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Ask Rabbi Dorfman #2: On location at the Western Wall in Jerusalem · In the Valley of Giants

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I want to say thank you to H for letting us use their amazing
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roof with this amazing view. So it's because of them they
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were able to do this Q&A in this awesome location.
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So big shout out to them. Oh, sorry, got to go.
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I think someone's falling from the sky.
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Hello, everyone. Today we're joined by Yasi
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Markov, and we're here at the H building here in Yushelym,
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Jerusalem. Irha Kodesh doesn't get holier
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than this, and we're here to answer your questions.
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Hopefully in the middle of answering these questions, the
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basement will fall from the sky or someone will begin building
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it, depending on how you passkin.
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So, without further ado, let's answer some of your questions.
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So at the Shadle, surgeon asks, were dinosaurs created in the
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six days of creation? OK, that's definitely an
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interesting question. So I would go about that in two
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ways #1 Akash Barako created the world in seven days, six days he
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did work and on the end of the sixth day, the beginning of the
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7th, God said I have perfectly finished all the work that I
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have set out and created to do. How long was that?
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So I believe the opinion of Nahmanities is that it's
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actually 624 hour days. But we already know from Hizal,
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for example, from the tractate and Brajos, the Kumaran Brajos,
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that a day is for God is 1000 years.
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And I don't know what 1000 years means.
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Does 1000 years means literally 1000 years?
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Does 1000 years just mean a very long period of time?
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I don't think it's crazy to say that the days that we're talking
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about and boracious is much longer than a 24 hour day.
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I think it's certainly a possibility.
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Once when I was a Bachar yeshiva, I was staying by my
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grandfather's house, Rabbi Haim Luke to look him up.
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And aside from being a tremendous paitan, he's a wild
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Taman, A kabbalist. So me being a nice Jewish
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litfish boy, Yeshivish was learning parsha and he asked me
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a question and he said, how long did Lemic live?
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And I said, well, the pusic says the verse says he lived 777
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years. And then there's like a
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mysterious classic way he would say, and you think those are
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literal. And then he walked away.
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I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that, but I think it
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it lends to the understanding that it could be that these were
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really long days. Maybe they lasted thousands, 10s
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of thousands, millions or even billions of years.
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If that's the case, then it could be that the dinosaurs were
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created and destroyed during the you know, she shows slash 70
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made gracious. It's possible, but that's if if
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if we stretch out time. Another possibility, which I
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really, really like is that who says that a Kurdish brothel
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created a new world. Maybe he created an old world.
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When Adnam was created, everyone pictures him as some middle-aged
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man because he probably was. He wasn't created as a, you
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know, 32nd year old baby chicken or the egg chicken came first.
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So the same thing here could be that God created the world with
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dinosaur bones in the ground and then we could have a whole fun
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discussion of why that is. But that wasn't the question.
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Good question. I mean to answer the literal
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text of the question where dinosaurs created in the six
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days of creation. There are bones in the ground.
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With dinosaurs, the world exists.
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Hashem created the world. Hashem created those fossils
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where they are in place, sort of to the roughest point.
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What does it mean for a sham that a year passed?
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We count a year as the amount of time it takes for the earth to
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go around the sun one time. If there is no sun, how long is
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a year, right? If you have a Kurdish bar, who
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who exists outside of time, how long is a day for him if it
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takes six days to create something?
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So yeah, these questions. Do dinosaurs exist?
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Well, did they exist? It looks like they did.
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What are we supposed to do with that as Jews?
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That's another question entirely right at Hawaii, Tart 33 asks
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can everybody tell the story about what Jewish antiquities
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are underneath the Vatican and if we're able to learn from them
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or use them? And here's the way to get them.
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Well, of course, I don't know what story you're talking about,
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but I will make up a story that maybe is the story that you're
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thinking about asking me. There's an anonymous rabbi has a
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very similar name to my own, but it's not my name.
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And he decided years ago that he was going to see how much the
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Vatican really had. So he looked up that there was a
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ancient writing of the Rochelle, which was a kabbalistic reshone.
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And one of his major works was missing and the Vatican was
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purported to have them. So I believe he changed his name
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and he emailed the Vatican and went back and forth.
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That's back when the library in the Vatican was called the
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secret library, which was not very secret, but and they were
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very forthcoming. And after a couple months of
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going back and forth with this rabbi saying that he knew the
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Old Testament, and I think he was pretending to be a pastor, a
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priest at the time, again, I'm just making this up as I go.
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And the Vatican sent him a copy, a photocopy of this rouquet that
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no one has seen for almost 1000 years, handwritten writing.
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Now this rabbi, of course, regrets not getting the rest of
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the safer and publishing it. But what it does show is that
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the Vatican does indeed have stuff from Jews and probably
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many other people's as the church and things surrounding
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the church were very vicious and definitely did not mind taking
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things from other people. I kid you not, last time I was
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in Rome I visited the parts of the Vatican that a person is
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allowed to visit a Jew and it was.
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It took a very long time to leave.
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In the very end, I think my wife and I jogged out so that we
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could make it in time for Shabbos.
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Do I think the Vatican has stuff?
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Absolutely, I think they do. How are we supposed to get those
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things? Probably to be, you know, work
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with them, work with the authorities.
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I know that there's a Rev that is working with the Vatican.
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Yes. He actually just told me about
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him recently. Sounds fantastic.
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I love to speak to him about getting things back.
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And hopefully with God's help, we were.
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Now, I will say that I'm not sure the Vatican has as much as
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everyone thinks they do, meaning the there's a big, you know,
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theory that the Vatican has the menorah.
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Personally, I don't believe that.
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I think the menorah is probably in your wife's writing rank, to
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quote Doctor Stephen Fine. You know, this is something that
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was incredibly valuable. So when the Barbarians came and
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burned Rome to the ground, I don't know why they wouldn't
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take all those valuable vessels and boil them down and.
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Keep in mind the menorah itself was we have writings about it
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was publicly on display. Right and the Temple of Peace.
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It was, it was out there. You can go look at it.
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Look at the spoils of Rome. This wasn't hidden somewhere.
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If I was a vandal and I was vandalizing Rome, I don't take
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it. Right.
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But maybe the parochas, you know, the covering of the Holy
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Ark or the holy of holies or scriptures weren't so interested
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and you know, interesting to Barbarians.
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So I do think that there is a lot of stuff, I just don't know
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what that holy stuff is. Well, to touch on a CUDA of the
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question that he also asked if we're able to learn from them or
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use them. Let's say an unnamed rabbi did
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get the full text of the Rocheir.
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Could we use that in halacha? Could we trust that we are
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getting something that's been unadulterated?
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The Vatican might not have halacha is actually learning the
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roka, but can we trust that what we're getting is the actual
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salvi out of the roka I think was changed.
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Well, I would imagine that this anonymous rabbi who looked at
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this Rokaech looked at it and was pretty astounded with what
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he saw. So it's very hard to fake really
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high level Jewish writing. I'm sure it's possible,
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especially now with artificial intelligence, but it is very
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difficult. So I'd imagine it to be pretty
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authentic and probably work well within the the Jewish framework.
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But of course, everything must be vetted.
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This hasn't been the first time that you know, we've been
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hoodwinked. There's a very famous safe,
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safer, excuse me, called the Casa.
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Is it the Casa de Harsena? No, no, no.
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I think Casa de Harsena has a parish on it.
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I'm forgetting right now. Nah, the Bassam and Roche,
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that's what it is. Casa de Harsena is a parish is
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an explanation of the Sam and Roche anyways, the medieval
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commentator of the rush, which is a one of the most important
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halachic commentaries that we have.
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So there was a safer that someone found around 152 hundred
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years ago and he says it's the I'm gonna call it the Bassam
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Rosh and it is the Chuvas of the rush.
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The response of the rush that we lost this guy was crazy.
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He thought it was the rush. Problem was that he was a really
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big tomahawkum. So people believed him if I'm
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not mistaken or but Kiva Eager believed that he was the rush.
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So we have been tricked before, but again, you usually have to
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be a tomahawkum in order to trick people that the writing is
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that amazing all. Right.
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And not to give too much credit to the Vatican, although what
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I've like I was telling about, I've been seeing murmurings and
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whisperings that they're getting more open.
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And not to deflate anybody's fantasies, the Latin, when you
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have a Latin term, secret library, secret secretness.
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And Latin just means personal. So the, the Vatican's position
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is that this was never a secret library.
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They're not hiding anything. It's just the Latin term.
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This is the personal library of the Vatican.
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Let's see if they put their money where their mouth is.
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Let's see what they have. That ruined the whole
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experience. Synonymous.
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Very sorry to hear that at Norman?
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Corb asks Do we have Do we have to do my macaroni after Mizonos
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and if we do, after how much Mizonos?
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Yeah, so that's a good question. So the reason why we have my
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macaroni, so we wash your hands after we eat bread is a
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discussion. And there are two reasons, but
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there's really only one. OK, one could say that it's
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because of rahura or tama, a sort of impurity that's on your
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hands after you eat, but that's not really the reason.
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The reason that's mainly recorded in the Gemara and how
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we pass skin is because of salt. Why is that so important?
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So salt, especially salt that comes from stone meloxedomis.
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The Gemara tells us in Hohen that if you put that in your
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eyes, it is going to blind you, or at least partially blind you.
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So Hazel made a takana, or sages made a rule.
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It's not like a nice idea. It's a rule that you have to do
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mimahronum after you eat bread, after you eat bread.
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So let's say you ate pretzels and they have salt on them.
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Do you have to do mimahronum? It would be the same reason in
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the sense that the the logic is the same.
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But since there's no takana, since there's no ruling that was
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made by their abundant that you have to do it.
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So then you don't have to wash your hands, my mahanum, if
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you're eating Mizonos, so that's not going to be a problem.
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If you're eating bread, then yes.
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If you're eating Mizonos, then no.
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Not to belabor the point, but here in Israel, I think a lot of
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the solid consumers literally taken from the Dead Sea area,
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it's literally male codonus. You have to be very careful with
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that. I.
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Completely hear if you're living in.
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America, you're probably a little bit more safe to to.
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Just to double down on this, you could look at the words of the
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Rambam. The Rambam clearly says when you
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eat, pass, then you're going to have to do my Mahonum.
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So. And the Rambam was quite aware
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of Mizonos, yeah. All right, fantastic.
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That kind of fine asks. We have a couple questions here.
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If God is all powerful and all knowing and all good, why does
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evil exist? A common answer is because that
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we need to have free will, so it has to be evil.
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But couldn't God, in all of his glory, create a world where
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there is no evil and we still have free will?
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OK, these are great questions. So I'm preparing the whole
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series on my terror channel discussing what really was the
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sin of Kava of Eve in the Garden of Eden and what evil really is
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and all that. So for a much more in depth
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answer, you'll be able to see it there when it releases.
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But for now, in terms of good and evil, I'd say like this.
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There are three ways of looking at why evil exists. 1 is that
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it's the struggle of good versus evil that makes life worthwhile,
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right? It it's not that peace is the
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absence of war, peace is peace when there could have been war
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and there and yet there is not, right?
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If there's no such thing as war, it wouldn't be called peace,
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it'd be called something else. Goodness, true goodness, right?
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When you go from from Yaakov to Yusraul, right?
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That's because you struggle, you become something greater.
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If there was no evil for us to fight with, we wouldn't be able
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to uplift the world. So it's that, it's that
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manifesting God all around us and that struggle to do so that
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makes life worth living. That's answer #1 So that's why
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we need evil. Now I should bring this up
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because it's quite deep. You'll find in Noah that Rashi
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tells us from Madrasahim that when the world was preparing for
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the flood that Noah went out of his way to save 2 demons.
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So if evil was really that bad, why did Noah save those two
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demons? So again, evil is necessary, we
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all know that from coming into this question.
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But that I would say that that struggle is even true, not just
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for humans. Because the world isn't
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literally just us. There are other beings.
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There's animals here, there's angels in heaven, It's for them
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too. So maybe angels also have to
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have that sort of struggle between good and evil and
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whether angels have the fear or not as free will or not, as a
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totally separate discussion. But that's one answer We're
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coming up. Right now to Yam Noraim, and we
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say a couple times that even the angels are counted in Din,
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right? Angels aren't perfect.
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They clearly have some sort of system of good and evil that
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they have to adhere to, because otherwise what are they being
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judged on, right? Exactly, exactly.
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Another possibility is that it's a philosophical point and a very
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necessary one. God doesn't need anything.
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And I'm not going to go why exactly God created every single
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thing, but also I don't know the answer to that.
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But God is the is the King, and so just as God is the king of
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good, he's also the king of evil.
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Doesn't mean he is evil, but he's Lord over it.
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So you can't be the Lord of evil if evil does not exist in the
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world. So perhaps it's a philosophical
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point that in order for goodness to exist in the Kingdom of God,
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for it to be a true and complete Kingdom, that must also be evil.
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I had a fantastic conversation with Chris Avalon earlier on the
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show. I asked him a bunch of points
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about the philosophical storytelling and and video games
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because I was really interested in how he tells stories and
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makes them so effective so that everyone, including us, can
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learn how to tell more effective stories to our children and our
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students. And he told me that he doesn't
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believe that there's ever going to be the presence of good with
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no evil, that they have to come together.
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And maybe this is part of it. Maybe the reason for this is
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because God is Lord over everything, so there has to be
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the presence of evil, so God is Lord over that.
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The third explanation is I don't know that's God.
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I mean, how am I supposed to assume the operation of
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someone's, you know, I don't know what my wife wants half the
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time, which means I'm an amazing husband because I got at least a
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50% success rate, you know? But it's hard to tell what you
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know, why people do big things and this is God.
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So I don't know. But I think the first 2 answers
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that I gave are quite possible. Yeah, very good.
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And clearly in this world, we're expected to to struggle and
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strive and become more like the Rob was saying.
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So you could question why that is.
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I think the answer that's brought down is if Hashem wanted
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us to always listen, then we'd always listen.
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It wouldn't be a struggle within us.
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The system that God created is that a human being has sort of
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as was reference to the question has a free will had asked to
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struggle between good and evil has to choose the good.
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And So what that must imply working sort of backwards is
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that the highest level of good could be only attained through
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the existence of evil and our choosing to shun it and ignore
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it. Exactly.
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Yeah. Another question from the same
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does God change his mind? A few instances in the Bible
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show God changing his mind or regretting something.
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That is usually the way that it's translated.
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How do you make sense of that? OK.
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So let's look at how people change their mind.
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So people make decisions and they make decisions.
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Let's say they decide on A because of factor B&C.
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So because of B&C, which they took into account, they decide
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to do A. But then they find out that
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there's actually another variable, D.
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And once they find D, they're like, well, I don't want to do
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anymore, I'm going to choose something else.
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So that doesn't happen to God because God is all knowing.
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OK, so what's another type of change in your mind?
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You decide to do A because you have B&C and then you learn more
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on B's importance. But ultimately you decide that C
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is more important than B. So then maybe I'll do something
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else. Also doesn't happen to God
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because I don't think that makes a lot of sense for God to have
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made a mistake in how much you should weigh something that's an
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imperfection. But there is a changing of mind
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of sorts that I think is within God and it's not a mistake.
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God created the universe, but he also created, I learned this
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from the cool kids, the multiverse.
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I hope I'm using this right, but there are multiple universes and
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possibilities of universes. So God has a plan and it's it
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goes out infinitely. Now if we do certain things, it
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changes that plan. Now God knows about that change.
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Think of it kind of like train tracks.
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It's not that you're going on a train track and God's like, oh,
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shoot, you chose something I didn't think of.
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I need to build another train track.
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You can pull a lever that switches to another track that
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God already has built, which is the continuation of the universe
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that's supposed to go when you do that action.
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Where this commonly comes up where people ask me, isn't
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prayer right when we dabbing for something like why are we
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dabbing for something that we don't have right now?
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Isn't God perfect and gives us everything that we need in this
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moment? The answer is, well, he does,
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and this is how your life is supposed to be in this moment.
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But perhaps if you dive in, then things change and your life is
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actually supposed to be a different way in light of the
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fact that you dive in. So I think this is the changing
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of mind of sorts that we see within God.
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So God doesn't really have to change his mind because there's
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another variable that he didn't think was going to come into
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account, is coming into account, or is more important than it
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really was, but rather you're choosing the other universe that
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God has already prepared. That's my belief.
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So maybe more for the layman. God's playing like he's saying
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it's not a train track and he's been rebuilt.
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It branches out in paths, and there's infinite paths because
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all of us make thousands of decisions every single day, if
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not more. But Akash Bark, who just has all
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he's prepared for all of it. Yep.
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I just want to add to this because it's on, it's on this
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idea, but there's a lot of causals.
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It's not this question, but it's related a lot of causals where
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they say, well, if you do this, then you'll be rich.
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And if you if you're you know, if you please your wife, then
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you're going to be wildly rich. And if you do this, then you
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know, you're going to live for all these, you know, you're
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going to live for a long time Mitzvah, you know, you're never
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going to get hurt, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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And the way I've always understood these because Khazal,
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we're much smarter than we're ever going to be is like this
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for some reason, only when I make this reference to people
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understand it. But if anyone's ever played
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Dungeons of Dragons, I might have been a nerd in my youth.
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I'm not going to reveal yes or no.
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But you know, you have this whole sheet of different
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variables and attributes, right? And depending on the amount of
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points or attributes that you have when you roll a die, then
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you can add to your roll. So if you're rolling a 20 sided
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die and you got a 16, if you have a + 2 and that particular
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attribute, so then all of a sudden I have an 18, etcetera,
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etcetera. You have to remember, Kurtish
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Barkle's world is infinitely vast and complex and beautiful
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and we don't understand all the intricacies.
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So, you know, God, God does stuff, We do things and we do
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things within that universe. So, and, and that's going to
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relate to what comes next. So when you do a positive action
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that has also, you get a bracha for that, you're going to be
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richer. Doesn't mean that you're
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definitely going to be rich. It means that you've added a + 1
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or a + 2. You'll be richer than you were
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before. Perhaps you're closer to that
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richness. So there's a complexity in God's
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plan. It's not just one train track,
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as many train tracks. And every single thing that you
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do, every little thing actually switches you on to a different
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track. Fantastic.
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Yeah. All right.
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Next question. Next question, if everything is
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predetermined by God and everything that happens is God's
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will, then why do we bother and pray for things?
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Doesn't God know best and we should just accept whatever
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happens because that's his will? I will say this is partially
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answered by the way you answer the previous question.
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Yeah, that's. How you feel shame I can answer
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answer the question before you can get it.
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Oh, there is a bit more here. Maybe we'll focus on this last
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part of the question. Why should I not accept whatever
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Hashem sends me? Or let's say if a person has to
19:42
show them that their their their child gets sick and they're
19:45
hospitalized, this person is obviously going to be motivated
19:48
to to dive in tremendously hard for his child to get better.
19:51
Why does he not accept this as God's will?
19:54
Maybe God's will is that his child should die.
19:56
Why does he not just go with it? That's a good question.
20:01
Let me make it a little deeper. So there's there been a
20:06
conjunction for a person to dive in for something that should
20:11
not, that is clear, that should not be true.
20:14
So here's an example. A person has advanced cancer and
20:18
they have two days to live. There is no way that this person
20:21
is going to survive. So technically it's
20:24
inappropriate for for one to dove in fresh to save that
20:27
person because it's dovending for a miracle.
20:29
It's called a cheela shove. Here's another example.
20:32
A person is coming into town and he sees that there's smoke
20:36
coming up from, you know, from the town that he lives in.
20:39
So for him to dove in that Oh my gosh, like I'm just praying that
20:42
it's not my house is another example of a Tila shelf of a
20:45
Tila that that has all meet us there.
20:47
Why? Because this Tila is not going
20:50
to do anything, meaning it already occurred.
20:52
You can't with prayer change the past.
20:54
There's certain things that prayer cannot do.
20:56
God is the one that could do anything with a certain prayers
20:59
that God does not want us to put forward.
21:02
I do think that there are times that we're supposed to just
21:04
accept our situation, as difficult as it may be.
21:08
But I think if it's possible for our situation to change, we have
21:11
to always realize that God has the power and we're giving.
21:14
It's almost like we relinquish that power to Him.
21:16
It's not that He needs us to do that, but I think it's a high
21:19
level for us when we just let go and we allow God to ride the
21:23
ship when we're davening for the next stage to just to just kind
21:28
of go with the flow completely and never ask for help.
21:31
I think it's leaving God out of it almost, right?
21:34
Since God made those infinite amount of possibilities for us,
21:37
He wants that sort of relationship with us.
21:39
So it could be in that moment He's calling out, but in a
21:42
Konami. But it is also indeed true that
21:44
when you get to the point where there is no other reality, then
21:48
it's inappropriate to domin. But until that point, don't be
21:52
like 1 of the 8 billion people in the world brush.
21:54
And we have a relationship with Akash Barkham.
21:56
Yeah, he wants to hear from us. Absolutely.
21:59
Why did God give a written and oral Torah?
22:01
We all know that the game of broken telephone, right?
22:03
I tell you one thing, until the next person just keeps going.
22:06
Then how things are changed and mixed.
22:08
So why would he risk his word being changed and not just write
22:10
everything down? OK.
22:12
So again, this is assuming the operation of God's mind, so I
22:14
can't say for sure. However, what feels the most
22:18
correct to me is that the Oral Torah #1 if you wanted to just
22:23
give one Torah, like a Torshi Basava 1 Written Torah, it would
22:26
be really, really, really long. But that, you know, that's not
22:29
such a problem. OK, so I'll write a really,
22:31
really long Torah. But I think that God wanted us
22:36
to be a partner in that Torah, and you can't be a partner in
22:39
written Torah. Mosher Abenu was the like the
22:42
people in that moment could have a partnership with God.
22:44
Mosher Abenu was a partner in some sense with God in the the
22:49
writing of the Torah, in the events of the Torah.
22:51
I can never be a partner in that Torah.
22:53
But what I can do is use what I've gotten from tradition,
22:57
which is Toshiba Alpa, the oral law in the Oral Torah.
23:00
And I now be, I'm able to create new understandings and, and, and
23:07
I don't know how to say exactly Fidushim in, in English, but I
23:10
guess new understanding is the best I'm going to get.
23:12
But novel ideas of beautiful parts of the Torah and other
23:14
aspects and attributes have got to the word as revealed because
23:17
I'm giving that opportunity through the oral Torah.
23:20
And it's a very difficult thing to do if a person doesn't know
23:22
how to learn oral Torah. It's, it's very confusing, it's
23:25
contradictory. It seems that it doesn't know
23:27
what it's doing at times. When it perfectly does, it's
23:30
very, it's quite amazing. So maybe that's why Akash Baraka
23:34
gave us an Oral Torah. And I think what backs up this
23:36
explanation is how he gave it. If you, you have to combine the
23:41
different Maimonides. But if you combine Maimonides in
23:44
Hizyata Hazaka and you combine Maimonides in what he says in
23:48
his introduction to Mishnias and you combine what he says.
23:52
And if I'm not mistaken, the moment of you'd come with the
23:55
following conclusion, which is is that Moshe Rabenu got from
23:59
Arsenite and Akash Baraka, we got there the ability to darsh
24:03
and everything, but didn't know all the Josh's yet because they
24:06
weren't made yet, right? So Hashem just gave him a bunch
24:09
of tools and said go, and he came down and that's when the
24:12
first achiever was born because he told a whole bunch of old
24:15
Jews ways to learn the Torah. And they all immediately start
24:18
saying opposite things. Not that one was correct and one
24:21
was incorrect. Everyone was true because
24:23
they're all proper ways of learning the Torah.
24:25
But one is going to be halacha and put into law 1 is only going
24:28
to be an exegesis. It's going to be something that
24:30
we're supposed to have as an ideal or a moral compass, etc,
24:33
etc. And it's the most beautiful
24:35
thing. This is why we have Jews that
24:36
are Torah addicts. It's because you get to your
24:39
learning partner gets to be God every day when you do that.
24:42
So if you would have just given us a written law, I think that
24:45
would rob us of that wonderful, beautiful opportunity.
24:49
I'll argue on a little point at the beginning, not the main
24:52
point here, but it would not have been possible to give us
24:55
the entire Oral Torah. There is not enough parchment in
24:58
the world. Torah is the DNA of the entire
25:01
universe and it's infinite. It can be infinitely understood.
25:06
Every single person has an individual unique Helicon Torah
25:09
that nobody else ever can ever unlock.
25:13
Only that person has the ability to do it.
25:15
So all Koj Barko could give us was the Torah ship itself, the
25:19
bones, and then you have the system that you used to
25:22
understand it, right? In chakras, we say the Shlo
25:25
chase to me though. So there's 13 different ways
25:27
that you could look at the Torah and you could then expound from
25:30
it. But that's the only thing that
25:31
could be done because Moshe Binder was never going to be
25:34
able to figure out what your Helekin Torah was.
25:36
As smart as he was, as close to Shem as he was, he wasn't didn't
25:38
have the ability to, right? Famous manager said he went to
25:42
the Moshe Binder, went to the bass manager, everybody key, but
25:44
he didn't understand what's going on right.
25:46
Just. Didn't understand the shear
25:47
because things got built up and built up and built up over time.
25:51
That the way I've heard it before is that we are midgets on
25:54
the shoulders of giants. We're much smaller than the
25:56
people that came before us. But because of this relationship
25:59
with that we have with Hashem, we're able to take the tour and
26:00
make it ours. And then to achieve a level
26:04
maybe even higher than motion band, it could hit.
26:07
So next question we have here, broad question, powerful
26:10
question. Why does suffering exist,
26:12
especially in a sense like a baby suffering?
26:15
Yeah, So this is a very powerful question because I think it's
26:18
really abused and molested. There's a particular Ruff who
26:22
I'll see. I'll I'll leave him nameless.
26:26
And there was a young girl, I think she was six or seven years
26:30
old that passed away from cancer.
26:33
So he stepped up at the funeral and said the reason why this
26:36
young girl died is because there's too much speaking I'll
26:41
of one another, the Sr. of Russian horror.
26:44
And when I heard of this, I was very upset and I only felt OK
26:47
being upset because one of my great Rabaim felt upset as well.
26:52
How does how do? How would how would he know that
26:54
unless God tells you why he did something or it's written
26:57
explicitly in scripture, I don't know how I'm supposed to know
26:59
exactly what God's thinking. There's a lot of reasons for
27:03
suffering. I don't know what those are.
27:06
Again, there's a really there's a master plan, as I explained
27:09
before, with many different possibilities.
27:12
And this isn't a cop out answer, it's humility.
27:14
It's understanding that God is great.
27:17
So there's a story which escapes my mind right now exactly all of
27:21
the pieces of it, but I'll try to put it in the show notes.
27:23
I'll try to find it. But there's a story of Elio and
27:26
Navi and one of the 10/9 is it maybe Ruby Shuai forgetting who
27:30
it was and and ultimately Elio and Navi offers him the ability
27:35
to come join him on his travels. But Elijah says, you can't ask
27:40
me any questions, anything that you see.
27:43
And there's a whole bunch of weird things like they go to
27:45
these poor people's house and they kill their cow or burn down
27:47
their house, even though they're so nice to them.
27:49
And basically Elijah was nice to every bad person and like,
27:52
really cruel to every good person.
27:54
And in the end, this great rabbi and Tana just says, OK, I just,
27:58
I don't, I give up, I lose. You'll have to leave me behind.
28:00
But you have to explain this to me because this is wild.
28:02
This is crazy. And he gives an explanation for
28:05
every single one. That's quite wise.
28:07
So why is there suffering in the world?
28:08
I don't know. I can't answer that question.
28:11
Elijah the prophet can, and he did a really good job, but I'm
28:13
not him. So I have less humility than the
28:18
rough. So maybe I'll, I'll try to give
28:20
an answer to say that it's not suffering that we have a
28:24
negative relationship with necessarily.
28:26
All right. We said before that there's good
28:29
and evil and evil pushes us to be good.
28:32
And that's not a pleasant experience all the time.
28:35
Very often a person is put in a very difficult situation,
28:38
whether that's a difficult choice, but in front of him or
28:40
God puts him in a difficult physical situation or financial
28:43
situation, and he's expected to be his best.
28:48
I think what people have a problem with is the perceived
28:50
suffering of innocence. And I think that's where the
28:52
roughest point really comes into play very strongly that that the
28:56
humility we need to have is to understand that suffering is for
28:59
people's good, even if I don't understand where that good is.
29:04
Because when I'm suffering, because let's say I really want
29:08
to eat something very yummy and it's milking and I'm flashing, I
29:10
just ate meat and I really want to have it.
29:12
But you know, I really shouldn't.
29:13
It's a much lower level of suffering than the question I
29:15
asked for sure. But that suffering pushes me to
29:18
do better. It gives me an opportunity to
29:20
make myself a bigger person than it was 5 minutes ago.
29:23
And there's an idea brought down that every neshama has its own
29:27
tikkun to do in the world. And I've read from people who
29:31
are much bigger than I am, who have had unfortunately,
29:33
children, very young children who pass away.
29:35
And these people, they're incredible.
29:38
Their reaction is wow, Hashem gave me such a special Hashema
29:41
that just needed a such a short time in the world before going
29:44
back to him. And if you could have that
29:46
perspective, then wow, one in a million.
29:49
And we could all gain inspiration from that.
29:51
The end of the day, we don't know, but there's a certain
29:54
level of suffering needed for every individual person to fix
29:58
the original original issue, the original sin of Mohava.
30:01
And then the people around them also obviously suffer from that.
30:05
And they have their own journey and their own things they need
30:07
to pull out of that and the only things they need to learn.
30:09
And no one can say what that is for sure, but only that we know
30:14
for a fact that Karzburg who tests people who could stand up
30:16
to the tests God is not cruel, right?
30:19
And there's an Ahama that So here's the last question from
30:23
Hannah Fein is how do you explain the treatment towards
30:26
non Jews in the Gemara? For example, if a Jew damages a
30:29
non Jews property, he doesn't have to pay back or doesn't need
30:31
to intervene to save a non Jews life.
30:33
And there's a caveat that a Jew is allowed to do these things
30:36
only if it will prevent more bad things of happening to Jews.
30:40
So how do we understand that? So I.
30:41
Don't know the answers to this question because I didn't have
30:44
the humility to know that I have not.
30:46
Talmud is quite big. I've not studied in depth every
30:49
part of it, but I can admit to him not yet, but I'll say off
30:55
the cuff, but I would imagine is that this kind of really grossly
30:59
misunderstood. There's a infamous claim that
31:02
goes out that it is allowed one of a Jew is allowed to steal or
31:07
kill a non Jew. And it's been more than one
31:10
libel on us about that. The only issue is that it's
31:14
completely false. It's completely false.
31:17
The prohibition for killing a Jew and the prohibition for
31:19
killing a non Jew is the same. They're both biblically
31:22
prohibited and the same thing, by the way, from stealing.
31:25
They're both biblically prohibited.
31:27
So we definitely view gentiles as people because the Torah says
31:33
that they are. That's why these sort of apply.
31:35
And what's my what's my proof for this?
31:38
It says in Genesis, NASA Adam, it's Salmeno kid Musseno Hashem
31:43
says we're going to make men and not in our image, not Ashkenazim
31:46
or stardom, right? Not misrahis or, or this type of
31:49
Jew or that type of Jew. All people are men and have have
31:53
those Halas, have those rules with them.
31:56
Now, I don't know if it's completely accurate that every
32:00
single time that you damage a non Jew that you don't have to
32:02
pay them back. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
32:04
Again, I'm not an expert at all, but what I can say is that I
32:07
think there's a difference between making something
32:08
obligatory, not obligatory. There's something that you have
32:11
to know as a Jew and it's insulting to people that are not
32:15
Jewish. But this is the reality.
32:18
We're the chosen people. We believe this.
32:21
There's going to be a superiority complex.
32:23
There is just going to be 1. We feel that we are privileged,
32:27
that God shows us as the chosen nation.
32:28
So we are going to have different relationships with in
32:31
terms of, you know, God and us because of that.
32:33
And maybe that bleeds over to the rest of the world as well in
32:36
a certain extent. That doesn't mean that it's good
32:37
to damage others, but maybe that the way that we showed that
32:40
difference is by not making certain things obligatory.
32:43
But again, I want to really preface, or I already did
32:46
preface, but I want to be. I want to bold and italicize
32:49
what I said before. This really isn't my area of
32:51
expertise, so this is just my guess.
32:53
It's just to show a separation between God's chosen people and
32:56
the rest of the universe. I'll say that even if we accept,
33:01
let's say it was perfectly permitted to steal from a non
33:04
Jew or to damage his property or to kill him, I want to say right
33:08
now that it's going to be one of those things that's like Minerva
33:10
Bushwa Satara. A person might be allowed to do
33:12
something and expected to not do it.
33:15
It's a situation of can you go steal your neighbor's car
33:18
because you're not Jewish? Let's let's pause it.
33:20
Yes. But if you do it, you're a
33:22
lesser person because you steal and we know stealing is wrong.
33:25
Definitely. Immoral.
33:25
You can't steal. From a Jew, even if it was
33:27
permitted to steal from a non Jew, you still should not do it.
33:30
But I think this also speaks to a general idea we have.
33:33
Why can't you drink wine with the non Jew?
33:35
Why can't you eat bread with a non Jew?
33:37
Hashem says I created mankind. They're in my image.
33:40
They all have a specific purpose and a specific job.
33:43
The non Jews are here and the Jews are here.
33:45
Now, the superiority complex we have, the rough mentioned, comes
33:48
with a lot of religious restrictions as well, right?
33:52
The chosen people also have a lot of things that they can and
33:54
can't do. But one of those things is that
33:57
we have to be, I'm segula for Hashem, We're special to Hashem.
34:00
There's certain things that we have to do, and to fraternize
34:02
with Gime is not within that mission.
34:06
Now you're going to have people for this.
34:08
Romantically for sure, for sure. You'll have people who deal with
34:12
the government in America, like ask on him.
34:14
They're dealing with non Jews all the time.
34:15
Well, that's the benefit of Jews, right?
34:17
And that sort of stuff is very important.
34:19
But for the general run of run-of-the-mill Jew, he needs to
34:22
be pleasant to every person he meets.
34:23
He needs to be kind, he needs to be polite, he needs to be a
34:25
Selma like him, and he needs to bring glory to Hashem's name.
34:28
But his real job is to work on himself and the Jews around him,
34:32
and that's needs to be his focus.
34:33
Yeah, but I'm maybe I'll push back a little bit, which is, is
34:36
that your, your priority is your Jewish brother, but it's still
34:40
the world. Like our job is to uplift the
34:42
entire universe. So that's going to be helping
34:44
our Gentile brethren as well. Like we're all we're all
34:47
brothers. I would say it's more like
34:48
Gentiles are your half brother and Jew is like, you know, your
34:51
full brother. I think that's, that's like some
34:53
sort of thing that I, that I would be comfortable saying.
34:56
But that's not to say that that Jews only should be, you know,
34:59
we're going to be so magnanimous and gracious and help Gentiles.
35:02
It completely goes the other way as well.
35:04
There's so much wisdom that I've run from Gentiles and we've seen
35:07
that from from, you know, rabbis of, you know, old as well.
35:11
So it's a two way street. I just don't think that it's at
35:15
least the way that the question is implied that Jews are awesome
35:19
and gentiles just kind of a horrible and we tolerate them.
35:21
And that's not the case at all as that Jews are somewhat and
35:25
the angelic nation. So we don't know exact that way.
35:29
And if we did, we'd see a temple over there.
35:32
OK, so we unfortunately don't want to act that way.
35:34
But so there there's going to be a whole different way that we're
35:37
going to react in our with ourselves and with God than with
35:40
our junk tiles. But Gentiles are still people
35:42
and beautiful parts of the global nation.
35:45
They're our brothers. I would absolutely accept that.
35:47
But here's here's a quick question.
35:49
He referenced the temple just now.
35:50
Let's say you were building the temple and your half brother
35:53
came and said I'm a dwarfman. I just got an excellent Lego set
35:57
and I would love your help building it.
36:00
I don't think you'd help him. I think you'd realize that your
36:02
priority is. Wait, which leg was that?
36:06
That's a good question. But I think you'd realize that
36:08
your priorities far outweigh his and you can be civil and you
36:12
could be kind and you could be helpful.
36:13
And I don't know if I would without looking at it inside, I
36:17
don't know. I would believe that that's
36:18
prohibited. Again, there's an issue with
36:20
fraternizing too much. But when our job is to build
36:25
eternity, that's what we need to be doing.
36:28
Any non Jew who's helping with us with that, let's take them
36:31
with us. Anyone who's has a shall not
36:32
helping us with that, we need to leave them be or fight against
36:35
them when appropriate. Yeah, but.
36:36
But but frame it. I I agree with everything you
36:38
just said, but frame it one of the best DeVry Tora, one of the
36:43
best pieces of Tora. I heard on Moshe Rabenos and and
36:47
Paros relationship was a couple miles away from here from Doctor
36:52
Jordan Peterson, which I love, which is a divider.
36:54
I say off, and I'll just say it briefly, that you know, life
36:58
isn't about not having rules, right?
37:00
Moshe Reveno doesn't say to Paro let my people go, even though
37:04
that's what modern media wants you to believe from the early
37:06
1900s. It's not let my people go.
37:09
Was it Charleston? Heston.
37:10
I don't remember what it was. OK.
37:11
I didn't even see it, but OK. But but it's Moshe Revena says
37:15
let my people go to serve Hashem in the wilderness.
37:18
That's what he says. And Doctor Peterson is correct,
37:21
of course. Anarchy is not a Jewish thing.
37:24
Tyranny is not a Jewish thing. The Jewish thing is following
37:27
God. And the rules that God gives us
37:29
are to help us be the best people that we can be.
37:31
You know, So I think that it depends, yes.
37:34
If I'm building the temple and someone says, you know, I really
37:36
want to build the Death Star, can you come over?
37:38
And you know, I'd say no, only when I'm really tired and I have
37:41
to take a break, then perhaps. But the, the but if, if the, if
37:45
it's, if it's let me offer you a novel idea or here's another way
37:48
that we can help more poor people or, or improving medicine
37:51
or technology, etcetera. That's all part of uplifting the
37:54
world. So you know.
37:55
How I would frame that, I frame that as he's coming to you not
37:58
to build the Lego set. Now he's coming to you to help
38:00
build a temple as well. And of course, we'll accept,
38:05
right? Yeah, the second base of Migdash
38:08
is like the the prime example of the Temple that we have was
38:11
built by not just a terrible person, a non Jewish terrible
38:15
person. Right.
38:17
I don't think there's a good argument that Herod was Jewish.
38:20
He was a slave. He led a rebellion, killed the
38:23
Hasmoneans, fortunately married. Yeah, he was really good at
38:26
that. Unfortunately, he's great at
38:27
killing all sorts of people, mostly family members.
38:30
Man was marginally insane. But one of the things he did is
38:33
he built the base of Mitos, and what's the ham saw that he was
38:35
going to do it in such a way that would actually bring bring
38:39
glory to Karzbarkel. They accepted it all right.
38:41
The cabanos never stopped. They only started building once
38:44
all the materials were assembled, probably with an
38:47
eyesight of where we're sitting right now.
38:49
But if someone's coming to help you build the temple, we accept.
38:52
Right, Sarah? Green asks what does tikkun Ola
38:56
mean? What is 1 practical way you can
38:59
help repair the world today? OK, so I, I really, really love
39:03
this question because it's so inappropriately handled.
39:07
So the Reform movement is really big on Tikanolam.
39:10
That's what they say. And the childish response to
39:15
that from certain Orthodox elements.
39:18
I'm an Orthodox Jew, so I'm really pro Orthodoxy and I love
39:21
my Reform Jewish brethren, but I think that they got life wrong.
39:25
But the inappropriate Orthodox response to that is there's no
39:28
such thing as Tikanolam. I've heard someone say that it's
39:30
and I think that's actually one of the comments there that was
39:33
posted on YouTube. This is not true.
39:36
There's absolutely is tikanolam and it comes up numerous times.
39:40
OK, so let's talk about two and we'll see what tikanolam is and
39:44
what you could do in order to have tikanolam.
39:47
So one example is the Gemarin Gittin.
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OK, there's a Talmudic rule that a man can divorce his wife by
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using a shlya. How do you say shlya in English?
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Representative, messenger, representative, but somebody who
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has his legal authority. But to store your legal
40:02
authority into somewhere that they could affect Holoca changes
40:05
for you, right? Now let's say he sends his this
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legal authority to Shanghai to divorce his wife, and he
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realizes by the time the messenger is halfway, you know
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what? I don't want to divorce her.
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So technically the letter of the law was is that you can just go
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to the local bases in the local Jewish court in your town and be
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like, remember that representative?
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He's no longer my representative and the court goes, OK, and now
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you're still married. Here's the thing.
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There's no technical obligation for him to let anyone else know.
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So what's going to happen is, is his wife is going to get this
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divorce contract from their husband and she's going to be
40:40
like, well, that guy's a prick and she's going to get married
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and have kids. So she's going to become an
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adulteress, not know it and have a bunch of mobs there.
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So Hazal and their tremendous wisdom said that's a really bad
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idea. Tikkun Olam.
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Let's not do that. Let's not allow that.
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So we're not going to allow you to be able to to do that in your
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local town anymore. You're going to have to go and
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do it in person and make sure that she knows etcetera,
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etcetera. So that Tikkun Olam is is about
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the world is a certain way, and we're going to enact certain
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things to prevent people from having big mess ups.
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That's what Tikka Nolam is. And so how could that manifest
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itself when you have an organization that set up a
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certain way, then try to go out of your way to make sure that no
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one is going to be affected negatively by it.
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But let's even get smaller. Let's say you're picking up your
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kid from school, OK, And you see that their friend is right there
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also waiting for a ride. And you ask them where are your
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parents? And they say not here yet.
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They're like, OK, just get in the car.
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So you think you're being such a pious person, You're giving this
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person a ride and you take them home and you don't tell the
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parents. And for like the next 3 or 4
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hours, you know, all that's happening is the parents come to
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the school a couple minutes late, don't see their kid,
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thinks their kid has been kidnapped or was lost and calls
41:47
the police. And then when you were like a
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couple hours later, oh, I did you a favor, I bought your kid
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home. When the person screams at you,
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you should realize you totally messed up this person's day
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because of this kind thing that you did.
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So, so just by doing in action doesn't mean that even one that
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seems positive doesn't mean that the the reaction is going to be
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positive. Ticanolam is when you do things
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and when the world works a certain way, make sure that's
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working in a way that best serves people.
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So that's what you should do. Coming home with this is that
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when you do actions, try to do them in a way that don't
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ultimately hurt in the long run. And you could use that in your
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own particular situation or circumstance.
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But there's a second place where Ticanolam comes in in Elena,
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right? So in our and one of the prayers
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that we say that you say every day, Elenu, according to the
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Kolbo, this is a prayer that was penned by Yoshua Joshua himself.
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OK, the student Taman Muvak of Moshe Ebenu.
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And then there it says Latakian ha olam, the Mauchul shall die,
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right? That we're supposed to make this
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world and fix it up to be the Kingdom of God, right?
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So how do you do that? You do that by being a Jew.
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But being a Jew does not mean locks and creep Jews.
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Being a Jew means that you do positive actions in the name of
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the Lord. And people see that, that when
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they see a Jew, they say, oh, a pious person, oh, a good person,
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oh, a fair person. And how do you implement that?
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That is that when you do something positive, attach it to
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your religion. You know, if you're your boss is
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injured and you take him to the hospital and they say thank you
43:15
so much, respond by saying you're welcome.
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But how could I do anything else as a child of God?
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You know, bring God into the positive things that you do so
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that Gentiles can see that that's where you're doing those
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actions. Otherwise, they're not going to
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know why you're doing what you're doing.
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Fantastic. I think especially if you look
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in the more Hasidic sources, you'll see that taking the world
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as it exists and repairing it is not just a nice thing, it is
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literally the entire purpose of our existence.
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Right, Right. The angels, they just sing
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praises to God. But we human beings on Earth
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actually unify the world in His name.