Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

00:03 - Intro (Announcement)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Thinking Talmudist Podcast.

00:12 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
All right, welcome back everybody. Welcome to the Thinking Talmudist of your day to join us here for a fresh study of Talmud. This week's Parsha is Parsha's Chukas Chukas. We have a lot of amazing things. We discussed this in our Parsha Review podcast. We talked about the Red Heifer, we talked about some of the complaints that the Jewish people waged against Moshe and God, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to talk about the poisonous snake that heals, and what is that? So let's read the verse from the Torah and then we'll look at the Talmud.

01:13
They journeyed from Hor, the mountain Remember that this is the same mountain that Aaron Moses' brother, his older brother, passed away on that mountain by the route of the Sea of Reeds to go around the land of Edom, and the spirit of the people became impatient on the way and whenever it uses the term, it's more of a stronger terminology and the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why did you bring us from Egypt to die in the wilderness? There's no bread and there's no water, for our soul is disgusted with the bread. That is insubstantial. God sent against the people poisonous serpents and they bit the people Vayyamos am rav mi'isro'el, and many people died from among the Jewish people, from the people of Israel, from these poisonous snakes. Verse number 7. This is chapter 21 in the book of Numbers. Vayyavo ha'am el Moshe and the people came to Moshe. Vayom ruchatonu ki dibanu ba'. And the people came to Moshe. We sinned in that we have spoken against you and against God. Please pray to God that he remove this serpent from upon us. And Moshe indeed prayed for the people. And Hashem said to Moshe Make for yourself a poisonous serpent and place him on a pole. And place him on a pole, v'hoyo kol hanashuch v'ro'oso v'choy. And anyone who got bitten from these poisonous snakes will look at this serpent that you place on this pole and they will live. V'yas Moshe nechash nechoshes. And Moshe made a serpent of copper, v'yisimeo alanes and, and placed it on the pole. And Moses made the serpent of copper and placed it on the pole. So it would be that if the serpent bit a person, he would look upon the serpent bit a person, he would look upon the serpent of copper and he would live. And that was it. That's the end of the story. And the Jewish people journeyed from there and they went to the next encampment.

04:21
Very interesting what the verses. This is in the Torah. By the way, this story is all in the torah, this week's parsha. You can look chapter 21, verse number four, all the way till verse number nine incredible story and there's a lot of commentary to.

04:36
To look through to see what is happening here, what transpired with the jewish people. An important thing, just to note. We see that they wage a complaint against Moshe, against God and Moshe. What do they need to include Moshe into this? So the first thing the Orchayim brings out that we see from here that they understood that everything that Moshe did was the will of Hashem, not like last week's Torah portion. Korach was waging war against Moshe, saying oh, you're just doing this on your own, you've decided to become a leader over us, a master over us, a lord over us, but it's really not the will of Hashem. Here the people understood and they learned their lesson. No, no, no, no. Everything Moshe does is exactly the will of Hashem. Here the people understood and they learned their lesson. No, no, no, no. Everything Moshe does is exactly the will of Hashem and therefore we're not going to play games against Moshe.

05:33
It's interesting that they complained that there wasn't any bread and water. Okay, we're going to get into that later. But what is this poisonous serpent? The poison in their fangs made their victims feel as if they were burning Snakes that were fitting agents of punishment. The primeval serpent had slandered God to Eve Remember that the first serpent and was cursed forever. It was punished by not enjoying the taste of the food. Now it punished the ungrateful slanderers who defamed the food that had a multitude of flavors. Okay, you're now complaining about what. I made that mistake. The same serpent made a mistake. You're making that mistake now.

06:29
Jewish people, god sends that serpent. You didn't learn the lesson from the serpent that he spoke a lashon harai, he spoke slander, and what was his punishment? He eats dirt and he has. The jewish people didn't learn a lesson from that and therefore God sends them the serpent and says to them guess what? Because you didn't learn your lesson, I'm going to send the same.

06:52
And we talked about this many times in our previous episodes of the Thinking Talmudist of affliction. Affliction comes how? In the exact form, that you need to learn In the exact form. Meaning need to learn in the exact form, meaning that if you don't have, if you don't take a lesson from what it is that you are inflicted by. Meaning that God gives us a lesson for us to learn. That is exact measure for measure. Meaning that God gives us a lesson for us to learn. That is exact measure for measure so that we can learn from it.

07:32
Here, god sends the serpent to tell you. Guess what? Number one, lashon Hara. Number two you complained about the food. You remember my punishment. What's my punishment as a serpent, for speaking against God to Eve? I don't taste food. You're complaining about the tasteful food that you have in the desert. And what was that tasteful food? We mentioned this.

07:55
They had the manna. What was the manna? The manna was a food that tasted like whatever you wanted it to taste like. You wanted it to taste like your ribeye steak. It tasted like that. You wanted it to taste like pizza, like Ed's delicious pizza. It would have tasted like Ed's delicious pizza. Whatever you wanted it to be, it tasted like that. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, ed is our chef, our in-house chef that makes fantastic pizza for our thinking Talmudist lunch and learn every week. So we're deeply grateful. Thank you, ed. So now the Jewish people were punished by the same exact measure for measure, so that they can learn.

08:37
Imagine the people are thinking to themselves one second, why is God sending a serpent? Oh, we spoke Lashon Hara. We said something negative against God, against Moshe. One second, what happened with the serpent? Same thing is a lesson for us to learn. Okay, now Moshe begged and prayed. God says make this, um, make this serpent, put this snake on a copper. He put it on a stick, a copper serpent on a stick. And that's, by the way, the symbol of the EMS. It has six prongs, but it also has, in the middle, a pole with a serpent on it. This is Moshe's pole with the copper serpent on it, which was an indicator that it was a healer and if you look at that copper serpent, it would heal. Okay, now the word nachash and nachoshes copper is nachoshes and the word serpent is nachash, and therefore this was a sign for Moshe to make a copper serpent to perform this miracle. It was a miracle within a miracle of healing.

09:49
Okay, now I want to go to the Talmud. The Talmud says something very, very amazing. The Mishnah talks about things that people in Jericho were doing. There are six things that they did, six that were approved, sort of, by the rabbis and they were commended for, and three of them that were commended for, and three of them that they did not comment on. So now let's begin the beginning of the Talmud. It's a new Talmud that we're studying. Intractate Psachim 56a Like the Mishnah. The following B'raisa describes six acts performed without the prior consent of the sages. Here, however, three of them earned the subsequent approval of the sages and three of them did not.

10:45
Toner Rabbonin, the rabbi's, torna braiso, king Chizkiah did six things al shloshah, hodulo. On three of them, the sages agreed with him, and about three of these things they did not agree with him. So the braza enumerates these six things. What is that? Garer atzomis aviv al mito shel chavolim. He dragged the bones of his father, achaz, to the grave on a bier of ropes, vehodulo, and they agreed with him. Kites nachash nechoshes, vehodulo. He crushed the copper serpent that Moses made in our Torah portion, and the sages agreed with him. And the third thing that they agreed with is Gona sefer refuos, vehodulo.

11:40
He hid the book of remedies and the sages agreed with him. You hear this he hid the book of remedies and the sages agreed with him. And there are three things that Chisgiyot did that they did not approve of. So now let's look a little bit at what is going on here. Why did he do that?

12:09
Why did Chizkiyahu HaMelech, the King Chizkiyahu, hide the book of remedies? And imagine today we have a list of illnesses that people are diagnosed with that is unbelievable, unfathomable. The list of things that people their diagnoses, that that people like, illnesses we never even heard of, on in every part of our body. It's amazing. Imagine you had that book from chris that would tell you the remedy for each and every illness, or that copper snake that would heal any person if they looked at it. And what did he do? He crushed it. He crushed it and got rid of it. So now we don't have the serpent and we don't have the book of remedies.

13:08
Why in the world would Chizkiah HaMelech, king Chizkiah, hide this and why would he crush the copper serpent? So for this I want to look at Rashi. Rashi brings a very, very important Talmud, a different Talmud, a Talmud from the book, from the tractate of Rosh Hashanah. He says why did he hide this? He said it wouldn't heal someone quickly unless they looked with proper intention, with intention, with proper focus, with proper kavanah.

13:57
And our sages in the Talmud said Does a serpent give someone life or death? Does a serpent give someone life or death? If the people would look up at the stick and have servitude to God, if the people would look at the stick and they would look upward and subject their hearts to their Father in heaven, then they would be healed, but if not, they died. This is what the Talmud says. It's an amazing thing. That means the problem is not the serpent. The problem is is that people are not ready to subject their hearts to their father in heaven, their hearts to their Father in Heaven. The illness is just the messenger of God. The cure is just the message of God. That means that if you get it wrong and you have all of your faith in your doctor, you have all of your faith in the medicine, you're missing the boat, totally missing the boat, totally missing the boat. What Rashi is telling us here? Rashi brings from the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 29a. He says the serpent doesn't cause life or death, does it? The serpent doesn't.

15:41
But in the time of Chisg Yoham Melech, someone would get ill. Instead of thinking one second what's God's message, they would run to the serpent, look up, healed, goodbye. They wouldn't even take a moment to introspect, to say where have I gone wrong? They used to go to the prophet and say to the prophet, look at my pain, look at my suffering, look at my diagnosis. My doctor said I only have a month to live. What am I going to do? The prophet would say you're asking. Good, my son. Let me explain to you. The reason why you have this ailment is because you did something. I see in my prophecy. You did something with this organ, with this limb, and you need to correct your way. But what would happen if someone didn't do that properly and instead they ran to the serpent? They look at the serpent, they're like oh, healed, goodbye. I had an ailment, it's okay, I can do whatever I want, because there's no repercussions, because there's no accountability. That means we see something else here, which is that these ailments were a gift from the Almighty, giving them a message.

16:57
Imagine this. Imagine if someone had an alarm that reminded them of something wrong. They did so. They know how to correct their way.

17:04
For example, if someone is in a marriage and before their wife gets upset at them, there is a little bell that goes on that reminds them that when they neglect their responsibilities, she's about to get upset. So what do you know? Oh, I hear the bell. I better pay attention. I better pay attention to what I've done wrong or to what I've been neglecting. Imagine you had such a technology right, so it would. Hopefully. You'd hope. You'd hope that people would be more attentive to their duties, to their responsibilities. But if the problem now became not the wife getting upset or the husband right, but rather the bell is bothering me, how do I get rid of the bell? You're missing the point. That means the issue wasn't that they have strayed from their relationship with God. Their issue became that now it bothered them that they got bitten by the snake.

18:10
The snake is just the messenger. It's just the bell waking you up, saying get back on course. The bell is just a reminder of how you've gone off the path. My dear friends, this is so fundamental when this week's Torah portion is teaching us a very, very crucial message in life that if, and by the way, what do we see? What happened? God forgave them, god forgave them, and that was it. The whole plague was over, but the snake stayed. The snake stayed because there was a hope.

18:51
What happens if you look at how the snake is, at least on the EMS symbol. So the snake, the head of the snake, is all the way on top. And then what happens with this stick? You hold it up, you hold up that staff. Now what happens? You look up. Why do you look up? Not at the snake?

19:16
You recognize that our Father in heaven is the one sending the message that is supposed to be a reminder, that reminds us and brings us to the consciousness that we should have Look up, consciousness that we should have Look up, look up, look up at the heavens. You know, we see a similar idea with tzitzis. Why do we have a blue string on our tzitzis? What's the idea of the blue string of the tzitzis? The idea that the blue string reminds us of the sea, and the sea will remind us of the heavens and the heavens will remind us of God's throne. And every time we look at our tzitzit it will remind us of godliness. It will remind us of God in heaven, it will remind us to stay away from our sins, remind us of God in heaven. It'll remind us to stay away from our sins. That means that there is a conscious reaction that needs to happen, that when someone got ill, they looked at that serpent. It wasn't that the serpent was going to heal them. It's that they're looking up You're looking up at God in heaven, and God in heaven is the one who heals you.

20:39
So why did Chizkiah HaMelech the Talmud here brings that? Chizkiah HaMelech destroyed and crushed this copper snake that was made by Moses, by the word of God, and the sages said said you did a good job. Good job, you did a good job. Why did they say he did a good job? What did he do here? That was right that our sages say good job. So the commentaries here say that while in the wilderness, the Israelites once spoke rebelliously against god and against moses, god punished them with a plague of poisonous snakes and many people were killed. After they repented, god instructed moses to fashion a serpent. Moses made a serpent from copper and all who gazed upon it were healed. Now, their healing came not from the copper image, but from God. However, in later years, people erroneously attributed powers of healing to the large, to the image itself, and began worshiping it. Chizkiyot therefore had it destroyed and the rabbi said you did a good job, you did the right thing.

21:55
Because what's the message of it all? What's behind all of this? By the way, the book contained directions for speedily curing all illnesses. And Hezekiah concealed it Because people were cured so quickly and effortlessly that illness failed to promote in them a spirit of contrition and humility which illness should engender.

22:25
Meaning illness doesn't just come upon a person. Illness comes for a very, very important reason To wake us up. And if it doesn't wake us up, then what's the problem? We're missing the boat. We're missing the boat. Now we also see, by the way, we see that Jacob, our patriarch Jacob, was ill too, and our sages tell us that was the first time there was illness in the world and that was a gift. That means all illness is a gift. Now we pray not to be sick. We pray not to have any illness, we pray that we live a long, healthy life because we want to serve God, and illness would limit that, it would limit our ability to serve as God because of the pain, because of the distraction. So we pray not to be ill. But what else do we see here? We see something very, very crucial, and that is God gave Jacob illness to prepare him for his passing on from this world. God gave Jacob illness and for all of us.

23:48
You know why we say after someone sneezes, we say bless you. Why do we say that? Or we say in Yiddish so gesund, or in German, gesundheit. Why do we say that? Because it used to be till Jacob. How did people die People? There was no illness. People died abruptly. They sneezed and died. Their soul came out and they were done After Jacob, where illness was introduced to the world, that method of death ended. So now when people sneeze, we say you should be blessed, you should have good health. In Russian Russian they say nazdarovya, to be to good health Universally, because we understand that a sneeze used to be the end of one's life.

24:44
With the gift that was given to Jacob of illness, god says I'm going to give you time to prepare for your death, so you can prepare your family, that you can prepare yourself with introspection on the things I may have done right or may have done wrong people. I need to ask forgiveness, amends that I need to make before passing on and leaving this world. It's very important to utilize all illness as an opportunity to introspect. Why is God giving me this? To take a moment and to say you know something, I need to make a change here. I need to do something different. I need perhaps this is my final call. And we all, again we pray that we live long, happy, healthy lives. But in the event that this might be the end of one's life, and again we pray that we have long, healthy, successful, meaningful lives, filled with connection with God, filled with purpose, filled with doing the will of Hashem. But if God decides that this is the end and we are fortunate to have illness, it's an opportunity to introspect and to make a change in our lives, a meaningful change, but I don't know what to do. Well, god speaks to us in the language that we need, and we see here with the serpent.

26:14
Why did the people have this punishment of the serpent? Specifically Because they spoke Lashon Hara. What did the serpent do? He spoke Lashon Hara against God to Eve. What was his punishment? Tasteless food. He's going to have to eat the dust off the earth. What did the Jewish people complain about? Oh, the food doesn't taste good. Oh, there's a correlation here. There's a correlation, there's a connection. It's not random.

26:41
So our sages teach us that if someone injures their arm, god is talking to you. What may you have done wrong with your arm? God is talking to you. What may you have done wrong with your arm. You did something. You have a pain in your eyes. Maybe you looked at something you shouldn't have looked at Again. Nobody can tell you what it is. Each person becomes a prophet Each one of us. We become a prophet when God is telling us a direct message that only we can decipher. We don't have prophets anymore. We became the prophets. This is what our sages teach us. Our sages teach us that we become the prophets, that we are the ones who are able to decipher those messages. This is such an important thing. We can't overlook this. We can't think for one moment that God, by any measure, has just randomly selected an illness here. Let me throw it into this guy. Oh, this is what's happening in the world today. People are getting sick because of this, because from COVID, or people getting sick because of this because of the location they live in. There's nothing random. God gives us exactly what we need to learn to perfect and correct our ways.

28:01
I'll share with you one quick story that is a true story that happened to me, story that happened to me. I mentioned this story previously, but when I was kashering my kitchen a few years ago about eight or nine years ago, what you do is in order to kasher, you have to boil water and then you pour it on the surfaces, on the counters or on any of the surfaces that may be used, for this is for Pesach. I was doing this basically to neutralize if it was meat or dairy or chametz or leavened, and you had non-kosher for Passover surfaces. So if you pour boiling water on it, it will basically neutralize any flavor, anything that was on that surface, and now it becomes neutral and now you're able to use it for Pesach use. You do this with dishes and pots and pans. You clean them and then you can dip them in this boiling water, completely submersed them, and now when you take them out from this boiling water, you got to use a lot of caution, of course and then what happens is they can be used for. If it was meat, it could be used for dairy, and if it was leavened, it could be used for Passover, et cetera, et cetera.

29:22
Okay, I'm not going to get into too much of those details. Either way, I was boiling up water and I was going taking this, this pot, obviously using a towel or two or three, and I wasn't using gloves, unfortunately, after that incident, I bought gloves that are waterproof and heat resistant, etc. Etc. But I was taking this pot over to the counter to kasher the counter before Pesach and I slipped on the floor and the entire pot of water burnt my hand and it was really, really bad. So this is before I became an EMT.

30:00
Even I ran to the bathtub, turned on the water and put my hand under the flowing water of the bathtub and I'm sitting there in excruciating pain, absolutely excruciating pain, absolutely excruciating pain, and I did what my great-grandfather in his book talks about pain affliction. God is giving you a message. What may you have done wrong? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I started immediately having this, you know, moment of introspection. What in the world did I do wrong? Perhaps that God is trying to correct my ways here and I'm sitting over there again in such pain, and suddenly it comes to me, that prophecy, so to speak, comes to me, and I thought that that was the correct answer to the question I was seeking an answer for why did God do this to me? I got the answer. I knew what I did wrong with my hands. That perhaps was the reason that God gave me this pain. And you know what happened Almost instantaneously the pain subsided, almost miraculously.

31:19
The pain subsided. It was the craziest thing. The pain subsided as I was, you know now. It still needed to heal and it still got blistered and it still got all of those other things that it had to deal with but the the deep, deep burning pain suddenly turned off, like like you turn the knob off. That was it, and I was like it's not, like it stopped the burning process, which is what you try to do when such a thing happens. You try to stop the burning because it continues to burn the skin on deeper layers, deeper tissues. It was an amazing thing how it suddenly stopped the pain, and perhaps this was so that in this class we can talk about the amazing lesson that the Talmud here talks about, of realizing that pain and affliction is a messenger of the Almighty.

32:16
And for this reason, king Hezekiah took away this book of remedies, took away the serpent of healing, because people stopped realizing that it was a message from Hashem. And it really is an amazing thing. When I saw this, when I was learning this week's Parsha and looked up this Talmud, I thought that this is an important thing for us to, especially since in the past couple of weeks, we were talking about affliction in our Thinking Talmudist series. I thought it might be important for us to realize what is really going on behind the scenes here. Why in the world is God giving us messages? And, by the way, we can see this with world events. We mentioned this, rabbi Yerucham of the Mir, Yeshiva the great rabbi. He would talk about world events in his lectures, in his sermons to his students. There were yeshiva in Poland. What do they care about what's going on in China? What do they care about what's going on world events in the other part of the world? Because everything that happens is something for us to learn from. See the Baal, shem Tov, says a very, very fundamental rule. It says everything you see is a mirror reflecting back at you. When you see something, god is giving you a message.

33:46
So, for example, if you happen to be passing by a television that's running, you're in the airport and you see a story of a murder, what? There could have been a thousand stories that could have been displayed on the television at the moment that you passed by that television set, you had to see the story about the murder. It could have been a story about the rays of the sun or electric vehicles. It could have been of many other things. No, no, no, specifically that story at that moment. Why? Maybe God is alerting you to murder Me? I don't kill people. Most people in New Jersey don't carry guns, so they don't carry knives either. I mean, what are you talking about? What are you talking about murder? I'm not a murderer. Why do I need to see that story? Well, there's another kind of murder Murder of the tongue, like we discussed in our Jewish Inspiration podcast recently, where people with harsh language speaking harshly about other people, your mouth is like a sword.

34:57
Our sages tell us Life and death are in the hands of the tongue. When we speak negatively against another person, very dangerous. You can kill a person with your tongue. We see this today. It's not a joke in the world of cyberbullying. We see that people take their lives because of bullying, because other people said something about them. They were embarrassed or humiliated in front of their school, in front of their classmates, in front of their friends, and they said they killed me already. I have nothing to live for. It's tragic. Life and death literally is in the hands of the tongue. We know the death. What's the life?

35:51
Someone can be depressed and you can pat them on the back and give them a kind word. You can say, oh, I love your outfit today and change their whole day. You can tell someone how smart they are, how beautiful they are, how intelligent, how kind, how pleasant, how enjoyable it is to spend time with them. These things can change a person's life and if we go out of our way to use our tongue in a positive way, you're bringing someone to life. That encouragement, that kind word, what that does to a person, we know how much we enjoy it. We know how much we appreciate it, by the way, in every level of life. A father appreciates it, a grandfather appreciates, a child appreciates it, a teacher appreciates it, the maintenance crew in the office building that you go for your doctor visit. They also deserve dignity. They also have a family they go home to and you tell them what a beautiful job they've done. You're not humiliating them. You're giving them a vote of value. Oh, I'm a high-end attorney. I don't talk to such people.

37:10
No, humanity, that's our job. Our job to make the absolute best of the world that God places in front of us, of the world that God places in front of us. We can't choose the challenges God puts in front of us. But we can choose how we react to it. We can choose how we deal with it. We can choose how we change because of it. That's what God wants from us and that's why Hezkiyot Ha that's why in our Talmud today, hid it. He hid it. He smashed the copper snake, he hid the book of remedies because he didn't want any shortcuts. And the rabbi said you did a good job, you did the right thing.

38:08
This is our responsibility. My dear friends, if there's one thing we can take out of today's class, it's this idea that we have a responsibility. We have an obligation to do everything in our power to take the messages, take the lessons. God is communicating directly with us. He's talking to us every single minute of the day and sometimes it's a very clear message. But if we clog up our ears and we put headphones on, I don't want to hear anything. We're not going to very clear message. But if we clog up our ears and we put headphones on, I don't want to hear anything. We're not going to get the message. This is our responsibility. This is our duty.

38:56
Hashem should bless us all that we should know no illnesses. We should have no ailments, we should have no diagnoses that we need to deal with. We should have only blessing and good fortune. And in what way can we guarantee that? By recognizing that everything is from Hashem and Hashem wants a closeness with us. Hashem wants a relationship with us and we can attain that closeness and that relationship every single day If we put our heart, we put our mind to it. This is what we're going to get to in a couple of weeks.

39:33
Torah portion. If you just it's within the ability of your lips and your heart to make that connection with God, lips, pray, talk to Hashem, say Hashem. I don't understand. What's the message you're giving me. Send me the message Hashem sends us a message. Sometimes we need an even clearer message. And our heart stop and recognize your relationship with God. God wants a closeness with us. Hashem should bless us all with an amazing Shabbos. Thank you so much.

40:08
My dear friends, any questions? So I explained it Again. I don't. Who am I to explain anything? But our sages show us that there are people who have the same genes and are not affected. It means they have the ability, means the fact that we have the genes doesn't mean that we're going to be affected by it. And, in general, I know people who have a certain genetic mutation that gives them that it makes them prone to blood clots. Who makes them prone to? You know, whatever some type of other them prone to you know, whatever some type of other. So, a, what's the deep message in it? And B, perhaps there is something we can do to remedy it.

41:00
Okay, so today, with the advent of advanced medicine, and even that advanced medicine I say it a little bit sarcastically because, as much as it's advanced, it's so arcane it's like we don't even have a clue. A clue, and we know a lot, but it's still nothing compared to the wisdom that God has already embedded into humanity, into our body, into our blood. We mentioned this previously Blood, the blood has so much information. In the blood you run a blood, you can have a blood panel for you can figure out everything. They can tell you if, in 10 years from now, you are prone or statistically capable of having a heart attack, what, how does that tell you? Well, they see certain things in your blood. It's like, and what is blood? It looks like water to us, but there's so much information there. All of the information is in it. All of the information is in it.

41:53
So, again, it doesn't mean that it's going to happen. If someone has a certain gene, but maybe it's something, maybe in their heritage they also have a flaw of a trait in their dna and they need to change that flaw, okay. So again, I don't have the answer to that, but I I do think that it's. It's definitely something that we see, because the only reason I I know this is because we see that there are people who have those same genes, those same likelihood, likelihood, and don't have the same results. So it's something where Hashem is giving us a warning, saying listen, this is something that your parents or grandparents or great-grandparents may have been afflicted with, but it doesn't have to be the same for you. Okay, I hope I answered your question, marilyn. My pleasure, thank you. Thank you, great question, all right, right, my dear friends, I look forward to seeing everyone next week!

42:42 - Intro (Announcement)
You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.