Reasons for Chukim. Focus on Shleimus.

I think what we had just going back to something we looked at already, I think we already commented on it, but just maybe to add a mareh makom. After the Chovos HaLevavos gives the mashal to the melech who commands his eved to collect money from the subjects in the kingdom, after he finishes with that mashal,

וכן אתה אם לא היית יכול להגיע אל עניין זה מדרך שכלך.

If inyanim like yichud Hashem etc. were inaccessible to you bederech hasechel, כמו עילות מצוות השמע, which is the case, as is the case for instance with chukim. הייתה נראית טענתך טענה בעמדך מחכה עליו. So then your ta'anah that I rely on what I was taught would be a correct ta'anah. So the simple pshat in the Chovos HaLevavos, again, this is parenthetical to his focus, but the simple pshat in Chovos HaLevavos appears to be, the Chovos HaLevavos is of the opinion that chukim do not have reasons, right? Because he doesn't seem to be giving this example that, you know, that you didn't succeed. Again, the mashal he's giving is you didn't even try. So if you didn't try because it's something that is beyond one's grasp, כמו עילות מצוות השמע, so at the very least, the Chovos HaLevavos holds one of two things: either there are no reasons, or that the reasons are inaccessible to human thought. The Rambam pushes back very strongly against this view in Shmoneh Perakim in perek shishi. So the Rambam says hein hamitzvos where a person should have a natural intuition that this is something good to do or that this is something bad to do. So the Rambam says hein hamitzvos

שאמרו עליהם חכמינו ז"ל שאילו לא נכתבו ראויים הם להיכתב.

That's the lashon in Yoma, right? And then the Rambam continues ויקראו אותם קצת חכמים. I don't know they have different girsa'os acharonim rishonim, I don't know, either way, meaning before the Rambam. v'yikre'u osam ktzas again

חכמינו האחרונים חכמים ראשונים אשר חלו חולי המדברים מצוות שכליות.

So midabrim is the way the Rambam refers to a branch of Islamic philosophy and says those who were infected, meaning unduly influenced and but literally those who took ill, those who were infected with the mistakes of this branch of Islamic philosophy, they refer to these as mitzvos sichliyos. But what's so terrible about that designation of mitzvos sichliyos for mishpatim? So apparently because it implies that chukim are not sichliyos. You know if someone does something which is highly logical, but we're unable to understand the logic, so you wouldn't say that you can't designate the mitzvah as not being mitzvah sichlis. So the Rambam is very, objects very strongly to this terminology that mishpatim are mitzvos sichliyos and again, the other phrase for chukim is mitzvos shimiyos because it implies that only the mishpatim are inherently sichliyos, inherently logical, rational, and. So again if the Chovos HaLevavos means that so the Rambam pushes back very strongly in many places. This is not the only place but in many places. If the Chovos HaLevavos means no HaKadosh Baruch Hu has His reasons but those reasons are totally inaccessible to us so the Rambam pushes against that also. In the end of Hilchos Meilah ראוי לאדם להתבונן במשפטי התורה. Again the Rambam doesn't mean mishpatim as opposed to chukim as is clear from the hemshech.

ראוי לאדם להתבונן במשפטי התורה הקדושה ולידע סוף עניינם כפי כוחו ודבר שלא ימצא לו טעם ולא ידע לו עילה אל יהי קל בעיניו.

So he's clearly talking about those mitzvos which are not intuitive which require hisbonenus even as an attempt to understand and he says no a person the fact that the reason is not immediately apparent as it is as is the case with mishpatim as it is with gezel with onaah etc. doesn't mean that through hisbonenus a person can't come to some degree of understanding. So whichever the two the Chovos HaLevavos means again whether he means that there are no reasons or there are reasons but the reasons are absolutely inscrutable either way the Rambam pushes back against that. He wouldn't give that mashal. Okay so I think we left off after the paragraph where he quotes again all the translations will be the same the pasuk in Yeshayahu הלא ידעת אם לא שמעת and then subsequently from Haazinu HalaHashem tigmlu zos. After that Amar HaMechaber. I think that's where we left off on this.

וכיוון שעמדתי על חיוב מצוות הלבבות ושנחנו חייבים בהם ממה שזכרנו וראיתי שהונחו לבלי נשקדו ולא חוברו בהם ספר מיוחד והתבוננתי מה שהם בו אנשי דורנו מקוצר דעתם מהבינם

and it's not that there's no need for such a sefer. כל שכן לעשותם ולהתעסק בהם. People don't understand them kol shekein that they don't practice them. והיה מחסד האלוהים עליי שהעירני אל חכמת המצפון v'raisi bemaasei I think we tackled that line also no

וראיתי במעשי קדמונינו זכרונם לברכה ובמה שקיבלנו מדבריהם כי יותר היו זריזים ומשתדלים בחובת עצמם ממה שהיו משתדלים בתולדות הדינים והשאלות הנוכריות הקשות ושהשתדלותם הייתה בכללי הדינים ולברר עניין איסור והיתר ואחר כך היו מתעסקים ומשתדלים לברר מעשיהם וחובת לבבותם וכשהייתה באה לידם שאלה נוכרית.

Again nochris means an unusual right? It's strange in the sense that an unusual occurrence poses a question.

וכשהייתה באה לידם שאלה נוכרית מתולדות הדינים היו מעיינים בה ומוציאים את דינה מן העיקר שהיה בידם ולא היו מטרידים דעתם עליה קודם לכן.

So if he would have stopped here but he doesn't. I think we tell the story of Rav Salanter that someone said to him about one of his gedolei hatalmidim Itzkele Peterburger that if he wouldn't be spending so much time in on mussar he would be he'd become a gadol of tremendous proportions tremendous dimensions and that Salanter answered he said the halacha is as follows let's say you're making hamotzi and you have in front of you a small challah-roll but it's whole and then you have one of these wedding challahs but someone cut a little piece off of it so this challah is only ninety percent of the challah so this wedding challah is twenty times the size of this small challah-roll so the din is that you make the bracha on the challah-roll why because if you have a choice between shalem and gadol so shalem is more important that's what Salanter answered. So again if you stop where we arbitrarily stopped before the stop sign you could have teitched that the Chovos Halevavos was saying something along the same lines. But generally in life rabosai everything we do is on the cheshbon of something else there's only twenty-four hours in the day and yemei shenosenu however many Hakadosh Baruch Hu allocates time is not unlimited whatever we do is on the cheshbon of something else so that's a reality and that time needs to be devoted to learning and then internalizing and being mindful of practicing Chovos Halevavos so that's what the Chovos Halevavos says obviously you have to make time for it. But what does he add here? The way he says it is מפני שהיו ענייני העולם נקלים בעיניהם. He seems to dismiss the reason he's relegating these sheilos nochrios as long as they're theoretical it correlates the reason they're relegated to being something of no importance not secondary importance he's not really assigning any importance to them is מפני שהיו ענייני העולם נקלים בעיניהם. They weren't interested in the mundane k'shele'atzmo. מפני שהיו ענייני העולם נקלים בעיניהם. They weren't interested in the mundane k'shele'atzmo. So again it means one of two things we partially spoke about this earlier he made this point a similar point or maybe the same point earlier it means one of two things either what it means is that again the question doesn't concretize a doubt that you have in terms of understanding the halacha which is fundamental to understanding right sometimes you give a nafka mina to help clarify to help concretize two different ways of understanding a halacha so then even if the nafka mina is farfetched but the point is not the nafka mina the point is sort of what the nafka mina helps you concretize. Or it can be stam. Now, a person is, I don't know, idly curious what's the halacha in such a case. And that's what this, that's what that's what he has in mind with this, you know, when he gives this far-fetched scenario. So if you say the second, so then the Chovos HaLevavos says, you know, that kind of idle curiosity only has a place if you know everything about olam hazeh, you know, in its olam hazeh-dik sense, in its mundaneness, is of interest to you. But but if its mundaneness is not of interest to you, so then who cares what the din is in that far-fetched scenario? If he means it the first way, so then it, I don't know, it's hard to understand what it would mean, so presumably he means it the second way.

וכשהיו צריכים לפסוק את הדין בעניין ההוא, אם היה הדין ברור להם מן היסודות שקיבלו משם הנביאים עליהם השלום, היו פוסקים אותו על הדרך ההוא. ואם תהיה השאלה מן התולדות שמוציאים דינם מן היסודות ההם,

that that you have to extrapolate, you have to draw inferences.

היו מעיינים בה דרך סברתם. ואם הסכימו כולם לדעת אחת, היו פוסקים. ואם היו חולקים בדין, היו פוסקים כדעת הרוב. כמו שאמרו על הסנהדרין:

nishala hasheila lifneihem, im shamu shamu, meaning they received a tradition. amru lahem. ואם לאו עומדים למנין. They would take a vote. rabu hametaharim tiharu, excuse me, rabu hametameim timau.

ועיקר שבידם יחיד ורבים הלכה כרבים. וחיברו במסכת אבות מוסרם וישוב מידותם המקובלות מהם כל איש בזמנו ובמקומו.

How does that connect with with this discussion? I don't know, let's park that for the moment. And what the Talmud says about their predecessors מה שיורה על עומק חכמתם ורוב השתדלותם לברר מעשיהם. And that's what's said, בשני דרב יהודה כולי תנויי בנזיקין הווה. And we, anan, later generation, kamasnina tuva. And while Rav Yehuda כד הווה שליף מסאני, even before he began to davven, הקדוש ברוך הוא טרם יקראו ואני אענה, HaKadosh Baruch Hu would send the rain. And we כמענינן ואזלינן ומענינן ואסינן. We fast and we fast and we fast ולא קא משכח בן. So amru lei, again, it's not that they were superior to us in learning. So what accounts for the fact that clearly they were closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu than than we are?

קמאי הבו מסרי נפשייהו על קדושת השם, אנן לא מסרינן נפשייהו על קדושת השם.

It's clear from context in the Gemara, not not from the part that the Chovos HaLevavos quotes, but the Gemara then gives an illustration of of what it means that they were מוסר נפש על קידוש השם. The Gemara tells a story, an unusual story, that רב אדא בר אהבה saw a woman. He mistakenly identified her as being Jewish. In reality she was not Jewish and she wasn't dressed properly and and he very... demonstrably objected to everything lefi hamakom lefi hazman, and he very demonstrably objected to how she was dressed. And that illustrates the מסירת נפש על קידוש השם. So what does that mean? It's one thing if a person is mekayem mitzvos, medakdek bemitzvos, but it's another darga entirely when it bothers us if another Jew isn't mekayem mitzvos. It's a totally different, it reflects and bespeaks a totally different level of commitment, a totally different attitude, a totally different mindset. And that's how the gemara illustrates מסירת נפש על קידוש השם. I don't know if it's only that we do mitzvos and it doesn't bother us when another Jew doesn't do mitzvos, when aveiros happen, when there are pirtzos, if it doesn't bother us, so I don't know, you know, it's good for us, but I think the Chazon Ish says in a different context, but it's a parallel idea in a different context. He says for a true baal chesed, he says, let's say Friday night in shul, so usually it's the same group of mispallelim. And then you see someone, an unfamiliar face. Okay, so clearly there's someone who's new in town, and so you're going to go over, you're going to invite him for the seudah, find out if he has a place to eat for Shabbos, and that's great. And you go and someone beat you to it, someone already invited him. You go over and he says, thank you so much, but Mr. So-and-so just now invited me, thank you so much. Chazon Ish says if a person is disappointed, so then that's a chisaron in middas hachesed because the real commitment, says the Chazon Ish, in middas hachesed is that the person should be concerned that the chesed be done, not that I get to do it. If I'm disappointed that I'm not going, my concern should be that he be hosted, it shouldn't be that I should do the hosting. Okay, if I don't know whether anyone else is going to do it, meheicha tisei that I should leave it for someone else to do, so avada the person should put himself out. But the Chazon Ish says if there's disappointment, so that highlights a deficiency in the person's commitment to chesed. And that's what the gemara is illustrating here also. It's one thing, it's one thing that a person is medakdek bemitzvos for himself in his own life, but it's an altogether different level of commitment and mesiras nefesh when the person's concern is with a mitzvah, is with a Torah, not just with my doing the mitzvah or my learning the Torah. Okay, we'll stop.