הלכה י"ב פרק ה הלכה י"ב ואסור לאדם להפקיר או להקדיש כל נכסיו ויטריח על הבריות.
So throughout the Perek, the Rambam has been talking about Talmidei Chachamim. We discussed the Lechem Mishneh's Kushya back on Halacha Dalet. But that Kushya notwithstanding, the Rambam has been focusing on Talmidei Chachamim. So here clearly what the Rambam is saying, the Halacha Yud-Bet is something which is unequivocally Me'ikar Hadin for all of us. אסור לאדם להפקיר או להקדיש כל נכסיו ויטריח על הבריות ולא ימכור שדה ויקנה בית ולא בית ויקנה מיטלטלין או יעשה סחורה בדמי ביתו אבל מוכר הוא מיטלטלין וקונה שדה.
If a person owns a field, so then he has in hand as close to what can be a secure source of income. So a person is not supposed to let that slip out of his hand for a Bayit. It's true that the Bayit has the, does share the same quality of the Sadeh in terms of נכסי דאית להו אחריות וערבון, that it's one's sort of real estate holdings which provide the most security. But the house isn't a source of income the way the field is. ולא בית ויקנה מיטלטלין או יעשה סחורה בדמי ביתו אבל מוכר הוא מיטלטלין וקונה שדה כללו של דבר ישים מגמתו להצליח נכסיו.
The direction, the goal should be להצליח נכסיו לא להנתאות מעט לפי שעה או ליהנות מעט ויפסיד הרבה.
It's true that Chazal say, the Gemara says that if a person has what to eat today and he worries about tomorrow, הרי זה מקטני אמנה. But Me'idach Gisa, these Halachos that the Rambam's quoting here or the Halacha that we have later in Matnos Aniyim of המבזבז אל יבזבז יותר מחומש שמא יצטרך לבריות. Shema Yitzatarech Labriyos is looking forward, is that if the person gives too much Tzedakah today, so then maybe tomorrow he himself Rachmana Litzlan will become impoverished. So clearly the Pshat is when the Gemara says if a person has what to eat today and that's all he has, it means that's all he has. Okay, that's all he has, so he shouldn't worry about tomorrow, he should have Bitachon that the Ribbono Shel Olam will give for him tomorrow. If a person has extra today and he has expenses that he anticipates coming up tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, so then a person is Mechuyav to save. He's not supposed to squander it and say that I'll win the lottery again tomorrow, I won the lottery today, I'll win the lottery again tomorrow. So if a person doesn't have, he doesn't have, so then the attitude he should have, he should have that Menuchat Hanefesh and that Hakadosh Baruch Hu will provide for him tomorrow if he's not in a position to save. But if a person is in a position to save for anticipated expenses, so then he's supposed to. Why is that? Because it's a chovas hishtadlus in the case of saving or is it because that is the that's how Hashem wants us to act in terms of our emuna? Our emuna is Hashem gave me this for now to use it for later and both, both, both. Sometimes we see unfortunately people have short-term they have big hatzlacha and they spend very freely and very lavishly and then the hatzlacha doesn't continue and then they end up evyonus because they're not abiding by this halacha. משאו ומתנו של תלמידי חכמים באמת ובאמונה. What does it mean emes ve'emuna? So mistama emes means that what he says now is true. He doesn't misrepresent anything. He doesn't posture. What he says is is a hundred percent true and emuna means that he stands by his word. That that what he says in terms of le'haba in terms of I'll pay you such and such so that he he's faithful to his word and he stands by his word. So משאו ומתנו של תלמידי חכמים באמת ובאמונה. אומר על לאו לאו ועל הין הין. מדקדק על עצמו בחשבון.
He insists on paying every penny. ונותן ומותר לאחרים כשיקח מהם ולא ידקדק עליהם. But he'll round it down for someone who has to pay him. ונותן דמי המקח לאלתר. He doesn't buy on credit. Pays right away. ואינו נעשה לא ערב ולא קבלן ולא יבוא בהרשאה. וחייב עצמו בדברי מקח וממכר במקום שלא חייבה אותו תורה כדי שיעמוד בדיבורו ולא ישנהו.
So the din is like this let's say two people are I don't know they're negotiating a price and someone says I'll pay you a hundred dollars for this but no kinyan is made. Neither is there a kinyan ma'os venatna nor is there a kinyan meshicha which is required miderabbanan. There was just there was some kind of oral agreement. So mitzad dinei mamanos the oral agreement is not binding. If you take someone to a din Torah that he said that he was going to sell his house for such and such a price or the customer said that he was going to buy the house for such and such a price but there was no kinyan so it's not binding because there's no such thing as for the most part there's no such thing as kinyan devarim. The fact that there was an oral agreement in dinei mamanos is not binding. Says the Rambam even though in dinei mamanos it's not binding but be'hilchos de'os the talmid chacham recognizes that even though again monetarily it's not binding but morally it's binding and the person should should stand by his word. This is similar I think we discussed back in Perek Aleph when we're talking about lifnim mishuras hadin and we looked at the Rambam be'hilchos avadim that often you have the. these two levels, these two tiers within a mitzvah of what the din is sort of let's say there by by in Hilchos Avadim mitzad what the mitzad dinei avdus, what the din is. But then in addition to taking factoring that into account what the din is mitzad dinei avdus one also has to take into account what the din is mitzad Hilchos Deios in terms of how the adam should relate to the eved. And this is a similar type of example. Here it's pretty mefurash in the Rambam that מחייב עצמו בדברי מקח וממכר במקום שלא חייבו אותו תורה
he's not being machmir in dinei mamonus. It's not that the lifnim mishuras hadin is in dinei mamonus. No, it's bringing to bear, it's applying, implementing the Hilchos Deios in every context including in mekach umimkar. מחייב עצמו בדברי מקח וממכר במקום שלא חייבו אותו תורה כדי שיעמוד בדיבורו ולא ישנהו. ואם נתחייבו לו אחרים בדין, מאריך להן ומוחל להן, ומלווה וחונן. ולא ירד לתוך אומנות חברו ולא יצר לאדם בעולם בחייו. כללו של דבר, יהיה מן הנרדפין ולא מן הרודפין, מן הנעלבין ולא מן העולבין.
So I think we once raised the question, you know, whether the klalo shel davar in the Rambam is only l'haba, it's introducing what the Rambam's about to say or whether the klalo shel davar is also sort of a summation or has to also be a summation of what came previously. Here lichora, it it certainly does reflect backward as well that basically what the talmid chacham does and there's no yuhara if we aspire to that as well is in the in a very positive sense to live by a double standard, to live by a double standard to hold oneself to a higher standard than one holds others. So that's what it means that he himself is מחייב עצמו בדברי מקח וממכר במקום שלא חייבו אותו תורה.
The standard to which he holds himself is to be omed bediburo even if there was no kinyan which is binding. But klapei others, so even when nischayvu lo badin, so he'll give them he'll give them extra time. When appropriate he'll even he'll even be mochel lahen. And that's what the Rambam continues. This again double standard in the most positive sense of the phrase, so that's that characterizes the talmid chacham in general. He's נרדף ולא מן הרודפין מן הנעלבין ולא מן העולבין. ואדם שהוא עושה כל המעשים האלו וכיוצא בהן, עליו הכתוב אומר ויאמר לי עבדי אתה ישראל אשר בך אתפאר.
The the the word that the Rambam here in in order kol hama'asim ha'eileh. For a person to be zocheh if Hakadosh Baruch Hu kavyachol to say עבדי אתה ישראל אשר בך אתפאר, so there has to be a remarkable consistency. It has to be עשה כל המעשים האלו for Hakadosh Baruch Hu to say that I associate myself with you, avdi atah and and I am glorified kavyachol in in that relationship. So that can't be if the person sometimes does does good things but sometimes does other things. That isn't even if a person most of the time does good things but sometimes does other things. It's עשה כל המעשים האלו. It's that the consistency is is that that he he does all these things. Okay, maybe we'll just begin the Perek Vav. דרכו של אדם להיות נמשך בדעותיו ובמעשיו אחר ריעיו וחביריו ונוהג כמנהג אנשי מדינתו.
Human nature is such that we're influenced in terms of the character traits that we develop in terms of how we act by friends, colleagues, and the society in which we live. This is a major, major principle in terms of human behavior. Whatever accounts for this dynamic, but we see with our own eyes, we see empirically the truth of this yesod. It doesn't matter how unbalanced or irrational the behavior is, if we see it enough, we're affected by it, potentially, if we're not pushing back to insulate ourselves to prevent that influence. How does it happen? Maybe part of it doesn't make a difference how it happens, I said it happens, but maybe part of it is that our teva is such that we associate with being normal or even correct what we commonly see. And even if what we commonly see is highly abnormal, but that's what human nature is. Human nature is that something which becomes common and frequent to which we're continuously exposed, if we're not on our guard against it, it becomes normalized. It becomes normalized. If you were to take any person, any person, doesn't have to be, we don't have to look at one of the chachmei hatorah. Take any person who lived a hundred years ago, throw them into today's world and throw them into today's, I don't know what's going on in Eastern society, but in Western society, he would say people are stark raving mad. Let's say this non-binary, people say they're not men, they're not women. It's crazy. It's a hundred years ago, if a person said that, they would have locked them up in an insane asylum because the person is out of touch with reality. You can't say father and mother. The forms have to say parent number one, parent number two. It's stark raving mad. But because we're surrounded by it, if we don't remind ourselves on a daily how crazy it is. So we think it's okay. At first we think it's strange. Then we think it's progressive. Then we think it's liberal. And then we think it's normal. And all those thens happen within a few months. They don't take forty years to happen. You don't use the phrase nursing mother anymore. If you refer to a mother who's nursing her child, she's a lactating individual. That's not crazy. It's not off the charts crazy. So how can it be that we don't recognize it as such? That's what this gentleman was saying. It doesn't matter how irrational the society is. If we walk out onto Amsterdam Avenue and everyone instead of walking on their feet will be walking on their heads. So the first time will seem a little strange and next week we'll be walking on our heads. If we don't, if we're not mischazek to tell ourselves that they're all crazy. You know one of the features about the way the Rambam wrote is that, let's say we had yesterday, I don't remember whether we read this half of the halacha or not, the second half of halacha yud-aleph: אבל הטיפשים מתחילים לישא אשה ואחר כך אם תמצא ידו יקנה בית ואחר בסוף ימיו יחזור לבקש אומנותו יתפרנס מן הצדקה.
So the Rambam could have softened it. He could have said some who are not ba'alei de'ah. He could have been a little bit euphemistic. He's not euphemistic. He says someone who does this is a tipesh. He's a tipesh. It's not the only place that the Rambam uses the word tipesh. So we're kind of queasy about doing that. And the truth is, usually it's right because in this day and age people get turned off. So if you talk that way people don't listen. And the point in talking is to say a davar nishma so people should hear it. To try to share with people what's correct. So you have to say it in a way that it'll be a davar nishma. So in that sense, there's a reason that, and it's most of the time correct that we don't. And maybe hundreds of years ago there were different sensitivities and different sensibilities. But the ma'aseh there's a danger, there's a real downside to always softening the formulations because at a certain time we begin to be influenced by our own words. And when our own words are always softened and we don't say things as they really are, but we're always saying it somewhat euphemistically, somewhat softly, so then in our own minds we begin to, I don't know whether, we begin to downplay what's at stake or at the very least we're not pushing back. So occasionally it's important to avoid any euphemisms and to say things as they are. We live in a crazy, crazy world. Stark raving mad. There's nothing extreme about that statement. That's a very moderate statement. I think arguably it's an understatement. The holy crusades of our days are also for complete immorality. The holy crusades are once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, so right away all the, again we would call them the governors of liberal states, but the governors of all the immoral states, so right away it Mother should be able to kill unborn fetuses without anyone. Ruba de ruba, it's good to speak euphemistically, so it'll be a davar nishma. But occasionally, it's very important to remind ourselves that that's strategically that it should be a davar nishma. But occasionally, we need to tell ourselves what what the what the reality is. לפיכך צריך אדם להתחבר לצדיקים ולשבת אצל החכמים תמיד כדי שילמד מעשיהם ויתרחק מן הרשעים ההולכים בחושך כדי שלא ילמד ממעשיהם. הוא ששלמה אומר הולך את חכמים יחכם ורועה כסילים ירוע ואומר אשרי האיש אשר לא הלך בעצת רשעים.
So earlier in Perek Aleph, I think we commented how the Rambam says there were two two mechayvim in the Derech HaBenonis. There's a mechayev of the pasuk in Chumash, vehalachta bidrachav, but there's also a mechayev mitzad hasvara, that it's ra'uy, that אין ראוי לו לאדם to go to either haktzavos, but it's ra'uy derech hayesharah. The emes is we have another example of of that yesod here as well. In Halacha Beis, if you skip to Halacha Beis for a moment, מצות עשה להדבק בחכמים כדי ללמוד ממעשיהם, shene'emar uvo sidbak. But that's exactly what the Rambam taught us in Halacha Aleph, without the pasuk, before he got to the pasuk. לפיכך צריך אדם להתחבר לצדיקים ולשבת אצל החכמים תמיד כדי שילמד מעשיהם.
So it's clear, we'll try to expand upon this a little bit tomorrow, that here is another example that even if we wouldn't have a pasuk of uvo sidbak that Chazal would explain to us that hiddavek bachachamim v'salmideihem, even absent such a pasuk, so in svara, a person would know, human nature is such that we're susceptible to influence from the people that we associate with. So mimeila, svara tells us, svara is mechayeves that a person has to associate with the right people, that a person should be associating with the people from whom he can learn and from whom that influence will be will be a positive influence, not not a negative influence. So you know it in svara. It's also a pasuk, but but but there are two mechayvim here. There's a mechayev in svara. Halacha Aleph is is a mechayev in svara. Lefichach tzorich adam, there's no pasuk which is which is substantiating that. The Rambam already said it because svara's the mechayev, the same way we had in Perek Aleph. Then additionally, the Rambam says it's also a pasuk of uvo sidbak. So we'll pick up here in the De'os part tomorrow and we'll continue in the Rambam, be'ezras Hashem.