(Way#14) WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING: 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 transitioned to the 48 ways to wisdom and it's been profound so far i encourage everybody to go back and cheat check out each and every uh a message we're starting today with part it's uh going to be exciting i'm sure i enjoyed last week so let's just jump right in and see how the rabbi's doing and let's listen in to what the next path to wisdom is rabbi poston so good to be with you sir i know it's late in jerusalem and we in the rest of the world are so appreciative that you're taking the time to share this wonderful series with us oh it's my absolute pleasure dan and welcome everybody all the people who are watching us right now live and those who are watching afterwards from the recording um we're going to have a very special class this is number 14 of the 48 ways i think it's fundamental for every ben noah first of all every jew should know this but this one in particular um i think is okay look somebody wants wisdom they need all 48 ways but if they're looking for the ultimate wisdom this is going to is going to be key it's going to be somewhat fundamental in your search for wisdom for what we call the truth the ultimate truth um you won't go wrong you're not going to go wrong here i just want to finish one thing just okay um i was just doing something else and i have to give you my total focus i just want to mention that tonight is one week before purim so this is mostly shabbos february 20th i know you just had rabbi kaufman on he does not live in jerusalem so next saturday night for him is not poor him at all it's a very awkward thing so people should become a little bit familiar with the idea that that was walled that had walls from the time of yeshua joshua ben none would celebrate purim on the 15th everyone else in the world except like i said for cities that were walled from the time of joshua would celebrate otherwise they would celebrate on the 14th so only like jerusalem there are a few other ancient towns that have doubts and they might celebrate on both days the 14th and the 15th so what happened when shabbat right we the rabbis decreed we're not going to well first of all the whole idea is rabbinic anyway so they had every right to make up any rules they wanted so one of the rules is we don't read the magilla on shabbat because someone might take it outside carry it within a public thoroughfare and that would be a big no-no as you guys already are aware of so they divided it up we're going to read in jerusalem like everyone else so comes thursday night friday we're going to read the magilla shabbat day is actually porn so we're not going to celebrate with food stuffs we're not going to have our sugar that's going to be pushed off till sunday and there's other mitzvahs also giving money to the poor and giving gift baskets food to people so that's going to be pushed off till sunday although there are stricter opinions too also absolutely strict but let's say i'm going to use the hebrew word machmer to be a little bit more i don't know if you want to call it from or religious but to be a little bit more strict and also do these things on friday and you know talk about the the meal increase your meal on friday as well as give gifts to the poor on friday but the main mitzvah would be on sunday so basically when it comes to our prayers we recognize like in the prayers and in the torah reading on shabbat it is purim so we will continue to do all the things when it comes to prayer and the activities in the bait knesset and the shul in the synagogue on saturday so it's called purim means divided into threes so it's not one day it's a three-day celebration for us in jerusalem now one of the gifts in israel as you most of your watchers uh subscribers probably know that during the exile most of the the holidays i mean yom kippur is an exception uh roshan is also there's a reason why it's two days but let's just say that you have pesach and sukkot we actually celebrate two days of holiday outside of let's say in while we're in exile and it's only in israel itself that we celebrate one day um why am i bringing this up oh my god i just uh i just had a little bit of a flash i don't exactly remember why i was bringing this up i think oh i wanted to say like this that it's kind of like a blessing and a curse right so when you're outside the land okay i'm not going to say it's a curse but you know for people to celebrate celebration is one thing it should be a good thing but you know like it's a little bit of a tear it's a little bit of a little bit of a pain you know knowing you're in exile and you have to keep these days two days in a row okay no cooking and you know you have to have well you can cook when young tiff but most people don't no cleaning or showering there's a certain thing a little bit um you got to prepare for it yeah here i i know that you're supposed to be happy on the holidays but to have two days straight now in israel we only keep one day now it's like reverse when it comes to purim because even though it's just jerusalem many people come from all over the country to jerusalem to celebrate purim the following day where like for me when i was younger i used to leave jerusalem the day before let's say bene brock or baytar or some other place and i could celebrate purim two days in arizona purim is very sympathetic it's very happy holiday and of course you can shower you can do you can cook you can do all that stuff so i don't mean god forbid that it's a curse in a sin but there is this um it's a heavy load and uh people should leave exile it's one of my little messages it's a little bit of a perk a plug come here celebrate one day like the rest of us in here's israel and when it comes to purim you get to celebrate two days right but again not that it's a two-day celebration it's outside of jerusalem it's one day the 14th and inside jerusalem it's the 15th but it's only a hop skip and a jump the country is a very small country it's very easy to go on the bus or take a car and celebrate with family and friends anywhere in the country okay i thought i didn't mean it was a curse to keep two days but i think those who do keep two days i think they understand what i mean not the word curse but i mean a tirha of a sort okay now there's another just a metaphysical thing that is they need that booster for two days you know because they're so far away from the holiness and the kedusha very trail that um it doesn't mean a lot of good to keep these two days for the game for the for these holidays um and you can tell that it's a real booster shot when it comes to purim you know what i'm talking about two days of purim is just like unbelievable okay with that having been said um what else did i want to say about that i think i covered that all right so number 14 of the 40 ways is called mikra mikra it's it's talking about the written torah right that's what it literally means however i shouldn't say literally i mean that's how it's translated but what it literally means is to read i mentioned before that in terms of it's it's not just a jewish religion it's not a religion it's a whole way of life that we are taught from an early age how to read we have to right the father has an obligation to teach his children um you know of course the shema how to read the sitter or the prayers uh going up to the torah today if i get called up to the torah there's someone else that reads for me but throughout jewish history it's always been the person who gets pretty much except for the last few hundred years the person who gets called up to the shabbat there's seven different people being called up each one knows the whole torah and he goes up you have there's no vowels you have to be able to read it correctly with as well there's also what we call the trump it's a um cantillations musical cantillations when to raise your voice when well i'm not good at it so i'm not even going to try but obviously the comments and the periods are the most important part that i can do right i can get up there and read i know where to stop i know where to raise my voice but i i'm not you know i tried out for the glee club when i was in middle school or grade school you know what they told me don't come back they said don't even try don't waste your time anyway i know the feeling rabbi so the rosh hashiva of north weinberg again i'll just stress once more one more time people should buy this book right he's the one who made this idea of the 48 waves very popular right but i mentioned to you it's already in mishnah and perky a vote it's ancient wisdom in fact we already were aware of these ideas from the time we left egypt until we received the torah at sinai these are the 48 ways in order to receive the torah that we had to work on our character so the ravnak always called this he called the torah written instructions for living and he would give them a shall you give an analogy and i i like it so it's not brought in the book but this analogy i remember clearly he said imagine in the 1960s it could have been late 50s or late 60s i don't know exactly when you when the computers first came out i think they were like the size of a room they weren't like a cell phone okay they they were like the size of of a room or an elevator so let's well let's just say the first time there was something compact right you can order from china and uh it arrived you open up the box i guess they didn't have amazon back then but whatever it was the box came you ordered it from china and you open it up and there's no instruction manual now we take for granted i think i i do anyway because i meet people that don't know how to cut and paste but um imagine you okay you pretty could pretty much figure out how to turn it on maybe even how to plug it in but some of the most basic and i'm calling them basic maybe they're not basic for other for some people but i think every person born in the last 30 years it's basic you know enter cut and paste you know and you know it's pretty so just imagine pre-daws to figure out instead of rewriting i mean there are people that do this they don't know there's something called cut and paste and they would rewrite i mean i i'm sorry to say i know some people that still to this day would do it and you have to teach them okay so cut and paste is pretty basic elementary but there's so many other functions i mean if you use excel i mean i'm not like a big bucky but excel is a little bit more advanced than regular word right so anyway i also use so many other apps and you just have to have at least some tutorial some some beginning so imagine if you got this computer and you didn't have how many years of just trial and error would it take you to figure things out i don't know i mean if it's even a week or a day that's too long so here we have our whole life 120 years what are we waiting for this is this is the torah is the instruction manual for living and he wanted to really you know just stress this over and over again now another i'm going to say an analogy but it's really in the tour itself you know god said you can eat from every tree of the garden correct except for one now later on when he kicks adam out of the garden he's puts these guards these angels these guards and he says what does he say lest adam come back and eat from the tree of life and live forever what does it tell you so the roshiva explains he's not the only one we're talking about this is ancient wisdom already but he brings it down so we can understand it that had we eaten from the tree of life first before eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil then there would never been a punishment of death so what is the tree of life the tree of life is torah and the tree of knowledge of good and evil is experience so what's the point going through life without having the tree of life is just going through experience and that is as we all know does not have such um a good ending right the consequences are severe because you don't know what you're doing it's like the blind leading the blind now here you have the torah the tree of life that's what the torah is the tree of life so this is what mikra is all about you have to see the torah as instructions for living but the problem is most people don't know hebrew which is a big problem because every translation is someone else's interpretation i'll go so far he actually says this is his words it's a lie it's a lie it's not your truth it's some it might be someone else's truth but it's not your truth so it's a lie so he encourages you you must not only learn hebrew but you're going to see through this session that you have to have also somebody who's able to tell you what it says because even though you can read you learned how to read because someone taught you that an aleph is an aleph a bet is a bet in translation an a is an a a b is a b right and what the word means and how to pronounce it and what the you know i when i learn with my students we come across a new word i tell them you have to have a dictionary as your best friend you will see minimally minimally that every word you come across has about eight possible definitions and you're gonna have to learn the whole context of course with your teacher and then you'll be able to plug in but just keep in mind that every one of those eight definitions are interrelated and they're all true on some level which is the most amazing thing so this requires a lot of diligence a lot of practice and experience so that's why our own mishna tells us that a child the first thing he should learn is mikra mikra meaning tanakh so i'm going to explain what tanakh is in a second i know most people watching know it right but you start with what we call the tanakh at age five five talk about literacy the literacy rate of the jewish people for of history has been 90 99 literate whereas unfortunately i mean this is proven i'm not coming off with um you know off the off the hip as they say off the cuff but 99 of world history actually is 99 illiterate i mean you can just really you have to go through history there's so many besides 100 years ago 200 years ago street channels and you know i watch like i have to say considerable amount of history and the wars the culture the despots the tyrants the oh mindless talk about what the jews have given to mankind in terms of in terms of civility in terms of civilization in terms of law is um you know invaluable okay and we're going to talk about tonight and it's all because of mikra it's all because of the ability to read the instructions living and to hopefully um live by them so the first thing the roshiva mentions in the book as i mentioned this is not this is all the roshiva's words but it was put together by students of his um the first thing you have to understand what mikra is is torshib means written it's the written word and it's divided as the word tanakh means torah that's the five books of moses that's the prophets that starts with an n or a nun and a cuff which is the the writings so just know what they are right the torah part is the five books of moses and that was revealed to the jewish people at mount sinai now what are the prophets there are different types of prophets throughout history we had seers and visionaries people who gave rebuke the main job was not to foretell the future that wasn't their main job in fact to verify that a prophet who came to rebuke was the real deal so he was challenged to speak about things that would happen in the future now i asked my audience many times my students i should say um if a prophet said something that would that didn't come about is that considered a false prophet and many uninitiated you know non-thinking people come back say of course it has to be he's a false prophet if he prophesized something that didn't come about of course torah even says kill him but that's not true right it's not true and let me explain why just i've explained this before we're going to explain it again one way to verify if he's a true prophet is only if he speaks about something in a positive way now i don't know what's considered positive in these days but let's say um you know the stock market is going to go up or um you know um the mets are going to win i don't even know if they who they play anymore but let's just say you know something positive right that's going to happen so if it doesn't happen he is a false prophet for sure but if he says something negative remember his main goal is to rebuke the people to teach and therefore like we know from ninja that if juve which god himself said in the prophecy i had seen their deeds i've seen their heart and i've seen them change their ways and therefore even yonah who said something bad was going to happen it didn't happen he's jonah's not a false prophet yoda is an effective prophet an effective prophet not a false prophet okay so the ones the ones that are written in the naveen happened to be now we had millions of profits the number is uh varying the gamora seems to mention over a million profits or a million two um i'm under the impression from other writings there were at least six million that had they all had the ability to raise the dead it's like no big douche it was not anything novel that one man 2 000 years ago stories are written about somebody who raised the dead therefore he must be god incarnate the whole thing is like i didn't want to say this is a family show right nonsense but um so basically those those 48 prophets that got into the tanakh um were called prophets they their prophecies were deemed relevant for all time that's the main point okay so every problem if you were sick if someone was not well physically they wouldn't go to a doctor now things are obviously different today we don't have prophecy but they wouldn't go to a doctor necessarily they would go to the prophet to find out what sin they were doing to find out what exactly they needed to do to rectify their sin and they were basically healed okay so that was a major major difference okay another thing is consuming the writings the writings are not prophecy now there are certain as we'll know daniel for example king david right they had ruach kodesh they had holy spirit now there's different levels of prophecy so it doesn't mean that they themselves experience different levels of prophecy in their lifetime but these writings are not prophetic in and of themselves right they are with ruach now we all know that if i think i think it's still true to this day maybe it's even more true because of the internet but um that the tanakh and i mean it's obviously translating to almost every language probably every language in the world is a world time all bestseller right i mean we're talking about through history so when once the um even before the printing press at least hand right hand written manuscripts if someone was going to uh hire somebody to write a manuscript that probably would have been the book at the time of course when the printing press came out the christians right they helped uh disseminate the bible greatly um but even today i'm sure they're through the internet um i'm not sure i'm just guessing that still would ask google you know maybe because we had there's a lot of competition with pornography i have no idea i have no idea i know that they say that pornography is probably one of the highest sought out things on the internet but at least um in terms of real literature real books the tanakh is probably way up there so obviously for what we call western civilization even at least in islam also the the torah obviously has the foundation for that for those who are from america i think everybody's aware of what it says about all men having inalienable rights right this is such a fundamental concept for for the western civilization um concepts such as love your neighbors yourself by the way it's written in the torah you didn't have to have some false prophet any other time coming later and saying such a thing there's a isaiah's wall in new york and i'm not a big fan of the united nations but nevertheless isaiah was a jewish prophet and his words right of one day soon right we'll take all those weapons of war and i don't know melt them down and make them into utensils for producing more food right that's the idea and that basically i'm from philadelphia so there's a liberty bell and in scribe they even had it says leviticus i forget which chapter right now but it says proclaim liberty throughout the land this is part of the torah right and everyone should go free right at the end of the sabbatical year number one but this particular line is from the jubilee okay so that's a great a great this is all in the mikra right this is how important the torah itself is right i'm going to quote john adams john adams if you don't know who he was he was the second president of the united states and i'll read what he says now he's not the only one you know we have quotes i'm not going to spend my time doing this but um who wrote huckleberry finn what was the guy's name and um oh the one who came to uh israel in the 1800s man yeah mark twain 200 years 50 years ago okay so we're not going to quote all i just want john adams uh to be heard he said i will insist the hebrews have contributed more to civilized men than any other nation if i was an atheist and i believed in blind eternal faith i should still believe that fate had ordained the jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations and he continues they are more they are the most glamorous nation that ever inhabited this earth the romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the jews they have given religion to three quarters of the globe and influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation nation ancient or modern okay so we see the jews obviously are you know the the original descent disseminators um um of this we'll call the manual for living and um it's it's it's the owner's manual i mean we're here on the planet it is the owner's manual even when you think about many knock i just see many nothings but there are there are some really earthy crunchy jews who aren't so religious but they believe that listen when it comes to partial snow it's it's giving us responsibility to care for the world whether it's for animals the environment or whatever ultimately the truth is it's about morals right if you we really hold them by morality that is actually going to save the world more than some of these environmental issues but nevertheless it is true it is true that we're responsible as best as we can to take care of this planet that we're on um so basically one should spend as much time to try to understand i'm just pushing mikr right mikra means the actual text okay so here's a really crazy idea so he speaks about like if i mean i know that i think this rover just landed on mars again i don't know if it's the first second third i don't know how many times we've sent um probes into outer space looking for life but imagine if we got a a text an in alien language how many professors how much money right how much biden would he put into any would he put any money into i have no idea but let's just say every world leader would be severely interested extremely interested in trying to find out what this message contained well guess what we got it right it's not an alien text this comes from god himself and um here's the most amazing statement that i'm going to make tonight i don't know i don't it's going to be the most amazing but it's truly amazing so we have a tradition that says god looked into the torah and created the world okay is it easy to understand i mean you have many questions could be asked why would he need to look into the term where did the torah come from isn't it his writing he doesn't forget i mean what does it mean so i wanna i wanna spend a little bit of time after i go through some of the other sources then we'll go back into many other sources but just keep this in mind i mean this is the blueprint of creation i want to explain what it means um maybe i should do that now uh there's too much to say about it so i want to save for the end but i'll give you a little idea so like a regular architect so he'll look at blueprints and create something now he may or may not have created those blueprints but at least he can look at those blueprints right i mean obviously the art architects that make blueprints and there's architects that read blueprints so it's not necessarily the same person so here we're talking about as i mentioned god is the architect and yet how is it that he needed to look into the term what does that tell us so from my simple understanding and we're going to go much deeper than that is the the torah which is the word right that's what mikra it's reading the word is his own thoughts and that that is like crazy right that's better than any drug if you could meld i mean really mesh your mind with god's thoughts that's the best drug you can ever have or imagine taking and that's coming from me okay um so obviously this torah contains all the secrets of the universe but we have to learn how to ask the right questions now there's a verse in deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 47. so it's only the first few words i want to mention but let's hear it deuteronomy 32 verse 7 47 47 reads for it is not an empty thing for you for it is your life and through this thing you will lengthen your days upon the land to which you are crossing over to the jordan to possess it now as i mentioned it's just the first few words when it says for it is it is not an empty thing if you can read from the context we're talking about the torah the whole time for it is your life for this is not either a thing or even a word a davar right it's not an empty thing that is now the word means for you or from you so rashi says well let me explain that the word meek hem and let me say what the roshiva says it's not an empty thing for you so the rabbis say if the torah seems empty is the word the word it's not an empty thing if it seems empty it's it's because it's from you that it's empty not that the torah itself is empty but that you are missing the point if something doesn't seem to make sense don't dismiss it as irrelevant keep asking searching delving deeper into every piece of whatever the torah is trying to tell you remember it's an instruction manual for living it's written by god himself every little detail is an expression of his will we're talking about i don't know if i want to use this terminology but i use any every uh i don't know what they call it dot and tittle or whatever you know this is like in other words john intended right every crossing of a t every dot on an eye right every i mean we're talking about crowns on each of the letters we're talking about obviously the vowels whether it's written grammatically correct or written as an as an anomaly not grammatically correct why why god who's the greatest i don't know if the word is grammarian he he he invented the language he knows grammar better than anyone else and yet he wrote or had us write the word wrong meaning not wrong but it's not pronounced that way or you would never use that word in this context with that validation and yet after tour you have plenty of that and every single one of those is a lesson for life because he didn't do it on an accident its meaning has been quite clear with me on that rabbi i i thank you for that i'm going to give a few examples tonight i'm going to you know we're going to go into a little bit here's another another example of how important right how important it is you have avraham sitting there and speaking to god that's the day right he had his bruce mila and he's recovering and it's actually the third day after his bread mila and he's recovering and he sees at a distance he's sitting at the opening of his tent and it's a very hot day he's eager to have guests this is who avraham is this is his personality and what does he say excuse me god i have to take care of these people i don't care who you are if you're even an atheist right you have an opportunity to talk to god if you know if there is a god for an atheist why would you say excuse me i i have something else to take care of this seems to be more important than talking to you hello this is going to translate into the most important i'll call it religious concept when we're talking about religion i don't like the word religion because judaism is not a religion certainly not man-made it's it's much more but why would you think that it's more important abraham was the founder of this religion stop speaking to god in order to take care of these strangers he's in the midst of a prophetic experience with the master of the universe and he just says pardon me god i to take care of some guests so the talmud derives a profound lesson from this incident it's greater to be hospitable to guests than to speak to god directly why is that i'll tell you why because as great as talking to god is being like god is greater now i'm not talking about like obviously if you have a crackpot idea of what god is you're right it's but to be like the true god who wrote this manual and tells you how to it's explaining to you how to be like god how to be godly okay what does it mean to be like god so truth be told and we've spoken about this before and the roshi was great at trying to get this message across god created us as pleasure beings beings that are desiring comfort and pleasure right pleasure he created the world for our pleasure everything he created whether it's fruit hands love they're all manifestations of his kindness the world is one big country club one big hospitality and hospital therefore when you assume the role of host serving your fellow man you're acting like god avraham was wealthy and famous yet it was not at all beneath him to serve strangers he understood this lesson well obviously okay if you study the term you'll find all kinds of gems all kinds and now he stresses the importance of learning hebrew now is where you know yet even as a searcher i always wanted to go to the source i'm not going to spend this time going through all the different religions that i actually sought out before i found judaism i mean i was born a jew but i wasn't born in the most religious home i knew my great grandparents were orthodox and kept shabbos not that i really knew them i visited them and i had great respect for them but they died while i was young i knew of stories of my own parents they told me that their parents would um find nickels on the counter on shabbos afternoon so they go to the movie theater so in other words their parents kept shabbos but they they didn't think it was that important for the younger generation really unfortunately we lost it why did i bring that up because when i was on my own search i always just forget about the fact that my great-grandparents were very religious just that i'll tell you what i thought i said why is the world so messed up it must be because of the vietnam war right that's what it is well what caused the vietnam war maybe it was the korean were never really finished uh well what caused the korean war well maybe it was you know the cold war they never really finished world war ii you know there was these uh i don't know whatever you want to call it the um the excesses you know from the whatever's left over from the war was never fully resolved well what caused world war ii must be the excesses of world war one it was never fully finished and go back and back and that's like i give up already i mean where's the you know i didn't really give up but i'm saying like it must be go going back back back and when i was in fishing around or let's say fond fondling uh christianity and eastern christianity you know the essenes and the gnosticism and all that thinking well they're all claiming everyone's claiming that the jews were the original you know are you know the original receivers of the torah whether or islam or any other religion and they all wanted what the jews are they all are claiming that they're now the chosen people so why don't i find out what it means to be the chosen people and okay long story short we did discuss this i think it was last week or the week before about a theory it started somewhere in germany maybe 150 200 years ago where they saw a notice well if the torah itself uses different names for god it must be the different there were different authors right they had the j the the you hey love hey name there was certain group that wrote those verses or passages or chat or paragraphs yeah the documentary jesus yeah yeah you have the p the priestly you know mace most of leviticus you have the d for deuteronomy if you only read the hebrew you would understand right obviously if you're looking at a german translation english translation whatever you're not going to come to this but you understand so he he mentions this he says for example torah uses seven primary names to describe god each name refers to a unique aspect of god's essence all-knowing all-powerful prime move or merciful but in english these names are all translated the same way and as a result much the depth is lost and he gives an example the word we use for sin so if you use the word sin in english especially after i'm going to use the word anyway i'm going to say bastardized by the christians right i can use that but it works on works yeah we're on social media it's not on television i know so you have this word sin which implies when you when the christians get all of it that it's eternal damnation that there's no uh there's no return right it's um it's irredeemably evil and that's not at all what it means like boker tovalio good morning elijah hello it means miss the mark made a mistake everybody makes mistakes and you're gonna tell me that's irredeemable evil i mean i don't want any part of that religion thank god okay the seder so i'm just letting you know like when you look at the hebrew with clear eyes without a veil you'll come to a a whole different understanding basically the torah view that human beings are essentially good right we're not evil i mean there's other religions they believe you're born in sin you're born evil yes we we agree that there's a yates iran it's stronger when you're young but hashem you know you grow up and you get a gay yeah you get an intellect and you have free choice and the truth is everything balances out you're not truly evil okay so basically human beings are essentially good we all make mistakes we lose our way and at times we miss the target but our soul our real essence really wants to do good and chuva which really means to return repentance it means to return and it describes a process of recalibrating our focus and getting back on track so that's what you need to know and now he mentions that the time is right now what do you mean now unfortunately right um people will say ah it's too late in life or i'm too busy making a living whatever it is um there is a perky vote that i want to quote and it's interesting where is it let me let me stick this one second where is it okay it's perky album chapter two mission of four you know i came back here okay you want me to see yeah copies over right if i'm not mistaken it's towards the end but uh i thought i had it on my source sheet but i know you want me to look it up yeah i mean i'm gonna look again oh i did find it okay it's the very end the hillel said and i don't want to repeat everything he said i just want to go to the end do not say when i free myself of my concerns i will study for perhaps you will never free yourself so in hebrew it says the al tomar don't say that when i finally have free time i will study shem a low tiff tiffany maybe you won't have that free time i mean it makes a lot of sense what he's saying so basically right now is the time it should be an absolute priority right if you were like we said you're on a search you're one of these major professors or scientists to receive this message and um everyone's trying to decipher it well it's there make time and now it's true your academic education might have ended years ago but when it comes to torah learning there's no such thing as okay beyond that it's you can never finish okay in fact i'll just mention that every jew is supposed to learn and actually learn read through it this mikra maker of the targum to read twice in hebrew the actual torah portion each week and a third time in i'll just use aramaic as an example that's what it was in past but many explain that any language you understand so in other words even if you don't understand it twice in hebrew a third time in a language you understand and of course a fourth time when you go to synagogue and hear it being read publicly another time so really it's four times a week we spoke about the importance of reviewing four times anyway before um anyway just in terms of semanim rosh yeshiva of north weinberg was big big on some money what do i mean by simone simone means like a system it's symme actually means signs but in this context like if i have a paragraph so i would put a word on top of that paragraph three that word would help me remember what the paragraph encapsulates right right it contained so if if i put as my friend rabbi gedalia girlfriend would do on every daff of the gemara right there's over 7000 pages write a word that would somehow summarize as many as one word maybe two words that would summarize and memorize that so there are 669 paragraphs in the in the um in the five books of moses so arya kaplan has a book called the living torah and he actually has like less than a sentence just a few words each paragraph is labeled and that's a good way to start take his example every paragraph and i say paragraph in other words there's 54 portions but every time there's a space it's considered a paragraph and you could remember how of course you can remember 669 especially you're talking about your whole lifetime reviewing them all the time you have a good idea of what's in each paragraph the shogun arrow which many of these books behind me are right they're listed by number system right to remember what this they call paragraphs every paragraph is a numbered paragraph and they have many halakhas many laws but to sum it up into one idea this is our life right it's our life again you should never think you're too old to start um rebecca those who are not familiar apparently he was 40 years old when he began to learn but he didn't just begin from nothing he he was minus i mean he hated the rabbis he said if i i felt like like you know i don't know a donkey or a mule that has a very strong um a bite he felt like any time i saw a rabbi i would want to bite them so he had such a negative attitude towards the rabbis and yet he transformed himself at the age of 40 began to learn just the alphabet right the olive bit and he then she became one of the greatest sages with over 24 000 students okay um there's a there's a mishna in perkiavo chapter 5 a mission of 26. the truth is i think it's a different number according to the system and i have here i wrote down the correct number i think it's 21 and 22. so i can read it if you want i can pull it up if i can find it i'm on chapter five um but i yeah it's the last it's the last two starting at 21 reads uh he used to say at five years of age the study of scripture at 10 the study of the mishnah at 13 subject to the commandments at 15 the study of talmud at 18 the bridal canopy at 20 for uh pursuit of livelihood at 30 the peak of strength at 40 wisdom at 50 able to give counsel at 60 uh years old old age at 70 fullness of years at 80 the age of strength again at 90 a bent body at 100 as good as dead and gone completely out of our world and 22 yeah okay then the main point here i wanted to mention that you know this is uh ben bagbag said something then ben hey hey said something um but he would say i think it's been hey hey he says five years old we begin studying scripture this tells you a lot this is this is two thousand years old written you know is the mishna going back even further this was the the most lift khaki this is the most prefer preferred time and to have a foundation how do you build a house how can you we're talking about the jews would then study mishnah and gemara as you see the age 10 and the age 15 goes on and on you build your whole life it is the structural foundation for building a life and that is what i wanted to point out to you this is what we call torah the the law of life doesn't just mean the it's the instructions for living that is the best um translation and that's through north weinberg's one of his greatest um uh contributions to explain to the world and explain to the jewish people who are not aware right he was a big into cure of digging into outreach okay now i have here some interesting ideas when i said originally as we're going into sources that god looked into the torah and created the world so i was fascinated even christian literature they talked about the word the first thing was the word well that's what we're talking about the word right this is a jewish idea that god looked into the torah and created the world so the zohar uses the very first verse right in the beginning god of god's creation of the heavens and the earth however you want to translate it i don't care it's a big lie it doesn't matter go to the hebrew bereishit boron hello king at [Music] with the torah god created the heavens and the earth right it says he spoke what did he speak the very words that are written on the page god spoke and the world came into being he said there look there be light and there was light right it's of course it's the word who came before the world but didn't come before god okay so keep that in mind um there's some great explanations all over the internet um there's too many to talk about but there's one uh piece that i found quoted by rabbi tats rabbi kiva tax is one of my favorite rabbis um and so basically he wants to explain i mean if anybody doesn't know him become familiar rabbi akiva tats a-k-i-v-a first name t-a-t-z he has taught for orson mack for many years i think he still teaches first american england um so it's very good so what people fail to realize they think okay the torah must have been created by man they see the way the world works they see let's say shellfish these are these creatures that walk in the bottom of the ocean and they eat garbage and of course it would be unhealthy to eat them so we're looking at the world and we're creating a religion what's the best way to um to survive this this crazy world he says no it's the other way around the reason these foods are unhealthy is because they're prescribed by the torah rather than shrimp being bad for you because they live at the bottom of the sea and so absorb all the elements which were deposited on the seabed shrimps swim around in the schmutz let's look it up in google s-h-m-u-t-z it is what it sounds like it's because god in his torah declared them spiritually and pure the like when adam even named the different animals he saw the essence of what they were it wasn't that he developed what they were based on his name but he was able to read what they were based on what hashem made so what does all this mean according to this kabbalistic wisdom the book of the zoar is telling us that the world is a copy of a torah scroll can you imagine everywhere around you you're looking if you know if you know the scripture well you're seeing god's essence in other words if he spoke created the world you're seeing letters you see a lion you're seeing the word ari you're seeing a hurricane you're seeing a storm you're seeing god's wisdom out of the matrix yeah the world is as it is because of what is written in the torah the deeper wisdom of the zoar teaches us that if we want to really understand the world we should study torah and its commentaries and that's let me leave you with that there's uh chabad has some very good interesting things i'm not so sure but you can look it up um say anything here i think i covered i think i spoke about although there is um there's some proof texts in other words things that i spoke about already um being that remember god bereshit with rasheed which is the torah god created the world look in proverbs 8 22. proverbs 8 22 reads the lord acquired me at the beginning of his way before his works of old okay so this is referring to in hebrew it says reishit so god created me in the beginning ray sheet so he created reishi first the first of his works of all this is the tour itself amazing yeah okay let's move on again i'm going to get mixed up here here we are [Music] this is just something that i think everybody should know if you don't know it take it to heart i know that we've discussed this idea in the beginning of our beyond the seven why does the rambam sound so harsh when he says and he's quoting earlier sources but he says if a non-jew i'm going to use i'm going to say even further an akum someone who is an idol worshiper studies torah he's high of misa he's he is worthy of being put to death not not that any jew would ever put someone to death for it but that his white life is not worth living that's real i think that's the best understanding a idol worship a night of worshipper who learns torah who's involved with learning torah his life is not worth living so first of all that's the idol worship it doesn't say okay but the idea in hebrew in deuteronomy chapter 33 verse 4 it says before i before we read this seven laws of knock one of them is do not steal correct it's forbidden to steal now let's read chapter 33 verse 4 verse 33 or chapter 33 verse 4 says the torah that moses commanded us is a legacy for the congregation of jacob now in hebrew okay you might not get the full understanding in english torah sivalado moshe the torah was commanded to us by moses where the torah that moses commanded us is a morosha it's an inheritance inheritance now belongs to us it was given to us to kihilatiako now it even goes further because even though it says the shin and a samik actually interchangeable to a certain extent and it could be read and understood it's a murasa it's an engagement there's actually so not only are is a non-jew who says i own the torah i can read it the way i want and translate it the way i want is called stealing but it's also like adultery because it is the engagement it is a marriage between god and the jewish people now if someone recognizes that the jews were the ones who received that and it belongs to them and i as a guest want to learn and absorb the wisdom because they hate all the power to you it's that recognition that they are the true well-played inheritors they're the ones who it was given to and they're the transmitters i should listen to them not read it on my own as i think that's really what the ram is saying that if a non-jew on his own is trying to learn the torah then his worth his life is not worth living he's just missed the entire boat and he's going to walk away thinking he totally understands and he doesn't even have that cool puts him in the deeper darkness wouldn't that be a form of even idolatry for for for somebody to dare to do such in that wrong attitude um i see i see enough of them and they they come over to be benignoic and they you know i had a dialogue with a new new person this week and of course they want to start making their own custom kippah and uh you know they ask me questions and so you do your best to try to try to give them healthy uh lessons for life but we just don't know but it's so funny to see that some of them just want to grab onto more than than is actually allotted for them i think this verse makes it so plain rabbi okay just cut to focus in on joshua chapter 1 verse 8. one second joshua chapter one verse eight oh that's that's a well-known one right oh and of levi he said uh your two mim and uriam belong oh maybe i'm not reading it's joshua i'm in deuteronomy sorry i'm still in deuteronomy why did it not change go oh joshua chapter 1 verse 8. yes this book of the torah shall not leave your mouth you shall meditate there in day and night in order that you observe to do all that is written in it for then will you succeed in all your ways and then you will prosper look this is such a blessing right the book of the torah loya moosh say for a torah yamoosh means to be released or um forgotten like moved so this taurus shall never be removed removed from your your mouth now if this doesn't like i mean there's many verses we could use to show there's an oral torah but the mikra is it means to read it means to move your lips and to read it so we're obviously talking about something that is physical concrete ink black ink on white paper right on parchment but it's something that is not just thought about it's something we must profess and that is the words now that's just the words coming out of your mouth and it says you shall meditate it meditate on it day and night 24 hours a day in order obviously to do but everything that's written in it and then of course you'll you'll have bracha you'll have all kinds of success um the reason i'm bringing this up i want to mention for those who are watching this before purim so there's a verse in exodus chapter 17 verse 14. this is like this is forever but it's relevant more now because it's the chapter 14 you said rabbi chapter 17 verse 14. forgive me 17 verse 14 reads the lord said to moses inscribe this as a memorial in the book and recite it into joshua's ears that i will surely obliterate the remembrance of amalek from beneath the heavens i'm just using this as a lesson because it's ripe fruit purim but i said this idea shows you that if you don't know the hebrew and you don't put extra effort into trying to study and again go to the jewish sources think about what it says the lord says to moses katov zot he tells him write this as it's called a remembrance in a book so that's we're going to have this is about amale coming this read from verse 8 through 16. it's all about amale coming and the three people standing on the mountain moses in the middle i gave a beautiful sheer i think it was nice here and before shabbat before pasha zakhar um so you can look at that inscribe this is a memorial in the book so this is the secretary this is the mikra the seem yahushua and place into his ears what do you need to place into his ears you just wrote in the book because there's something that is also oral but it goes on it says i will surely obliterate obliterate the remembrance i'm going to focus on these words that word i will surely obliterate the remembrance of a molly so the first thing we're taught this is uh through um if i'm not mistaken the rokayak explains this first what we have is a remembrance because in in the order of words write this as a zika run as a remembrance so that's why we read the week before purim pasha zakhar the remembrance and then next week we're going to have the action of of the megillah not just the reading of the magilla but everything it entails the suitor the meal the giving of the gifts right everything that involves purim so you have remembrance before the action just like god said to moses write it in the book as a zika road a remembrance and then place it into the ears of joshua i will surely wipe them out just keep that in mind no just as a side point you would never know this in the english for sure not but the roque points out and i counted it i read this today i actually read a few days ago but i in preparation for this year i wanted to make sure this is a hundred percent true the real cake points out that there are actually 166 verses in the megillah esther esther happens to be there are two portions that we read we read um we read deuteronomy 25 that was uh verses 17 through 19 this past shabbos and then on on a poem itself we're going to read in chapter in exodus chapter 17. 8-16 all together there's 166 words so in the two parshiot the two paragraphs that deal with amalek there's exactly the same amount of words in one and there's exactly the same amount of senses in other words it's 166 in both now you may not find that interesting what we do is we find that absolutely exhilarating in fact the word mcgee lat esther the word miguela like from gal is like a role it's a scroll miguel attesto you can translate it as the scroll of esther right everyone knows that right however if i wanted to reveal something to you the word megillah in mem causative is the same word it's a revelation but what does esther mean it's her name that's true but it also means hidden hester panning god says i will surely hide in my face estres so magilat ester is not just simply the the scroll of esther it's the revelation of that which is hidden and when you're living in a framework of hebrew and i mean hebrew i mean lash nakodesh the holy language it will um it will help you understand what the instructions for living are all about it will make them certainly much more meaningful and it'll bring depth to everything that you do and so this really some you know we're finished this evening about and number 14 mikra i hope that we got across how important mikra is in achieving wisdom because without it i don't think you i don't think you stand a chance you have to be literate you have to be illiterate wow thank you so much i started out very late so i was reading a lot of english books and um because i got a good handle but when you're thirsty you're hungry right for the word of god you have to go deeper you have to go deeper into the original you know i recently bought a set of ramban where it's an english translation along with the hebrew and whenever they reach the deeper kabbalistic meaning they tell they tell you this is not for our audience we have skipped this paragraph i had several rabbanim who wrote extremely kabbalistic books and really deep stuff and they asked if they could translate in hebrew to bigger rabbis and that the bigger rabbi said no this kind of stuff you cannot translate into english so this is a not a warning this is a encouragement right get yes yes you know a rabbi i i i know i'm uh i've been i know it but uh i've been yeah slowly wanting to dive more into hebrew and i you know actually had one no hide friend in seattle down there do a hebrew class my rabbi let us do five lessons basic hebrew and you know in this day and age so often we get used to just looking up quick words using software tools just to compare but it's not the same as actually getting the depth of the whole of the matter and you're making that so clear and i you know i'm one of these guys that when i decide to do it i won't put it down until i got it i can't like it's kind of like it just gets you a bug and you have to finish it and to learn hebrew you know i can i i've got some beautiful sessions to to speak you know linguistic you know modern day but it's different than learning to read it and the necessity to read it is so great and uh hashem willing maybe i'll get the time and i'll jump all over it and uh i just see it as the necessity for growth and uh i don't want to um tell people out there that are of the 70 nations it's a must but in reality you know how far do you want to cleave to hashem right it is a must but again everyone on their own level everyone can only try as much as they can some people are limited you know they're just naturally limited the older you are the more frustrated or maybe the more time you have you don't you don't know everybody only got you know what i mean like if you're gonna make a mistake at least you made the mistake why why follow other people who are making the mistakes so uh i think it's best to try so many people you know my mother she met rivnoch weinberg for the first time it was an amazing story and um she says your voice is so familiar you're the one that made those tapes i'm listening to aren't you she says it's because of you that i learned how to play the piano at my age wow okay 35 years ago but still my mother's uh close to 80. in fact uh she is around 55. yeah so wow yeah it's a hard thing to do for some of us motivational ideas of it's never too late it's never too late and uh so look if it's piano is like a language as well right music is a language it's also abilities i mean everyone nobody's going to hold it against you for trying that's for sure okay and it brings its own joy but torah torah as has you've been very clear it's definitely the way as as you you know the whole thing i mean right from the the the rasheed i i i remember the first time i heard that i spent 32 years as an adult worked in christian schools and whatever and the point being you know you don't get that out of them it just doesn't exist it doesn't exist out there in in in unless you're hearing it from a learned rabbi you're not going to get those true golden nuggets that are real and i encourage everybody check every one of these messages out are we done for today rabbi and i know that with perham next week we're off we're we're we're off we're just delayed another week yeah all right so we will not be doing part uh uh 16 15 15 next week we'll not be doing 15 to be two weeks from today so folks until then we're gonna sign off and uh please share this give it some likes uh uh don't be afraid to even uh yeah post it out there yourself on social media thank you everybody for tuning in thank you so much rabbi for staying up late there in jerusalem to share beyond the seven uh the 48 ways to wisdom with the rest of the world till uh the next time folks have a wonderful wonderful [Music] week [Music] is