Transcript

The other thing we mentioned yesterday that for the Chovos Halevavos, it's not only Ahavas Hashem but also Yiras Hashem which precludes having mundane motivation, mundane incentive for a Mitzvos. Whereas for the Rambam, it's only Ahavah. Bli neder, we still need Bezras Hashem bli neder to come back to that, but we're going to leave that as unfinished business and continue with the next paragraph. So again, in this edition, it's a new paragraph. והשערים שפתחם הבורא לדעת תורתו ודתו הם שלושה. You see that, Rabosai? Vehashe'arim. Right, the gateways. והשערים שפתחם הבורא לדעת תורתו ודתו הם שלושה. There are three sources of knowledge in terms of Torah, in terms of religious obligation, in terms of religious truth.

האחד מהם השכל הניצול מכל פגע. והשני ספר תורתו הנתונה למשה הנביא. והשלישי הקבלה שקבלנו מאבותינו שקבלו מן הנביאים עליהם השלום וכבר הקדים לבאר הרב הגדול רבינו סעדיה זצ"ל במשך יש בו די.

So these three sources of knowledge Rav Saadia Gaon in Emunos VeDeios identifies and enumerates. This is something you have in the Geonim and the Rishonim that seichel, what's known al pi seichel, is a mechayiv bifnei atzmo. It doesn't also have to be a pasuk in Chumash. Obviously, a pasuk in Chumash is a mechayiv. That's the second source of knowledge. It doesn't have to be a Torah Sheba'al Peh. That's the third source of knowledge. Sometimes they obviously overlap and we know things from more than one source. But any one source is enough. הלכה למשה מסיני is only source number three. Something which is only known al pi seichel is only source number one. But each of these stands alone and even independently as a source of knowledge of, again, religious truth, religious obligation v'chulu. The simple pshat is that Chazal already say this as well. Amar Rabi Yochanan, עירובין ק' עמוד ב', Amar Rabi Yochanan:

אלמלא לא נתנה תורה היינו למדין צניעות מחתול וגזל מנמלה ועריות מיונה ודרך ארץ מתרנגול.

So even if we didn't have Torah, again, sources number two and three, Torah in a broader sense, even if we didn't have sources to sort of paraphrase this in the categories that the Chovos Halevavos here is giving us, even if we didn't have sources number two and three, so we would have looked into the natural world, we would have seen how the chasul when it's nitzrach lankavah acts with tzinus and we would have recognized and understood that that's a trait, a quality that we should practice, that we should cultivate. That's the pashtus that this Gemara reflects that. That in addition to the the famous Gemara in Yoma

ס"ז עמוד ב, תנו רבנן משפטי תעשו דברים שאלמלא נכתבו דין הוא שיכתבו ואת חוקותי את חוקותי תשמרו דברים שהשטן משיב עליהם.

So chukika means engraving, right? Lachatok chakikecha, it means to engrave. So it means that a chok is only a mitzvah by virtue of the fact that it's engraved in the Torah. We wouldn't have known it intuitively. So that's why it's referred to as a chok and a mishpat, mishpat is something which is justice, justice means something that that we should have and and recognized even if it hadn't been written in the Torah and that's what the these two terms referring to mitzvos are, that mishpatim refers to דברים שאלמלא נכתבו דין הוא שיכתבו. It's mishpat. It's mishpat. As opposed to chukim which we only know by virtue of the fact of this chakika because they're not they're not intuitive. So Rav Nissim Gaon in in the Gemara Berachos you have the hakdama of Rav Nissim Gaon to Shas. Rav Nissim Gaon there writes that anything which is misvara is binding on kol ba'ei olam. Any mitzvas HaTorah which is also svara is is binding on kol ba'ei olam. Why? Again because of this what the again it's makor b'Chazal but what Rav Saadia says, what the Chovos HaLevavos says. It's it's clear in in many places that the Rambam agrees with this schema as well. That the Rambam also thinks that svara itself is is a mechayev. The the question that I think the the question certainly was was known to to Rabbeinu Bachya, known to Rav Saadia Gaon, known to Chazal, it's probably been magnified many times over in in very recently, in recent years. Svara is is easily corrupted also. In the days of the Chovos HaLevavos the overwhelming majority of the world were either crude polytheists or if they weren't crude polytheists, you know, they they were adherents of false religions. I don't think I think the the lunacy of our society kemidumei is unprecedented in history. The craziness with the it's it's beyond crazy, there were no words in in in the language to adequately describe the business with the pronouns and and gender and it's it's beyond lunacy is wholly inadequate, W-H-O-L-E, is is. So how do you understand on the one hand the takeaway cannot be that this is a kasha or worse a pircha on you can't retreat from sevara because the emes is even if you would let's say take away, let's say edit obviously not really but edit what the Chovos HaLevavos says and say השערים שפתחם הבורא לדעת תורתו ודתו הם שנים and skip number one. You can't learn Torah without sevara also. Like what does a beferush pasuk mean? If you're crooked enough so you can distort what a beferush pasuk means also. If you're crooked enough you can distort anything either crooked or tendentious either of the two so then lo ninalu the shearim of distortion and so it's not as if the fact that what people convince themselves is mistaber can be so crazy the takeaway from that can't be to retreat from sevara. You retreat from sevara you're not a person anymore you can't do anything you can't read a pasuk Chumash either. There's no retreating from sevara. And it's clear that the Chovos HaLevavos is sensitive to it right? השכל הניצול מכל פגע right? That's why he has that phrase. He doesn't just say hasechel. The Chovos HaLevavos again he I don't think any even crazy people didn't have a sordid enough imagination to imagine what happens in our world. So השכל הניצול מכל פגע. Yeah it's true that sechel can be distorted. Everything can be distorted. That's not a pircha, it's not even a kasha. Okay but it does mean that one sort of has to understand how does that phenomenon happen and how does a person guard against it? That's the question. One has to recognize that often sechel is not nitzal mikol pege and how do those pga'im happen and how do we look to self-check and self-monitor that sechel is nitzal mikol pege. I'm sorry I meant to bring it I forgot. So Reb Chonon has famously in his ma'amorim on Aggadah I think some of them were originally printed in the back of Kovetz Shiurim in Yevamos and then there's a little thin used to be a little thin volume now they added notes and made it as thick as a toothpick now it used to be a little thin volume that was printed separately also. So he quotes the maimar Chazal that לא עבדו ישראל עבודה זרה אלא להתיר עריות. And he says that the yesod is certainly true and again in that maimar Chazal it's clearly pshat. In another maimar Chazal Reb Chonon quotes where yesh l'adam that we are susceptible to allowing our sevara to become meshuchad by our taivos. Right so the Torah already tells us how sevara can be miskalkel that

לא תקח שחד כי השחד יעור עיני חכמים ויסלף דברי צדיקים

which means that the Torah is telling the dayan you may be determined to take shochad and still be dan din emes right? And it's interesting the Torah doesn't say אף על פי כן it's asur you could have heard that also right? אף על פי כן it's asur. The Torah says not that there's an inference here that in theory it would have been muttar but the Torah says but don't fool yourself. into thinking that's possible, that's not human nature. You take shochad, so you're not gonna remain objective. כי השוחד יעור עיני חכמים ויסלף דברי צדיקים. So that's what Rav Elchonon says. So the Torah identifies for us one source which is pogeia, which is mekalkel sevara, which is shochad. And he says what the pshat in that ma'amar Chazal that ולא עבדו ישראל עבודה זרה אלא להתיר עריות is that one source of shochad is that we're meshuchad by our taivos. So then we construct a scheme, a system which justifies, which justifies, you know, that which we want to be muttar, that which we want to engage in, that which we want to indulge in. So if a woman gets pregnant and she wasn't planning on getting pregnant and she doesn't want to deal with pregnancy and childbirth and okay, so then you convince yourself that it's a right to privacy and you convince yourself that don't look at the sonogram and don't see that that's a baby, you know, just call it a clump of cells and you convince yourself that it's adiraba, that it's immoral for anyone to tell the woman what to do. So that's an example of what Rav Elchonon says, that we're meshuchad. We want something, people want something to be muttar. They want something to be muttar, so then they construct, in quotation marks, sevara, in quotation marks, that justifies, but the conclusion comes first. The conclusion is, and that's the shochad, the conclusion comes first. We want this to be muttar. Ai, but how can it be muttar? You know, the fact that the Ribbono Shel Olam created the world that life begins in utero? How can? Okay, it's not life, it's a woman's body, it's the right to privacy, it's all the divrei havel that we hear. Another source of thinking something is mistaber and thinking that one's position or one's beliefs or one's values are anchored in sevara when in fact they can be diametrically opposed and antithetical. The Rambam has, it's a question why he has this comment in that context but he does. He says that someone once asked him a question that the nachash says to Chava that if you eat from the Etz HaDa'as, והייתם כאלוהים יודעי טוב ורע. And in fact that wasn't false advertising, right? That wasn't false advertising, that in fact הן האדם היה כאחד ממנו לדעת טוב ורע. So he said how can it be that what's great and unique about Adam, about man, is his ability to know and discern tov vara? How can it be that that shleimus he gets only as a result of cheit? So that's the question that was posed to the Rambam. The Rambam answers it, but before he answers it, he again, it's a question, whatever, for whatever reason he interpolates the comment and says you know, if you think you're gonna understand Chumash because when you take a break from partying and you open a Chumash for a few minutes and you look at the Chumash and then you think you're gonna understand it, you know, between parties and whatever else is part of a hedonistic lifestyle, he says, so you're not going to understand it. So after giving that patch, then he goes on to explain the difference between tov and ra and emes and sheker vechulu. So sevara, you know, employed and applied. Okay, so partially it's, it's on one level it's the same as what Reb Elchonon says later. Again, it's, it's highlighting, you know, that, that sechel can be distorted by taivos. But the Rambam is clearly saying something more than that. He's also talking about the danger of superficiality in thinking. And that when people are superficial, so then also you come to all kinds of, you come to all kinds of crazy conclusions. You see that today's, we can't really call it discourse, today's contemporary rambling and is also, you know, amazingly superficial and and nonsensical. How, how can you not support same-sex marriage? It's so cruel. And and if there's a principle of chesed, so how can you, so chesed can never be independently defined, defined independently of emes. I mean, if someone asks you to pass something on the table, is it a chesed to do it? Well, maybe. He's asking for the seltzer, so you know, the odds are that that is a chesed to pass him the seltzer. If he's a recovering alcoholic and he's asking you to pass him a bottle of wine or a bottle of scotch, so then it's, it's not a chesed. So you can't define, you can't say someone wants something, so therefore it's a, by definition a chesed. No, chesed has to be, first you have to define emes and you have to establish values and then you can define chesed. So the Ribono Shel Olam says that it's, it's horrific. It's שבע מצוות בני נח. It's kemaaseh eretz mitzrayim. It's maaseh Sdom. It's horrific. So it's not a chesed to facilitate someone doing something which, which the Ribono Shel Olam in such categorical absolutely, absolutely rejects. Like giving a recovering alcoholic, it's, it's infinitely worse than that. You give the alcoholic the bottle of wine, you're destroying his body. Here you're destroying people's souls. It's infinitely worse than that. Again, but it's, you'll excuse the crudeness of the language, it's stupidity being presented as sevara. And that's what, well that's what a lot of what one hears today is. It's also שכל המוצל מכל פגע. So a person has to look, is he meshuchad? Person has to look, is he, is he superficial? And if he doesn't know whether he's superficial, so find someone who, find someone who isn't superficial and and run it by him and and and find out. How do you discern whose sevara to trust? How do you discern who's smart to trust and who you can't trust? That's an excellent question, the, there isn't, one of the, the answer isn't always as comprehensive as, as the question, unfortunately. When you have, let's say in a different context, in a different context, how, how do you know who to ask a shaila to? How do you know who not to ask a shaila to? How, how do you know? And, and it's, so in an ideal world, you know, everyone paskening shailas, everyone giving hadracha, everyone acting in, in a role of a manhig would be, you know, totally, totally qualified and everything they're saying would be right. Okay, so even so, you still have to know who to ask, but at least there'd be a safety net, you know? You know, even if you didn't ask the person who's, you know, who's attuned to, to your nefesh. Okay, but you, but no fault of the Ribbono Shel Olam's, fault of our implementation. You know, the world we live in is not ideal. So, the only complete answer to that is, let's say in the context of asking shailas, is that a person has to learn enough to be able to be discerning and distinguish. I, I belong to the generation where the 614th mitzvah was that you bought your suits at Syms. As a Sy Syms school of business. So, their, their advertisement was that an educated consumer is our best customer. Because what they, the niche that, that Mr. Sy Syms created was that he used to get high-quality, let's say high-quality suits, but they were last year's suits. So at the end of, at the end of the previous season, so every season, you know, in, you know, the, the, they come out with new styles, so he would buy last year's at, at very, very low prices, and then pass on those savings. So you would get top-of-the-line suits. Okay, so they weren't this year's newest design, they were last year's design. And you got it for a fraction of the price that you would have paid the previous year. So, but to appreciate what you were paying, you know, so you had to be educated. You had to see, you had to know that, you know, look, I'm getting a 100% wool suit, it's not polyester and, and it's something that's going to last. So, their commercial used to be, 'An educated consumer is our best customer.' So the yesod is a true yesod, that, that we need to be educated consumers. If a person is sufficiently uneducated, and there are people selling suits, and, and some people are selling very cheap suits, cheap not in terms of the price, but in terms of quality. I don't know, there isn't really a foolproof answer to how he's going to get a good suit. He needs to be an educated consumer. Okay, so we need to be checking ourselves, monitoring ourselves, whether or not we're meshuchad in what we think is mistaber. We need to be monitoring ourselves whether or not we're being superficial in, in employing and exercising seichel. That applies in, the, those two concerns and factors are basically relevant in just about every situation. The third one is, is not quite as broadly applicable. Sometimes in order to exercise svara there’s a certain corpus of knowledge a person first has to have. And if you lack that corpus of knowledge, so then svara will take you in the wrong direction. Let’s say the way vaccines worked when they used to use live when it was a live bacteria or whatever it was that was counterintuitive. If you knew nothing about science or how the immune system functions, it was counterintuitive. What, you’re saving him from chickenpox by giving him chickenpox? It’s crazy, right? You’re saving him from this by giving him some, it’s crazy. But if you have, you know, basic knowledge in terms of how the immune system works, so then it’s not crazy. It’s compelling. So you can’t, sometimes what’s mistaber is mistaber within the yesodos of a system. And when we try to when we’re am ha-aretzim about the system and then we look to exercise svara, so then svara will generate the exact opposite. And that’s true in so many areas of halacha. You know, if a person hasn’t again this is an easy specific example but it’s actually true in a more fundamental global sense that as we get further be’ezras Hashem maybe we’ll talk about that but leaving that fuller more fundamental understanding for later, let’s say I think the Chazon Ish writes, right, maybe in in his little sefer in Inyanei Emunah u-Bitachon. Sometimes a person who hasn't studied hilchos Shabbos well or properly can't imagine that something would be asur on Shabbos. Can't imagine that you know some things which are asur on Shabbos would be asur. This is a melacha? How can this be a melacha? Okay, but then when you understand hagdaros about how you define a melacha and how a toldah is nistaref from an av, so then once you understand the yesodos, so then you have a different intuition. It becomes very different what’s intuitive that it’s a melacha and what isn’t. And that’s another example of how we, you know, can end up with when we try to exercise svara ignorantly and arrogantly and don’t have the the again it’s like paskening on again the vaccines today don’t even work that way right but the way the original vaccines worked. It’s like paskening on it without without having the basic yedi’os in science. So all those are examples of self-inflicted pgamim on seichel. The fourth perspective which isn’t a question of a little bit of semantics but sort of the fourth perspective on how there’s so much craziness and lunacy that people convince themselves is is svara. A lot of things people say and claim they believe which again obviously only Ribbono shel Olam can say this absolutely and definitively but it seems quite clear there are things people claim that they think are logical. It's not only that they're being superficial and therefore they're seeing things the wrong way. It's not only that they're am ha-aretz and they're seeing things the wrong way. They're just lying, first and foremost to themselves and then to everyone else. The people who engage in the unmitigated achzarios of tracking children to become trans, to be physically mutilated, they really think because a child did one thing when he or she was four years old, that that's indicative of something? Again, it's wrong for fifty other reasons also. And if a kid goes over when he's four years old and he grabs a toy from someone else, okay, kid's a ganef, so let's enroll him in a school that he should at least be a successful ganef, learn how to get away with it. We don't want him to end up doing hard time in San Quentin, so let's have a school for ganovim because you see, I just saw he took that toy that didn't belong to him. So they don't really believe it, they don't really believe it. They lie to themselves, and then they lie to everyone else and then it becomes an echo chamber. Everyone's lying to themselves, everyone's lying to everyone else and it chozer ve-nistoref with other people who are thinking superficially and allow themselves to be influenced by that achzarios. No one really believes that. And again, it's wrong for fifty other reasons, this isn't the only distortion and the only element of achzarios. But there's a lot of that also. You know, the famous Beis HaLevi on Parshas Vayigash, ולא יכלו אחיו לענות אותו כי נבהלו מפניו, so the Gemara in Chagiga אוי לנו מיום הדין אוי לנו מיום התוכחה. So where was the din, where was the tochacha? So the Beis HaLevi explains that when Yosef said to them Ha-od avi chai, so it wasn't an innocent inquiry because they hadn't been back to Eretz Yisrael since last time they were there because he had them arrested before they got back. And the previous time he already asked them for an update. So this wasn't an innocent inquiry as to how is Yaakov Avinu. It was rather he was telling them that here you are, you're imploring for mercy because of Binyamin and nafsho keshura benafsho, Ha-od avi chai? What about what you inflicted on Yaakov Avinu when you sold me into slavery? And the Beis HaLevi says that le-asid lavo, if a person will plead, I didn't have enough money to give tzedaka, so the Ribono Shel Olam will say, pick out the ledger and say, you went here and here on this expensive vacation and you used to waste money on this, so you had money for that, but you didn't have money for tzedaka? That will be shown rachmana litzlan, we should do something about it, but that won't be the case, but that a person will be shown the internal inconsistency in his actions. And how people, society, go through life lying to themselves. If a parent wants to give permission for a child to get married, they can't do it at age twelve, they can't do it at age fourteen, but they can be grooming the child for physical mutilation at that age? That parents can do? Society really thinks? They don't really think, they don't really think, they don't really think, but they lie to themselves, they lie to each other, and that's the fourth perspective on things which people claim to think is mistaber and is wrong, they don't really think it's mistaber. What do these people like have the game? Like if they if they know it's not true, I'm not saying that they do think it's true, just what do they have, like why why is this whole thing happening? Like what's the cause of all of it? Because once you have a certain societal context, sometimes again I don't think there's only one answer, there's more than one answer, you know in different cases there are different answers, but one answer certainly is that in this when society has already reached a certain stage of perversion, so you show how enlightened you are by doing it. The world is certainly happening that that kind of you know perverse incentive to keep up with the Joneses in terms of you know this is something, no this is this is now being enlightened, this is you know we're more enlightened than than than past generations. There are many permutations of that answer, other answers. Never underestimate, here's the vort, you know, זה לעומת זה עשה אלוקים. The Ribono shel Olam created Adam and therefore all of us with the potential for greatness, but זה לעומת זה עשה אלוקים. Whatever positive potential there is, so because the yesod of Adam is that he's a baal bechirah, so there's an equal potential for negative. So if you can create a world in which there can be a Rav Chaim, in which there can be a Vilna Gaon, so that means that there's also potential for such total sheker and such total perversion because it's זה לעומת זה עשה אלוקים and if you're zocheh to understand a Rav Chaim, so then you also realize how much potential there is in the world for sheker and perversion and again and this is just superficial, although that's this is pure lunacy and and superficial sheker, but there's potential for even more, you know, a sheker which which would run deeper.