(Way#12) TEACHING STUDENTS: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston:

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston this class has been such a joy he's been teaching us the 48 ways to wisdom and today we're on part 12. it's been exciting i encourage everybody to get back and check every episode see how it builds how it mounts how the the beauty of what the rabbi's teaching aids us in steps to wisdom and you know what we've got a beauty today no doubt so let's tune right in and see how the rabbi's doing rabbi poston always a joy to be with you thank you so much for staying up so late in jerusalem and sharing torah with the rest of the world how are you sir and take away the class it's yours good thank you thank you dan thank you for everyone who's coming and watching and participating and we look forward to comments uh it's a real pleasure for me because it gives me the opportunity to go over the material that i had learned over the years that i actually got to witness rav north weinberg teach many occasions and i hope to put into practice in my own life whatever it is that i'm teaching and sharing so let's get going let's get started and this is number 12 of the 48 ways to wisdom as i reiterated every time and we'll repeat it's not just for jews although some of the principles here will be strictly um for the israel for the children of israel however because we are a light to the nations and we are sharing our wisdom there are bits and pieces and treasure you know gems here that everyone can pick up on so as we left egypt into freedom right the 49 specific days that we traveled and that we worked on our character in order to leave impurity and to come forth towards the highest levels of receiving the torah and i'll say because this is part of the beyond seven series the torah is for everybody when i say the torah is for everybody it was given specifically to the jews to share with the world meaning the torah is for you but just keep this in mind i hope this does not sound especially preachy because i'm going to talk about how one should not preach it may sound very preachy but in order for a human being to understand the torah and i know this is going to people you know i want conduits okay i might sound very uh a controversial what i'm about to tell you but there is no way for anyone who does not have the tradition that was revealed at mount sinai to really understand the depths of torah and therefore we invite you to learn if you're interested in learning torah properly then find a rabbi find someone who has a tradition don't go to you don't go to the what they call the blind leading the blind right it ain't going to get you nowhere right it's going to get you nowhere that's where it's going to get you so um that's how i want to begin with this number 12 is called people which means teaching students so there's so many verses there's so many verses i mean i can go through a few just to give an idea maybe i'll save it as we go along but just keep in mind i'll give you verse after verse after verse verse how there's an obligation and it may sound like it's just for the father to teach his son we'll have to deal with that because the truth is learning torah is one of the staples it's one of the fundamental concepts within judaism the jews had always been literate i mean just take a look at history world history so these are statistics i don't know if they're that true anymore because the last you know 2 300 years more and more of the world became quite literate but the statistics that i heard and i believe were true was that for 99 of world history 99 of the population we're ignorant we're illiterate illiterate now on the flip side and it may sound very arrogant okay but for 99 percent of world history 99 of the jews were actually literate now that's a that's a strong statement i'm about to make but we're talking about the written word everyone was supposed to have their own safer torah everyone came three times a week sometimes more obviously for public torah readings now that is in order to hear to have discussions if you have to have your own say for torah you wrote your own messages or you had to fill in which everyone had i mean maybe they weren't scribes okay it takes a little bit of a special talent to be so right but being literate doesn't mean you have to write it means you have to be able to read okay and to to okay you know what i maybe i'll go through the verses no i'll hold off let me hold off until we get into the sources right i want to talk in general first right so teaching students means not to be a preacher we've not said don't be a preacher right a demagogue is someone who is using emotions and manipulation in order to try to get across this idea this is the opposite this as one of the things i meet so many people who have left other religions and unfortunately even the jews who who figured they they had enough of judaism it all comes down to the same thing that they were not allowed to ask questions so involving the non-jews who have left uh christianity or other religions they basically said you know i got in trouble with the pastor because i was asking too many questions or questions they didn't like and they said you just have to believe okay unfortunately the the school system the jewish school system every it's autonomous each school each teacher is doing is perhaps his own thing and unfortunately you also have you know um you know it's called damaging teachers teachers who cause damage to their students and unfortunately that could last for a long time and hopefully the students who have grown up and realized it was just that teacher that that's the opposite of what judaism stands for they encourage the whole talmud is discussions questions and answers and more questions more questions and more questions every time you give an answer there's more questions and it encourages questions to end so the whole idea of teaching students how are you effective in getting across your ideas so that's what we're going to talk about tonight hopefully with the um with the guidance of north weinberg but this is one of the 48 ways to wisdom and and why is teaching so important in acquiring wisdom that's really going to be uh the the bottom line in the nutshell so ravnoch weinberg always said teach teach teach doesn't matter don't wait till you're like studying talmud for 15 or 20 years or even 10 years whatever you know now teach now he used to give an example how the jewish people in soviet russia i don't even know if people know what that is back in the day when it was forbidden to teach torah that jews went out of their way in an underground sort of way you know in the lead illegal sort of way where you know you couldn't even get a brit mila there are jews 70 years behind the iron curtain that illegally you know and did did be lost so it was not legal to congregate in synagogues or you knew that i guess they called big brother i don't know what they called it over there big comrade whatever it was uh was watching who came in and out of this there was no freedom of religion okay so they didn't want you to share ideas and this is unfortunately what's the council culture that's what it's called and it's uh affecting its epidemic that's the that's the real epidemic um it's not the real you know we know there's another epidemic going on but this is one of the worst the worst things that could happen to the jewish people is the squelching of the free market of ideas so teach whatever you can so what do they do in russia so they if one guy learned aleph that's all he knew was a few letters from the alphabet from the hebrew alphabet he went out of his way and they made these meetings at the cost of their lives in somebody's basement to teach the few letters they knew and someone else who knew the other letters would teach him and they would teach each other with very little information they knew because it's all they had was a few pages of a book and he shared what he knew and the other one shared with they knew and broke hashem to a certain extent a certain amount of the religion we call religion we know we mean the the the true knowledge that came from hashem was able to be transferred um under great difficulty and so another main we're going to talk about is just caring about people if you really care you're not just empathy and sympathy and but just pure care let's say you found happiness and you see other people walking around the street today it's very difficult because everyone seems to have these face covers on their on their face so you don't know how happy or unhappy they are but assuming that you do actually have some contact with somebody and you know they're going through troubling times and you have an answer to their troubles maybe it's it's a suggestion for a job or a suggestion how they can you know better improve their website or their marketing skills or whatever it is why wouldn't you share with you little knowledge i'm just assuming it's a little knowledge maybe you have a lot of knowledge maybe you have to charge for it but how about starting them off with a little bit of knowledge for free to get them on their feet so maybe they can afford to pay you one day for the big knowledge that you have right but anyway the point is this to teach people and not to charge either there's another idea okay this is really not for tonight's topic but i do want to mention that a rabbi should not charge for his future now there are there are reasons why one may charge but in general the general idea is that one should not charge why because god didn't charge us he gave it to us freely and so obviously there's time involved there can be traveling there could be preparation there are certain things that are unique okay there may be there may be reasons not going to go into it but the idea is that one should if you really care about people then you want to help them and you'll share and you'll teach them i just use happiness as an example but really the whole torah is tikkun why are we here to fix our characters as the as the vilnigan says and many others the purpose of being on this planet is to work on our character and the torah is the instruction manual and if you have some insights then why would you charge okay right exactly why i'm sorry why would you hold back that was the main point and there's another assumption i know we're going to get into this and that is that maybe you don't want to share with people because you assume that they don't want to learn so it is true the it's a hurrah right there's an evil inclination has a strong pull on people and they don't want to learn but we we're taught that every every soul is pure every soul really wants to soar high and connect with the almighty and it's only the yates of hurrah that distracts it and doesn't want it to so i'll give you just an example when we were training to be rabbis at aysha torah now is one of the largest buildings on the western wall plaza western wall if anybody doesn't know what that is it used to be called the whaling wall and we don't use that term but it's where it's the outer structure where that we'll call the um it's the temple mount it's the wall of the temple mount where the temple was first temple second temple and the third temple will be so right now it's a plaza where a lot of people go to pray and congregate for learning as well anyway so back in the day in the 60s late 60s the 70s the 80s i'm sure continued 90s in the 2000s as well that many many jews who passed through on their way to the far east from america or jews perhaps who didn't live in jerusalem came searching for something and there were a few rabbis that went out and would tap people on their shoulder who were you know carrying a backpack usually they had a canadian flag because they didn't want to they didn't want anybody another american but the idea is that they looked like backpackers they were on a trip and they were just passing through and uh one particular rabbi rabbi mayor schuster there's a chronological he passed on but he um he was famous he he seemed to be i mean i knew him personally he seemed to be he would have his hands like this and he looked like he was afraid to talk to anybody and he would be the most famous guy that would go and start a conversation now that's already difficult you can imagine you don't know this person he doesn't know you i mean maybe things are different back then so here maybe some would get very upset that you even try to enter their space but he would ask them are you jewish and then the person yeah okay and says well did you would you like to learn some torah so it's a very awkward question and then what he would do ultimately is get the guy convinced just take one hour right you have your whole life why don't you just one hour come with me you can leave if you don't even like it come and listen to this rabbi medra of north weinberg come to one of these classes he's affected tens of thousands of people by just saying hi well he actually was saying excuse me do you do you have the time and the person would tell them you know what time was no do you have time do you have time to come and learn so the idea in our training was that every soul really wants to do the right thing and is looking for it it just doesn't know it and you could be a messenger you could be a conduit you could be an opportunity standing there waiting god put you right there at that moment for this guy and what you're asking him is you know how do you engage you know you ask questions have you ever had a background did you ever learn the person never did wouldn't you think that if it was worthwhile spend 15 minutes 20 minutes check it out it's just a conversation and he wasn't charismatic he was i'm telling you it was the scariest thing because his black hat this jacket and you didn't see a smile on his face and but he was determined not to let you go until you came with him up all those steps to the yeshiva and i'm telling you i don't even know the numbers it could have been in the hundreds of thousands so many people came now what does it mean that everybody really is soaring every the soul is like a flame and it just wants to go higher and higher but unfortunately because of its childhood um you know what the word is you know trauma let's say it again upbringing or you're talking about an event negative you know the dysfunctional family things that happened that turned you off from certain things that you know kept you bound up like in your own egypt that didn't allow you to to experiment and go out and beyond only only with negative things you know whether it's drugs or women or you know i don't mean women are negative god i mean with um we get the point dysfunctional relationships right relationships aren't going anywhere right those types of things so so this was like a tremendous idea just to bring it down to and not not being a preacher not being a demagogue but just engaging in conversation another thing is when you're teaching but you you appreciate certain things hopefully and what you want to do is to convey you just want to share with somebody something that you appreciate appreciate with somebody else in other words if only they can appreciate what you appreciate but that means you have to open yourself up to explain why it's meaningful to you and if it's meaningful to you why wouldn't it be meaningful to someone else okay so you have to learn how and that's going to be part of what we're going to talk about okay so let's begin with some of the sources and the ideas i'm just going to use again this is ravenoff weinberg's book i mean he didn't write it his students wrote it friends of mine and um we're using this as the outline so one of the main ideas is until you teach an idea to somebody you don't really fully comprehend it right now let's say for example you're in a classroom and the teacher says a certain math equation and so you get the right answer let's assume right you get the right answer now they call you up to the front of the room and say now explain how you arrived at that point so it could be that you don't know how to explain it true but wouldn't it be i don't know not just good in the teacher's eyes but wouldn't it be productive if you could because then you could um replicate that same uh you know what do you call it the equation right not the answer but the using the methodology in any uh situation similar uh to what the teacher had asked just using different numbers you're going to come to the correct correct answer so one of the ideas of teaching is you have to be able to actually know what you're talking about right and through teaching it you're going to make mistakes but you hopefully your students will be able to ask the questions and that will help refine some of the ideas so there is one particular verse and i told you i got a whole bunch of verses well let me know if you want me to read i've got my my tanakh up here torah okay so let's start with um proverbs 27 verse 17. 27. verse 17 says iron sharpens iron and a man sharpens the countenance of his friend okay so you understand we're not even talking about teaching students we're just talking about having a conversation with another human being right so in judaism in the general beit midrash study hall you always have two people at least two people um sharpening each other they call it a favruta system so in hebrews barzel babarzel iron against iron right it sounds actually quite like warlike and if you're ever in a bate midrash i invite you all to come or you can look at some of these things online where they're slugging it out with their thumbs it's almost like a a rocket right a mortar a katusha rocket right a guy comes up with something and the other guy has to come back and they're both looking for the truth but it's like you know when you're what do you call it um sharpening a knife okay i guess you could use stone but the idea is to use a one piece of iron against another piece of iron will sharpen and right one against the other yakin is together it's sharpening but it's also the word together is from khad khad is sharp right as the verse continues also ish and that's what happens when one man sharpens the countenance of his friend this happens to be also in the gamora in tanit 7a so what i will do is just read the first part and then there's another verse i want you to read so i'll tell you in a second so rabbi hama the son of rabbi khalina said what is the meaning of that which is written in our verse we just read proverbs 27 17 the verse says iron sharpens iron so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend this first comes to tell you that just as these iron implements one sharpens the other when they are rubbed against the other so too when torah scholars study together they sharpen one another in halacha in the torah in the torah ways comes of nachman by yitzhak and he said why are torah matters likened to a tree and we have a verse and you can read it it's proverbs 3 chapter 3 verse 18 18 reads it is a tree of life for those who grasp it and those who draw near it are fortunate okay so the last right so why is the torah likened to a tree in other words it's a tree of life and it's talking about wisdom for those who grasp it and those who draw near to it to the torah are fortunate so this verse comes to tell you that just as a small piece of wood a kindling can ignite a larger piece so too minor torah scholars people i think you look at as not knowing as much as you do can sharpen great torah scholars and enable them to advance in their studies and now this is the famous expression that really this idea is based on and this is what rabbi hanina said i have learned much from my teachers even more from my friends but from my students i have learned more than from all of them so yeah we are not just talking about friends but we're also talking about students as well because that's what it's talking about pew pool tommy bean teaching students right and how really it's it's it's actually quite selfish i could sit and learn all of my own but you know what that's not the most selfish thing i could do because i'm not going to really gain that much if i actually find students that's called being selfish in other words what is selfish it means i want to get the most for myself and if i'm if i want to get the most knowledge then i better find some students to share it with do you follow so it's counterintuitive because and unfortunately there's a lot of people that maybe it's in their personality maybe they're really not capable of having a conversation with someone else but you have to work on your character i'm just telling you now you know everyone is different and um but it's more important to learn with other people it's to sit down with a book on your own it cannot be compared i don't know if it's like copper and learning with someone is like gold you know like it's it's a world of difference and um unfortunately as i say you know people with different personality disorders or they never really worked out how to have open communication they don't know how to listen right they just there's too much ego they're gonna have problems and then they're turned off and says i can learn much better by myself and you know what maybe they're right but they're missing the point because the whole torah was there to work on your character so hopefully they will see the signs we'll see the signs as we go through our relationships and see what we need to fix in order to enhance that relationship because it's so necessary as i mentioned that's where the real the real sharpening will happen like if you're all by yourself let's say a guy who's not married right so this is a promo for getting married okay so you wake up in the morning you look in the mirror and you say i'm so handsome i'm god's gift to the world right i'm perfect there's nothing wrong with me and you go with your life like that as a single guy but what happens is you get married and then you find out you're not the best guy in the world right you got all these problems you didn't know you had you didn't know existed you have you have this uh other human being we'll call her your wife this female in your life and she starts telling you about your warts reminds you about your doctor's appointment reminds you about remember you're me you're meeting this guy the last time you got in a fight with that guy you know maybe uh you should tone it down and maybe you should not talk about a certain subject whatever it is right your wife is your better half and uh listen you just being alone learning alone it's the same idea right life is about it's learning it's a journey it's a learning process so to really be able to as i said it's a promo also getting married as a a possibility of actually fixing who you are and i'm not again it could be quite selfish right you're going to give you're going to do you're going to do the dishes for her you're going to go out and buy her or give her the credit card she'll buy the clothes but whatever it is you're giving to another human being and in turn she and it really works both ways okay so don't i'm not like being uh i don't know what the word is um you know but she is yours she is your tikkun she is you she's like a mirror it's an opposite attract right i don't want to go to my i want to go back to the tommy deem thing but i want to just say how important is to get married it works both ways right i'm not just saying from a man's point of view i'm just being a little bit because i am a guy a little bit biased or one-sided but barak hashem everyone should get married they should live happily ever after right it's a lot of work don't get me wrong but it's the best thing you can ever do for yourself and you will inherit the world to come put it that way okay so another idea is kenyana to actually acquire the term so how does one acquire it right when you're able to verbalize it to someone else like if you're not just reading from a script so if you're let's say you're just reading from a script you never really acquired it if you could not just memorize it but internalize it right when one speaks to another human being there's actually a catch phrase um i'll tell you what it is i don't know if i actually if i wrote it down but there's this idea that when the heart speaks to right when you open your heart and you speak to someone else it will enter their heart okay i actually found a certain phrase i don't know if i still have it oh it's a lie for sure uh yeah here it is i wanted to know where this statement like originated from because hazal our rabbis do say this many places it says divine see min words that leave from the heart right you're expressing something to the heart they enter the heart okay so i just put through the google like where it's from and there's different websites that explain it goes like they found it in print over for over a thousand years in in different uh rabbis have mentioned these words um but it sounds like interestingly enough there's an old arab quote so but it's nowhere near it's also about 1200 years old so it says when a word comes from the heart it enters the heart and it will leave the tongue only it does not pass through the ears i don't know where they came up with that but that's uh at least they got the first part the same as us but it makes sense so the idea of acquisition to acquire make it real it's got to be real something you um either implement in your life or you hold tr as a treasure in other words you you yourself feel that it is valuable okay so that's what it means to to have this kenyan of the term now why why should we teach is it a moral obligation we did discuss the idea of caring but i want to go into some of the the sources the tour itself tells us so let's start with the rambam the ram bomb we're only talking about you know a thousand years ago but we'll go back to the sources as well through the rambam um so in the laws of teaching torah or learning tara i should say learning interestingly every one of the 613 mitzvahs always has some verse in the torah right if it's to pick up a lulav on sukkot or to sit in a hut on sukkot or to eat matzo on passover or to bring a certain offering on a certain holiday whatever the exact mitzvah is specific mitzvah there's something there's words within the torah that describe it so there's no question where do we know that learning torah is so important learning torah right the jews have been known to learn the torah why as we know really it's about the transmission of the torah okay maybe i'm already giving this away in order to be part of the transmission you have to be part of the link you have to be part of the training the change so to speak so of course you have to acquire it in other words it's a prerequisite for to teach so there's so many words in the torah about teaching but nowhere do you see the words about learning it not not exactly those words so let's start with the first verse i'm going to mention in deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 19 chapter 11 verse 19 reads and you shall teach them to your sons to speak with them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise so already if we're talking about teaching your students i mean you better find a lot of students because you're going to be doing this all day long but it's really focusing on your sons so since and we'll see so many times the torah says you have to teach your son which you cannot possibly teach your son if it's not it is not um within your you know scope right so you have to learn in order to teach okay so we'll just say that learning is a prerequisite to teaching it's obvious if you're going to teach you have to know yourself but we see that the actual source for learning because this is in the laws of learning torah is in the torah it says teaching so as rav north weinberg says that in order to fulfill the mitzvah of learning torah you should learn in order to teach in other words when your motivation is to make this kenyan to acquire the torah for yourself it's not just sitting and learning but you want to be able to be have clarity so you can share it with others in other words that's actually on your mind so you're already starting from a self-less point of view in other words i'm learning in order to give it away it's unbelievable if your whole goal is to learn to give it away then hashem will fill you he'll fill you in law number two of the rambam and he mentions again that a man is obligated to instruct his son as well as his grandsons so you'll find this in deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 9. if you want to read it chapter 4 [Music] verse 9 reads but beware and watch yourself very well lest you forget the things that your eyes saw and lest these things depart from your heart all the days of your life and you shall make them known to your children and to your children's children so i mentioned the idea of being part of the transmission being part of that chain link all the way back from sinai mount sinai the revelation till the future to your children's children grandchildren and your grandchildren's children this is um but how could you be in a position where you're going to watch yourself lest you forget the things that you saw god forbid lest these things depart from your heart and then the answer is the way to do it is what it says to teach it's it's like as clear as day beautiful to me anyway and go to deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 7. deuteronomy 6 verse 7 reads and you shall teach them to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise up okay again it sounds very much like deuteronomy 11 19 but the idea it's this is the real this is a real catch verse for the mitzvah to teach right you shall teach your sons not just speaking but teach them and the hebrew is this now by the way in deuteronomy 11 19 which you read it's you shall teach them to your sons here it says now it's what's the difference between lee moon and shinoon so the language of xinun is sharpness um also mishna it's to review it's to constantly go over it what's the greatest way of doing review look i heard it once but i have to say it over if i say it over it's automatically reviewing right you hear what i'm saying so this is the rashi on that word on that word of shinnanten this is deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 7 this is an expression of sharpness meaning that these words should be sharply pressed in your mouth so that if a person asks you something you will not have to hesitate about it but you will tell him immediately so to a certain extent it probably means that you've chewed it right with your teeth you've digested it maybe you salivated all over it and you tasted what all the different ingredients that were in it and then you digested it now it's part of you the kidney and a torah that it's part of you part of who you are right you are what you eat so you're the vicinante you're chewing you're digesting this information and it's going into your heart now what about the children right because it's talking about to your sons well not everyone has sons and maybe people learn later on and their children are already out of the house or maybe they never had children like i said so in deuteronomy chapter 14 verse 1 in the beginning part just the first few words you are the children of the lord your god you shall neither cut yourselves nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead okay it's just the first part is you are the children of so the jewish people right are you have an obligation a jew has an obligation to each other jews that's for sure question is just a side point do we have an obligation to teach the non-jews so there's no question how directly not everyone is fit to teach right you obviously have an obligation to teach your sons but everybody is the son of god so there's no reason not to someone comes to you right a non-jew comes to the jews and says teach me so you have an obligation to give them an answer the answer could be you know go to the noah kai world center you know or go to rabbi skoback go around by you know singer go to one of these other rabbis but at least you have an answer right so minimum minimally right you can tell them about the seven or high laws by the way there's a great way to remember what they are you know how so right just so those who are watching there's the big three in judaism and then there's a b c and d okay that's how you remember the three big ones what are the three big ones idol worship i don't murder don't and adultery or let's say you listen to sexual relations right those are the big things remember the big three hundred minutes four olive bed gimbal and dollar a b c and d what are the four aleph don't eat a limb off a live animal avers starts with an olive bet birch hashem well we say it's blessing god but don't do the opposite and that's how we say it so so every jew should know them if the non-jew comes in what do i have to do right you just tell it's the big three plus the four a b c d okay thank you and okay so just to get back into this idea of why you should teach other people so we we've discussed this right if you saw somebody who was sad i mean come on you're the nominee but let's say something else like imagine someone discovers a cure for cancer so instead of sharing this breakthrough with the world you keep it to yourself come on it's murder it's tantamount to murder come on you have a moral duty to share this discovery with the scientific community now in terms of one of the biggest things that rav north was into we know that many jews were assimilated are assimilated and he believes and i i believe it that the reason why jews have given up and wanting to be part of this transmission is because of ignorance if they were aware of the richness of their own heritage then they would unlikely give it up so easily right a lot of you know let's say anti-semitism really hard to to make it in certain cultures if you're outwardly jewish or if you don't work on saturdays or whatever it is there are obviously you know certain factors but it's ignorance ignorance itself it's the most destructive and painful disease in our generation and how many i just side point how many jews are like leaders of other religions they know nothing about judaism you know and they gave it up for you know for whatever but they didn't know they didn't know what they were giving up no but um this ignorance is what wrecks wrecks havoc and causes untold suffering such as suicide marital strife domestic abuse all types of alienation so if you understand the concept about life and you don't share it you're being a callous person you are your knowledge who you are and you have you actually have the power to alleviate other people's suffering but you're making a choice not to you're basically saying i don't care about other people now as i said in the 12-step program the 12th step for those who are not familiar this for those who are the 12-step after having had meaning experienced the first 11 there is a statement that says having had a spiritual awakening now that is the goal because whether you like it or not god is part of the 12-step program um having had a spiritual awakening as a result of this 12 steps it says we but it's it's referring to each person but try to carry this message to other alcoholics or other addicts of some of sorts that's one idea so believe it or not i think they understand this well they call 12 stepping in other words how do i if i was a recovering drug addict or recovered addict or an alcoholic how am i supposed to keep sober how am i supposed to be constantly reminding of the fact that where i was where i got to how i got there and where i'm at today if i'm not carrying this message to others helping others service helping others is in their world is a primal factor in their continual sobriety and growth as human beings on this planet otherwise they go down the drain and but the last part is and to practice these principles whatever principles they acquired on the way to continue to practice but the idea for them and really it should apply to every one of us right how's this right i have belief in god i'm a jew i wear a keeper right people say okay you must believe in god which god do you believe in let me ask you you know which god the god that took me out of egypt so for that addict especially right or recovered addict so which got which power you know higher power the one that cured me the one that saved me from total destruction right that's the higher power and he wants to share that with other people who are still experiencing hardships well this is the really the lesson in life and this really brings me to another idea i didn't even think to talk about it but um rabbi twersky passed away last week and he was um at least in the last generation in the 12-step program world probably the most famous clergyman that was involved and promoted the the 12-step programs and unbelievable he wrote a book i i i tell the truth it's either recovery through truva or true you get exactly the title uh maybe john this morning yeah i i actually so there's a link he he spoke when he put out the book we called a book signing a an introduction when his book first came out on the market we had him speak here in jerusalem he actually lived around the corner for me and um it was a broke hashem it's a great book but he wrote i think he wrote close to 100 books wow and i don't know the amount i'm going to say close to a third of them had to do with recovery from addictions you know it was really on the on the page it was on the page um okay so now remember i mentioned to teach don't preach now the roshiva of knock would tell you all kinds of cool words right don't be uh charismatic don't be um what's the word and like like a salesman right you want to get people to think you want to make them you don't want them to you don't want to make let me just words you don't want to put your thoughts in their heads that's what they're supposed to think that's the last thing you want you want them to come to it on their own too just like you did you want you wanted to enter their heart they can at least think about it and ponder it and think it's important you don't just know this is important you just have to believe me right so he says like this basically don't you you shouldn't be a preacher you have to teach now preaching is he would say preaching is saying like this accept what i say because i'm the authority park your mind and just listen to me he says this is completely ineffective don't do it what is teaching it's communicating ideas to others in a manner that they can appreciate and understand it on their own terms right like that arabic saying you know when it leaves the tongue it doesn't even pass through the ears right it's from the heart it's got to come from the heart and you have to speak with people not at them right and you have to open your mouth and say if i'm wrong correct me right if you come across like i'm the authority i know it all and you'll know those words would never come out of your mouth right so he says preaching is if i can't even pronounce the word demagoguery so i have here on the dictionary i think i still have it up here um what a demagogue is right so greek i don't think it's going to come up now mike here it is but he says getting people excited and overwhelmed and moving them emotionally without substance that's not teaching it's manipulation so as a noun it's a person especially an orator or political leader who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions passions and prejudices of the people as a verb it's to treat or manipulate in the manner of a demagogue obscure or distort with emotionalism and prejudice as as a verb i don't know whatever okay so basically an impassioned teacher can be inten inspiring and uplifting but ultimately a teacher has to be able to convey ideas in a way that emotions do not interfere and distort the message now the main thing is to learn how to do it because um you know we see other people in pain they're wasting their lives you know our heart is going to go out to them very nice and we're going to desire to help them but how often in our own lives right how effective are we with our children right i mean my kids are lovely kids um but they're all different and they all went in their own you know unique way in life hashem um they're not like robe what do they call that cookie cutter kids not like robots um but you know people suffering in this world we don't know how to we don't know what to do you know so a father who gives his unhappy son a slap on the back and says ah do you realize how fortunate you are for goodness sake why aren't you enjoying life you have your life your whole life ahead of you cheer up but what does that really help right the father can care as deeply as he wants and he can't even bear to watch his own son wither away but he doesn't have the foggiest idea how to reach him the important thing is to learn how right how there are so many good teachers out there right there's so many good teachers take advantage they're books there's role models or people whatever you consider important for you to teach your children learn how to do it for yourself right if you think it's the best way to teach is to be a role model right and i know i think my kids they love life they love life i couldn't i could not have instilled i feel so bad for so many other parents you know kids i grew up with um but my parents instilled such a love for life in me and i think that ultimately that's what i and to question things and to not you know to have respect there's so many things but it means that you have to have it you have to incorporate in your life you want to be a teacher that's what it's all about first you want your children you want to teach your children to be happy learn how to be happy yourself otherwise you're going to end up nagging them pushing them away once you learned how to be happy practice teaching the art of happiness to others so you will be an experienced teacher once your children are old enough to learn okay share with whatever you know i mentioned about the iron curtain in russia that if all you knew was one letter presented um let's say you're out on the best on the baseball field and you see somebody holding the bat the wrong way you tell them you know i've experienced i know how to i'm not a professional player but i know that if you hold the bat the other way you're going to be more effective okay they listen they don't listen but it depends how you how you um you teach it over to them approach it yeah anything you see that you think you can improve helping somebody else in life would be great um another the last point he mentions is making it real you have to really know the material review it many times um this idea of devarim hayotsim in the late nixon words are spoken sincerely right from the heart and to the heart basically teaching is not just giving over little bits of information it's about changing the way people think in a way that'll impact how they act um the best idea is trying to figure out how to transmit an idea so that others will not only appreciate it but will actually put into practice um he just ends with one word one line the world is full of difficulties problems and confusion don't suffer them help cure them by sharing the light of your wisdom now i want to go into some more um um more uh sources to get this message across so robino yonah from science i'm also giving advice on ruben yonah and shari chuva and he teaches that when one studies torah the whole idea of torah should arouse yourself to improve your own ways and deeds so the idea of learning torah is as the nagon says is to work on yourself but and i just want to get this idea of called is the ultimate purpose of learning and we're going to now see some of those ideas again this should help you that be able to like if you incorporate this into your life it should help you pass this on and the mentions one our primary purpose in life is to study and to know hashem's torah there's no limit to how much time one should spend on his studies since the game is eternal so how much time this is another idea we talked about as you walk through your day whether you're lying whether you're rising up in the morning and evening we're going to talk about this now a little bit um okay so the gomura in shabbat 31a now i'm not going to read the whole thing so much in detail so i'm going to get bogged down in the first part but it's important to know there's a verse in isaiah 33 6. the truth is if you read 33 5 that would be helpful as well isaiah 33 scrolls girl scroll 33 verse 6 you want five as well go with six and then we'll go back to five in a second very good six says and the faith of your times shall be the strength of salvations wisdom null and knowledge fear of the lord that is his treasure now back to number five yeah says the lord is exalted for he dwells on high he has filled zion with justice and righteousness now the reason i ask you to read five even though the gomorrah does not bring the verse five is because we're talking about the real point we're gonna talk about is that when we die eventually after 120 years they're going to be many questions asked of us okay but there are six brought down in this gemara wouldn't you like to know what god is going to ask you when you die 100 before we get there this verse and the faith of your times shall be a strength of salvation wisdom of knowledge but the fear of the lord is his treasure so the fear of the lord the idea of law is really going to be over encompassing but there were six words used faith time strength salvation wisdom and knowledge and they parallel to the sixth siddre mission of the six categories of mishnah and therefore faith is equal to what we call zeroim the tractate that has to do with seeds and starts with gemara brachot which is about prayer remember farmers you can have a farmer almanac you can do whatever you want in studying whatever they call it whatever the the um pillar of science is called i'm not talking about just biology i'm talking about whatever it takes to be a successful farmer without hashem's help having rain in the right time right today maybe you can get around it with hot houses and irrigation but still so the way it has always been traditionally is correct farming it relies a lot on faith number two and the other idea is the word in the in the verse that you read and the faith of your times times that's modim that's with all the festivals okay um including shabbos the next thing the word strength so women out there strength has to do with all the laws with women okay and then salvation that has to do with damages of course you don't want to be damaged salvations and then wisdom wisdom of the word has to do with consecrated items in the temple and knowledge has to do with purity and to horror okay with that that's really was not the main point but i wanted to touch on it because we're going to come back to it for something else beautiful but rather says after departing from this world when a person is brought to judgment for the life he lives in this world they say to him meaning the uh the tribunal and based on this verse okay did you conduct business faithful in other words the same verse that we just used to tell you about the sixth order of the mishnah is going to be used by asking you did you do business faithfully because the word faithfully faith was used so did you do your business faithfully so i think obviously and noah hyde should be very concerned right laws denim ghazal thievery it's all part of right part of the seminar laws and the next one is did you designate times for torah study so again the word as we saw and the faith of your times so you're going to be asked in judgment did you set aside time for torah study now that doesn't mean you have to spend your whole day right but it's important to you it's important to you now we did talk earlier on in the in the we began this series beyond the seven that even another can dedicate himself to learning torah right even though they may not be obligated but if they want to reach a higher level they certainly may and can provided they remember that it's the torah that god gave the jews and you want to learn and you learn okay and we said the next verse is strength we said that had to do with women so the next question was will be did you engage in procreation right were you involved in getting married and having children the next the word was salvation so did you anticipate salvation were you looking forward to the messianic era okay and the next thing we said was wisdom so did you engage in dialectics of wisdom or understand one matter from another and that is um it's really the next and also knowledge you know there's wisdom and knowledge okay so and then this little piece of guar ends off talking about the fear of the lord as his treasures so that's the overall uh that's the bottom line okay there's a little bit of a mashallah i do want to read this because we're going to talk about that too time permitting and i see we're going over time but we're going to we're going to go on because this is good stuff so the analogy is if a person said to his emissary so your co-worker and you you're the boss whatever one of your employees bring a certain amount of weed up to the attic for me and store it there so the worker went ahead and brought it up for him so now the boss says oh by the way did you mix a certain amount of preservative with the wheat to keep away the worms and the person said no he says you know it would have been better not to be brought up to the attic right because it's going to just get worm infested right if there's no preservatives it's going to rot this is the idea of torah mixes if you have torah missiles without the fear of hashem they are of no value okay one important point out of these six questions that were asked three of them have to do with tur learning right one was did you set aside uh a a set time for torah number two did you engage in torah analysis which is really our topic it's all about torah analysis and number three did you deduce one lesson from another okay now i want to just go into this a little bit more because we're talking about in the next world the question did you do business buying and selling faithfully is it's interesting because you have to know some torah a little bit you know you can't be moral but morality is objective so if you're gonna do if you're gonna be asked were you honest in business you have to know some of the torah in order to be right so torah learning is really isn't injected in all six of these things okay so you do business buying and selling faithfully but it really also means you know honestly and did you know the torah did you know what you were doing you were stealing or not did you fix times for torah obviously that's obvious were you involved in being fruitful multiplying so the idea of marrying somebody is not just for lust or for physical pleasure but the idea is to implement what you learned in dealing with another human being of course but the idea of period of arrhythmia in other words having children is called the fruits of the labor so just like torah just because you're sitting and learning if you're not implementing then if you're not incorporating in your lives there's no fruits to your labor so there's a i say parallel between that question and your tour learning now we're anticipating the redemption the only way you really have any idea of redemption is learning because as i mentioned the very first of the ten commandments or did i say this already i am the lord your god that's true so you have a mitzvah to believe in god but which god i am the one who took you out of egypt meaning just like i did then i'm gonna do today and i'm gonna do in the future i am the lord your god who will remove you from your bondage but the truth is that you need to learn the words of the prophets right in other words the prophets are speaking about messianic times so it's called learning torah right properly properly again so if you learn the words of the prophets you're believing the learning torah brings the redemption closer by the way learning torah brings the redemption closer in many ways one is through working on your character what we do deeds matter and we number five was were you intellectually engaged in pursuing wisdom and understanding obviously and that's our topic were you engaged and number six did you engage in the dialectics of wisdom of understanding one matter from another obviously that also has to do with true learning so so many of these questions are really dealing with torah learning okay that's um quite well this is treasure yes um just to get an idea how important it is the purpose of knowledge what's the purpose of acquiring the knowledge so look in deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 39. deuteronomy chapter 4 39 reads and you shall know this day and consider it in your heart that the lord he is god in heaven above and upon the earth below there is none else okay so basically you're saying the young this knowledge for what purpose the purpose of acquiring this knowledge is ultimately to understand who you are what your place is in this universe who god is right to bring you let's say certain not just humility a certain realistic idea i am getting unbelievable amounts of emails and texts and comments on videos people proclaiming to be the messiah i mean come on now i mean they have no clue what the messiah even is you know i don't look around and see world peace do you right do you see people taking their weapons and you know making them into plowshares i think do you see the knowledge of god spread out that people don't need to teach anybody the truth anymore so obviously he's not here so what makes you think what makes this person think they're just delusional and maybe it's maybe certain vibes i'm putting out but whatever it is there's something in the water i don't think it's you rabbi okay now i just want to talk about the word for learning itself in hebrew right when someone goes to a center of learning it's called an opan right it's based on the word word aleph aleph is the letter one meaning it's equal to the number one um it also is for a thousand in other words even though we have one through twenty 22 the letters are basically 1 to 22 and then we have additional ending letters you know what ending letters are the final letters so then there's multiples and then it starts all over again aleph at aleph means a thousand okay so there's two verses if you look at them carefully what aleph means it has to do with exalted wisdom okay the word itself so it says in psalms 54 14 it's really just the last part of the verse but it's really only in the hebrew i'm just using it to show you what it means psalm 54 verse psalm 54. i only have nine verses oh i think sorry that's 55 55 14. next chapter 55 14 reads and you are a man of my equal my prince in my esteemed one so just the last two words a luther um so the luffe is like a prince it's it's more like the esteem one thing these two words are like it really means like a chieftain a captain a prince so on one hand that's the word elith aloof aloof maybe even i don't know if that's a word in english i know it is but i don't think that means it's really high up there but look at the next verse in job job chapter 33 verse 33. let me just find job chapter 33 and verse 15 you said rabbi 33 33 33 33 says if not you listen to me be silent and i will teach you wisdom now in hebrew the last two words there's a double aleph there's two allah and i will teach you so the first aleph is i right because that's what implies and then the word wisdom i will teach you i will teach you the word ellith is to teach now we we're talking about in hebrew the whole night called pill is spelled now the word aleph is aleph olive it's a word but it's a letter okay let me just figure this out the letter aleph can be spelled out to where it sounds like aleph so here you have in this verse job 33 33 the word oppan right i will teach you aleph with two olives the word the word itself is too elves so now connect that pill pool pill pool means deepest it's really a discussion it's having a conversation in order to get to the truth in order to share the wisdom don't be afraid to enter conversations and ask questions right you can learn so much you can have the other person learn as well don't be a preacher okay you want to share the wisdom have a dialogue have a conversation walk up to someone and say what do you do for a living what inspired you maybe they'll ask you i mean you know don't be afraid that's that's really the body so this pill pool is palamid painlam it's like alex without the olive meaning because the the olive is ultimate learning and pillpool is um it's related to it okay so that's why i wanted to get it now i actually have a lot of comments in the gemara that brought out some interesting points but i'm going to leave that we'll have another session another time and we'll continue this next week so i can say not this subject we'll go on to the next one next week well rabbi thank you so much that was such a beautiful class i mean that we would actually get it into us bring it out in a living fashion so that it does click and connect uh i just find it amazing if people will not share and i've had moments in my life where i've been known to be very loud and very very open in dialogue and do such uh but also you know it's it has to do with personal thirst and wanting to know but you can't just soak everything up like a sponge you got to get it out there but i think what you what you brought out today is to get it in there digest it and then and then do something with it you know get out there and look everybody is going to do on their own level whatever they is they need to do you know if it's only their siblings they confide in to discuss these things or they'll either co-workers or only their next neighbor only the one person they meet once a week for coffee not everyone's personality is going to you know demand they get on youtube right and share with the wheelchair yeah it's not realistic and there's some people that just don't have it but at least teach your sons teach your own children right and the way to do it is to incorporate those those important lessons in your own life first right make it real that's okay so nobody's judging anybody hashem will judge you on your level for who you are and don't think that he's going to say oh how come you weren't giving lectures to thousands of people you are very modest and whatever but when people do come to you and ask you why you do something look you have to figure out an answer and it could be you can direct them to other people that is a part that's a way of of teaching okay it might not be in your personality doesn't mean you're less of a person okay you're just who you are okay thank you so much well i guess we're going to sign off then so hashem willing are we we on for part 13 next week till then folks have a wonderful wonderful week [Music] is