Chanukah; Definition of modern, how the Rav zt”l related to modernity

Don't remember. Probably very simple. One amazing pshat that the Rama says that Shulchan Aruch says that the seudos which we have on Chanukah are really seudos reshus because Am Yisrael gives hallel vehoda'ah, not seudos and so it really isn't a mitzvas seudah and so the Rama says מצוה קצת להרבות בסעודות and that by singing shiros veshishpachos so we help convert it into a mitzvas seudah, that helps shiros veshishpachos on Chanukah so maybe that's one reason that Maoz Tzur is reserved for Chanukah. Another reason perhaps, again there must be simple reasons that we're not discussing but another one, the Rambam has at the end of Hilchos Chanukah the famous halacha,

מצות נר חנוכה מצוה חביבה היא עד מאוד וצריך אדם להיזהר בה כדי להודיע הנס ולהוסיף בשבח האל והודיה לו על הנסים שעשה לנו אפילו אין לו מה יאכל אלא מן הצדקה שואל או מוכר כסותו ולוקח שמן ונרות ומדליק.

Just one quick he'arah on the Rambam just pashut halacha: shemen veneros umadlik. The Or Sameach has a one line comment here: להרבות בנרות ולהוסיף בשבח וזה שאמר להוסיף בשבח. This is amazing because the pashut pshat in this Rambam is that the Rambam is telling you like the Magid Mishnah and others comment that the din of אל יבזבז אל יבזבז יותר מחומש which doesn't apply to ner Chanukah. Right, for a person who is being lokeiach k'susov to be לוקח שמן ונרות ומדליק. So it means a person doesn't have anything other than his shirt to sell to raise the money, so obviously that represents much more than a chumesh of his income. So he tells us, the Magid Mishnah and the Lechem Mishnah explain that that's the din whenever the mitzvah is a kiyum of pirsumei nisa, so by ner Chanukah, by mikra megillah and by daled kosos, the din is like this. So comes the Or Sameach and says for the mehadrin, the mehadrin also you're mechuyav to do this, the mehadrin also you're mechuyav to do this. So kimdumeini if I remember correctly the Gershon Zaks from the Rosh Yeshiva and that was extraordinarily difficult but that should be the pshat and though the diyuk of and the diyuk is not לוקח שמן ונרות ומדליק just for eight nights, you're going to need minimum eight. He says shemen veneros umadlik. Why neros? Why not ner? Because ner means the receptacle, ner means the receptacle. Lokeiach shemen veneros. And he's clearly not using ner the way we use it as oil. He's using ner as candle and that's the way Chazal use ner. The Or Sameach himself doesn't say that, perhaps he does because the Rambam says lokeiach shemen veneros. He does. I don't know if the Rambam does use neros the way Chazal do, so neros would be the candles. Even for mehadrin, the mehadrin would be mechuyav to אל יבזבז יותר מחומש. He used to quote from his father the Reb Mendel that part of the מצוה חביבה היא עד מאוד is to be yotzei le-chol hadei'os. That's part of showing the chavivos of the mitzvah, not just pashut-er but trying to be יוצא המצוה לכל הדעות. But you're right, the diyuk is from neros. If you're just going to reuse if it's just the ikkar mitzvah of ner ish ubeiso so then all you need is one ner. It's partly showing the chavivus of the mitzvah, to be yotzei the mitzvah lechatchila. It's partly showing the chavivus of the mitzvah, not just pashuto, but trying to be yotzei the mitzvah lechatchila. But you're right, you know, from the dikduk from neiros, if you're just going to reuse, if it's just the ikkar mitzvah of ner Shabbos, so then why you need anything in it? Like shemen for the ner, shemen for the neiros. Something else in the Rambam, something else in the Rambam that I didn't notice before. I noticed it this year for the first time. Rambam begins:

כדי להודיע הנס ולהוסיף בשבח האל והודיה לו על הנס.

So the Rambam begins with k'dei l'hodia hanes and he finishes with ולהוסיף בשבח האל והודיה לו על הנסים שעשה לנו. He shifts from lashon yachid to lashon rabbim. Lashon yachid to lashon rabbim. So what's the pshat? So the pshat of the matter is like this. Again, in mind what we were discussing in Maoz Tzur. So the pshat is that the ner Chanukah, in lighting the ner Chanukah, so it means that a person is demonstrating and cultivating a capacity to recognize yad Hashem in nissim nistarim. Which again, as we discussed last year, the ikkar nes was the nitzachon. The ikkar nes wasn't really the nes of the neiros in the Beis HaMikdash. The nes of the neiros of the Beis HaMikdash, if you view it disjointed and divorced from the nitzachon, wasn't such a big deal. It wasn't so different than the nes of the ner ma'aravi which happened thousands of times. It wasn't so different than the asarah nissim which the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos enumerates. It wasn't different than the nissim which the Gemara Yoma enumerates. It didn't, I don't know, I don't think it even would have made the headlines. I'm not sure it even would have made the headlines if it was just self-contained. But it was rather that the nes of the neiros, the symmetry of the nes of the neiros as we talked about last year to the nes of the nitzachon, rabbim beyad me'atim, tme'im beyad tehorim. So it was the nes of the ner Chanukah that interpreted the nes of the nitzachon, and therefore in our lighting the ner Chanukah, so it means that we too demonstrate that ability, capacity to interpret the nissim nistarim. So then the Rambam says something amazing, you wouldn't have expected to find this in the sifrei hachassidus. So the Rambam says: modeia hanes. You begin by being modeia the nes Chanukah. And based on that, a person has that ability, modeia hanes Chanukah, so then he's able ולהוסיף בשבח האל והודיה לו על הנסים שעשה לנו. So then once he gets, once a person gleans that ability from the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, he takes the or haganuz from the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, so then mimmela he's in a position not just to give Hakadosh Baruch Hu hoda'ah on this nes, he's in a position to give Hakadosh Baruch Hu hoda'ah על הנסים שעשה לנו. It's an amazing thing. And it's simply, it's just the pshat, it's the pshat here in the Rambam. So mimmela, so maybe the pshat in Maoz Tzur is that when you sing about ner Chanukah, so you can't just sing about Yavan. Adrabba, once a person recognizes the nes of ner Chanukah, so it means that he has this ability to now recognize other nissim and give hoda'ah on other nissim as well. And be'emes, be'emes I think for this my father zichrono livracha told me that you see from the berachah of Birkas HaGomel that הגומל לחייבים טובות שגמלני כל טוב. That the hoda'ah is not merely, the hoda'ah is not merely on a specific tovah, but once you're chayav to give, and once you have the ability to recognize, to recognize the nes, one particular nes, so then that ability is supposed to carry over. And that's what this Rambam says: ולהוסיף בשבח האל והודיה לו על הנסים שעשה לנו. So that's in Maoz Tzur. People think, let's say it was l'hiyos tov or whatever. So people say, you know, just the resha'im and Aman. They say on the contrary that that emphasizing this, so he was de-emphasizing the kavanah and the qualitative aspect. Adrabba, this for him was an expression of the, of being machshiv and being mechabbed the mitzvah. What greater expression of chavivus than being m'chabed shemen is this? What Does that pale in comparison to singing zemiros? So times he didn't sing zemiros. And I don't know whether singing zemiros is more of a way of showing chavivus Shabbos than observing Shabbos ke-hilchata. Not to say you shouldn't sing zemiros, but both. But so I think that's what the Rebbe was saying as well that ke-hayai gavna is certainly a way of showing that you cherish the mitzvah. Not ולא מעלי ולא מצלמצא. But you know one of the most genuine expressions of chavivus is to show it. He quotes the Kashya in the Tosefot Rid. He quotes it from the Minchat Chinuch, actually he quotes it from the... actually he quotes it from the Minchat Chinuch. So why was the whole nes shemen for Hanukkah necessary if tumah d’chuyah b’tzibur and hadlakat nerot is docheh et hatumah? So why was the whole nes shemen necessary for? He brought the Kashya al pi halakha, he brought it al pi hashkafa, it's also a different way of thinking about it. If natural law is also the Ribono Shel Olam's and he doesn't overturn it, he doesn't suspend natural law unless there's a compelling reason. What was the compelling reason? It's also his ratzon. That's why when we hear these stories in all the Tzaddikim you know they would pour from the from the vodka bottle and no matter how much they poured the bottle didn't get empty. So if the stories are true you have to know peshat in the stories. So why was it relevant? It could be the stories are true, but if the stories are true it's going to need peshat. There has to be a reason for everything. It's not it's not... So the Bach brought the teretz that when we say that הדלקת נרות דוחה את הטומאה it means whatever is involved in actual ma'aseh hadlakah. Presumably meaning that if you can't find anyone who's tahor to light it without creating tumah somehow or other within the ma'aseh hadlakah. But something at the stage of machshirin so that's not docheh. Similar to the fact that milah is docheh Shabbos but machshirim milah are not docheh Shabbos. Take a look in the Bach inside. So the Chacham Tzvi here if you look in the new edition of the Tur, they give you the mareh makom to the Chacham Tzvi here in Siman Reish Zayin says that the whole comparison is totally totally wrong. He says

דברים תמוהים מאד מה שייך דחייה לעניין עשיית השמן בטומאה.

He says by Shabbos the ma'aseh milah is docheh Shabbos. So therefore we distinguish between what part is the ma'aseh milah and what's part of the machshirin. Here there's no issur in the asiyat hashemen even if the shemen is tamei. The issur is at the time of hadlakah. So he says the whole distinction is artificial and the emet is that the דין הדלקת נרות דוחה את הטומאה would also mean if you had no shemen tahor that you would be madlik with shemen tamei. Halakha le-ma'aseh they would have been madlik with shemen tamei in the Beit HaMikdash. He says

ועיקר קושיית הרב אינה כלום דאף שדוחה את הטומאה רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא להראות חיבתו לפניהם ועשה להם נס.

He says something remarkable. He says the emet is there was no need. There was no need for the nes of Hanukkah for the nerot. But

רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא להראות חיבתו לפניהם ועשה להם נס.

So this Chacham Tzvi again emerging out of this discussion halakha. So again it reinforces what we just mentioned before that it's obviously incorrect to think that we're just interested in the nes of the nerot per se. Havaiy the nes of the nerot per se was totally unnecessary, was totally unnecessary. If you take this, I don't know if he intended it too, but if you take this Chacham Tzvi in conjunction with the first of the Beit Yosef... So then something even more remarkable emerges. Not only did Hakadosh Baruch Hu want this nes, but the first of the three answers the Beis Yosef gives, that they had an adequate supply of shemen for one day, so the miracle was only seven days, not eight days. He says: no, they divided it into eight parts. Divided it into eight parts. So then it comes out, so this is what they did was very difficult. I mean, and again, we're not really going to answer these questions on the level of which we're asking, but al pi Halacha, what what this this pshat is, according to the Beis Yosef, what the Chashmonaim did, what the Chashmonaim did, what the Chashmonaim did is is very difficult. I don't know halacha l'maaseh, I think if we would have declared halacha l'maaseh, we would have declared, let's say a person has, let's assume that now for argument's sake that now Chanukah has to burn for 30 minutes, right? And a person has only two hours' worth of shemen, okay? And he can't, whatever, he sells his ksus, everything, there's no way he's going to have more than two hours' worth of shemen. So he now has a choice: he can use 15 minutes of shemen each night and and distribute the two hours over eight nights, or he can just light four nights out of eight, a half hour each night. So if if we had to declare a sha'ala, so I think we certainly would have said, we certainly would have said, light for four nights for a half hour each, because by lighting 15 minutes a night, he's lo yatza. כבתה שאינו זקוק לו, but it's a de-vadai that you have a shiur in the ner l'chatchila, that you have a shiur in the, you have a shiur in the ner, that you have a shiur in the ner. So this terutz of the Beis Yosef is צריך עיון גדול מאוד. The Chacham Tzvi quotes the kasha on this, gadol me'od. But in conjunction with the Chacham Tzvi, so something else very interesting emerges from this first terutz of the Beis Yosef, that not only, not only as the Chacham Tzvi says that

רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא להראות חיבתם לפניו ועשה להם נס זה,

but they themselves did not want to have recourse to the din of tumah hutra be-tzibbur. Right? If if you combine, again, I don't know, maybe maybe this terutz in the Beis Yosef wouldn't wouldn't agree with what the Chacham Tzvi says and vice versa, but if you combine the two, then something even more amazing emerges, that not only did Hakadosh Baruch Hu not want, but they in a ready sense, that they didn't want to rely on this din of tumah de-chuya be-tzibbur. Again, so obviously the second chiddush is much more problematic al pi Halacha than the first, of which and then we're not really going to discuss it on that level. But what's the remez, why should it be, again, whether they already knew this and took that initiative, whether they already knew this and took this initiative, or whether it just came mil'eila, so what's the remez in not wanting to follow the din of tumah de-chuya be-tzibbur? More shel shemen? Yeah. Yeah. What's the pshat? What's the what's the pshat? So again, when we're discussing this al pi aggada, al pi hashkafa, and in our usual in our usual style, I I invite any questions, comments, criticisms as we go along. Din of tumah be-tzibbur basically, again again, what Torah tells us to do so, but nevertheless, it represents a concession. It represents a concession. It means that we allow tumah to infiltrate our avoda, and the avoda proceeds nonetheless with the din of tumah be-tzibbur is, hutra, de-chuya, whatever it is, but we allow tumah. And it really is, again, conceptually. The whole struggle of the Hashmonaim which pitted as the Al HaNissim tells us, teme'im against tehorim. One of the gezeros of Antiochus was that they should offer, they should offer chazir, chazir as korbanos. That was one of the gezeros of Antiochus, they should erect mizbechos and they should offer pigs on the mizbe'ach. The Yevanim, the tactic was not merely to try to eradicate avoda but rather to letamei avoda. That was the thrust of what the Syrian Greeks wanted to do. They weren't looking to simply eradicate it as the communists did in the Soviet Union. So they weren't looking to substitute some other theology for religion. They were looking to obliterate religion because they wanted to make the state into an avoda zara anyway. But they weren't looking to substitute some kind of other theology. The tactic of the Syrian Greeks and of the Misyavnim amongst the Jews was to letamei the avoda, to letamei the avoda. And in that way to destroy Torah, to destroy Yiddishkeit. Again, the nes of the neiros was the culmination and again as we just discussed before, we discussed last year, not just the culmination, but also the interpretation of the nitzachon of the milchama. So that's where the Chacham Tzvi explains, the emes is there was no need strictly speaking al pi din for the nes of Chanukah, because if tuma, hadlakas neiros is dchuya hatuma, hadlakas neiros is dchuya hatuma. But nevertheless Hakadosh Baruch Hu said this entire struggle was because the Hashmonaim realized you can't, how did the whole revolt start? How did the whole revolt start? It also started over such a confrontation with Mattisyahu. The Hashmonaim saw that you can't make concessions or compromise on letting tuma infiltrate our avoda. That even if you're going to say that the compromise is l'shem shamayim and you're going to say that the compromise is pikuach nefesh and you're going to say that the compromise is a hora'as sha'ah, so the whole thrust of the battle of the Hashmonaim was that if you let a little bit of tuma in, so then it's metamei everything and everything will be spoiled and nothing will endure. So comes Hakadosh Baruch Hu and according to the Chacham Tzvi and says, if you were moser nefesh for teme'im b'yad tehorim, so therefore I reciprocate and I respond that you shouldn't need to rely on the din of tuma dchuya b'tzibbur for hadlakas neiros. That you should be able to madlik the neiros b'tahara because that's exactly what the battle, what the struggle of the Hashmonaim was. Halacha l'ma'aseh. There's a lot of discussion in general how Torah, how in contemporary jargon, how Orthodoxy is supposed to interact with modernity. About that in general, and about what the Rav thought and said and did in particular. What the role of YU should be as the leader of what goes by different aliases, Modern Orthodoxy, Centrist Orthodoxy. People make a big mistake. People say and even those who intended as a shvach, not just those who intended lignus, but those who are doresh leshvach, so they say that the undisputed leader of Modern Orthodoxy, hamuchne Centrist Orthodoxy, was the Rav, zecher tzaddik livracha. And it's hard, you know, and then they point, he was a modern person and he had a PhD and he spoke many languages, all of which is true. I picked up today while I was eating lunch, so they have at the guide's desk in Furst Hall in the lobby, they have the Manhattan Jewish Center. So they had there an article in which someone is bemoaning what has become of Modern Orthodoxy. What has become of us when people are now nizaher bekol isha? What has happened to Modern Orthodoxy? What have we come to when people are now nizaher bekol isha, when people want to sit and learn? And what has become of us? Woe, woe unto us and there are people who actually call themselves Modern Orthodox and they don't say Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut and what has happened to our movement and a lot of the blame and the fault is with the right-wing Roshei Yeshiva at YU, at RIETS, and I don't know, the issue came out too early. It was for Purim and they put it out early. Clearly, clearly the Rav was unique in many, many respects. And in one of those respects, he would have been unique in any generation. And in one of those respects was certainly in his approach to modernity. And as far as that goes, they're correct. But he was unique in that he didn't grant modernity any de jure, any theoretical validity. It wasn't that modern values were valid and that Torah somehow or other had to be reconciled with those with modernity, that Torah had to somehow or other, we have to find a way to subscribe to Torah and to modern values. He was certainly unique in that he said the answer he recognized modernity as part of the shayla. He recognized modernity that he didn't make an attempt because he thought it was doomed to fail. He didn't make an attempt to pretend that when he walked the streets in New York or in Boston, that he was walking the streets of Vilna or of Chaslavitch or any of the other places in Europe where he lived. He didn't when the question was how to be mechanech the generation, when the question was how to talk to the generation, so he recognized the metzius of modernity. He didn't deny the metzius of modernity. He didn't wishfully and hopefully deny the metzius of modernity and say, you know, that everything everything can proceed as though we were living a hundred years ago. He knew we weren't living a hundred years ago. He knew that we weren't living a hundred years ago. And if we were just learning on Daf Yud Beis that דאין להקדש אלא מקומו ושעתו, so whether that applies to kiddushin we learned is a machlokes Rishonim. But דאין לחינוך אלא מקומו ושעתו. is Lass Mande Polig. But אין לחינוך אלא מקומו ושעתו is Lass Mande Polig. So he was certainly unique in his not, not in his acceptance or validation of modernity, but in his acknowledgment that it existed and that the people you were talking to were people who lived in modern times, people who, whether you like it or not, were going to be determined to integrate themselves into modern professions and into the modern economy, people who in many instances were more conversant with a modern language and terminology than they were with Torah language and Torah terminology. And therefore he wasn't afraid to speak in modern languages to reach people. And he wasn't afraid to say that in terms of chinuch, the measures we have to adopt are measures which recognize that the people we're dealing with are people who live in and are very much influenced by the temper of modern times. And in that he was certainly very unique. A case in point just to illustrate and concretize is when the, and this, this is not something that we remember, but it's something we read about, but you ask people who are older about the big nisayon which rabbanim had trying to build shuls with mechitzos in the fifties, and even maintaining the mechitzos in shuls that they had. So he didn't merely, he didn't merely assur removing a mechitzah and didn't merely assur going into shul on Rosh Hashanah if the only place you could find was a place without a mechitzah, but he also tried to understand, to provide a rationale, to let people relate to, to help people understand it. So he didn't hesitate to use his gift of language and even modern language or his knowledge of chochmos sheba'olam to try to communicate with people, recognizing that maybe they would understand something which was couched in Western terms better than they would understand something which was formulated in Yiddish. But there was no, there's no, there was no compromise with modernity. Even if you look, even if you look, if you saw the most recent Tradition in my father's article there, so you'll see that he makes a very, very important observation. And that is that with that there was no chochmah in the world not just with which the Rav wasn't familiar, but which he wasn't expert in, of which he wasn't expert in. I have a friend who's a PhD in, who went to MIT and studied physics and used to eat in my parents' Sukkah sometimes on Sukkos. So once, I forget what happened, we were clearing up the table or something, so he was alone in the Sukkah with the Rav and they started discussing relativity, theory of relativity. And he said he was nishtomem, he couldn't believe that there was, that anyone had such a profound and lucid understanding of the most obscure and difficult points of the theory. Someone else told me a story once that he was studying American literature and that he was once giving the Rav a ride somewhere and the Rav asked him what he was doing, what he was studying, and he told him what he was studying. So he said the Rav proceeded to give him the best lecture he ever heard on American literature. And Rabbi Wurzburger told me a story once that in the forties he accompanied the Rav to a meeting with a group of professors of philosophy from Columbia University and they sat with him for a while and their mouths dropped. And finally one of them said to him, "Rabbi, you should be a professor of philosophy, what are you doing as a rabbi?" So he didn't hesitate, he knew everything, and yet nowhere, nowhere do you ever find in his writings, did he ever ever find in his oral discourse, he never felt that he had to reconcile Torah with any chochma in the world. No chochma in the world had a claim to truth if it was at odds with Torah, so unlike even the Rambam, even HaNesher HaGadol the Rambam, so a lot of Moreh Nevuchim is an attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy with Torah because the Rambam felt that whenever possible one should accord to that the status of truth and he was trying to reconcile the truth. If you look at Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, so he is clearly doing his best to reconcile Torah with European values. You don't find it anywhere in the Rav. He's not, he doesn't, he doesn't owe any debt to, it's amazing, it's amazing. Everyone sees, and they should see, everyone sees that there are two sides to the thing here. One side is the amazing, amazing breadth and scope of what he quotes. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I mean, if this had been a full, if his study of chochmos had been a full-time preoccupation, not something which he basically, basically spent a couple of years, a few years, and the rest, the rest of the time it was at most mi-gavla legavla and it's amazing, amazing. If it would be a full-time preoccupation for 60 years, it would be amazing what he quotes. And yet nowhere, nowhere is it that as well, the way to reconcile Torah with Kantian philosophy is this. You don't find it anywhere, you don't find it anywhere because he never thought in those terms. There was Torah to the extent that anything that he read or knew of or thought could help articulate something in Torah, could help sensitize us to something in Torah, or most often could help communicate an idea of Torah to people who were more conversant in these languages than they were in Torah, so then he drew from this unparalleled capital. But you don't find anywhere, you don't find anywhere that there's any attempt to reconcile, okay, this is that there's an attempt to reconcile Torah with anything else. No, there isn't. You find that in many others. You don't find it, you don't find it in the Rav because he didn't. That wasn't his approach. The approach to chochma is to see what's there and filter it through a filter of Torah and whatever you're left with and whatever is helpful and whatever is valuable you take. And whatever isn't, so there's no need. You don't try to, you don't have to try to say pshat in the Torah to make it consistent with the modern philosophical temperament. And that's amazing, that's amazing. There's nothing, there's no, there's no acceptance in the sense of validation of modernity. He was the most modern in terms of his understanding with, understanding of, and grasp of modernity, sociologically, intellectually, philosophically, but there was no validation of modernity. There was no compromise to modernity. It wasn't that something is bowed to modernity, it was rather that modernity is a fact, is a fact. And when you and when you present a shayla in chinuch, so you have to know all the facts. So one of the most important facts is the, is who you're dealing with, is who you're dealing with. And it's a terrible, a terrible error and distortion not to realize what the modernity consisted of. The modernity consisted of a willingness to confront and approach and not be intimidated by modernity. It didn't mean compromising an iota. In the same thing, not even for tumas dichuya b'tzibbur, not even for tumas dichuya b'tzibbur, not, not, not compromising with modernity. A few years ago when the whole issue of the Israel Day Parade came when they were going to have that gay group marching under its own banner so one person either knowingly misrepresenting or unknowingly misunderstanding so I think that happened in the months or maybe even in the weeks following the Rav's petirah of the same year it's the same year began bemoaning look look look at the intolerance which has come into the world and if the Rav were here and omeid v'eisono so he would have said of course you should let them march because he was a very tolerant person. So the leading the leading issues today which people like to talk about are tolerance and pluralism and and women's issues and in each of these issues are all test cases of what Chazal say התורה זכה סם חיים ולא זכה סם מוות because in each of these areas it's probably true in every area I'm sure it's true in every area but we see it more in these areas that the Torah says is very carefully balanced and nuanced and can easily be distorted in different directions. Is there tolerance in the Torah? Of course there's a lot of tolerance in the Torah of course there's a lot of tolerance there's tolerance for legitimate dissenting Torah opinions there's tolerance for people who because they're tinokos shenishbu adhere to illegitimate practices from a Torah perspective there is an awareness that בזמן הזה שאין ידינו תקיפה and again the overwhelming majority of people amongst whom we live are in the class of tinokos shenishbu that heavy-handed tactics is not the way to be mechazek yiddishkeit but rather by being mekarev people there's a lot of tolerance of course there's a lot of tolerance but tolerance doesn't mean tolerance doesn't mean relativism it doesn't mean that there are no absolutes there's tolerance but there are many many absolutes and there are things which are absolutely right and there are things which are absolutely wrong and there are things which can absolutely under no circumstances be sanctioned or acknowledged or recognized without passing judgment on whether or not these people are sincerely misguided or whether or not they are totally totally corrupt but the practice is abominable and that is an absolute there's nothing relative about that and all the droshes and all the correct citations of of the role of tolerance in the Torah notwithstanding there are some things which are just absolutely out of bounds. And yes the word pluralism wouldn't have been such a terrible word if it hadn't been distorted and grotesquely extended to basically mean a kind of relativism of well there's you can be frum you can be not frum and you can or or maybe you can even think that Oso Ha'ish was a great moral leader so pluralism yeah one one could have explained pluralism yeah again because there is room for legitimate disagreement within Torah and there is room for legitimate plurality but you can't you can't use the word pluralism anymore because of the associations with it which are all totally wrong it doesn't mean that everything is totally relative and that there are no absolutes that there are no absolutes you know in his There were things which are absolutely right and there are things which are absolutely wrong. Things which are absolutely right and there are things which are absolutely wrong and all the talk about and all the talk about tolerance and about, you know, one can quote and one should quote and one should know eilu v'eilu and one should know that, one should know it when it comes to learning and one should know it in terms of hashkafa, but it doesn't mean that there are no absolutes, doesn't mean that there are no absolutes. And if if if Yeshiva has a has a unique mission, it's not that Yeshiva, it's not that Yeshiva fashions some neo-Orthodoxy which has to have a new name. You know, when the Rav used to talk about hashkafa and wanted to convey what the Torah's hashkafa was, so he never spoke about, he didn't say this is what Centrist Orthodoxy says, he didn't say this is what Modern Orthodoxy says. He never even used the word Orthodoxy. He used to say either this is what Halacha says or Yahadus teaches or Yiddishkeit.