Emunas Chachomim

The last perek of Pirkei Avos, which is a Braisa about Kinyan Torah, lists מ"ח דברים שהתורה נקנית בהם, the 48 items, 48 qualities which are indispensable for a person to koneh torah. One of them the Braisa mentions is Emunas Chachamim, a sense of trust and confidence, a sense of trust and confidence in chachamim. So perhaps we'll take a few minutes out to discuss some of the elements of what's involved, what Emunas Chachamim means, why we're supposed to have Emunas Chachamim, and why is it sometimes that it doesn't come as easily and naturally to us as it should. So the first component of Emunas Chachamim is to have a sense of trust and confidence in the integrity of our mesorah. That means both the mesorah of Torah She-bi-ksav, that as the Rambam formulates in the Yud-gimel Ikkarim, that the truth is that without this mesorah, without this confidence in mesorah, without this confidence in the integrity of mesorah, so we don't even know what the text of the Torah She-bi-ksav is. So it means having a sense of confidence in the integrity of the mesorah of Torah She-bi-ksav and also of Torah She-ba-al Peh, all the oral explanations that Hakadosh Baruch Hu provided Moshe Rabbeinu on Har Sinai which have been transmitted throughout the generations. So that's one aspect of Emunas Chachamim. Another aspect of Emunas Chachamim is confidence in the integrity not only of the mesorah but of the baalei hamesorah themselves, of the people who, sorry this is an online mishpacha, a sense of confidence in the integrity of the baalei hamesorah. What does that mean? So for instance, the Gemara in Berachos says that one of the things for which a person is chayav nidui, a form of excommunication, is if he insinuates to Chazal, to chachamim, that they had personal negiyos, personal biases in their interpretations that they put forward of Divrei Torah. To say that some of the Chachmei Ha-mesorah, Shemaya and Avtalyon who were geirim, said certain things favorable to geirim because לכבוד עצמם היו דורשים to bolster their own standing is something which violates that sense of Emunas Chachamim. Maybe you'll remind me later, im yirtzeh Hashem. At the moment we're talking about Chazal, but the... we really need to go beyond Chazal as well in terms of talking about the masorah and emunas chachamim. Chazal had the integrity that they were anshei emes. They were people of truth and there were no such again personal biases which played a role in in their interpretations of divrei Torah, in their development and transmission of the halachah. Rav Moshe Feinstein has a has a teshuvah in which he comments that he says, you know, my whole life, he says, I've been immersed in Talmud Torah. And he says, and that's my whole, that's my entire worldview just comes from Torah. I'm not influenced neither lekula nor lachumra by anything else that's that's in the air. What I've imbibed my entire life has just been divrei Torah. So emunas chachamim also means integrity not only of the masorah, not only that the Torah that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave Moshe Rabbeinu is בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים את הארץ, not only that Hakadosh Baruch Hu told Moshe Rabbeinu in Har Sinai that a pri eitz hadar is an esrog, but also emunas chachamim means a firm belief and confidence in the integrity of the baalei hamasorah. Closely related to this, well, before we move on to what's closely related, I remember several years ago I once gave a talk and afterwards someone came over to me and and posed the question, the question I I repeat to illustrate what we're talking about. The question was absolutely assur to say. It was assur to say, it was assur to think. It was a maligning of Chazal that well you understand that everything is tilted towards men in halachah because the rabbis wanted to retain the control, that it should be again a society where men have the the authority. So I so I asked this person whether whether she had ever met any of the great people of the previous generation. I asked her, did you ever did you ever meet Rav Soloveitchik? Did you ever meet Rav Moshe Feinstein? No, never never met them. So I told her that I I grew up sitting at the breakfast table across the table from Rav Soloveitchik and that you can't begin to imagine someone who was more removed from any such interest or any such consideration. These are people who were just totally, totally devoted to Talmud Torah, to avodas Hashem and part of emunas chachamim is recognizing again the integrity of the baalei masorah. We'll come back to to this point soon. Part of the integrity of the baalei masorah is also realizing that they didn't simply reflect and and inject into halachah what were the mores of the society in which they lived. That they developed Torah from within. They didn't they weren't simply again reflecting whatever the the ancient world thought about A, B, and C. Again, as Rav Moshe said, they derived their understanding, they derived their hashkafos from within Torah and all of this is part of the emunas chachamim, the again firm belief and conviction that we're supposed to have in the chachamim. So you'll ask what's the basis for that belief? What's the basis for that belief? What's the basis for placing Chazal on such a on such a pedestal? So when when you apply, whether you apply to come to a to a yeshiva, whether you apply for a job, you have to get letters of recommendation. Right, without a letter of recommendation, so and and no one's no one's gonna take you. You need a letter of recommendation. Someone should vouch for your character. And when you try to get a letter of recommendation, the more the more credentials the recommender has, then the more weight that letter of recommendation carries. If you get a letter of recommendation, you're applying to yeshiva, and your little six-year-old brother, you know, writes a letter, you know, "He's a great guy." Okay, it says something. It certainly says something, but I'm not sure whether I'm not sure if Rav David's going to be totally bowled over by that by that letter of recommendation. You have from from your high school principal, you have from one of your high school rebbeim. Mah! That's a significant significant recommendation. So Chazal have a recommendation from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. The Torah tells us in Sefer Devarim, in Parshas Shoftim, לא תסור מן הדבר אשר יגידו לך ימין ושמאל. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, "I'm trusting the people who will emerge as the leading chachamim and I'm entrusting to them my Torah." So they they have the ultimate letter of recommendation, a letter of recommendation from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, "These are the people whom you're supposed to trust." So obviously Hakadosh Baruch Hu knows to whom He's entrusting the Torah, in whom He expects us to have this sense of confidence and this sense of of conviction. He knows who they are in terms of character, He knows who they are in terms of ability, and based on that Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, heed what they tell you. One of the in in the aftermath a few months ago of Chacham Ovadia's petirah, so we we all heard extraordinary extraordinary stories. Some of them we we had heard in his lifetime, and just because of the outpouring, we probably heard certain stories that that we hadn't heard before. And and the stories were were unbelievable. His his retention, his mastery of of rabbinic literature was literally, I'm too old to ever otherwise speak like this, it was literally awesome. But the question is, what are those stories, those stories, do they do anything for us? And I don't think it was because, I don't know, he knew the proper diet to eat to help his memory. I don't think that's where he got it from. And all the extraordinary יגיעה ועמלה של תורה notwithstanding, he obviously had a gift that is one in I don't know how many. So the question is, what do those stories do for us? So the answer is, at least on one level, that's exactly what the stories do for us. This is a person in our generation, right? This is a person our generation. This isn't this isn't Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi who lived almost two millennia ago. This is a person who a few months ago, you could have gone to Rechov Hakablan and and and you could have seen walking on the street. And and look at just look look at that greatness. Look at the greatness in terms of the ability, look at the greatness in terms of the drive. I mean, someone who has that ability doesn't need to work hard. He he would have been, he would have risen to the top without working hard. He could have put in a nine to five day. With the lunch break from twelve to one, and he probably still would have been the biggest baki of the generation given his abilities and his capacities. Whether it should have been made or not, but you know there is this short film of Chacham Ovadia in the last years of his life, he had terrible, terrible back pain. And at one point the pain was just so crippling and so dominating that it affected his ability to learn. So this is again a man who's acclaimed as the, not just the biggest baki of this generation, but who knows of how many generations in terms of his, again, encyclopedic, photographic knowledge and who had written already, I don't know, dozens of sefarim and there's a video taken of him going to Rav Steinberg, asking for a bracha that the yissurim should abate that he should be able to learn because he wants to learn and he's crying. He's literally crying. And you hear Rav Steinberg saying to him, lo livkot, lo livkot. So that's the devotion and dedication that Chachmei HaMasorah had. In their own way, they all possessed to varying degrees, but again, extraordinary, extraordinary abilities and these are people, again, these are figures from the twenty-first and twentieth centuries. So Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't give letters of recommendation without care. They're given carefully. So if we want to know why should we have that sense of firm belief and conviction, why should we have such an emunas chachamim that they were above the pettiness of subjective biases, that they didn't allow themselves to be influenced just by the mores of their society. They were extraordinary and remain ad hayom hazeh extraordinary people. Well, why do we have so much trouble with this? One of the big... which cup should I use? Of those? Let me hand out another one of these. Why is it that we sometimes, not we don't necessarily admit it, but sometimes we sort of react cynically when we hear these types of presentations about emunas chachamim? So the answer is because we tend to imagine Chazal in our own image. And we project, right, one of the major categories of psychology is when a person projects. And we imagine Chazal in our image, in our own images. And we know that we're affected and driven by all kinds of personal biases, invested interests, and we know that we are unduly influenced by the society in which we live. So therefore we take that as the definition of what it means to be human and we therefore say, what are you telling me that they weren't people, they weren't human, that they weren't real? So the answer is they were very human and they were very real, the same flesh and blood that we have, they needed to eat and they needed to sleep. But it's a major, major error to imagine Chazal in our own images. And what that person who posed the question to me that we were talking about earlier, so what she was doing was projecting onto Chachmei HaMasorah, not just Chazal, of all generations, her own and I'm no better, I'm no different, my own. But but it's simply not true. It's not even true in this generation. It's not even true in this generation. I'm sure you all heard the one of the stories which which was told about Chacham Ovadia and again I mention him only by way of illustration because he was recently niftar, but one could tell stories about Rav Elyashiv, Rav Shlomo Zalman, the Rav, Rav Moshe, one could... there are true stories germane to our topic tonight about any of them. That the doctors told him that he needed emergency heart surgery. And he said, "Okay, I'll be back in three hours. I'm going home, I'll be back in three hours." So one of his sons says to him, "Abba, pikuach nefesh!" So he says, "I'm in the middle of writing a teshuvah to be mattir an agunah. I don't think anyone else has come upon the hetter, the correct, legitimate hetter which I have for her. If I go on the table and something happens and I don't survive the surgery, so this woman will remain an agunah for the rest of her life. So I have to finish the teshuvah before. I think it's going to take me around three hours to write the teshuvah, and then I can have the surgery." So in terms of character, in terms of ability, in terms of devotion and dedication to Torah, so even the contemporary Chachmei HaMasorah, not us. Not us. We're little people with all kinds of little cheshbonos and they're giants of spirit of a very different stature. Then when one realizes that even as great as they are, they'll be the first ones to tell us that there's been a yeridas hadoros, right? Chazal already tell us that even within the tekufah of Chazal, even within the several hundred years of tekufas Chazal, Chazal talk about that there was yeridas hadoros, that the further away we get from Ma'amad Har Sinai, the further away there's been a yeridas hadoros. As incredibly great as contemporary gedolim are, they'll be the first to tell you that עפר אנחנו תחת כפות רגליהם of Rav Chaim, of the Vilna Gaon. They'll tell you that that when we're nothing, that we're we're nothing compared to the gedolim of a hundred years ago, of two hundred years ago. And if we were to have an audience with them, so Rav Chaim Volozhin who used to literally shake when he talked about his rebbe, the Vilna Gaon, said, "It's true what they said about my rebbe that he's like one of the Rishonim, but he wasn't as great as the Rambam. He wasn't as great as the Ramban." So there's been a tremendous yeridas hadoros. When you combine these two factors, A: the gap that exists today between ourselves and contemporary giants of spirit, and B: the fact that there's been a yeridas hadoros, so yes, Chazal were very real and they were very human and they were mortal and they were people and they were flesh and blood. They weren't they weren't like me, they weren't like you, they weren't like us. They were very, very different. And we have this self-centered image of others. We imagine other people in our own image and it's not only vis-à-vis Chachmei HaMasorah, whether it's Chazal or whether it's later generations that we do it. This same mistake infects sometimes how people read and interpret Chumash. So people open a Chumash and they open Parshas Vayeishev and they begin with all the Toiros about sibling rivalry and the and the brothers are jealous of Yosef and the brothers hate Yosef and mamesh the same thing the same way I used to fight with my brother so that's the way they fought with the way they fought with with Yosef and what's more difficult than than an older brother feeling that he's being eclipsed that he's being outshined by a younger brother and and that's what happened and and that's how Mechiras Yosef resulted. And they'll argue that if you say differently but don't don't the psukim say that Vaykanu Vo Echav that the brothers were jealous of him and doesn't it say וישנאו אתו ולא יכלו דברו לשלום? So the answer is like this rabosai. Take the following mashal. Let's say you're you're sweating over a difficult passage in the Yerushalmi. You go over to a four-year-old and you you bring you bring your Yerushalmi with you and and you open to the passage and and you say to him yingele maybe you can help me with pshat in the Yerushalmi. Kid says I don't know. Fakt. So then there's a tiyul aliyah l'regel you go to Bnei Brak. And and you go into Rav Chaim Kanievsky and ask him yelamdenu rabbeinu what's pshat in the Yerushalmi. And it's taka a shver Yerushalmi. It seems to contradict a Yerushalmi here a Bavli there a Tosafos there a Rambam here. So Rav Chaim Kanievsky says I don't know. It's a shver Yerushalmi. So they say the same words. I don't know. The four-year-old said I don't know and and Rav Chaim Kanievsky says I don't know. Did they mean the same thing? Is it the same I don't know? Four-year-old said I don't know Talmud Yerushalmi. What are you talking to me in Chinese? I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. And Rav Chaim Kanievsky has his cheshbon of kol hatorah kula he's taka not sure exactly how this Yerushalmi integrates into kol hatorah kula. I once gave this this mashal and and someone came over afterwards and told me the following story about Rav Hirschprung. Rav Hirschprung in his youth had learned in the Chachmei Lublin in the Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin in in Poland and then later was the rov of Montreal and and also was a baki atzum. So a young avreich once came over to Rav Hirschprung and asked him a question. And Rav Hirschprung said I don't know. And you could see on the on the avreich's face that he was very satisfied. Very. He had a that oh you see what I don't know he doesn't know also. And he walks away. And after he walked away so Rav Hirschprung says to his son Rav Hirschprung's son he thinks that his I don't know and my I don't know are the same. So yeah it says in the Chumash Vayisnu Oso it does say in the Chumash and it says in the Chumash Vaykanu Vo. The four-year-old said I don't know and Rav Chaim Kanievsky sometimes says I don't know. Does it mean the same thing? Does it mean the same thing? So again so we project we project onto the Shivtei Koh onto the onto the Shivtei Koh whose names are inscribed on on the Choshen. Onto the we project onto the Shivtei Koh. Okay so we fight with our siblings and we are jealous of people so we assume that our Vayisnu Oso and our Vaykanu Vo is their Vayisnu Oso and their Vaykanu Vo. What it means on their level veist men nisht veist men nisht. But we should never ever make the mistake of thinking that what it means on our level is what it means on their level. And whatever lessons we're going to derive we should recognize it's not because we really understand what was happening on their level. It's if the Torah tells it so then this story can be understood it can send messages on a lower level also. But their Vayisnu Oso and their Vaykanu Vo is not our Vayisnu Oso and our Vaykanu Vo. So it's a big avodah to realize just how far we are again A because of the gap that exists between us and contemporaries and then multiply that by the again by the yeridas hadoros. but the decline through the generations, these are people who lived on a different level than we live, and people who lived on that level are very, very deserving of the again that firm sense of of trust and confidence which emunat chachamim involves. So I think we were supposed to stop and also see if there are any questions about this or anything else. What's the reason and source for yeridat hadorot? There are gemarot has it in different places. The gemara has in Berachot, the gemara talks about ad kan de-amora'im say, and ad kan the earlier generations when when they would daven, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu right away would answer. And we shout ourselves hoarse and Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't answer. We go in Gittin, it tells a story that tzu-u u-re'u, Berachot also has such a lashon מה בין דורות הראשונים לדורות האחרונים. So you have it in a few, in Berachot it's in the fifth perek, in Gittin towards the end, you have a few places where Chazal already in their day already comment on the fact that there has been a yeridat hadorot. The source again, that's the source in terms of where you find it in Chazal. The reason? I think we generally assume that the further away we are from Ma'amad Har Sinai, so naturally there is there is this decline in the generations. So you say that when we learn Tanach, we can't really learn the peshat she-bipeshat because we can't even fathom what actually happened? We can learn peshat she-bipeshat but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that's what really happened. I mean Chazal do say, it's the gemara in Shabbat, where we're learning Shabbat this year, Chazal do say that a parent shouldn't show favoritism, that a parent should treat all all all children the same, he should shower all the children with the same amount of love. But look, Yaakov showed favoritism to Yosef and because of that Galus Mitzrayim ensued. So we can, we can derive lessons from what seems to be the simplest, lowest level on which the story is told, but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that that's the level on which the story actually happened. So on that note, how would you recommend if we let's say took a certain episode in Tanach to actually delve into it and to actually learn what happened? Because there are certain like meforshim or mekomot that we can try to look at? Again, I think your question is a very good one. I think like many areas in Torah, on our own you know the chances of our deciphering on our own are not that good to get an idea. I don't know if there's one, I don't know offhand if there's one particular meforesh who you know is always going to provide the answer to that question. I don't know if there's one necessarily. The Rosh Yeshiva talked a lot about the greatness of acharonim but then in particular. It's my understanding that the Rosh Yeshiva had the zechut to have a chavruta with Rav Soloveitchik and we've heard so much about the Rav, can the Rosh Yeshiva share some sort of anecdote perhaps that encapsulates what that relationship would have been like? I'll just share and it's I don't have one one story or anecdote that one impression that has intensified as the years go by and as the color of my beard changes, this impression has not weakened, but it has intensified. When the Rav spoke about Divrei Torah, there was a vibrancy, vibrancy, a profundity, a depth and dimension that one doesn't, one is otherwise just not exposed to. You know, almost lehavdil, lehavdil, lehavdil, you know in mythology, there was someone who had a golden touch, that whatever he touched turned to gold. So whatever, whatever line in the Gemara that the Rav would read, again there was just such vibrancy. The the ability to understand and explain the depth was something, something extraordinary. You know, it was clearly, clearly, it was the same type of phenomenon, there is a famous quote from Rav Chaim Ozer. Rav Chaim Ozer was the, I guess probably acclaimed as the Posek and Manhig HaDor between the two World Wars in Eastern Europe. I think, yeah. So he he used to say about Rav Chaim Brisk, the Rav's grandfather, who the world used to acclaim for his Gaonus, his brilliance, his insight, his profundity, so he used to say that he's the biggest Baki in the generation. And then he would explain by saying that קיינר ווייסט נישט זיינע תוספות'ן. That the Tosafoss'n that Rav Chaim knows no one else knows. Meaning everyone knows the same Tosafoss'n but no one else's Tosafos says the same thing that Rav Chaim's says. And and you actually you saw that and experienced that with the Rav. There was just a vibrancy, there was a depth, there was a dimension. Ad hayom hazeh, when I learn, I always have a feeling that that there's so much there that that I'm missing and I think that was maybe one of the very, very powerful impressions and again, it's one that has intensified as as time goes by. Going forward for like our generation and future generations, how can we ensure that the people we look up to are are proper Gedolim, or people who we should be looking up to? So that's a great question. So I would tell you the following. I mean למעשה השם יראה ללבב, right? Only Hakadosh Baruch Hu really, really, really, you know, knows anything absolutely. האדם יראה לעיניים והשם יראה ללבב. We see, we see externally, and I don't know, the only one who's supposed to have x-ray vision is Superman, but other than Superman we see, we see externally. So I would tell you the following, there are certain character traits and qualities that genuine Gedolim have. There's a tremendous sense of humility that Gedolim have. The Rambam writes in Hilchos De'os that כשם שהחכם ניכר בדעותיו, the same way a chacham is set apart because he just knows so much more than the rest of the people, he also has to be nikar in terms of his behavior, in terms of his comportment. Then it's also very, very important that we should The one of the biggest impediments to being able to recognize genuine gedolim and to understand the difference between an adam gadol and someone who has the title Rabbi is the more educated we are in Torah, so then the less difficult that becomes. And the more ignorant we are, so then the more difficult it is to know the difference. A person can seem to be a baki based on knowing how to use the computer. A person can be a baki in other people's bekius. And then gedolim are beki'im in their own right. You know, it's sort of symbolized by the following story. Around, ich vays, a hundred years ago or so, someone claimed to have found the Yerushalmi in Kodashim. And so we have Yerushalmi on Zeraim and we have it on Moed and we have it on Nashim and Nezikin, but we don't have Yerushalmi in Kodashim. So someone claimed to have found the Yerushalmi in Kodashim. For some reason some people get their kicks out of forgery. Like we would think that if a person is capable enough to come up with a pretty good forgery, so let him do his own creative work. But nicely you see it lehavdil in the art world also. Some people, they get their kicks out of making a painting and passing it off as a authentic Picasso or something. So ba'avonoseinu harabbim, so there have been forgeries in what purports to what was allegedly Torah literature as well. So someone published a manuscript, he claimed that he had found the Yerushalmi in Kodashim. So they brought it to the Rogatchover. So the Rogatchover looked through it and said, "Fake." How does he know? So the Rogatchover said, "In every other masechta of Yerushalmi, there's always an amora who's not mentioned in any other masechta. In Yerushalmi Shabbos, there's an amora who's not in Yerushalmi Berachos, Pe'ah, Demai, Ma'aseros, etc. Every masechta there's an amora who's not mentioned elsewhere. Says here, it's only the amoraim mentioned elsewhere. Why? Because this guy doesn't know that. So he just took the names from the other volumes of Yerushalmi." So what the story sort of besides being an extraordinary story in its own right, you know, again you can add that to the discussion of who the chachmei hamesorah were and the gap between ourselves and them. But again also illustrates what it means to have one's own bekius. I think they tell a story about we mentioned Rav Hershmann before. So they tell a story about Rav Hershmann as follows. Someone came and asked him, "How many times is—I think it was about Beruria, I don't remember—how many times is Beruria mentioned in Shas Bavli, Yerushalmi, Tosefta, here and there?" And so I think, I don't remember the numbers, don't hold me to that, I think he said six. And they said, "No, it's only four." So he says, "You looked on a computer." He says, "But sometimes it's spelled with a hei at the end, sometimes it's spelled with an aleph at the end. And if you have both of those, you'll see that it's six." Gedolim have their own bekius. There are people who don't have bekius and they can sort of pretend to have bekius based on a computer. There are people who can have bekius in other people's bekius. The more a person learns, so the more a person is in a position to be able to recognize and appreciate who you can go over to and talk to. You're in the middle of working on a sugya and you're deeply involved and it can be any sugya and you can go over to this person and he's holding, you know, he knows what you're talking about. The more we learn, the more we can recognize and appreciate. So we can look again for the qualities of anavah, of the middos, of the yiras shamayim. And hopefully the more we learn, so the more we're in a position to recognize that in others. How are we supposed to reconcile when a rishon or some sort of commentary says something that seems to denote some sort of deficiency in biblical figures, like when the Ibn Ezra I believe says that Yitzchak didn't teach Esav in the correct manner, or I don't know if anyone else said that, or when Rashi I believe says that when Yosef went to look for his brothers, that they were busy drinking wine and that caused them to sin? I'm not familiar with that Ibn Ezra. I'm not familiar with that saying and I can't say. But there are cases, I mean, there is a case where, right, one famous example is where the Ramban says that Sara was wrong, how she treated Hagar, ותענה שרה ותברח מפניה, so the Ramban says that חטאה שרה אמנו חטא גדול. So two, just I guess, two, I guess, reflections on that. Number one, you have to be the Ramban to be able to say it. And number two, sort of the Rav once said, he doesn't know how the Ramban was able to say that. Those were the two, two reflections. Isn't the fact that, isn't it depressing how no matter how much we learn throughout our whole lives, we're never gonna measure up to the Chachmei of before, or the Vilna Gaon, or anything like that? I think we assume that, you know, contrary to the, forgive the heresy, but contrary to the Declaration of Independence, not all people are created equal. None of us are created the same. We're all created with different abilities, different skill sets. We don't all have the same opportunities. So we assume, you know, like the famous story with Reb Zusha of Anipoli, that when I come before the Kisei HaKavod, they're not going to ask me why I wasn't like so-and-so, they're going to ask me why I wasn't like Zusha. We assume that our person is, you know, when you take a final exam in a course, for the exam to be fair, it has to reflect the material that was taught. It can't. Hakadosh Baruch Hu's test for us is personalized, is individualized. So I think what's, you know, what's discouraging is when we feel like we're squandering our own potential. The fact that Hakadosh Baruch Hu didn't, you know, didn't give us certain blessings that he gave others, I don't know that that's depressing. What's depressing is when we don't make the most of what we have. That's discouraging. Okay, we're not supposed to sit and wallow in that sadness, we're supposed to get up and try to do something about it and let that be a catalyst to action. Right, we try to measure up to ourselves, and we should set our sights realistically high, but we try to measure up to who we can be, not to who someone else can be. Just another question that's been bothering me a little bit, I don't know, but we know that, so Rashi is let's say known for giving the pshat on especially Tanakh. He gives the simple interpretation of the Torah. So it's hard, I don't know how to understand, did Rashi only say what he knew, or did Rashi understand that there was deeper meaning to the Tanakh, but only chose to give the pshat? Did he know what the other mefarshim also thought of, but chose to not write it down, or is that only what he knew? I think it's, again, it's an excellent question. I think it's clear from comments that Rashi makes, you know, in a few places... And Rashi says that you know Chazal have many drashos, but אני באתי לפשוטו של מקרא. Again, it's not the easiest task in the world to define exactly what Rashi set out to do, but it's quite clear that Rashi didn't set out to say everything on all levels that is to be said, but the need that he was responding to and the service that he was trying to provide was basic peshat and those types of comments, they're not they're not throwaway comments. Those comments that Rashi makes that you know that האגדה תדרש ואני לא באתי אלא לפשוטו של מקרא, something to that effect, is where Rashi I think is addressing your your point. So the truth is that we don't know you know because Rashi undertook to do that so we don't really know you know how Rashi understood things on other on other levels but he clearly is acknowledging those levels and saying but the you know the task that I set myself is that people need a Perush Rashi on Chumash. Who's next? Okay. To what extent, the Rosh Yeshiva mentioned before about the idealism of Chazal in days past and how clearly Chazal of many years past viewed society and how much their Torah was unadulterated as opposed to like the metzius today as opposed to our metzius. Alright, our metzius, yes, our metzius today. To what extent should we take into account the idealistic, idyllic Torah of back then in rendering decisions today when it comes to things like politics or even science or like for example, geopolitical situation taking place today in Israel, how to govern Israel itself as a state or dealing with the Palestinian government? To what extent should Torah principles be applied to that and given in a case of Gedolim today, Gedolei Torah today, if in the hypothetical situation they were to render judgment on a range of decisions, to what extent should we take into account their opinions and bind them? Good. Also excellent questions. Again, I didn't mean to when we were talking about how you know Chazal didn't just reflect what the contemporary values and mores were of their day, I didn't mean that Chazal were you know removed from the world in the sense that everything they were saying was just theoretical and hypothetical. No, what they were saying was very real and very practical, but the way they arrived at that was from within Torah, not not from outside. So we do believe that Torah speaks to reality. That application requires tremendous you know a tremendous breadth in Torah, depth, grasp of Torah to know how to apply Torah to changing situations but we do believe that you know the Torah does speak to reality. Does that mean it doesn't it doesn't necessarily mean that contemporary chachamim are the biggest experts on any question except halakha says if you have a question about chillul Shabbos for a choleh on Shabbos, you know is it a dangerous situation, isn't it a dangerous situation, does he need to eat on Yom Kippur, doesn't he need to eat on Yom Kippur, so you consult a doctor. So we don't say that we don't assume that the chachamim are the ones who are necessarily going to know best. No, if he has a heart condition, so then a top-rank cardiologist you know needs to provide us with his with his insight. And you know in that that same can be transposed but in terms of... whatever when it's not a question of clarifying a medical metzius or something like that, but when it's a question of what does halacha say about such a metzius, what what do halachic values dictate about such a metzius, so we assume that the Torah does speak to לכל מקום ובכל זמן. but it's not necessarily the Chachamim who are going to be the ones to, again for instance in the case of a medical question, it's not necessarily the Chachamim who are going to be the ones who are going to clarify what the facts on the ground are. they'll be the ones who make the call as to how the halacha deals with those facts on the ground. in Rabbi Zink's shiur, shlita, it's a similar question to him but we encountered in Shabbos where the Chachamim came up with different refuos for different ailments, and I don't know what Rebbe's view on the legitimacy of all those ailments of those refuos are, but why my question is why would the Chachamim comment on the daily science that was going on then if we now know that it's all wrong and basically my question. one major view in the Rishonim, it's a big topic that you're touching upon, one major view in the Rishonim is that we don't know how to implement those refuos, not that we know that they're wrong, but that we don't know how to implement them, we don't know how to apply them, but not that we... you can't know that something is wrong unless you know how to do it and then it doesn't work. if you don't know how to reproduce it, you can't know that something's wrong. if I give you a recipe for chocolate cake but I don't tell you how much sugar and how much chocolate and or how long you let it sit or how vigorously you have to mix it up, and then the cake doesn't turn out well, that's your fault, that's not my fault. my chocolate cake recipes are great, that's your fault. earlier you said that when a Rishon or a Chacham would comment on the Torah that the society around them wouldn't filter or affect their pshat on like a Sefer Torah, but back in school when I was in Build, we learned that the Rambam would state that Bilaam was a tzaddik except he slipped and became a rasha, except Rashi who lived in an environment where the non-Jews were hostile towards the Jews, so he said right off the bat that Bilaam was a bad person to begin with, and my teacher immediately went off to say that because he lives in a generation in which they are hostile towards the Jews. so is that true in any sense or? I think your teacher made a mistake, just even historically, even historically, the Rambam, his family ran away from Spain. the Rambam signs משה בן מימון הספרדי. so Sefardi originally meant Spanish, not the broader sense the way we use it today. so his family was in Spain and they ran away because in the Rambam's day when he was a youth, so Spain was conquered by these fanatical, fanatical Muslims called Almohads, whose agenda was lehashmid laharog ule'abeid. so it's not as if the Rambam lived in a highly enlightened society and needed to imagine the possibility of non-Jews hating Jews. he experienced it firsthand and knew it as well as anyone living through Jewish history knew it. so just in terms of the biography, it's true, Rashi at the end of his lifetime lived through the Crusades, but the Rambam's experience in running away from the Almohads and again the wickedness, the fanaticism, even if one were looking to explain things against such a background, just that the historical background is not true, so the explanation isn't correct. I go back and answer the question on the same topic, that's okay. How does one understand the difference between Olam Haba and time when Mashiach comes? It depends, it depends whom you ask. If you ask the Rambam, so the Rambam will tell you that Yemos HaMashiach is fundamentally the world as we know it now, except it's utopian in the sense that there's no persecution of Jews and there's no sickness and people have optimal conditions for studying Torah and serving Hakadosh Baruch Hu. But it's the world fundamentally as we know it. We eat, we drink, we sleep. It's existence as we know it, but again in idyllic circumstances. Imagine the following: Imagine someone whose dream in life is to become a physician. But when he takes the MCATs, so first of all he has a flu and he's got 102 fever and he's all dehydrated and next door there's a construction going on and during the entire three, four hours of the exam, so there's just noise and he doesn't do too well. So then he takes the MCATs another time. The second time he takes the MCATs, Baruch Hashem he's feeling well, he's well rested, had a good night's sleep and the test conditions are perfect. It's quiet, there's no disturbances. So it's fundamentally the same, but again, idyllic circumstances. That's how the Rambam describes Yemos HaMashiach. Olam Haba is something that we can't really relate to because Olam Haba, again for the Rambam, is only the... there's no body in Olam Haba. So that's not really something that we can relate to and that's why the Rambam says that he quotes from Chazal that even the Nevi'im didn't describe Olam Haba for us because it's just such a totally different type of existence that it's like describing colors to a person, rachmana litzlan, who is congenitally blind. Other Rishonim disagree, and they say that Yemos HaMashiach is the segue to Olam Haba and that even though in Olam Haba they agree that it's a spiritual existence in the sense of no falafel, no pizza, no shawarma, there's no achilah, no shtiyah, there are none of the bodily functions and needs, but that people exist as body and soul reunited from Techiyas HaMeisim. And again, it's also a different type of existence, but there Yemos HaMashiach segues into Olam Haba and Olam Haba is guf veneshamah, but again albeit no achilah, no shtiyah, just again, it's a spiritual life without the physical component that we have now. So I guess my question then would be on the Rambam's answer. So I feel like from my understanding at least the purpose of this world is that it's not idyllic and we have so many tests to overcome to get closer to Hashem. So if that's the case but then is the idea of the time of Mashiach, what is our purpose then? The purpose of Olam Hazeh is that a person should choose to be oved Hashem and earn his portion in Olam Haba. It's not... again, sometimes in this go-round in Olam Hazeh, so you're right, sometimes our avodah is to accept yisurim, to be mekabel yisurim, to overcome adversity. But removing those challenges doesn't in any way leave us without, the challenge still remains just from within to marshal all our energies and resources towards avodas Hashem. I mean there are two types of challenges we have. I think the Maharsha comments that the Gemara Berachos says that we say that one of the Amoraim used to add where we say Elokai Netzor at the end of Shemonah Esrei, one of the other Amoraim used to add גלוי וידוע לפניך הקדוש ברוך הוא, you know that רצוננו לעשות רצונך ומי מעכב שאור שבעיסה ושיעבוד מלכויות. So se'or sheba'isa literally the yeast in the dough, so that represents sort of the internal challenge that a person has, the internal yeitzer hara that a person has to overcome, you know whether it's laziness or whatever it is, and then the shibud malchiyos represents the external adversity, again, whether it's the type of persecution that in many many generations throughout history you know we've lived with, or whether it's personal adversity. So even when the shibud malchiyos is removed, so there still is the challenge on the task of marshaling one's resources and energies to talmud torah, to get closer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and to you know thereby you know determine one's destiny in Olam HaBa. Thank you very much. Please base yourselves in the back of the Beis Medrash.