Well, let's begin by reviewing and, I think you have the pictures of the Madodei Midot, the discussion of רב חיים דרך הלימוד and then try to understand something that we haven't, b'ezrat Hashem, something we haven't touched upon yet. You have page, I think it was page 75 under the heading Aruka Mei'eretz Midah. והחזות וצופת ההשוואה עולה להכרה הדיסקורסיבית הזכה והמחוברת. So it begins with a vision, with an intuition. And I think the choice of terminology in terms of a vision, both in its simple association and it's also true if one makes the association with Nevuah, it means that initially it's not in categories of thought. If someone beholds a vision, whether it's a physical vision or whether it's a Navi beholding a prophetic vision, so what again in the first scenario literally what one sees, in the second scenario what one sees in quotation marks is not something discursive. You're not seeing units of words and units of thoughts. And it's something that if you're then challenged to share it, to communicate it, to convey it, so then you have to convert it into categories of thoughts and words. And that's what the Rav is describing here. Whenever something is initially, again in the mashal, maybe describe a vision, you can give a mashal of an experience, the nimshal is this intuition. But the initial stage, the source isn't, doesn't happen, doesn't unfold, isn't experienced again in categories of thought. But in order to be not only communicated but even to be fully understood for oneself, it needs to be converted into categories of thought. It's famous that Reb Chaim used to say: וואס פעלט אין הסברה פעלט אין הבנה. What a person can't explain, a person doesn't understand. That for oneself also that to really fully understand and fully process again that intuition, that vision, that experience, one needs to be able to convert it. Again when the Rav introduced us to the Sefirot, one needs to make the step from Chochmah to Binah, from again some intuition. Again, that intuition, that vision, that experience, one needs to be able to convert it, again, the Rebbe introduced us to the Sefiros, one needs to make the step from Chochmah to Binah, from again some intuition, experience, vision to categories of thought that can be expressed in through concepts and through words. כשהגאון מעלה את חזונו לדרגת חשיבה הגיונית. Again, this is the process that we were just talking about. Hu poseach, he begins, בפעולת יצירה ספונטנית שאינה מפרשת את הנתון המוחשי אלא ממציאה קונסטרוקציות מופשטות.
Initially, one isn't interpreting the tangible, physical fact but is creating abstract constructs. Ha'ala'as HeChazon LeHasaga, elevating vision to comprehension, Veha'intu'itzya Lekonseptzya, and the intuition to concept, היא מעשה יוצר הבונה עולם אידיאלי is an act, is a creative act which constructs an ideal world המתקפל בעצמותו ומוצא את ערכו ותכליתו בד' אמותיו ובמערכת היחסים שבין העצמים המופשטים.
I'll try and give an example to explain what that means. Let's say you have, let's say you're dealing with a bein adam lachaveiro situation. Friction in a relationship, or maybe even without friction, maybe hadracha is being sought in how that relationship should develop, should function. So what the Rav is explaining is that again, using this as the mashal to the nimshal of halacha and the world of halacha is that the way you begin the process is not looking at the two individuals who are the ones seeking the hadracha. Again to what extent the nimshal is true for the mashal is not our interest, okay? We're interested in this as a mashal for halacha. But you begin by understanding in an ideal world what does friendship mean? In an ideal world, never mind Reuven and Shimon here. In an ideal world what does friendship mean? What does the Rambam in Peirush HaMishnayos Avos tell you? How does he explain to us what a friendship means? In an ideal world, I don't know if it's not Reuven and Shimon, if it's Avraham and Sarah, so in an ideal world what should a marriage look like? What should the marital bond be and how should it be expressed? And then, and on that level, you're not being... at that level, you're not being maseach at that level. You're not being maseach to Reuven and Shimon. You're not being maseach to Avram and Sora. אינו מפרש את הנתון המוחשי אלא ממציא קונסטרקט מופשט and it needs to be a, again, internally coherent vision. Then the way you go from the abstract to the practical, well in light of that, so how then you figure out how should that play out in context of Reuven and Shimon? How should that play out in context of Avram and Sora as opposed to you know, how do Reuven and Shimon build a friendship? As opposed to how do Avram and Sora cultivate a marriage? It begins in the ideal world, right? Again, so again, the point is not how to approach therapy, you know, again, to what extent the nimshal hotza lamashal is not at all, not implying anything kehai gavna. Okay. שניחן באינטואיציה הלכתית ברוכה you know, there is, I don't know what word you choose sort of you know depends upon one's perspective and opinion here. There is a view out there that says you know that if you only want something enough, so you know if you only want it enough and you horev for it enough, v'oisim gezochia. Let's say at the very least, not everyone agrees with that. Reb Chaim's amal and yegiah was almost superhuman, maybe from the standards by which we operate it was superhuman, but his natural kochos were also extraordinary. The Baal HaTanya writes in his Shulchan Aruch that what a person's capacity is for talmud Torah depends upon the ability Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave them. That you know one person is going to need to do much more chazarah to remember and retain than another person, and because of that he's obviously going to progress at a much at a very different pace than the person who's blessed with different kochos hazikaron and you know because of that there's an adjusted standard in terms of you know what for him mitzvah talmud Torah means. The Sma has also in Hilchos Talmud Torah where he says that he says it about all mitzvos but about talmud Torah as well. He says that in general what you find meforash in Torah Shebiksav is the least common denominator of mitzvos. That level of kiyum hamitzvah, that level of chiyuv and kiyum that everyone is capable of. But then beyond that, we all have different abilities, different capacities in different areas, and then everyone is supposed to go beyond—not everyone, but anyone who in that area you know has been blessed with abilities, again, whether it's in terms of tikkun hamidos, whether it's in terms of talmud Torah, whatever the area is, is supposed to go beyond the least common denominator to the best of his ability. Lichora, that's, I don't think it calls it—of course—lichora that's the pshat. I think it's the Smak. I think Rav Soloveitchik in one of his divrei Torah quotes this. I think the Smak lists in his minyan hamitzvos to go lifnim mishuras hadin. So that seems to be a stira minei ubei, no? The definition of lifnim mishuras hadin is that it's... So how can that be a mitzvah? Not that according to the v'asisa hayoshar v'hatov I understand how it can be a mitzvah, right? Because the shuras hadin reflects the least common denominator and then we all have a chiyuv to when appropriate, when in that area we have a capacity which is above the least common denominator to work to the best of our ability and to take advantage of that capacity. So Reb Chaim nichem again his incredible yegia and amola which the Rav goes on to describe here in the hesped. The total involvement and the intensity of the involvement. Reb Chaim trained his sons to always be thinking in the divrei Torah. And at random times he would turn to them and say, what are you thinking about? So there's a story that once he turned to I don't know who it was at the time but when he was a kid, chronological, not describing where he was spiritually or intellectually, but chronologically a kid. So he turned to the Rav's father and said to him, what are you thinking about? And he said he was thinking about if you have a kohen who's an androgynos and he's 12 years old, is he allowed to be metamei l'meisim? רב חיים שחונן באינטואיציה הלכתית ברוכה he was again Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave him, right, Chanina is lashon matnas chinam. Hakadosh Baruch Hu blessed him with this capacity, but again he had capacities are potentials and they have to be developed, they have to be cultivated, they have to be tapped into. Again, it in no way detracts from the human element and effort and exertion that are required. רב חיים שחונן באינטואיציה הלכתית ברוכה המציא את מידת ה
conceptualization b'sdei ha-halakha. Meaning when Reb Chaim's analysis again wasn't about tangible physical but he moved away from the tangible and the physical again in our mashal. You move away from Reuven and Shimon and before you reflect on Reuven and Shimon you understand what's a friendship supposed to look like? So that's moving away from the concrete to the abstract, from the phenomenon to the concept. ובנה עולם של אידיאות וגילה את הקונסטרוקציה ההלכתית החופשית. אם נתמצק קצת במידת
of the conceptualization and mathematization shel hateva of the natural world שאחזו בה אבות הפיזיקה הקלאסית והמודרנית that the fathers of classical and modern physics, again classical, not the way we use classical when we talk about classics, ancient Greece and Rome, classical meaning as the Rav says, מזמן גלילאו וניוטון, that's classical physics. Ad l'yamenu with all the changes whatever with Einstein whatever נבין גם את מידתו של רב חיים בהלכה הדומה באופן מוזר לגישת המדעים המתמטיים לעולם הממשי. הפיזיקה האריסטוטלית ביקשה לבאר את המציאות מבחינת מהותה האיכותית ולהפיץ אור בהיר על תכנים מוחשיים הכרוכים בתהליך של גירוי והגבה
excuse me שהיא המציאות היחידה המכתרת אותנו סחור סחור הממלאה את תודעתנו. החושנית בריבוי צליליה וגווניה והמעיקה עלינו בממדיה ובחשכת כוחותיה.
So Aristotelian science, Aristotelian physics. We experience the world in a qualitative, on a qualitative level, right, in a qualitative dimension. We're hot, we're cold, we see light, we see different colors. Dorot rabim, many generations, meaning until Galileo and Newton, דורות רבים האמינו בתום לבם באפשרות ההרחבה הרציונלית ביחס ליש האיכותי הממשי.
They thought that you could understand, that you could investigate scientifically the qualitative world that we experience. Haphysica haklassit v'gam hamodernit, classical physics as well as modern physics, ויתרה על יזמה נועזת זו. This insolent initiative. היא תפסה את האופי האי שכלי של תבל ומלואה כשהיא מופיעה בדמותה הקמאית היומיומית ונואשה מהשג מדעי ביחס אליה.
It recognized that you couldn't, you can't explain that, it's just an experience of cold, of heat, of light, of darkness. Ha'emet hayoter amuka, the deeper truth, שנתגלתה למחוללי המדע החדש היא שאין האדם יכול לעמוד על עצמותן של תופעות מוחשיות כהוויתן.
A person can't really explain the qualitative dimension. Umah yesh beyado, what he can do, is ליצור קונסטרוקציות צורניות כמותיות המקבילות לתופעות המוחשיות שאינן נתפסות בסדירות והתייחסות מתמטית.
And just as we said earlier in terms of the mashal we were given, קורלטיביים אידיאליים אלו שכל משמעותם אינה ספונה בעצמם אלא בהזדקקותם ההדדית בצורת משוואות מתמטיות נהפכו לאובייקט של המחקר המדעי.
So the Rav explains that the revolution of the scientific revolution was to attempt to build a quantitative model to explain the world. What does that mean? So if you take chemistry, so every reaction you can write as an equation. You can write what the chemical reaction is as an equation. So an equation isn't something that makes you hot, that makes you cold, that makes you, right, it's a different dimension, it's a different way of depicting, it's a quantitative model for the qualitative experience that we have. Do those words make any sense? Again, a person doesn't, you know, if you ask a person what he's experiencing if he has a chemical imbalance in the brain, he will not answer with an equation, right? He'll answer symptomatically, he'll answer qualitatively. But the way, but the way modern science understands it is that they will explain it, right? It will be depicted quantitatively in terms of, you know, such and such a chemical reaction is happening and this molecule is breaking down, and etcetera. Tochnay, and that's what this next line means, תכני תחושה כגון צבעים קולות חום, sensory content, such as colors, sounds, heat, nehephchu, were transformed, l'kamuyot mufshatot tehorot, were transformed into pure abstract quantities שאין להן אלא היחס ההדדי. That, you have that again, the relationship in terms of the two sides of the equation in terms of how the molecules get reconfigured when you have this reaction. עולם פיזיקלי זה שצורף וזוקק מסיגי החושניות, this physical world that was purified from sensuality, from the again, the qualitative. herashut hahakara hamada'it. Let's skip the next paragraph. Be'ofen dome, in a similar fashion, נהג רב חיים בהלכה. That's how Rav Chaim approached and acted in terms of learning Torah, learning halacha. קודם כל טיהר ההלכה מכל סוגי גישות מן החוץ. He purified halacha from all kinds of external approaches. Al pi shitato, according to Rav Chaim's derech, יש לדחות בשתי ידיים, you totally reject eth pe'ulat hapsychologizatzia, psychologizing and historicizing halacha. כמו כן יש לפסול את הגישה הבעל-בתית. Again, when the Rav says balabatit, he means prosaic common sense. There is a common sense of the world of halacha, but he means the common sense of the mundane as opposed to the common sense of halacha when he's saying that it's disqualified. שיש בה התרשמות סבילה, which only reflects passive impression, v'lo yetzira pe'ila, and not active creativity. החשיבה ההלכתית מתנועת הרחק, thought moves b'maslul meyuchad mishela on its own track. Chukeha ve'ekronoteha, its axioms, its principles, einam pychologiyim ve'uvdatiyim, they're not psychological, they're not factual, כי אם אידיאליים נורמטיביים, they're ideal, normative. The Rav goes on to explain how, again, this doesn't mean that halacha is out of touch with reality, but on the contrary, it tells you how halacha... doesn't react to reality, halacha provides an ideal world based on which we then know how to relate to reality as opposed to halacha just being reactive. Okay. Now. So let's try to keep this on one side of the screen. On the other side of the screen, let's, it's been a few weeks, let's try to review the Rav's profound chiddush in explaining what halacha is, what Torah is. So as we discussed and tried to give examples of, unlike human legal systems which begin with concrete situations and figure out how do we deal with it, how do we regulate, how do we legislate, so halacha doesn't begin with a concrete situation. halacha begins with what the ideal in the world of ideas should be and then on the contrary and then in light of that, so what should we be doing in this concrete situation? And this has profound implications for Talmud Torah as well as for spirituality, for avodas Hashem, which is what the Rav is developing here in terms of its profound implications for Talmud Torah. Again, so one example we gave was the teshuvos HaRashba that the Beis Yosef has is that you would have thought that everything about gviyas eidus and who's kosher le-eidus, who's pasul le-eidus, that everything is, okay, when something happens in this world, how should we try to establish the truth of what happened? And yet it's clear from the Rashba, no, that's only if you need to shift gears. But the dinim of who's kosher le-eidus, who's pasul le-eidus, of drisha ve-chakira etc. is not that. Why? Because again it's exactly this idea, right, that we don't begin by looking to legislate and regulate and navigate. We begin as, no, what should gviyas eidus look like? In an ideal world, who should be giving eidus? So again, that's one example of its profound implications in terms of Talmud Torah and again the type of svara one gives. Again, it's not a svara again which is psychological, which is historical, because it all comes from. And then it also has profound implications for spirituality. Spirituality that given the impulse that the ish hadas without the ayin has to try to connect to what's transcendent, which is ultimately a futile attempt because a person is physical. He's guf va-nefesh, he's not transcendent. No, so halacha brings the transcendent down into this world. That's the profound implications in terms of avodas Hashem. We haven't read it all yet. Okay, good. Now. Here's the point I want to say. Here's the point. I don't mean this shouldn't be, this isn't reducing, oversimplifying, but one definitely needs to recognize the parallel between the description of Reb Chaim's derech halimmud and the description of what halacha is here in Ish HaHalacha. Ish HaHalacha could not have been written, could not have been understood; the chidush, the central thesis of Ish HaHalacha could never ever have been discovered, could never have been understood by anyone other than someone who with his tremendous natural blessings and endowments grew up immersed in Rav Chaim's derech. Because to a very significant extent it's a philosophical understanding of what Rav Chaim was intuitively doing. And the parallels when you look at it, it's just so, one of the things that the Rav says about a chidush is one of the telltale characteristics of an authentic chidush is that when you hear it, it's obvious. The Rav draws upon the same analogies and the same analogy to how the mathematicians function; he draws on that analogy here in Ish HaHalacha, draws on the same analogy in trying to explain to people what it is that Rav Chaim was doing. And it was based on that, I'm not saying that there aren't, that's what I'm saying not to oversimplify and not to be guilty of reductionism, not saying that there aren't other intellectual factors which are relevant, there are. But indispensable and central to the philosophy of the Halacha, it's an outgrowth of Rav Chaim's Derech HaLimud. And the truth is that the best introduction, again it's hard to go back and forth in terms of which you can understand, but in a certain sense the best introduction to Ish HaHalacha is this section of the Hesped of Mah Dodech MiDod. Again, none of that in the least bit detracts from or diminishes the originality of Ish HaHalacha, but it explains the intellectual background and part of it, not all of it, part of the intellectual background. If one understood as the Rav uniquely did what was happening in how Rav Chaim explained, understood, analyzed, so if you had the keilim to understand that, and the keilim are not only natural genius and endowment but that certainly is part of it, so then what that yields is this understanding of Halacha that you have in Ish HaHalacha, which again I think is as can be many a absolutely crucial point to what we've been learning and that's how these two interconnect and interrelate. One could even, who does, no one anymore, but one could even really, really practice Rav Chaim's derech and not recognize what it represents. You could be practicing it again sort of kind of paradoxically intuitively without making that translation of what that reflects about Halacha and what its implications are, again not only for Talmud Torah but for... For avodas hashem. The same way, you know, again in the same vein as the mashal the Rav gives, you can be a very good scientist and not be able to have certain reflections about science that a philosopher of science can give you. So for instance, if you go ask, I don't know, once upon a time you go ask an Indian chief, you know, what causes rain? So he'll show you the dance, and I'm not sure if he'll show you the, you know, necessarily outfits or not, I'm not sure exactly all the pratim of the theory. And then you do that and it rains. So the shaila is, you know, before we're not thinking even whether it's right or wrong, but is that a scientific theory or not? So is that even a scientific theory? Even if you'll disprove it empirically, you'll show that, you know, you can dance and dance and then it doesn't rain, and then you don't dance and it does rain, you'll disprove it. But was it a scientific theory that's disproven? So what distinguishes something which is a legitimate scientific theory from something which is magic and hocus pocus? So lav davka that a scientist may be doing that a hundred percent correctly, but he may not be able to reflect upon what it is that distinguishes the two. So this in no way, again, what we're saying in no way diminishes or detracts from the tremendous chiddush and originality of the Rav in Ish HaHalacha, but that is the, you know, indispensable part of the background.