Hi, good morning rabbosai. I hope you're all well. על אודות השאלה מדברי הרמב"ם בהקדמה לפירוש המשניות. דע לך כי אין לדבר של הרמב"ם שום שייכות עם הנושא של המאמר בקונטרס וזאת חנוכה.
As will become clear as we read אם ירצה השם בלי נדר in further in the paragraph, so Rav Hutner apparently in that ma'amar spoke about how the phenomenon of machlokes is to be attributed to shikchas hatorah, which on a superficial literal level is actually contradicted by what the Rambam says in the hakdama l'perush hamishnayos and he's going to explain how he was using the phrase in a different sense than the Rambam does there. כי הדברים הנאמרים במאמר דמחלקות ותוצאת שכחת התורה misfarshim heim, דמחלקות היא תוצאה מירידת המדרגה בחכמת התורה. He says what I was talking about on that ma'amar was not forgetting specific halachos, was not forgetting, I don't know, like the Gemara in Pesachim tells us, forgetting whether or not korban Pesach is doche Shabbos or is not doche Shabbos. I wasn't talking about forgetting Torah in that sense of just the specific halacha verbatim. I was talking about rather shikchas hatorah in the sense of level of understanding of Torah. ועצם הביטוי של שכחת התורה החוזר ונשנה באותו מאמר אין עניינו אלא הנמכת המדרגה של חכמת התורה.
That there was a loss, a shikcha, a loss in the level of understanding, the degree of insight, the depth of understanding. והלא עובדא קיימת היא כי מה שהחכם הקטן מסתפק בו בירור ליה לחכם הגדול.
So for instance, the Gemara in Sukkah and the Gemara in Bava Basra when it talks about the greatness of רבן יוחנן בן זכאי, it says that all the הוויות דאביי ורבא, meaning everything that Abaye and Rava, and Abaye and Rava are the pillars of Torah Sheba'al Peh, but everything that Abaye and Rava had to contend with, had to struggle with and often had machloksim about, so all of that was clear and רבן יוחנן בן זכאי had a behirus in that. That's what Rav Hutner's referring to: כי מה שהחכם הקטן relatively speaking מסתפק בו בירור ליה לחכם הגדול. וממילא, says Rav Hutner, הנמכת המדרגה מביאה לידי טשטוש המושגים. When the level of understanding is lowered, again everything is while talking here everything relatively speaking, right, all these when we're talking about the tekufah of heilige Tannaim or Amoraim, so they're, you know, vis-a-vis us in the stratosphere. וממילא הנמכת המדרגה מביאה לידי טשטוש המושגים. It leads to a blurring of concepts. ומחמת חוסר בהירות הציור של דרכי העיון הולכי הספקות ומתרבים.
Right, very often let's say we're trying to figure out pshat in a Gemara, pshat in a Tosfos, in a Rav Akiva Eiger, and we're not sure, is the pshat like this, is the pshat like that? So the emes is many, many of those sfekos represent again a yerida. It represents is this the right way to look at it, is that the right way to look at it, is this... right, yesterday we were talking about the hagahos Rav Akiva Eiger in Shulchan Aruch. Is this the right way, is this what Rav Akiva Eiger, is this how he understood the din that אין בישול אחר בישול בדבר יבש, is that how he understood it? That sofek, that sofek again basically represents a yerida in darkei ha'iyun. That's what Rav Hutner's talking about. והרי כל מחלוקת בשרשה אינה אלא ספק. Right, the source, the root of machlokes is always sofek. There's a certain on the level on which the ba'alei machlokes are... find themselves, there's a certain ambiguity in how to understand something שבמקום ספק שני צדי הספק מקננים בלב אחד. Umachlokes, שני הצדדים של הספק מקננים בשני לבבות. Sometimes the two sides of a safek are within a single person, the person internally is mesupak, and sometimes the two sides of an issue are that two people see it differently. Ule'umas zeh, distinct from this, מה שכותב הרמב"ם שאינה מחלוקת תוצאה של שכחה, when the Rambam rejects the approach to attribute the rise of machlokes to shich'cha, the Rambam says that's not true, that's a distortion. What the Rambam means by that, clearly in context when you look at the hakdama to Perush HaMishnayos, כוונתו היא שאין לנו לומר דמחלוקת בהלכה ידועה היא תוצאה משכחת אותה הלכה המסוימת.
Don't think that the fact that there's a machlokes about again concretely because there once was a kabbalah which was forgotten. That's what the Rambam is rejecting and the Rambam is saying that's just not true, it's historically inaccurate. So the Rambam is talking about shich'cha on that level. בקיצור הרמב"ם מכוון בשכחת התורה השכחה של הלכות מסוימות, forgetting concrete, specific halachos. That the Rambam says it's not true that that happened and that that serves as a source for machlokes that we find in Torah Sheba'al Peh. On the other hand, והמאמר דחנוכה מתכוון באומרו דשכחת התורה השכחה, when in that maamar what I was talking about, which does identify a shich'chas haTorah as a source of machlokes, what I was referring to was the שכחת דרכי העיון והליכות המחשבה בחכמת התורה. I'm not sure why Rav Hutner doesn't reference the fact, but the emes is this distinction the Rambam himself draws. The Rambam himself in the hakdama to Perush HaMishnayos says the pshat when Chazal say that machlokes began to preponderate משרבו תלמידי בית שמאי ובית הלל שלא שימשו כל צרכם.
So the Rambam himself draws this distinction. He says it doesn't mean לא שימשו כל צרכם that they didn't receive the traditions or they didn't spend enough time doing chazarah. No, that's not what it means. What it means is שלא שימשו כל צרכם that in terms of the darkei ha'iyun, in terms of being able to think the way a person is supposed to think, in terms of internalizing Torah logics, Torah patterns of thought, so there there was a yeridas hadoros. And when there's a yeridas hadoros, so then people began to have different, again, different darkei iyun, different patterns of thought, and that's what generated machlokes. Again, kedarkeinu in learning these letters, so again sometimes we're focusing on what it says in the letter and sometimes using it as a springboard and moving away from the specific context of the letter. So again, Rav Hutner in this letter is talking about the, again, machlokes in among the heilige Tannaim and the heilige Amoraim, kedoshim vachasidei elyon. There is a, again, in terms of how we're using this letter, so maybe give a משל למה הדבר דומה. I think we've discussed on occasion over the years that there are many stories in Chumash that we learn and that we derive lessons from, but we do so recognizing the fact that we don't really understand the story on its historical level. When it says that even when Chazal fault Yaakov Avinu for playing favorites, Chazal say that a parent should never, ever show favoritism, because look, Yaakov Avinu showed favoritism for Yosef and giving him the kesonas pasim, and from that was nisgalgel Galus Mitzrayim. That's one of the catalysts if you look bederech hateva at how we ended up in Mitzrayim. So we're supposed to learn and apply what that means to us on our level while simultaneously recognizing that what it means to us on our level is not what it meant and not what happened on the level of Yaakov Avinu. On our level, so parents play favorites because maybe temperamentally they're more attuned to one child than another. That's what That's the type of one child gives them more nachas than the other. So that's the kind of katnus hamochin which leads us to play favorites. And we're supposed to learn a lesson from Yaakov Avinu how dangerous that is and how wrong and misguided that is. But at the same time, we're supposed to recognize that that wasn't what was happening with Yaakov Avinu. What was happening exactly with Yaakov Avinu, I don't know. It's whatever it meant on his level, which is not what it means on our level, but אף על פי כן we should derive something from that. In that sense, in that same vein, let's talk a little bit about this yesod of shichchas hatorah. Again, not shichchas hatorah in terms of forgetting sort of the words of the halacha, not forgetting as it were the shell and the surface of the halacha, but shichchas hatorah in the sense of hanmachas hadarga, of a lowering of the level in terms of the ability to analyze and understand what the halacha really means. It's something again, which again, applying this on our level, what it means is that a person can—a person can quote fluently from many, many places, but that in and of itself doesn't necessarily speak—so that speaks to the lack of shichchas hatorah, right, in one sense of what Rav Hutner's maamar is talking about, of halachos mesuyamos, halachos pratis. It doesn't necessarily speak to a lack of shichchas hatorah on the other level that the maamar is talking about in terms of the darkei haiyun in terms of the understanding. Again, the darkei haiyun, you know, don't obviously don't suffice in and of themselves either because they have to be applied to the halachos, to the tochen. And that's how sometimes one sees and encounters even someone who can quote fluently but isn't lacking in—is not plagued by shichchas hatorah on that level and yet sometimes this other element is missing in terms of understanding based on correct darkei haiyun, having not a superficial understanding of that in which he's fluent, but the necessary deep understanding. This is perhaps typified. It's reported that Rav Chaim rejected what again, even in the classical poskim had was an accepted distinction that on Tisha B'Av or in aveilus when one is allowed to learn devarim hara'im, but one should learn it more what we would call bekiyus style, shitchiyisdik, more more superficially. And Rav Chaim said that he doesn't understand what that distinction means. Either you understand something properly or you don't understand something properly. What what does that mean? Again, we're not talking about the pace at which one learns, we're not talking about how much ground a person covers, we're talking about the quality of the comprehension, the quality of the understanding. And there are times, there are times which require—Torah always requires it, but there are times when this requirement is magnified and the stakes become even greater than we generally recognize them to be, that really, really require that level and degree again of the chochmas hatorah in terms of genuinely understanding what the din is. It's very important and there's really no alternative to this; as great a demand as this makes upon us, there's no alternative to this. You know, it used to be that, I don't know, it's been several years already so maybe you're not familiar, but the old-timers remember the chain of clothing stores Sims. You know, he's the one who Sy Sims School of Business was based on his donation. So their advertisement used to be that an educated consumer is their best customer because they wanted you to recognize that they're selling high-quality suits and you don't need a shocking price tag to reflect that fact. But how are you going to know whether a suit which is very moderately priced is that a gevaltege metziah and it's really high quality or no, maybe the fact that it's priced down is because it's inferior quality? That's what they used to say: an educated consumer. The emes is, lehavdil, lehavdil, we as people who need to look for guidance to chachmei haTorah and, Baruch Hashem, that we have chachmei haTorah, that we need to be educated consumers because one can't simply look on the level of who can quote a Gemara in Masechet Nazir, who can't quote a Gemara in Masechet Nazir? One needs to also be able to recognize who has the other quality that this letter is talking about. And lemaiseh, there is no external ranking system that does that job for us of being able to recognize, and we need to know enough to be educated shoalim. It doesn't mean that we think of ourselves as meshivim, but no, an educated consumer, he's the consumer, he's not the tailor, he doesn't know how to manufacture the suit and maybe doesn't even know how to market the suit, he's a consumer; but the consumer, in order to know where to buy, what to buy, where to turn to, has to be an educated consumer and there's no substitute for that. There is no way for a person to know where to turn other than, again, either being an educated consumer or someone else in one's family is an educated consumer. And achutz from our mitzvah talmud Torah just to learn because of veshinantam levannecha, because of ולמדתם אתם ושמרתם לעשותם, we need to learn also to be able to know where to go with a shailah. We need to be educated consumers because of this dimension of Torah. Numbers in some contexts are an indicator; in others they can be very misleading. So again, there's no external consideration which in a foolproof way can accomplish for us that which can be accomplished and, in truth, can only be accomplished by our being educated shoalim, educated mevakshim. Okay, we'll stop here.