Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: The Nature of Prophecy, the Laughing of Avraham and Sarah

[Music] okay good evening everyone tonight is uh dedicated at the continued reforeshalema of benthanita as well as the aliyah shamud whose yard site falls out this week yeah amen again i also want to add my own personal felis for a foolish lima for for binyamin for the beloved ones of the other people that are sponsoring this year we obviously all of us appreciate all of the support of torah and we know that the reward for those who support torah is very very great i'm still a little behind because there's some things i wanted to talk about again we're in humisboracious these are nyanim abracious so even if it's not absolutely in sync with the parsha tashavua it is generically about the avot and the mahouts so it's a worthy topic to talk about and i want to talk about the concept of laughter which is very very prominent in the second generation we know that avraham and sora had a son yitzhak yitzhak actually means he shall laugh and we know that when abram is given the news after his bris mila that he's going to have a child so the torah says he fell on his face and he laughed and then of course when sora hears the news via the three angels that she thinks are just people it also says but that she laughs at herself or within herself saying acharay valosi after i have withered away hayasa liedna shall i have rejuvenation of the flesh one laughs of course when one is confronted with something that is absurd something that's impossible something that makes no sense and in many many ways the whole birth of yitzhak made no sense not only were avraham and sarah old but ghazal say there was a much bigger miracle than her age although it's a little difficult why the terry doesn't talk about that miracle according to our sages sarah literally did not even have a womb so it wouldn't at whatever age it wouldn't have been possible for her to have a child but the question i want to raise is this avraham had his bris milan we talked about that last week and it takes a while to recover and avram is 99 years old after all and especially have a tradition that the third day after circumcision the baby or the adult is in a very weakened condition so akira sparkle knew that avraham was waiting around for a for origin for guests all the time so akari sparkle made it very very hot so that nobody would be traveling thinking that avraham would withdraw and take a rest take a nap but avraham is sitting in the heat waiting and looking and yearning for him so stuck so what does he have to do he has to send him three travelers who are actually angels but they're in the guise of people and avraham welcomes them etc and we know that these are angelic figures and they give avraham the great news once again that avraham had already heard from god but now he hears it from the angels that sarah's going to have a child and sora laughs from behind the tents and the angels say to avraham lamazette why is sarah laughing does she believe that god cannot give her a child and sarah denies it and sarah says i'm not laughing and the angels say yes you are so there are a number of questions here number one how come sora is criticized for her laughter when avraham himself laughed when god spoke to him why is avraham's laughter more justifiable than soros laughter number two is sora imenu lying she laughs and then she says no i i didn't laugh of course she did laugh so what exactly is she trying to do by saying she didn't laugh so i just want to mention a number of different answers that the meforshim give the madrish rabba actually says that when the angels criticize sarah for laughing they are indirectly criticizing avraham as well in other words because of the honor of abraham hashem did not want to give abraham a direct criticism but by pointing out that it's not appropriate to laugh in skepticism when hashem is telling you abraha so avraham should get the message as well so according to the madris rabba the tokuga the moosa the criticism is directed both to avraham and sarah and in fact avraham is even faulted for kind of being responsible for causing sarah's reaction if he laughed and i can laugh as well so the tocaka is equally shared by both but there's a second interpretation of targum unclass now who was uncles uncles was a nephew of the roman emperor titus who when he was a general was actually the person who destroyed the second base amiktas when he returned to rome he erected a triumphal arch celebrating his destruction of the base of mixes and on top of that arch you can see a picture of jewish slaves being led away in chains holding the menorah and there's an inscription in latin judea captiva which means judea the land of the jews has been captured has been subjugated there is a tradition i don't know if it's brought down in any authoritative halachic work that a jew that visits rome or lives in rome does not walk under the arch of titus not to glorify the what that arch symbolizes the subjugation of the base amicus archaeologically that arch is very important because it actually gives you a picture of what the menorah looked like although one might question whether the roman depiction is necessarily accurate in fact maimonides has a picture different than the picture of the archer titus so i think it's kind of a question who's more reliable obviously maimonides as a torah source is more reliable on the other hand the arch of titus represents a contemporaneous depiction of what the menorah was the rambam had never seen the actual nerve but be it is it may that's titus uncles was the nephew of titus a nucleus actually converted to judaism and uncles was a talmud of the great tanayam rabbi eliezer and rebbi yoshua and he was a chaver he was a colleague of rabbi akiva and he translated the torah into aramaic because aramaic was actually the more popular spoken language even in eric israel for example jesus of nazareth probably spoke aramaic in his common speech more than hebrew so the thing about uncles is this uncles is a very very literal translation of the torah it's it's not unlike for example the other aramaic targumim like targa myonasan targum you shall me that it that uh bring in incorporate many many madrussian of course keeps away from midrussia mongolis is very literal and because oncolous is very literal unclear is also very consistent if the tyra uses the same word multiple times uncles will normally make a point of translating it exactly the same way interestingly enough however when it comes to avraham and sora he translates the same word in two different ways with respect to avraham the torah says he fell on his face vayitzhak for he rejoiced with sarah it says fatitshak now titscock and yitzhak are exactly the same word uh the only difference is feminine versus masculine yitzhak is he left vaticak is she left but the targum does not translate but as the hadith that she rejoiced he translates it as so the targum is trying to answer this question why is avraham's laughter okay and sora's left you're not okay because there are two different reasons you can laugh you can laugh out of joy and you can laugh out of skepticism and avram's laughter was seen as joyous and soros laughter was seen as skepticism now this is a very interesting interpretive point what the targum is essentially doing is the targum is translating in order to answer a question that you might otherwise have on the text in other words the target doesn't ask the question but to target them by giving you the differential translation is addressing this question rashi often does the same thing rashi will often give you an explanation which is designed to answer a question that you would have with the alternative explanation but rashi doesn't give you the alternative explanation and rashi doesn't even ask the question he is giving you an answer for an unasked question that an attentive reader would have so that's for example uh my late dear friend rabbi dr viktor banchek sikornov raka who is a very very fine both psychologist who died recently wrote a five volume work called what's bothering rashi in which he goes through the rashes and shows you what the question is and the same thing is true for oncolous to a lesser a lesser degree but there is a cash on unclass if avraham's attitude and soros attitude were so different then why does the torah use the same word why does the torah use exactly the same word to describe both of them if in fact they are totally different types of laughters that itself is akashic so because of this i want to share with you uh two thoughts one is a thought of the meshech and the other is a thought of the aura of benatar the mesh says that abram and sarah's laughter were exactly the same and both of them were skeptical both of them were doubting but avraham had the right to be skeptical and sarah didn't what's the difference so here to understand this i have to digress a little bit to discuss a very very famous passage in the rambam's introduction to the mishnah you know the rambam's first work was his commentary on the mishnah but he wrote an introduction to that commentary which is a separate classic in and of itself in fact the hakodama of the rambam through the parish of mishnais sets out the basic understanding of what is the oral law what is the taurus about what are the components of halacha and in the middle of that discussion the rambam discusses the role of navua prophecy and the rambam makes a very important point that prophetic inspiration has no role in the halaq process this is the meaning of the famous verse loba shamayami the torah is not in heaven meaning even if a navi tells you that god says to not do a certain mitzvah or whatever we don't listen because the revelation of sinai cannot be changed and god has declared it's not going to be changed so any prophet no matter how great he seems to be who purports to either change a mitzvah abrogate a mitzvah or even tell you who to follow in a disputed makloket so he's not violating anything he's simply telling you who to follow mo basham i mean we don't listen to him right that's the famous gemara in bravo mathia where a majority of the sages ruled a certain way rabbi eliezer refused to accept that ruling and a voice from heaven said the law is like rabbi eliezer and the sages said to god lo basha miami the torah is not in heaven and god himself deferred to the erroneous decision of the sages in other words the error became the truth a fascinating point that that which was intrinsically mistaken became the will of god by virtue of that process so the rambam says therefore prophecy and divine voices have no role in halakhah but prophets are spiritual teachers they give us musa they give us guidance etc so the rambam says the following how do you know that somebody is a prophet some guy shows up and simply says god told me you should do x y and z now if he's a true prophet there's a misfit to listen to if he's a false prophet he's deserving of death how do i know who is a true prophet and who is a false prophet so the rambam says prophets have to undergo an examination till they get their prophecy license and this is one of the functions of the sanhedrin and that is you claim you're a prophet we're going to test you we're going to ask you to predict a number of events and if you are a true prophet your predictions will come true at a 100 not 99 at a 100 percent accuracy rate and if they are not accurate at a level of 100 you are a false profit and you will be discredited and the sanhedrin determines what the events should be and they also determine how many meaning you know it may not be one one may not be enough because anybody can have a lucky guess they may 5 10 15 they may be small things in other words these are not the major messages from god it may be you know who's going to win you know the the election in the united states uh well although i'll see you'll see in a moment that maybe that's not a good test uh for various for various reasons okay so the rambam says the following in testing a prophet the only way you can test the prophet is if he gives you a good prediction a prediction of a good event that doesn't happen so if he tells you the jews are going to win their war against saudi arabia so if they don't win the war he's a false prophet but if god forbid the prophet gives you a negative message the jews are going to be defeated and suffer casualties and it turns out barak hashem that they're victorious that doesn't prove that the prophet is the true prophet but it doesn't disprove him either because even if god told the prophet that a bad thing will happen to the jewish people hashem is full of mercy and because hashem is full of mercy hashem may cancel the decree which means the falsifiability of prophecy can only be when the good fails to come but if the badge fails to materialize a navi is not discredited that way and the rambam brings a very excellent proof to this idea from the book of yemi yo in the time of year miyahu which was during the the period preceding the destruction of the first beisamiktas by the babylonians so in many many ways yamio was considered to be a traitor because there were many false prophets that were telling the jewish people fight against the babylonians god loves you you're the chosen people you have the basamiktas god will never allow jerusalem to be destroyed fight against the world empire of babylonia you will be victorious hear me sounds like a benedict arnold or tokyo rose those who remember world war ii uh ymio was saying don't fight surrender uh if you try to fight they're gonna crush you they're gonna destroy you you're not worthy of god's protection surrender and maybe they'll treat you with mercy and the false prophets were calling you meow a traitor they were saying he lacked they were saying he lacked the munna you don't have faith in god we are the maminum so yamiyo told one of these false prophets who said we that we will be victorious he says listen i hope and i pray that you're right but if you're victorious and i'm wrong that does not prove i am a false prophet it just shows that god has mercy but if your prediction turns out to be wrong and my prediction is correct that will discredit you it's mama's the rambam's rule the rambam's rule is based on the story of euro meow now to go back the reason why i said if they navi tells you that who's going to win the election let's say the navy tells you trump wins the election and uh trump doesn't win the election as it looks like he won't although you know who knows so the question becomes uh is trump winning the election a good prophecy in other words i guess most i don't i don't want to speak for anybody but most certainly most of the religious world consider trump's victory to be something good and trump's defeat to be something bad so if the navy said he would win and he loses that would discredit the navi as uh giving you a false prophecy on the other hand i do know at least one orthodox rabbi he's probably the only one in queens who actually was uh very much against trump and said you have an orthodoxy who has to vote for bison so these are ambiguous what's good and what's bad so so the only so i'm not 100 sure if this came up la la la mesa i'm not sure if we would what events we define as absolutely good and absolutely bad but for purposes of illustration i use being defeated in war for the jewish people to be victorious in war we will assume is a good thing for the jewish people to be defeated in war we assume it is a bad thing so if the navi prophesies defeat and that doesn't happen he is not discredited if he prophesies victory which it doesn't happen he is immediately discredited as inaudible because god will never rescind a positive prophecy even if the jewish people then sin and become unworthy in other words if the navy's victory doesn't come to pass the navi cannot come up with an excuse oh sorry my number was good but you guys messed up because of your avarice doesn't work that way once it's an avua that's good it's gonna happen no matter what that's very important because otherwise you can never falsify a prophet because if the bad things don't happen then nobody says well god had mercy what do you want from me are you complaining and if the good thing doesn't happen then he could say well you messed up because of your sin so how do you ever falsify a prophet the answer is the good things are never going to be taken away so that's the rambam's clown a very important clown after the rambam says that clau he asks akasha on himself from a gemara in brachus we're going to read in a few weeks that after yaakov spent many many years in loven's house and he finally returns to eric israel with this with his children with his wives with his possessions he gets word that ace of his brother has not forgotten the enmity ace of his brother has not forgiven the fact that yaakov took away both his birthright and his blessings and we'll talk you talk about that a little later in a week or so from now and asap wants to kill him and the pussock says yaakov is frightened and yaakov is distressed and yaakov prays to god for help the gemara in brachos asks takasha what is yaakov afraid of many years before when he was running away from asaph he had a dream and god appeared to him in dream this is the latter of the angels going up and down the ladder and god said i will be with you i will protect you i will take care of you i will not abandon you yaakov has a divine promise so why is yaakov afraid when he comes back so the gemara and brachos answers that even though yaakov has a divine promise yaakov is afraid in his modesty that perhaps he sinned in the course of his years in lovan's house and because of his sin the divine promise might be forfeited meaning what is the gemara saying even when god gives you a promise it's on the condition that you're worthy and deserving of receiving that promise and if because of your sins you're not deserving god's get terminated now of course yaakov didn't have a sin but but jacob and his humility thought he might so the rambam says this is a direct contradiction to my rule i just told you that a divine prophecy for something good can never be rescindable even if there's sin and that is how we falsify a prophet so why in the case of yaakov is yaakov fearful that the divine promise will be terminated because of sin there's a contradiction between yaakov's fear and the rambam's rule regarding the falsification of a navi so the rambam gives an answer the rambam differentiates between promises and prophecies a promise is what god says to you so if god makes a promise to you you have to understand that there are certain conditions attached the promise is if you're righteous and you continue to follow the ways of god you'll get the promise and yaakov therefore is afraid that perhaps his sin will cause a forfeiture of promise prophecy is very different prophecy is not simply what god says to you it's what god says to you to communicate to other people this is actually very important what makes another navi is not his communion with god or his visions what makes a navi a navi is his duty to communicate his vision to others because he is a messenger of god but that explains some interesting problems we have in tanakh torah naviem prophets and writings and it's hard to understand exactly what differentiates the prophets from the writings for example the book of daniel is not in the prophets it's in the writings and the gomorrah in fact says daniel is not a prophet now what do you mean daniel is not a prophet the book of janil is filled with visions and their messianic visions in fact the most explicit they're very obscure but the most explicit messianic calculations in all of tanach are in the book of daniel so daniel certainly had visions daniel certainly spoke to god so why isn't daniel a prophet the answer is having visions seeing the future speaking to god that means you're holy that means you're beloved for sure but that doesn't make you a prophet what makes you a prophet is when god tells you go and convey this message to others daniel was not commanded to convey the message to other people he wrote it down kind of in an obscure way but he was not commanded to communicate it so the rambam says when god makes a promise to you you might lose it because of shema yigram but once it's by definition has to be falsifiable because if nivua cannot be falsifiable you never know if it's true in fact that's a rule that's a rule of science by the way any proposition that cannot potentially be shown to be false can never be shown to be true falsifiability is actually a necessary element in veracity because if no matter what happens you can't discredit me then i could be a liar and get away with it so nervous has to be falsifiable so god could have gone in two directions god could have said the evil stuff will be final or the good stuff will be final so hashem hashem decided to go in the path that's more merciful and compassionate okay this is the rambam it's a very important piece in the parish missionaries so now the metro says the following when god tells abram you will have a child avram is entitled so to speak to laugh not in a happy way but in a roofal way as if to say i i wish it will happen but how do i know maybe i'll sin now there's the rambam's the rambam would understand that avraham's laughter would be almost a fearful type of laughter ay vey who says but ramirez understands that after avraham got the news from god now this is not in the text actually but he wants to learn after avraham got the message from god he actually told sarah meaning sarah heard about it before the angels came once he told sarah it has now become prophecy it's no longer promise it's prophecy prophecy that's positive will never be rescinded so according to the metric why does the terror use the same word because the attitudes are the same a certain skepticism but avraham is entitled to be skeptical because when he heard the news it was the getter of by by the time sarah gets the news from avraham it is the getter of nevua and the vua is irrevocable even if they're sin that's the answer of the mesh but the final answer i want to share with you is an answer of the aurachain which is quite quite beautiful the oracanym says let's look at it the opposite way why do you have to assume that anybody is cynical that anybody lacks faith avraham is laughing out of joy out of gratitude out of simcha and sarah is doing the same thing sora is doing the same thing joy so why is she criticized if there's no skepticism why is she criticized so here's what the arakayam says there is actually a medrish that rashi brings rashi brings this matter it's not in the text that at the moment that the angel said that sarah will have a child even though she was old even though she was postmenopausal her body returned to its vibrancy and youth and she actually had her period she had her menstrual period and she was laughing in the light at the physical miraculous changes that came into her body god is really doing this it was a laughter of wonder a laughter of amazement now that's good those are positive things but here's what the aura says avraham laughs as soon as god makes the promise sarah did not laugh until she saw the physical changes in her body in other words for avraham a promise coming from god is every bit as powerful and more so than what you see with your physical eyes avraham didn't have to wait for there to be a physical change the promise itself was real enough to him to induce laughter now sarah believed of course she believed but the belief intellectually was not strong enough to induce the emotional response of laughter shall she saw the physical change in her body so the arakayam says when the angels say why is sarah laughing they're not criticizing her laughter they mean to say why is sarah laughing now and she didn't laugh when she heard the news from abraham did she not believe it then and that's why sarah denies it because she thinks she's being accused of not believing and she says no i didn't laugh in a scoffing way and that's true but the angel said the fact that you're laughing now and you didn't laugh then means there's a difference in your mind between a divine promise and a physical reality it's a very subtle difference most people most of us even if we believe in hashem when we actually see the physical reality that's more powerful for abraham there was no difference for avraham it was the same there's a famous gemara it's a mission of the last mission of says anyone that mourns the destruction of jerusalem shall merit and see the joy of jerusalem now i just mistranslated it because i translated it the way everybody translates it i translated it will merit and we'll see but grammatically that's not what it says it does not say below you yes will merit we'll see rather it says if you mourn over jerusalem zohair you marriage right now it's present right now what does that mean i understand the idea i mourn over jerusalem god will eventually let me experience the redemption in some way but what does it mean to say while i'm mourning i experience the redemption so there's a story about napoleon and again this is like a very famous often repeated story i i understand historically it may not be true so you have to understand a lot of these stories are not necessarily historically accurate but it makes a beautiful point that napoleon after he had completed his conquest throughout europe happened to walk by a jewish synagogue on the ninth of us when people were sitting on the floor and they were crying and they were mourning and they were grieving and he asked somebody what's going on here says oh these jews are mourning the destruction of their temple he says when was the temple destroyed and they told him almost 2 000 years ago year 70 even in napoleon's time it was almost 2000 years ago and napoleon said any nation that still mourns its past that is still connected to its history that still yearns to go back to its homeland can never be defeated god will be with them because they've never forgotten where they come from so in fact jonathan rosenblum the columnist tells a story that's a very very disheartening story about a terrorist who was languishing for many years in an israeli prison and finally in one of the insane prisoner swaps where israel kind of releases a thousand to get one okay without getting into the halakhas of those issues the guy gets released the terrorist gets released and he's interviewed by al-jazeera the the arab network and they you know they treat him like a hero he's a terrorist but a big hero freedom fighter and they ask him did you ever give up hope in all of your years in prison did you ever like give up the struggle did you ever feel the odds are against you the israeli army is so powerful he said there were times that i lost help but i gained my hope when i saw what one of my jewish guards was doing it was during the jewish passover holiday and the jewish guard was eating bread eating pizza and i said to him the arab said to him the terrorist said to him what are you eating what are you eating pizza it's the passover you're not allowed to hear the arabs are very from in the ritualistic parts of things what are you eating bread and the guard said this is the arab is saying this in al jazeera the guard said i don't care what happened three thousand years ago it's not relevant to me the jews being taken out of egypt and the terrorists said god forbid that's when i knew we would win because we care about what happened three thousand years ago and he doesn't now rahman al-islam you know god forbid that it should should be that way but the point is a very powerful point that we're hearing even from from our enemies says we can learn from our enemies as well that when you no longer care about your roots you no longer care where you come from then the enemy can can get you you know whether we're talking about uh the american revolution where a relatively small group of americans were able to defeat the great british whether we're talking about chanaka which is more where a small jewish army defeated the most powerful military in the world whether you're talking about vietnam if you remember vietnam it's a basic rule of war that the side that wins the war is not necessarily the more powerful or the more militarily advanced it's the one that is more committed to their cause so consequently the idea is if i truly mourn jerusalem i'm experiencing redemption that very moment because i'm connected to it and that connection is going to give me the goula now the sofa says the point a little differently but it's ultimately the same idea remember when yosef gets sold and the brothers come back to yaakov with yosef's multicolored garment and it's dipped in blood and they say oh yosef was killed by a wild animal this is his garment so the pussac says that although yaakov was told that yosef was dead yaakov could not be comforted no matter what he could not get over it and rashi brings in madrid that yaakov could not get over it because the the the principle in the creation that time heals all wounds that we're able to go on after a loss is only when somebody is dead but when somebody's alive there's no closure and the agony continues now this doesn't mean rashi does not mean that yaakov knew that joseph was alive this is a metaphysical idea that even if you think he's dead if in reality he's alive the pain doesn't heal now why couldn't yaakov figure out that joseph was alive that sent us another question so here's what the qusam sulfur says hashem gave a principle in the bria that we do get over things it doesn't mean we forget our grief but we can compartmentalize it and we go on and live that's a great great blessing that the passage of time gives a person some type of strength and resilience to be able to go on otherwise life would be totally unbearable there would be no way out of anything so here we are two thousand years we're still crying and mourning over the base of mikdash why don't we get over it answer you don't get over something that's alive you only get over something that's dead if i'm still grieving over it that means it's still alive and therefore the very fact that i'm grieving is a source of joy because if it wouldn't bother me anymore that means it's dead the basic idea and i'm connecting this to the aurochaium is that when i have in mind god's promises of redemption it's not a future thing that will happen it is a present reality that i experience this is what a muna is and muna is so real and munna is so deep that it's equivalent to what you see with your eyes in other words when mashiach comes we're not supposed to be surprised or amazed because we knew it was coming i think the mark is the story that there was a certain rav jochen the who made it rasha that lyasid lavo in the future the walls of jerusalem will be comprised of huge slabs of jewels diamonds emeralds rubies sapphires 30 almost high 60 almost high 60 feet high 30 ammos and there was a talmud who thought this must be an exaggeration i don't think it's really going to be the case and she's traveling in a sea voyage and they get lost in a storm and he sees floating on top of the ocean mediterranean i assume huge slabs of jewels diamonds emeralds ruby sapphires and angels are sawing it away and they're making the walls of jerusalem and when he gets back to his rebbe he's so excited rebbe you're right everything you said was right and ravioconan said you mean until you saw it you didn't believe it what about a moon and muna right this is the gift of emunah so the mymen finds a sense of comfort and redemption simply by the divine promise itself even before it happens and that's the tainan sarah why are you laughing now sarah are you surprised why are you surprised you had the divine promise of course interpretively this is presupposing that sarah heard about this before the angels came because the ramban by the way asked the general question this goes back to uncles uncles understands that sarah is disparaging what the angels are saying not and the ramban asks okay let's say she is but these these are people these are entities that she thinks are just people so why should she take them seriously and their unbound lays down a very important rule i should have mentioned it earlier we see from here that when somebody gives you a bracha even if you think they're insignificant and they're nobodies say amen because you never know who god chooses to be the conduit of his blessing because i'll say the blessing of a simple person should not be treated lightly in your eyes they tell the story again this also may not be a true story but it's a well-known story that people like to tell about a man named brock that had a daughter and she was approaching 30 and she was not yet married which in bane brock was a major tragedy and he goes to the steipler uh and asks for a bracha and the steipler said did you make a kiddish when she was born he says well no i didn't a lot of people don't make a kiddish for a daughter it's more of a private thing he says why is that important except ah because at the kid-ish everybody goes over to you and say may you be zolka to take your daughter to the cup maybe a hundred people and it's like even gets kind of tired all right and uh again and again and again and again and again and one of them may have been the designated conduit for a divine blessing and since you didn't have that opportunity you didn't get the blessing so the man said what should i do now he says make a kiddish now in honor of her birth 30 years later and the story goes he made a kiddish people say why are you making a kiddish oh in honor of the birth of my daughter and everybody gave him a bracha mayu bizoka to take your daughter and the story goes within two weeks she got engaged and she got married you never know the barakah of anybody counts for a lot counts for a lot so we should be generous in giving the giving brothers to people and we should be open and modest enough to acknowledge and receive the broncos that anyone wants to wants to give us so i just wanted to talk about that lesson of emunah and the thought of the origami um i want to end a little bit that the number of difficult events have happened this past week the u.s election is one of them but that's the one that's actually least important uh in terms of ultimate issues but claudia israel did lose two very very great leaders this past week one was and they're really very different one you might call kharadi yeshiva and the other more modern but both of them were great great leaders of um israel one was the 91 year old son of moshe feinstein rev david feinstein rob david feinstein in some ways was overshadowed by the greatness of his father as the god of adore like any son of ramosa is going to be overshadowed by rav moshe feinstein but one needs to know that david feinstein was truly a son of his father in every way he was a great great talmud a great post-sake one of the great post kim in the world but like rab moshe feinstein he was a kind generous modest compassionate person who was willing to give of his time to anyone that needed him at any time and this too was a great characteristic of ramosa and in fact i would urge people to if you don't have it to buy the art scroll biography of rav moshe because it is filled with stories of kindness and goodness and care and i think that's important sometimes because sometimes and maybe more so in israel when we talk about godolim we always emphasize how much they learn how much they know oh they knew the whole poem of my heart whatever it is and that's true but this is a different type of emphasis the emphasis of kindness of goodness i myself have a story of the throat of marcia finds him rachel feinstein used to visit my community hartford because he had a relative and he wanted to take a two-week break uh we used to say he wanted to go to the one place in the world where nobody would ask him to shiva hatred connecticut and uh i was i was in fourth grade i was in fourth grade and i used to be in the car that would take him to show i would have an in show and then walk to school and i noticed a lot of things i noticed the shining of his face i didn't understand a word he said it was all yiddish i watched the way he would learn as he was wrapping up his two i had never seen that before he would learn between alias he had a mishnais and he had his finger in the mishnahs it was always closed during the reading of the torah and as soon as the aliyah was finished he would open i mean how much time do you have he had like 30 seconds to learn clothes open close open close i was like transfist i had never seen such a thing but my story is that one time uh i went to show with him he didn't talk to me i mean there are other people in the car and i was the last person in show and i was still dabbing i had the key to the show and you know there was little precocious in that in that way and it was raining and i only had to walk a block to school but somebody knocked at the door and the driver said rabbi feinstein remembered you were in the car on the way to show and he didn't walk he didn't want you to walk home in the walk to school in the rain so he asked me to come back and give you a ride now all of the people who knew me were not volunteering to give me a ride and i didn't care i i didn't mind walking in the rain and i still don't mind to this very day i walk around in the rain it does not bother me but the goddess the greatest rabbi didn't want a nine-year-old to be inconvenienced so when i read these stories about kindness i know they're true i know they're true because i experienced it they are true and it's worthwhile to read because i think you need a corrective a little bit in which cadolum are defined simply by what they know when there's so much more so in that sense rev david feinstein was a son of his father he was the same way as they say gets overshadowed but he was very very great in his own way lived in the lower east side which was a poor is a poor neighborhood there's some re-gentrification but it's largely a poor neighborhood lived in simplicity and modesty and it's a tremendous loss for us although he was 91 years old he was not a young man but when we mourn our guidolam it's not so much for mourning them mourning for us the other person was very very different in some ways but very much the same in other ways and that is rabbi jonathan sex jonathan sax was absolutely brilliant he was uh considered to be when he was studying for a phd in philosophy he was considered to be the most brilliant philosophical student in england absolutely brilliant uh his books are beautiful but one has to know that what rabbi sachs did was rabbi sax made the name of god beloved rabbi sax was able to communicate the truths of torah in ways that everybody can understand them a jew non-jew that's why even prince charles the prince of wales sent a note to the funeral saying what a uh what a loss it is for him personally that rabbi sachs was able to give him wisdom and guidance and rabbi sachs could walk into a kharadi yeshiva and give a shear people don't realize he was actually a learned very learned person and he could speak in the house of lords and his whole life really was a tremendous tremendous hashem and one of the great aspects which is coming out now is that besides all of the public things that he did the lectures and the books he was extremely available to people privately he mentored many many rabbis young rabbis he gave them encouragement he gave them he made them feel that their role is valuable he built people up tremendous thing to build somebody up in which what did he say he had he had a sense he said a good leader attracts followers a great leader makes leaders it's a great statement the greatness of a leader is not how many followers he has the greatness of a leader is how many leaders he can make so although in the shiva kharadi world perhaps rabbi sax is not as appreciated as he should be but his loss is a very very great loss he was a wonderful person and his teachings will continue to inspire so what i actually want to end with i want to end with a vort from rabbi sachs that was said at leviah you know all of the i mean it was a very small of eye under the coverage rules in england you can't have a gathering of more than 30 people this would have been a leviah that would have had thousands and thousands of people they're only 30 people at the funeral but they did have they have the eulogies on youtube and this was a eulogy given by one of the senior dionym on the london basin which itself is very very interesting because in some ways the london based and rabbi sachs always had a bit of much locus because robbie's action is more modern more progressive more open the london bastion is very stark they were always like pulling him back so there was there was always a little bit of tension with the london basement and rabbi sacks but you see from this husband how much love and respect they actually had for each other and the dayan dayan bin stuck very harsh of a dayan in london said over a vote avram argues with god when god tells avraham i'm going to destroy saddam so abram starts arguing well what if there's 50 righteous people 40 30 20 10. there's a mach lokes exactly what is the significance of the numbers the way rashi learns is that you always have to have 10 people to save a city the the way it worked is there were five cities that god wanted to destroy saddam amara admits to him and so so 405 because there's a minion in each city 40 means okay if you can't save all five maybe there'll be four minions and you'll save four the thirty is say three cities the twenty is save two cities and the ten save one city meaning according to rashi you need the minion to save the city and avraham is simply going down if you can't save five cities say four save three save two save one and of course there wasn't even a minion so according to rashi you need a minion but other we shine and learn differently other we shine and learn avram is not going down in cities avram is simply going down in merit meaning to say save all five cities if there's fifty save all five cities if there's forty five save all five if there's forty if there's thirty if there's twenty if there's ten now meaning according to this second shot which is not rasheed if you only have 10 sadiq in five cities avraham is making the argument that even two righteous people should save a city not like rashi rashi is learning when avraham is arguing for ten he's only arguing to save one city but if you learned this other shot abram is saying if in five cities there are ten save all five cities all you need are two tzadikim per city you understand the makhlok is how to understand the numbers so rough sex asks bislama according to russia you need a minion so you can't go below 10. but if we understand that a city could be saved even with two righteous people then why can't a city be saved with one righteous person avraham should have asked for five let there be five sajikim in the five cities one sadiq per city meaning why does avraham stop at ten like rashi avraham stops attend because you have to have a minion in a city but if i'm learning all you need are two people in the city then let avraham go down to one meaning five so if sex says you see from here that you can't be at sadiq unless there's at least one other person that you influenced in a good way meaning to say what type of psychic are you if you're living in a community and not a single person has been changed because of you so that's what he says so abram couldn't go below 2 because 2 is the minimum that sadder has to influence and that is a beautiful voice and that i think is his credo we're put here in this world not only for ourselves we're put in this world to help others to influence others now that doesn't mean everybody's going to be like her of noah weinberg or uh the like it may just be our children which is good enough but we have to be givers we have to be sharers whether it's a large thing or a small thing if you love hashem then you love his children and you want to bring them to something precious and something good so what do you mean there's only one static in the city what type of static are you if not a single person was influenced even noah we talked about noah weeks ago but noah influenced his children yes the zoa does condemn noah for not having more but noah did influence somebody he wasn't the only soviet right there was noah his wife and his his children right so um may the memory of these great people be a blessing and may we learn from them you know whenever a great person dies there is a vacuum in the world there is less holiness in the world and if there's less holiness in the world there's a certain emptiness and it's our job to fill up that emptiness a little bit so in a sense there's there's a responsibility on the jewish people to kind of take up the mantle that was left left behind so we should be zoho to see us and again stay healthy and good uh [Music] here [Music]