Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Welcome back to the Muslim Masterclass we have today. We are going to continue the Gate of Torah and we are on day number 185 on page number 959 in the Treasure for Life edition of the Or Chesedik and the Ways of the Righteous V'chol ze einam osim ato, ki kol echod rotsa lilmotos afos, v'chol chidushim, v'chidush edi chidushim
kodem she yeda tzuras hatalmod. Im kein, eich yatslichu kevin she ose lehefech mimas she amokach meyatalmod. So this is, the author here is talking about the different methodologies that people use to study and he was saying that one is specifically better than the rest. Let me explain. When you study Talmud, so first you got to get the narration of the Talmud correctly, the story, get the basic outline. Then you can go deeper and deeper and deeper, but the real exciting part is when you get deeper and deeper into it
and you start seeing, oh, look at this connection to that Talmud and that connection to here and this connection to there. And this is not a contradiction to that. And you're able to go and really dig deep and that's where it gets really, really exciting in the study of Talmud. Some people don't know the basic of what the storyline is of the Talmud and they just get into the fluff without the essence. My grandfather would also bring, the Talmud says that people make a lot of noise when it's empty.
If you take a pushka, take a tzedakah, a charity box, and you put in two coins in there and you shake it up, it's going to make a whole lot more noise than if it's full. My grandfather would say the more full you are with Torah, the less noise you make. The empty ones make a lot of noise. And it's something to understand that there's a process. I remember my grandfather had these two young yeshiva students came to visit him and he asked them, this was probably right before Pesach,
and my grandfather asked them what they're studying in yeshiva. And they said what they were studying, he says, where are you holding in that Talmud? And they were like up to page four in the Talmud that they started at the beginning of the semester six months earlier. They only made it three pages, it starts on page two. They're only three pages into the Talmud. And my grandfather commented that you can't learn like that.
You got to get the full picture because from so many trees, you don't see the forest. You get too stuck on the details without understanding the broader picture. It can be very, very, very, very minimally beneficial to your study. Everything that is written in the Talmud, and if you remember in the previous episode of In the Gate of Torah, we talked about that everything that is written in the Talmud is true because it's all based on the Mishnah, which is all based on the Torah.
It's all it's all sourced there. But it's also all of the notes that were written from generation to generation all the way till the authors of the Talmud and the Mishnah. It's all emes, it's all truth. And we don't question it and we don't change it, we don't add, we don't we don't take away. Because sometimes when people don't learn the Talmud appropriately, it becomes tasteless to them. We're now in our 106th episode of our Thinking Talmudist, of which we probably did 200.
We only started publishing them a few, two years, three years ago. But it really is an incredible journey when you're able to learn Talmud and understand what it is that you're learning. Then it's very, very flavorful. It's not just opinions. Meaning, we wish we understood just what's written in the text, understood the text itself. He says, and a person would be able to learn and understand even in a state of half wakefulness. A person would understand it right away.
And then they would be able to derive fear of heaven from what they're learning. So he says, if you don't learn the Talmud properly, it's very difficult to benefit from it. If you learn it properly, you will understand that every word that's written in the Talmud is truth, is emes. And that every word in the Talmud is divine. And you will also be able to derive from it fear of heaven, understand your relationship with God from it. Fear doesn't mean trepidation. Fear means having clarity.
And every page of Talmud provides for the person who knows how to learn Talmud, it provides clarity. I have notes like this, not of my notes, my rabbi's notes that are the sources for the class that he was going to give each day. So every day he would write out, learn this piece of Talmud to this piece of Talmud. Usually about 20 lines of Talmud. And then he would say, now look at the Rashi. And then he would say, look at this Tosafot, which is another commentary.
And then he would say, look at this commentary, look at that commentary, look at this commentary, like that. Why was he telling us to look at all those sources? Because he wants us to understand how to learn the Talmud. It's not enough to just, yeah, I read it, understood it and goodbye. No, he wants us to understand how to derive wisdom from it. I can't even tell you how many times the best part of the study of the Talmud was when my rabbi would explain it in simple words.
Forget the words of the Talmud. Take it now, apply it to your daily life. How does this apply to my daily life? That it's not just some esoteric conversation, some study of Kabbalistic ideas or aggadic ideas. It's something which is so relevant and so practical today to me now in my day to day life. And this is how we need to study. Whenever we study, the Ramban writes in his letter to his son. He writes the famous letter.
He writes, when you get up from the book, whenever you study, whenever you're learning something, look at how you can make it practical. Apply it to your life. So you're learning the Torah portion. All right. I think every person should have an English translation. You can get online. You can get from Artschool. They have a magnificent, my favorite, Chumash. I have this many years. This is the interlinear translation. So under every word is the translation. So really, it's amazing. You can't go wrong.
You get the whole story. It makes sense. You learn the entire Torah. You read the Torah portion. You're like, wow. Right. Okay. That's great. In concept, in an idea, in our mind. But how does this become relevant to me now, today? How do I apply this? That it doesn't stay in the realm of intellect and wisdom, but becomes practical. It becomes applicable to my daily life right here and now in the 21st century. That's the question.
And that's what every single person should be thinking when they study. And by the way, it should be the same with every experience we have in our day-to-day lives. You have a conversation with someone. Is this something I can learn, something that I can apply to my life from this conversation? Is there something that I can change because of this insight? I learned a new computer program. Today, everything's online. You don't learn any programs anymore. But imagine someone teaches you.
Is there something I can learn from this process? Is there something that can be added to the quality of my life from this? And if a person sees that there is, how do I apply this today? How do I make it real within me right now? And in the Talmud, where it talks about one who employs workers, Reb Zerah, it says over there, he fasted a hundred days to forget the Babylonian Talmud so that it not distract him.
By its disputations from assimilating the Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, the Talmud of Israel. And what else? If one has gone astray in a certain transgression and has incurred the penalty of the death penalty by the hands of Hashem, what should he do so that he might live? If a person realizes that he needs to improve and change his ways, what does he need to do? It says if he was accustomed to reading one page of Torah a day, he should now try to read two.
If he reviewed one chapter once, he should try to review it a second time. If a person would learn something, only he would learn one subject at a time, maybe he should try to review it a second time. We see then that it is the abundance of learning which is paramount. It means learn as much as you can. Don't say I'm only going to learn one verse and I'm going to learn everything I can about this verse.
And I'm only going to focus on one verse because there's a whole Torah. As the Torah tells us, I'm sure he'll bring this. It says the Torah is wide like the sea, deep like the ocean. It is endless. It is endless how much Torah there is. So we have to do as much as we can to acquire as much of the Torah as possible. Because he says that a person, if debate were the important thing, meaning only focusing on one topic and just debating it to death.
He says then shouting and raising his voice half the day on one point, then it should have stated that if he was accustomed, page 962, that if he's accustomed to asking one question, now he should ask two questions, which, by the way, there's a story told about the Gaon of Vilna. The Gaon of Vilna, we know, was a child prodigy, was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant child and adult. You say he finished the entire Torah when he was five years old and the Talmud when he was eight years old.
And he was like delving into the deepest of Jewish wisdom at a very, very, very young age. So when he was very, very young, like a young child, he was learning the commentaries on the Talmud. And he saw the letters Vav Kuf Kuf, which is an abbreviation, which he thought means there are a hundred questions to this. But really, it means it's a little difficult.
It's not a little difficulty with this explanation, but it's not, you know, don't don't break your it's not it's not a big deal kind of statement, which sometimes the Talmud is not the Talmud, but the commentaries of the Talmud will say at the end of a whole conversation, Vav Kuf Kuf, which means you can move on. You don't have to dwell on this too much. He thought it meant there's a hundred questions on this. So he came up with a hundred questions. The little, the young, Gaona Vilna.
And then someone said, no, no, no, no, that's not what it means. It means that it's not so difficult. You don't have to, you don't have to belabor this. So he says, one second, but I had a hundred questions. I have to find a hundred answers now. So he, he had to think through a hundred answers to the hundred questions that he came up with on that topic.
But for us ordinary people, the Torah doesn't say and the Talmud doesn't say, oh, if you asked one question on the verse, ask us, ask two questions. So it doesn't say that. It says quantity is of essence in Torah study. It's quantity that's of essence, not per se the quality. What does that mean? Spend the time learning, spend the time reviewing. It's about the effort in learning. It's not about how well you know it.
And we know this, we say in the introduction to the Talmud, in the introduction to the Talmud. Actually, this is in the, in the, in the conclusion of the Talmud, when we finish learning, when we finish learning every day. So it says as follows. We arise early to learn Torah and the people of the world arise early to get their job, to, you know, follow their pursuits of their career, whatever it may be. We wake up for Torah. They wake up for other things. We toil and they toil.
We toil in Torah study and receive reward. They toil and do not receive reward. This is a big question that's asked. What do you mean we toil and they toil? When I hire a plumber, he toils and he gets paid. What are you telling me? He doesn't get paid. What are you talking about? Of course he gets paid. That's not true. It's true. He gets paid, but he only gets paid if he does the job that I hired him for.
So for example, if you have a leaky sink, Lauren, you call your plumber and your plumber comes and he's sitting under that sink and he says, you know, I think I figured it out. I know why it's leaking. I can need to get apart from Home Depot. He goes to Home Depot, comes back. He tries to replace the part. He says it wasn't the right size. It goes back, comes back. It takes him a whole day.
By the time the day is over, he tells you, I'm sorry. I don't know what the problem is. I tried everything. It's still leaking. I know. But here's your bill. What are you going to pay him? Are you going to pay him? Of course you're not going to pay him. I didn't ask you to work hard. I asked you to fix it. I asked for a final product. But what happens if someone sits to learn Torah?
All right, David, you sit to learn Torah. You set out to understand the whole Torah portion. And you're sitting there for three, four, five, six, seven hours. And by the time you're done, you're like, I didn't understand a word. I kept trying and trying and trying to get anywhere. I didn't get a word done. I didn't understand the word. Is God going to reward you? Yes. Because that's the difference between Judaism and the nations of the world. In Judaism, it's all about the effort.
It's not about the results. The Mishnah tells us in Ethics of Our Fathers. Lo olecha amolach ha-ligmar. It's not your job to attain perfection. Avel iyata ben choren lihi batalim eno. But it is not your freedom to not pursue it. You've got to pursue perfection, but you don't need to attain the perfection. Pursue it. Go for it as much as you can. But don't think that if you don't attain perfection, that you didn't do your job right. You absolutely did your job right.
Uvva peraka ish beka le-shomrinon ki shemeis Ravi Meir, omer Rav Yehuda, al yekonsu tamidei Ravi Meir lekan. Shekan teronim heim. Right? What happened? When Rav Meir died, the Talmud says, Rav Yehuda said the students of Rav Meir should not come in here. Why? Because they're argumentative. Vichol zeh shelo hayah rotzeh lihis batel migir soso. And all this because he did not want to be drawn away from his learning. For Rav Meir was exceedingly sharp, and his colleagues could not fully understand him.
So they were always arguing about understanding the words of the Talmud. But Rav Yehuda said, omer Rav Yehuda, libon shel rishonim ki pischa sheolam. He says that the understanding of the early sages was as broad as the hall of the temple, which is a wide open hall. It was 60 feet wide, the whole way. Ki Rav Meir hayicharif lo amdu chaver uvar sov da tove. Ode Hossam omer Rav Yehuda, libon shel rishonim ki pischa sheolam, vishal acharonim ki pischa shel heichol.
And then the later sages were as broad in their understanding as the sanctuary, not as the temple hall, which was considerably smaller. Ve'onu kamlon nekev machat sidkis. You know how our ability to be open minded, you know how big our ability is for that, how broad our ability is. It's like the eye of the needle and how small it is to get the thread through the eye of the needle. That's how limited we are in our capacity to understand. Ve'omar Ravva Ravva said, ve'anan ke'etzbat be'kira lesfara.
He said that we are like a tent pole stuck into a wall. It occupies that little space. Ve'omar Ravva Ravva ve'anan ke'etzbat be'kira lesfara. And here are the different opinions of what exactly, how they would define the limitations of our ability, of our capacity to understand Torah. Ve'omar Ravva Ravva ve'anan ke'etzbat be'kira lesfara. Our understanding of an argument is like a finger attempting to penetrate hard wax. We know it doesn't go, it doesn't penetrate.
But if you heat up the wax, you're able to put your finger right through it. He says that's our understanding. We're so limited in our access, in our comprehension of Talmud, of understanding the deeper reasons. Ve'omar Ravva Ravva ve'anan ke'etzbat be'kira leshikra. Our forgetfulness is as effortless as the placing of a finger into a hole. It's so easy for us to forget our Torah.
It's almost like, you know, if you think of the words of our sages, and I highly recommend look at the words of the Talmud, look at the words of the Midrash. It's unbelievable, spectacular. It's uplifting. But you know, they didn't ever say a statement just in vain. Every statement they made was backed up by a source. They didn't just randomly, well, why did you say that? Well, I had a rough day and I just, no, there's no such thing. There was a reason why they said it.
Everything was meaningful. Ve'ahshav anan, he says, and us today. Aniyei hadas ein on yucholom lomar ke'etzba ki'im ke'even shayish. He says, today we're so impoverished intellectually that we cannot even compare ourselves to fingers, but to marbles in respect to our absorption of Talmud and of rationale. Ki'im ke'even shayish le'gamara ve'le-sfara. Ve'ahod amav perak b'memadlik, ki'en amav ravah b'shah she'mach nisin adum ladin. Sha'lun aso nasasa ve'natate be'amuna, pi palta be'chokhma.
So there's a famous Talmud, which I believe we did a study in our Thinking Talmudist, of what are the questions that are asked to a person when they pass on from this world. When we pass on, we come in front of the heavenly tribunal. What do they ask us there? The first thing they ask us, were you honest in your dealings? Did you deal with business honestly? Second question, were you debatable in wisdom? Did you discuss wisdom?
Or did you just have your intellect, this is the way I grew up, this is my understanding, and that's it? Maybe there's another perspective. We see that the greatness of Hillel and Shammai, the two houses of study, two major houses of study, they always argued with each other. But do you know what was the greatness of Hillel? The greatness of Hillel is that they always listened to Shammai first. They let Shammai speak. What's your opinion? Then they would debate it amongst themselves.
They say maybe Shammai is right. And then they were able to give their refutation to Shammai and present their own perspective. That's true wisdom. Because it's not just, listen, all the people that vote like me, I like. And all the people that don't vote like me, I don't like. On the contrary, the way it should be, and we talked about this many, many times, that if you want to grow in your personal growth, you want to grow in your maturity of understanding, having patience for other people.
Find a friend who doesn't see things eye to eye with you politically, someone who doesn't see eye to eye religiously, and take them out for coffee on your dime. And only discuss the things you dispute. They think abortion is great. You think abortion is terrible, right? It's murder. And everyone is so passionate about their opinion. Everyone has the right, my body, my right, my choice. OK, everyone has got great arguments.
Talk it out without getting angry, without being judgmental, without getting frustrated, without yelling and screaming, just hear their perspective. You're not going to melt just because you heard a perspective that's not like yours. You're not going to explode because you heard it. That's what Talmud teaches us. When you study Talmud, do you know how you study Talmud? Our sages tell us it's like two knives. You don't sharpen a knife with thin air. You know what you do, how you sharpen a knife?
You take another knife and then you sharpen them one against the other. And what happens? They both become sharper. When you study Torah, you don't take two parallel lines to infinity and never cross each other. You try to find someone who doesn't see it like you, and you're going to constantly be crossing lines. And he sees it one way, I see it another way. Now let's figure out, let's argue it out. Let's debate it out. That's what the study of Torah is.
The study of Torah is not, I remember one of the most dramatic things in yeshiva was seeing two of the rabbis argue in understanding of the Talmud. I remember they were like fire and brimstone, passionate as can be. Their faces were beet red. They were arguing, but how can you say that? Because the Talmud says this. How can you say that? The Talmud says that.
And each one had, but you have this first, but I have that first, but you have this halakha, and the Rambam says this, the Rambam says that, and this Talmud says that. It was, and we were all students, young students, impressionable 15 year old students. And we see these rabbis arguing because this is life. They weren't arguing because I want my opinion to be right. I want the truth. And we're fighting to understand the truth. This is what Torah is about. Torah is Torah's MS.
It's a Torah of truth. That's what it's about. I'm trying to get the truth. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And then to see the rabbis smile and love each other and hug each other, embrace each other after that dispute in Talmud is the beauty of what it's about. It's not that I'm better than you. I have a different perspective than you. Two study partners who learn together. That is the benefit that this is what we would do in yeshiva. We would learn the Talmud.
We would read it together and we would translate it. And my friend, my study partner would say, one second, one second. That's not how you translate this. You translate this with this. Well, well, well, well, Rashi says it like this. The Tosefot says it like that. And then you come into, you get into a whole conversation of looking at it from another perspective.
Which is what in the legal world, when you are arguing a case, the most important thing for you to know before you know how you're going to defend your client is you have to understand what the other person is saying. You have to understand their perspective only when you understand their perspective. You don't have to accept it. You don't have to like it. You have to understand it. Only then can you refute it. Only then can you overcome their argument. That's what Torah study is about.
That's what the Talmud teaches us. And that's what our sages implore upon us, that responsibility in our Torah study. Don't just let it be, well, I'll just learn it quickly, learn it, just get a basic understanding. No, no, no. Get deep into it. Get passionate about it. He says, mashma shetzoroch adam lefalfa. We see that a person has to debate in Torah. A person has to not just accept it.
It means in our classes, technically, what should be happening, you say, Rabbi, how could you say such a thing? That's a contradiction to what you said last time. And we have to understand how it's not a contradiction, because there is no contradiction to the Torah, but it seemingly would be. OK, so we have to we have to discern what are the different perspectives of these two pieces of Talmud and how they differ. This is the study of Talmud. Where contradictions between the Mishnah and the Brights are opposed and resolved.
And to the fact that constant occupation with the study of Torah leads one to reason analytically and to make the appropriate deductions. No se'ndato le'dakteh v'motzeh ta'amim. Aval le'shev kol hayom lefatpeit pesheet ha'shalol ha'soskein. Definitely for a person to just schmooze and quibble certainly is not what needs to be done with one's life. Yeyodim she'enam lomdim be'derach yishora. Kimi rov torach ha'pitputim shehem efatpetim. By just schmoozing around. Then they don't you don't get to study. You don't get to understand when you're just schmoozing about random things.
You will not be able to acquire any of these magnificent gifts. Neither will you be able to study the Mishnah. V'lo midrash v'monateh midrash, v'lo shum chokhmah, mach masrov batlonos v'tachbolos sholayim. Okay, so now he says that a person needs to dedicate himself to the study of Torah. Torah study cannot be just a hobby. Torah study is not a hobby. Oh, I enjoy it. I like going to Rabbi Wolpe's class. I'll go to Rabbi Wolpe's class every once in a while. I go to his class.
Nice, really nice. It makes me feel good. Right, Mark? Makes me feel good. Right, so I'll go to the class. That's not what Torah is about. Torah is about ki heim chayinu, this is my life. Just like oxygen isn't optional, Torah study shouldn't be optional. Torah study is our oxygen. V'idorsh ra b'senim al pasok zeh, and our our sages explain the following verse in Proverbs. Al zdei ish otzel ovarti, v'al keram odom chasar leiv. V'hineh ola kulo kem'shonim, kasu iponov, charulim v'geder avonav neherso.
The verse is as follows. I walked by the field of a lazy man and by the vineyard of a man, and I passed by the vineyard of a man void of understanding. And behold, it was all grown over with thorns. Its face was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down. Mi she'einu machzir tamudo, mitkhilo mishakach rashi prakim. This is one who does not review his Torah study. At first, he forgets general structures. Sof machlev derech hachamim, then he distorts the words of the stages.
Sof sheomer altame, toher aval toher atame. And then at the end, end, end of it all, he confuses that which is pure with something which is impure, something which is holy with something which is unholy. He swaps the halacha and doesn't know right from wrong. V'harehu macher v'solam, and this is destroying the universe. It's like people today who will do anything and promise you that their opinion of communism, their opinion of socialism, their opinion of capitalism, their opinion of war and peace and all of that is absolutely the only way.
That's right. And people, murder is great, murder is righteous, murder is, there are people who think that today and they're convinced by it. That's because they've distanced themselves so much from Torah, from what values, from morals, from ethics. And this is devastating. Alma we see, mi she'einu chozer lo yucha lo horos kadin, anybody who does not review halacha cannot provide halachic rulings. Ela to'e b'rova o'ros, he will end up making a mistake in most of his halachic consult. Ve'amrinu, and we say, Amre Avishmoel, Avishmoel says,
Bo re'ei kama kashi yom adin, come and see how difficult the day of judgment will be. Ve'amrinu, Amre Avishmoel, and we say from Avishmoel, Bo re'ei kama kashi yom adin, She'aset haKadosh Baruch Hu, la dun kala olam kula be'emek Yehoshaphat, where God will judge the entire world in the valley of Yehoshaphat. Ve'kei van she'talmud chacham balifanov, and as soon as a Torah scholar comes before the Almighty, Amar lo, he says, Klu masakte beTorah? Did you labor in the study of Torah?
Amar lo, he says to him, yes. The scholar says, yes. Whereupon Hashem will say to him, Amar laKadosh Baruch Hu, Ho ve'hodeysa lefanai? Emor li, ma kariso ma shanisa? U'ma shamate beYeshiva? He says, God's going to say to him, Thank you very much for telling me the truth, that you learned Torah. So now, please tell me what you read, tell me what you reviewed, and tell me what you understood, what you heard in Yeshiva. So now, the author concludes this chapter by saying,
bringing the Midrash from this verse in Proverbs, Proverbs 10, 1. The Midrash over there says a very important thing. He says, don't let yourself be caught with embarrassment, with shame in the Day of Judgment. Why? What happens on the Day of Judgment? God says, You say, yeah, I learned a lot, and I reviewed, and I did this, and I did that, and I accomplished so much in my Torah study. Okay, teach it to me. And what happens if a person doesn't know it?
He learned it, but he didn't review it. He didn't own it. You see, learning is one thing. Reviewing it is another thing, but then to own it and making it yours is a whole other level. And I need to tell you, this is not a simple task that the author here is encouraging us to do in our Torah study. It's not easy. It's always more exciting to look at the new page of Talmud than to review the last one.
But where do you get the most benefit? When you review. You review it again, and review it again, and review it again, and again, and again. Then it becomes yours. I remember one of my rabbis once said, And by the way, you can do this in the Torah as well. Take a portion of the Torah. It could be your Bar Mitzvah portion or Bat Mitzvah portion. But take any portion of the Torah and say, You know what? I'm going to learn this.
I'm going to read it. I'm going to translate it. I'm going to read as many commentaries about it as possible. I'm going to become a master in this one portion of the Torah. My rabbi back then was telling us about Talmud. Get one tractate of Talmud. Make it yours. Make it yours. You own it. It's going to become your favorite piece of Talmud. Your favorite tractate of Talmud. Why? Why did he say that? He explained.
He said because every time you learn, you will find a reference that relates to it. So you go to a class and they mention something like, I studied that in Genesis 1 verse number 12. I remember that from Genesis 1. If you learn that first portion, that becomes your portion. Because everything is connected in Judaism. It's not like, Okay, now I'm going to learn something that's not connected to anything else relevant in Judaism. No, that never happens. Everything is connected to everything.
And whenever you're learning, the tractate of Berakhot, the tractate of Babakam is brought in. And from Proverbs is brought in. And from this Mishnah is brought in. From that, everything is connected. It all intertwines. It all makes sense. It's all perfect. And that's the goal. My dear friends, the goal of our study, this is the bottom line. We talked about this in our Lunch Learned today. We talked about how sometimes it's just important to zoom out.
So from all the trees, you're able to see that there's actually a forest. Sometimes we get so stuck in the nitty gritty details. We don't see the forest from the trees. And that's a big challenge. We have to be able to see the big picture here. So what we did when we studied Talmud, the first thing we did was pull out the Chumash. Okay, we'd pull out the Torah and say, Okay, this entire book of Talmud is going to explain one verse,
which happens many times. You have many, many books of the Talmud that each are dedicated to one verse in the Torah. One verse, all book. And it doesn't even fully, completely explain everything to you. You got to figure it out on your own. It's fascinating. On one word that Esther said to Ahasuerus at his party, when he said, I'll give you up to half the kingdom. And she says, Okay, so then let's have a feast tomorrow. You and Haman and me. Right?
That's what Esther says. We brought the Talmud. It brings 12 opinions about what that meant. 12 opinions about what? Three words. And then the Talmud says, And one of the Tanaic sages met with Elijah the prophet. He says, Which one of those 12 opinions are correct? He said, All of them. She had in mind all of them. All the different aspects. Each one sorted in a different way. All of them were hers. Fascinating.
Every single word in the Torah is precious. Every single word in the Torah is meaningful. It explains the will of Hashem. If our goal and our mission in life is to understand and to gain clarity, What does God want from me? Then we are the luckiest people in the world. And we are. Because God gives us the explanation. God tells us in his Torah exactly what we're searching for. If you ever see someone leave the study hall excited and energized, I'll tell you why.
It's because they found understanding. They found purpose. They found meaning in their study. That's the goal. The goal is for Torah not to be, The Torah is not dry. The Torah is life. I want to read to you. Here we go. Got it right here so I don't have to leave my desk. Thank you. This is from my grandfather's book. His opening chapter. His first chapter. I'm going to translate it to you. We're going to learn it together here.
It's about the study of Talmud. It's about the study of Talmud. And we think, oh Talmud, it's Aramaic. That's not my pet peeve. You know what I'm saying? It's not my most exciting thing to do, read books in Aramaic. Right? Typically I'd read books in languages I understand. So what does he bring? He brings the Midrash. The Midrash says this is how he starts off the first chapter in his first of the two books that he writes. If Torah, we know this in Psalms.
King David says, So what does King David say? If Torah wasn't my joy, I'd be lost. I'd be lost. Torah, you know what Torah is? Torah is life for the Jewish people. It's our oxygen. If you didn't have Torah, you wouldn't have life. And this is what it says. This is your life, referring to the Torah. And as well it says, Whoever finds me found life. Referring to the Torah. See, my grandfather here explains. Torah is not like any other trait.
It's not like any other subject. Who decides to become a mathematician, a scientist, a lawyer, a doctor? People who have tendencies towards that. They have tendencies. They have certain, oh, this guy's a numbers guy. He loves, he's going to work in the stock market. He understands finance. He's going to, people are attracted to the things that they have tendencies towards. Torah, however, It's not another subject that we study in school. It's life. For us, Jews, Torah is life.
We say this every single evening in our prayer. It's actually our life. When a person, heaven forbid, distances himself from Torah, I can show you a hundred cases where someone says, you know what, it's just not, I'm taking a break. Taking a break. What happens? Their quality of life goes down. Their fulfillment goes down. It's life. For us, as Jewish people, the Torah is not a subject. The Torah is life. The youngsters of Israel who merit to study Torah
should not base their study on their desire for Torah. But rather on the obligation to Torah. What's the difference between studying Torah by obligation or by desire? What's the difference between obligation and desire? You see, desire, and my grandfather is going to explain this in a few minutes. Desire is an emotion. Obligation is logic. You've got to do it. So what's if you're not in the mood? You've got to do it. What happens if you do it because you enjoy it?
It's just fun. I like it. What happens if you're not in the mood? Out the window. Right? You understand? That's the difference between emotion and logic. I'll give you an example. What's a better thing for a person to fall in love with? A spouse because he's just attracted and infatuated by her looks, her personality. I know she has terrible traits, but I'm just so obsessed with her. Or I know she's the right thing, and the love will grow.
I know she's the right thing. I know she's everything I'm looking for. I don't feel the emotion per se, but I know she's the right thing for me. One is intellect. That won't break. One is emotion. Most likely will break. Because you don't always have that emotion. Our emotions come and go. Our intellect is solid. I know this is right, so I'm going to do it. I know this is wrong, I'm not going to do it. But if it's emotion, it can sway, it can get pulled.
I see emotions like bubble gum. Pull it this direction it goes, that direction it goes. It pulls in all directions. That's emotions. You pull it in every way. Yeah, I don't want to go there, but my friend said I should go, so I'm going to go. Why not? I don't want to be right. But if someone is using their intellect, it's the wrong thing, I'm not going to do it. So now we understand something very important.
You see, the more we exercise our intellect, the more we'll make the right decisions. When we know it's right, we're going to do it. When we know it's wrong, we're not going to do it. Because I trained myself in my study of Torah based on my intellect, not my emotion. Emotions are very powerful. In fact, emotions are one of the most powerful things we have. But if we allow ourselves to be controlled by our emotions, we're in deep trouble.
Because then one person can tell you this, oh, I guess so. Another person tells you that, oh, I guess so. Pulling you to all directions, and your emotion gets pulled all over the place. That's very dangerous. In previous generations, Jews knew that without Torah, there wasn't life. Everyone learned Torah, everyone was involved, everyone was part of a Jewish community. However, in our generation, our modern day generation, very few people know and understand their obligation to study of Torah. What does it mean, an obligation?
That means, if you want to, I'll give you an example. Think of your soul as a Tesla car. Is it a recommendation or an obligation for you to plug that thing in, in order to recharge your battery? Is it a recommendation? It's not a recommendation. Once you run out of power, you're done, right? Well, who's Elon Musk to tell me what to do with my car? Well, it's just not going to move, okay? Our soul is the same thing.
If we don't charge that soul with Torah, it's going to spiritually die. The atrophy of that soul is real. That's what is being said here. But how do we know this is the power of time for learning? Who is the one who uses Am Yisrael Amiti? Who is the one who presents the Torah? You want to know what the representation of the Jewish people is? It's those who study the Torah, who understand what Hashem has prescribed for this world.
And these are young yeshiva students who are studying Torah. They understand and they're learning the word of Hashem. And by the way, it's not theirs. It doesn't belong to them. It belongs to each and every one of us. It doesn't belong to the yeshiva students. It belongs to each and every one of us. There was a member of Knesset, a secular member of Knesset. She stood up from the podium of the Knesset.
You know, there's this big argument now whether or not the yeshiva students should go serve in the army. So she said, I have no problem with every single yeshiva student being enlisted to the military. But who's going to study our Torah? If you're ready to take every secular child and demand that he go learn Torah, then I'll do it. Because someone has to stay at the guard of the Torah. Someone has to be studying Torah all day, all night.
And if it's not going to be the yeshiva students, then you're going to have to get the kids from the kibbutz to go study Torah. Someone has to stand at the guard. We have to understand that it's the central mechanism of Judaism, the study of Torah. So someone who is studying in yeshiva, don't think you just picked a nice school, an academic school of Torah study. Right? You can go for electronics and you can learn science. Excuse me. You can learn engineering. You can learn law.
You can learn medicine. And you can learn Torah. No, it's not the same. We have to know that the study of Torah is not another topic. It's not another subject in our notebook. It's life. The truth is, without Torah, there is no life. The first part of studying Torah, which is an obligation for every Jew, is to obligate myself to study Torah. I got to learn Torah. Yeah, but it's not so much fun. It will become fun. But it starts with the obligation.
It starts with dedicating myself. I need to commit time every single day to the study of Torah. It can be five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, two hours, five hours. But I need to learn Torah. Because otherwise, I'm unplugged. And I need to be plugged in to charge my battery. And the longer we charge, the more power we have in our connection with God. Now, does that mean that that's the only way a person can connect to God? No.
It's one of the commandments, one of the major commandments of the Torah. But it's only one of the commandments. We have 612 others. And we have to perform the other mitzvahs as well. But how are we going to know how to perform them if we don't learn them? So, as a summary to this chapter and now, my dear friends, before we resume next week with our final chapter in our journey here, we're going to learn the gate of fear of heaven.
And I think that this is really, really a momentous occasion for us to be finally reaching the end of this book, this final chapter. We only have 11 days, 11 days of our study where we stop by day. Next chapter we begin is the gate of fear of heaven, day number 186. And I congratulate all of you. I want to thank you for being my rock. Because if you weren't here, it would be very hard for me to learn this all by myself. Right?
So, you know, this is an incredible joy. I would love to throw a party when we're done this book. So, those of you who are not part of this study, jump on the bandwagon. Now, join us on TorchZoom.com. Join us on the podcast. Join us live here in the classroom at the Torch Center. Because this is going to be an incredible conclusion, the 28th gate of the Orcha Tzadikim. With that, my dear friends, we conclude tonight's program.

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