The True Meaning of Shavuot: An Agricultural Festival and the Problem of Celebrating Law

Introduction: The Two-Part Agenda

Instructor:

Yeah, we’re good. So this is the story. We’re going to say pshat [simple, straightforward interpretation] on Shavuot, the true pshat, and then we’re going to talk about what was the question in my clickbait? Oh, about Torah u-Mesorah [Torah transmission]. Yeah, why it’s not a good idea to believe in Torah u-Mesorah. Okay. But first we have to say the Torah u-Mesorah.

So it’s very important to understand the true pshat of Chag HaShavuot [the Festival of Weeks], because most people are very confused about it. I’m repeating what my friend Rabbi Dvir Lehrer told me today, or wrote on his Facebook. And I will repeat it in my way. And it stands on something very, very simple. Okay?

The Problem with Shavuot: What Is This Holiday Actually About?

The Uninformative Name

Everyone knows that there is this Yom Tov [holiday] called Shavuot. And its name, as most names of things in the Torah, doesn’t inform us much about what it is, because Shavuot just means weeks. So festival of weeks, Chag HaShavuot, festival of weeks—very informative, helps us very much.

Of course, you probably know why people think it’s called that way, because we counted seven weeks to get there, which is again not very informative or useful. So we don’t really know what this means at all. Right? Everyone knows.

The Missing Source for “Zman Matan Torateinu”

Then if you look in your Machzor [holiday prayer book], you’ll see that it says Chag HaShavuot, Zman Matan Torateinu [the time of the giving of our Torah]. And that is, again, another problem for people that come to my class. They’ve all heard that this is entirely non-present in the text. Not only in the text, also in the Mishnah, it doesn’t say. Nobody knows why anyone decided that Shavuot was—I mean, we know why, but it’s not—there isn’t any original source for the holiday being about the time of the giving of the Torah. That’s one question.

The Conceptual Problem: Why Celebrate Receiving Laws?

There is a bigger question than that, which we discussed last year in the shiur [class/lecture], that was on Shavuot, I think, which is that what’s—that sounds like a weird reason to have a holiday in any case. I mean, Zman Cheruteinu [the time of our freedom], or becoming free from Mitzrayim [Egypt], becoming of our independence, that’s a happy thing. Zman Simchateinu [the time of our happiness], which just means our happiness, but happiness for something, also makes sense.

But celebrating the day of the receiving of a Torah is a kind of weird thing to celebrate. I don’t know much comparative culture or religion, but I don’t really know of many other peoples or cultures, or even our culture—the Torah doesn’t say, right? But I don’t know of many ideas of celebrating the day of the signing of the law, or the giving of the law, or the declaration of independence—that’s Zman Cheruteinu. July 4th is not when the constitution was written. The constitution was written 11 years later or something. There isn’t a constitution day.

Student:

Yeah, nobody knows of it, okay? Nobody makes a barbecue.

Instructor:

So it doesn’t count. So that’s the question. Very basic question. Two double questions. One is that I think this question goes together because if you read the Chumash [the Five Books of Moses] in a simple sense, everything over there makes sense. Right?

A Methodological Principle: The Torah States Only What Makes Obvious Sense

Reading Without Rashi

One of the secrets of the Torah is that if you read it without Rashi [the primary medieval Torah commentator], it makes more sense. In other words, most of the problems, like Pshuto shel Mikra [the plain meaning of Scripture] and so on, kind of fall away. This is something that Rambam [Maimonides] noted in his book, in the third part [of the Guide for the Perplexed]. Okay, this is not our subject today, we’re going to skip it.

The Torah Records Only Observable, Tangible Things

But see, the Torah makes sense. And it does make sense to celebrate in the way that the Torah discusses things makes sense. The Torah says you should remember the day that you went out of Mitzrayim—that makes a lot of sense. The Torah doesn’t really give historical reasons for any other holidays. And the reason it doesn’t make sense—Mikra [Scripture] means, the language forever remembers last week’s shiur. And it makes sense.

People are happy, or in the Torah it says, when you cut your harvest, you harvest your stuff, your land, your food, you’re happy. Or maybe when you gather it into your house in the seventh month, you’re happy. Things like that, all the—what we would call spiritual things don’t say anything, right? That’s because those things don’t make sense, right?

The Torah doesn’t say anywhere—Rambam talks about this, it’s not something that we discovered—it doesn’t say anywhere because that’s a spiritual thing. Did you ever see that? Nobody knows about it. So it doesn’t say in the Chumash. There’s only things that we could see, right? That’s what Ramban [Nachmanides] says. I mean, Rambam doesn’t say it. It has the opposite shitah [approach/position]. But anyways, that’s why it doesn’t say anything about Olam HaBa [the World to Come] or anything like that.

Applying This to Shavuot

So we have to understand this story. So this is a problem with Shavuot, that it both doesn’t say and doesn’t make sense. And the reason why it doesn’t make sense—sorry, the reason why it doesn’t make sense is because it doesn’t say. No, the reason why it doesn’t say is because it doesn’t make sense.

Every person understands. He sees harvest, or he sees gathering, or he sees independence, or he sees being delivered from some enemy, like Chanukah, Purim—all those things make total sense. As everyone knows, they tried to kill us, they didn’t succeed, therefore we eat. Makes total sense. But we got a law, therefore we eat—that makes no sense. And it’s right that it makes no sense, because it doesn’t say in the Torah, right?

And the Midrash it says, and the Gemara [Talmud] it says—it doesn’t even say in the Mishnah, maybe, but the Gemara says things that don’t make sense also, so it’s not a kashya [difficulty/question]. But the Chumash only says things that make sense, so that’s why.

When I say it doesn’t make sense, I mean doesn’t make sense at first glance, right? I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense. It’s not obvious. It’s not simple. It’s not something you can explain to a ben chamesh le-Mikra [a five-year-old beginning to learn Scripture], or like the Lubavitcher Rebbe is saying. At five years old, you don’t understand that. So it’s a baya [problem]. Okay?

The Real Pshat: Shavuot as an Agricultural Festival of the Land

The Simple Answer

Now, there’s a basic debate. There’s a real answer to this question. And I’m repeating from my friend, Rav Dvir, today. That it’s very simple. Okay? And if you get the real, the basic answer to this question, you’ll understand also how it does make sense to talk about Matan Torah [the giving of the Torah], not in the way that most people talk about it, but in the real pshat. And the Rishonim [early medieval rabbinic authorities] are also going to ask for this pshat.

And the Torah does say what Shavuot is, and very explicitly, if you connect it to other pesukim [verses] and other context that we know about this. You’ll understand why it’s called the festival of weeks, but it doesn’t say in the Torah—it doesn’t say like this.

Student:

I just want to say the Muslims do have the last 10 days of Ramadan to celebrate the giving of the Torah and Laylat al-Qadr [the Night of Power].

Instructor:

I don’t know, but it’s like Matan Torah?

Student:

No. That’s a different revelation.

Instructor:

Okay, maybe. Maybe. I wonder if it’s a good analogy. I don’t know enough about that.

Student:

Do you think it was also that which I remember from the Hindu tradition, where they also had a celebration between the Mahabharata, whoever it’s called, the epic and the narrator?

Instructor:

Yeah, but that’s not a book of law.

Student:

Okay.

Instructor:

So laws are a problem. Why would we be so happy about it? Okay, so like this.

The Explicit Torah Sources

The simple pshat is like this, okay? The simple story is like this, and it’s so simple that the fact that we didn’t realize it until today was because we’re so brainwashed now by all kinds of Torah ideas that nobody understands, and they forgot to say the things that we understand.

So the simple pshat is like this. And the Torah, it says like this, it says something about Chag HaMatzot [the Festival of Unleavened Bread], and then it says, if you look both in Parshat Emor [the Torah portion Emor, Leviticus 21-24], where the story of Shavuot is said, the story of it, and then Parshat Re’eh [the Torah portion Re’eh, Deuteronomy 11-16], and it’s a slightly different way, but both of them say something like this.

Shavuot Did Not Exist in the Wilderness

In the Midbar [wilderness], for example, there was no Shavuot, right? There was no holidays. B’chlal [in general] there was Pesach, because we’re commemorating Mitzrayim. The story of Parshat Beha’alotcha [the Torah portion Beha’alotcha, Numbers 8-12] is the people celebrating Pesach in the Midbar, but other than that, it doesn’t make sense. They didn’t eat in the Sukkah. They were in the Sukkah.

Student:

Oh, yeah.

Instructor:

Or Sukkot Shavti [they dwelt in sukkot/booths].

But these holidays are holidays of people living in their land. So in general, as I said, in Sefer Devarim [the Book of Deuteronomy] it’s made explicit, and in the entire Torah, even in Sefer Vayikra [the Book of Leviticus] in the Midbar, it’s sometimes explicit that the Torah was given to people living on their land, right? And this is even more explicit for Chag HaShavuot.

The Agricultural Framework

It very explicitly says in the beginning of the mitzvah [commandment] of Sefirat HaOmer [the counting of the Omer] and Korban HaOmer [the Omer offering], Sefirat HaOmer and Shavuot, in the book of Leviticus chapter 20-something, it says, and then you will—it says, you will make, and then in the beginning of Sefirah it doesn’t say, this is what you’re going to do, it says, and then it says you will count, and then it says, and on the fiftieth day you will bring—you will bring what we call, and that will be—that’s what we call Chag HaShavuot, right? Very, very clear, right?

Very simple story, and the story is as simple as can be. But if you know a little bit about the order of the harvest, which I don’t know—I just know it from this story in the Torah—but I’m assuming that this is true also if you look around in the fields, which at least in Israel, in the way, mostly the way the agriculture works, there are grain cereals that start growing, that they harvest, their time of being ripe and harvest. Because earlier on, there are things that are later, right? In general, it goes like this.

Modern Alienation from Agricultural Reality

I’ll tell you a very interesting understanding of it. Everyone knows, and if you listen to my shiur on brachot [blessings] and tefillah [prayer] and Rambam recently, you’ll learn about this. Everyone knows that we live in a very weird situation. Why do we live in a weird situation? Because most of us go to work every day in the morning, and at the end of the week or the end of the bi-weekly period, get some kind of paycheck.

Nobody knows how exactly our work made that paycheck—something Marx called the alienation of labor. Do you know how your paycheck comes from your work? Nobody knows. Somehow, you don’t know how your labor produces the value that you get out of it. Somehow, there’s a system that somehow claims that if you fill out a lot of forms, you press a lot of times next on the internet during the week, somehow—

The Agricultural Cycle as the Foundation of Torah Life: From Modern Labor to Ancient Harvest Rhythms

The Distance Between Modern Work and Natural Cycles

Modern Workers vs. Capitalists and Entrepreneurs

Instructor: And therefore, you’re able to pay rent. And therefore, you’re able to continue your life. But there’s very little cycles of production, where you see I did work, and then I receive. I get my reward, right? It grows. It sells a little bit more.

Student: So people that are their own businesses or people that are capitalists, they do…

Instructor: If you’re a capitalist, then you’re closer. It’s very weird—workers are the furthest from the ancient system. The capitalist and the owners are closer to it.

Student: The others, like someone who gets percentage of the field, like a sharecropper?

Instructor: Yeah, that’s still a sad situation, but yeah. But I’m saying nowadays when you’re a worker, you just work. I get it. I mean, you just work for a day and you get your payment. It’s very little connected to natural cycles. There’s business cycles or there’s cycles of production, you don’t really know about that. You just live in your…

Student: Slavery would be tied to production. You would get more or less.

Instructor: Maybe, maybe, or maybe it’s smoothed out. But there’s no… And that’s why we’re living a very weird, weird, weird world. But the Torah assumes, and like I’m saying, the modern capitalist or someone who invests and waits for the business to give tithes, right, bear fruit, or someone with different kinds of entrepreneurship—there were different ways you could come close to this. And this is the basic cycle of a farmer in the olden, in the ancient times. And until not very, not so long ago, about 80% of humanity were farmers or auxiliaries to the farmers.

The Torah’s Two Occupations: Farmers and Warriors

Instructor: And you read it—in the Torah, it’s only two jobs that are mentioned: farmers and the warriors. That’s basically what you do. And they can—the winter you farm and the summer you fight. That’s more or less…

Student: What about hunters?

Instructor: Hunters? Mostly, yeah, not much. I mean, Esav was a hunter.

Student: Well, Yaakov was a farmer.

Instructor: Yaakov’s father, a pastor [shepherd].

Student: What? Like…

Instructor: Precious man [Nimrod], yeah. Yeah, those are bad people.

Instructor: Okay, okay, let’s go, let’s go back to… We’re going to get involved in this.

The Natural Cycle and the Blessing for the Year

Understanding *Barech Aleinu* [Birkat HaShanim: the blessing for prosperity in the Shemoneh Esrei prayer]

Instructor: Point is, there is a natural cycle. And therefore, for example—and people get very confused—there’s a *bracha* [blessing] in *Shemoneh Esrei* [the Amidah prayer] for money, for *parnasah* [livelihood], right? It’s called *Barech Aleinu* or *Barech Einu*. And if it’s in the summer or the winter. And that’s a *bracha* for something called the year. What is the year? Nobody knows why we’re blessing the year.

But the year over here means the crop of the year. It doesn’t mean literally the year, or maybe the opposite. The word *shana* [year] probably originally meant the crop of a year, or a cycle of crop. And then was borrowed to mean also just a period of time, which we count more or less by the seasons, which are what gives us the crop cycle.

And therefore, the *bracha* for *parnasah* is that this year’s crop should work out. That’s why in the winter we pray for rain, and in the summer we sort of just pray for the protection of it, which is called *tal* [dew], but it just means that the already grown fruit or cereals, or whatever you’re growing, shouldn’t be ruined by too much heat or anything like that. That’s what *morid hatal* [He causes the dew to descend], that’s what *birchat tal* [the blessing for dew] means. If anyone didn’t know yet, that’s what it means. You can read all the poetry around it, and you’ll see that it says explicitly that.

The Two Seasons: Planting and Waiting

Instructor: So, this is the natural cycle, right? Now, this means something like this: Since, at least in the kind of climate that we’re thinking of, generally there are sort of these kind of two main periods, which we call summer and winter in general, in which, in something like in the beginning of the winter or sometime in the winter, you plant. And then you wait a few months and nothing happens. You wait for God to send rain. That’s God’s part in this process. You don’t do anything. You’re sitting around and reading *Tehillim* [Psalms] or writing books or whatever it is that you’re doing during the winter, playing cards or whatever, and making Hanukkah life, whatever, all kinds of random stuff. And then in the spring things start to grow.

The Terror of Late Winter: Survival and Starvation

Instructor: Now this means, for example, that the end of the winter is a very scary time, because after things start to grow you have to figure out a way of storing your grain for the whole year, because otherwise in the winter you’re barely going to have anything to eat. This is why the end of the winter is a time of starving. That’s when everyone starves. If you read any ancient things, you’ll see we don’t have enough food to last through the winter. And the winter ends, we start rationing our food.

Student: Yeah, there’s American stories about this, but all kinds of stories.

Instructor: Like I said, until not so long ago, people lived like this. Now, this means that when it comes, like, *Chodesh Adar* [the month of Adar], that Purim has a big interesting thing that we have a *Yom Tov* [holiday] in that time. But when it comes, like, Adar, the end of the—you know, like, February, March—people are kind of really, really tense, and they might not survive because if the harvest comes too late you’re gonna be dead.

*Chodesh Ha’Aviv*: The Barley Harvest and the Meaning of Pesach

The First Harvest: Barley

Instructor: And then finally comes *Chodesh Ha’Aviv*. *Aviv* literally means the—and what does *Aviv* mean? Literal translation?

Student: No…

Instructor: *Aviv* means the barley harvest. *Aviv* literally means the barley harvest because this is the first cereal that is harvested, that becomes ready, becomes ripe. And finally, we’re sort of happy that we survived. We have some barley, and we could eat a little bit.

This is why we have Pesach. Or not exactly Pesach, at least the second day of Pesach. *Korban Omer* [the Omer offering]. Pesach is when we have the independence. But there’s a second interpretation of Pesach, maybe the second half of Pesach. There’s all kinds of random theories about explaining the connection with this and Pesach. But *Korban Omer* means we’re happy that we survived this year. Now it seems like we’re going to last for another few weeks. We have food.

The Nature of Barley: Poor Man’s Food

Instructor: Now, unfortunately, barley is not a very good grain. Usually we call it, in *Chazal* [the Sages], *ma’achal behemah* [animal food]—animals like to eat it. Okay, you can give it to your animals, you’ll eat that, and you’ll kill the animals and eat them. You could survive on it, you could make bread out of it or something. It doesn’t make very good bread. Did you ever eat bread from barley? It’s not very good.

And it also doesn’t rise very well. At least in the ancient times, I’ve read, or that’s what my friend told me today—I’m trusting it for now—that nowadays maybe you could put artificial yeast, but in the ways that bread rose and became *chametz* [leavened], it’s very hard to make barley into *chametz* because naturally it doesn’t ferment. It doesn’t have the gluten content or whatever it is to make it into *chametz*.

So barley is usually eaten—if people eat it they eat it like it says in the Torah by the story of the *Omer*: *kali* [roasted grain], *karmel* [fresh grain], with all kinds of random—you make cereals, you make some farina out of it, or you bake it, you make some kind of cakes, all kinds of things. It’s kind of a poor man’s food, but at least he survived.

*Korban Omer*: Thanksgiving for Survival

Instructor: That’s called *Korban Omer*, and of course we bring the first one to the *Beit HaMikdash* [the Temple] to show our appreciation for the beginning of the harvest. And that also, if you think about it, actually matches very well with the historical meaning of Pesach, which is that we survived, right? We got out of Egypt, we survived, we’re here, we have some *matzah* [unleavened bread]. We don’t have much to eat, we have some *matzah*. *Matzah*, which is—*matzah*, you’re *yotzei* [fulfill the obligation] with barley, for sure, right? Sort of *matzah*, or all barley is *matzah*, or *matzah* is made out of barley, and you’re fine.

*Chadash*: The New Grain

Instructor: Okay. *Chodesh* [month], that’s the big thing of *chodesh*—there’s a new thing. Right? You read the story of *Shemitah* [the sabbatical year] and *Parashat Behar* [Leviticus 25], you see it’s like, if there’s a great, great abundance, you still have old grain from last year. Usually, it uses up at the end of the year, at the end of the cycle.

Now, you go to the *Beit HaMikdash*, you make a big party, you bring some *korban* [offering] and so on, and now you go back to work.

The Seven Weeks of Harvest: Labor and Anxiety

The Most Stressful Time of the Year

Instructor: So this is one of the most stressful times of the year in this kind of system. You go back to work and it’s getting hot and you’ve got to go in the field and harvest all the things that grow. And within these seven weeks, more or less—another few weeks—if you’ve ever spoken with farmers or you’re going to the *kibbutz* [collective farm] in Israel where they have all kinds of random plants and stuff, every few weeks, during the summer, basically from Pesach until sort of like *Chamisha Asar B’Av* [the fifteenth of Av], every two weeks something else gets ripe. It’s literally a schedule, more or less.

And every few—you’re basically at work, and when you harvest, you have to go to work from the morning, from *vatikin* [dawn], and you wake up before the sun, because you don’t have a lot of time, and you can’t work at night, so you have to fill up all your time working. That is what people do for seven weeks.

God’s Protection of the Harvest Weeks

Instructor: That’s why there’s a *pasuk* [verse] that says in Yirmiyahu [Jeremiah] that Hashem [God]—it gives rain in time and then He watches for us the weeks of those that need to be watched. You need to make sure—sometimes if there’s a random rain or a random cold flash or something, everything gets ruined and then you’re dead for that year. So you gotta make sure that you have your good harvest and you’re working on that.

That is—that’s the time, like someone that has—nowadays we, like I said, we don’t really live like this—but someone who sort of has some investment and then this is the time where it vests, right? He gets his proceeds. And you have to make sure right away to put it away, to take it out.

Torah as Utopian Vision: From Survival to Thriving and the Economic Blueprint of Shavuos

The Transition from Barley to Wheat – Surviving to Thriving

That’s basically what people do during the harvest. That’s the harvest. Now, when you go a little further into the time, like in the time of Shavuos [the Festival of Weeks], we get the wheat, chita [חיטה: wheat], and wheat obviously could be made into chametz [חמץ: leavened bread], it could be made into much better things than barley. And that’s why we’re very happy about this. And we do something called shtei halechem [שתי הלחם: the two loaves], and we make it into—that’s called, we’re not just surviving, we’re also thriving. That’s the difference.

Student: So, Pesach [פסח: Passover]—

Instructor: Exactly. That’s a little Zohar pshat [פשט: interpretation]. It says, but it’s a pshat. From the letter, it’s a pshat and it’s 100% true—from lechem oni [לחם עוני: bread of affliction] we’re going from surviving to thriving, which is the same thing. I was going from Yetzias Mitzrayim [יציאת מצרים: the Exodus from Egypt] to Matan Torah [מתן תורה: the giving of the Torah]. And I think about a little more—explain you how this connects to that, what this means, what does this have to do with Torah.

Identifying the Source: Dvir Letterer

Okay, now what does that do with Torah? So he says like this. Either I had a different pshat once, but more likely this pshat, and this is more—see, this is more—so I’m gonna say that I’m saying this pshat. If you want my pshat, you could look in some old—I need you—you don’t know him, you should know him, but it’s complicated. He lives in Israel. Look it up on Facebook: David Later Letterer. Letter Melamed [מלמד: teacher]—letter, a teacher. From a teacher, from Germany, is called a letter. Anyways, so I don’t want to say a leather worker, not a leather—a letter, a letter.

Student: No, that’s with a D.

Instructor: Okay.

The Connection Between Torah and Material Abundance

So now we have to understand what does this got to do anything with the Torah, okay? Seems to be very gashmius-istic [גשמיות: materialistic], like the Mashgiach [משגיח: spiritual supervisor] would say. So now, besides for gashmius—there’s nothing wrong with gashmius, what? Yeah, like we spoke last week. Besides for the Torah not being—nothing wrong with gashmius, that’s what you should be happy for—there is also a more basic pshat with Torah that has to do with this. And this is also very clear if you read Parshas Emor [פרשת אמור: the Torah portion “Emor”] and Parshas Behar [פרשת בהר: the Torah portion “Behar”] in a slightly different way. You’ll see that the Torah is what creates even more abundance and more happiness in this kind of time of harvest, where you finally—how do you say—you finally, finally fulfill your options and you get the money from the work that you did all year since last year, and God helping you with his rain during the winter. And that is like this.

The Litvish Pshat: Torah as Covenant of Sustenance

So my Litvish pshat [Lithuanian/rationalist interpretation] was that the Torah says that if—the basic deal of the Torah is called a bris [ברית: covenant], and the Torah says that if you won’t do the Torah, you won’t have food for your animals. So, of course, if you have food, that means you did the Torah. That’s what the meaning of the word Torah basically, in the Chumash [חומש: the Five Books of Moses] at least, for the most part, means this. That was my old Litvish pshat.

Now I’m going to give you a better pshat, because that’s like very thin. Although it’s true, and we can get into a lot of Torahs about that, but I’ll give you a better pshat from Reb Dvir [Dvir Letterer].

The Better Pshat: Leket, Shichcha, and Pe’ah in the Context of Shavuos

And he said like this. The words that say in the Torah about Shavuos, it says like this: After it says the mitzvah [מצוה: commandment] of Shavuos, it says [the laws of leket, shichcha, and pe’ah—לקט, שכחה, ופאה: gleaning, forgotten sheaves, and corner of the field]. So randomly—and this was more or less repeated from Parshas Kedoshim [פרשת קדושים: the Torah portion “Kedoshim”]. Or it was repeated, it said already in Parshas Kedoshim. So randomly in the middle of Hilchos Shavuos [הלכות שבועות: the laws of Shavuos], we got Hilchos Leket Shichcha Pe’ah [the laws of gleaning, forgotten sheaves, and the corner of the field].

Obviously, if you read the story of Megillas Rus [מגילת רות: the Book of Ruth, read on Shavuos], it’s also the same story of that. And what does it have to do with anything? You understood what it’s got to do, because that’s the time that we do it. But it’s still kind of out of place.

And the tzavua [צווי: commandment/teaching] is that Shavuos is this celebration of this period where we finally receive a reward. The time of sachar [שכר: reward]. You work and you get reward. You work all winter and you get your reward. Things grow in the spring and the summer.

Economic Organization and Torah’s Blueprint

Now, it’s very important to realize that there are better and worse ways of organizing your economy. The worse ways make everyone have less money, and the better ways make everyone have more money. What are those better and worse ways called?

Student: Okay.

Instructor: No, we explained that this is only worse for capitalists, because it’s kind of capitalist. There are people that invest, and—could you make the air conditioning higher, if you could? I mean, stronger, like put it down. There’s a remote over there.

So that’s capitalism. Cold. Cold.

Student: Make it colder, if you mind, if you don’t mind, unless you’re too cold. Just put it down two degrees.

Instructor: So that is like this. There are better and worse ways of creating a society and having money. And of course, the whole point of the Torah is to have the better way. That’s what Torah is.

Rejecting the “List of Obligations” Reading

And it’s very important, because we have this crazy way of reading the Torah as a list of obligations. And that’s nonsense. Nobody would be making up for a list of obligations. The point of a Torah is—

Student: People do it.

Instructor: No, they lie to themselves that they do it. You can come to the shul lastly, but they don’t do it. People say a lot of this. But what the Torah is—no, what I mean to say is like this.

The Problem with How We Read Legal Portions

When we—we use, for example, we read—we read—there’s different parshiyos [פרשיות: Torah portions] that we read, right? If you—everyone reads every week the parsha of the week, whether you hear it in shul [synagogue] or you read it yourself or you hear something about it. And everyone that does that, that follows the cycle, knows that there are parshiyos that are more—that people are more happy about the parsha, that people are less happy about, right?

They’re like a story of the Shemos [ספר שמות: the Book of Exodus]—everyone is kind of happy. It’s a lot of delicious to say. Or some parsha of like—and this—there’s parshiyos of Chumash [חומש: the Five Books] that other people like, like Vayikra [ויקרא: Leviticus]—people that love those parshiyos. Everyone has their stories that they like, right? Bereishis [בראשית: Genesis], Noach [נח: Noah], all these nice stories that the kids like, and the teachers make them pictures, and so on.

Then we read, like, Parshas Mishpatim [פרשת משפטים: the Torah portion “Mishpatim”], or Parshas Kedoshim, or whatever parsha—just a bunch of lists of laws. And some of them are happy, because they could say a shiur [שיעור: Torah class], and that’s nothing to do with the parsha. It’s like a halacha [הלכה: Jewish law] that’s mentioned in it. It is the parsha, technically. But most other people are kind of bored and waiting for it to finish, right?

Student: True story. I think it’s the lowest in Ibn Kaspi’s ratings, right? He gives ratings, he rates them, he rates the stories.

Instructor: Yeah, yeah, fearless. He’s a huge fan of ratings.

Student: Okay.

Instructor: But I’m saying this is a fact, right? Everyone rates stuff. And wait, wait—I’m not going—I’m not going to give ratings now. What we’re going to do is give you—is that good YouTube short? Do you drag them into the columns?

Student: Different, yeah. No.

The Conventional Orthodox Approach to Legal Texts

Instructor: What I’m saying is that this is one of the reasons why we’re very weak. Like, what do you do? What is your attitude? What kind of story is it? Read like a Parshas Kedoshim. Take a parsha, like a self-contained, how do they call it, a code of law, right? More or less tells you everything about how to be a Yid [Jew]. Like a little bit of Yoreh De’ah [יורה דעה: a section of Jewish law], a little bit of Choshen Mishpat [חושן משפט: a section of Jewish law dealing with civil matters], a little bit of Arachin [ערכין: valuations], a little bit of Even HaEzer [אבן העזר: a section of Jewish law dealing with marriage], a little bit of everything, right?

Or in the Book of Devarim [דברים: Deuteronomy], from Re’eh [ראה: “Re’eh”] to Ki Tavo [כי תבוא: “Ki Tavo”], more or less, right? There’s all these self-contained little versions of the Torah, and Parshas Mishpatim, and Parshas Beshalach [פרשת בשלח: the Torah portion “Beshalach”] even, and so on. So, in case this—I’m sorry, there’s all these little things, and people just read it.

Now, who does read it? How do we think it should be read? Like I said, if someone is like a halacha guy, if you’re like, okay, or in general, you’re like an Orthodox Jew, and Orthodox means something like, I think that the Torah is a list of obligations, so you’re like, wait, this is something you have to do. Do we have to do it like this? Do we have to do it like that? We could have discussions. Does it really mean this? Do we have to do Heter Mechira [היתר מכירה: the halakhic mechanism of selling land to a non-Jew to permit agricultural work during the Sabbatical year]? Do we not have to do that? That’s really what—how we read it, right?

And if you read it that way, then okay, if you’re like a halacha guy, you’re going to have some use out of it, because you have—that’s how you make your money. But not exciting. Nobody is happy with it, right? Nothing exciting, right?

The Deflating Experience of Matan Torah

Like I was by a shiur—a Litvak said, “Wow, everyone likes Parshas Yisro [פרשת יתרו: the Torah portion “Yisro”] because we’re told that Matan Torah is a great thing.” Although it’s just a list of laws also, but there’s at least these nice stories of the thunder and lightning and Kol Shofar [קול שופר: the sound of the shofar] and like dramatic. And then like, okay, and what is the Torah? If you read every day, then it’s Parshas Mishpatim, which meant to be a little—

Student: Canadian?

Instructor: Hello, that’s why we have Shavuos. We eat cheesecake so we should know the difference between Eved Ivri [עבד עברי: a Hebrew servant] and Eved Kena’ani [עבד כנעני: a Canaanite servant]. Doesn’t make sense. And that was—yeah, that’s how we know—the kids, you learn Torah. That’s the message.

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: But that’s nonsense. Not—I discovered that’s what—no, the truth is these people usually are—some of them that have—they enjoy learning Choshen [Choshen Mishpat]. That’s why they do it, right? They must have some pleasure in it, and they identify that pleasure with God, which is cool.

Student: Now I think you mean cool in a real way.

Instructor: Yeah, I mean—okay, this is not our conversation. We’re just making fun of Eden now.

The Proposed Alternative: Torah as Utopian Description

The—my point is that I have a better way of reading it, okay? And it’s a much—I think that we have to read Parshas Kedoshim and Parshas [Behar]—all these parshiyos—like each one of them is like a self-contained thing, I think. And you have to read them as descriptions of utopias. That’s basically what they are.

What they are is—and they’re all imaginary. Nobody that read the Parshas Behar talked about how we’re going to sell our houses and we’re going to have all these complicated rules for how and when you could be go’el [גואל: redeem] in your real estate. This never really worked.

Torah Laws as Utopian Vision: Why Chag HaKatzir and Zman Matan Toraseinu Are One

The Utopian Reading of Torah Law

The Problem with Contemporary Yeshiva Systems

Instructor: But of course, the *Takanos HaYeshiva* [yeshiva regulations] that I know are a bunch of nonsense. They’re all there to serve the *Mashgiach* [yeshiva supervisor], not to serve anyone else, right? They’re not about serving God. They’re not even *Mechillik* [beginning] with us. They’re *Moedah* [institutions], right? There’s a system. It has to work. We’re serving this system, right?

But let’s say I was a *Tzaddik* [righteous person] and I would go to *Har Sinai* [Mount Sinai]. And I would go to *Hashem* [God] and I would say, let’s imagine together a kind of system, a list of rules that will not serve the people or whoever is on top, like make sure that he—

You know, why is there a certain time when you have to be there? Otherwise it would be very hard to teach everyone specifically. That’s really what he would have to do, because that’s his *mitzvah* [commandment], to teach the kids. But since he’s lazy, he wants to do it all at once. He says, everyone has to be by the time on the *seder* [schedule]. So the *Zman HaShiur* [class time], the *Shmir Zman* [keeping to the schedule], I’m here to serve him. Nothing wrong, but it’s not here.

Yeah, you’re like, you come. In the olden days, it wasn’t *Zman* [fixed times]. You look at the *Gemara* [Talmud], how they describe it. You come in the morning, you ask the *Ka’ash Ha’aleh* [question that arose]. There was some kind of structure, but I’m not saying we shouldn’t have structure. I’m just giving you an example of like, you could very obviously see that we all live within certain structures.

The Contrast Between Human Laws and Divine Laws

Like *Moshe Rabbeinu* [Moses our teacher] was living in *Mitzrayim* [Egypt], right? In *Mitzrayim* they were full of laws and they didn’t live without laws. Not like we imagine like, came to *Torah* and gave laws. Everyone has laws, right? Problem is, these are not divine laws, right? These are laws that serve power, they serve whoever is the one that makes them.

You make sure everyone’s on time because otherwise it’s hard for them. They make sure that you get—there’s a whole law that you have to count your harvest so you should be able to tax it, you know? All kind of laws like that. So right, many great laws that like we have, right? If you will deposit more than ten thousand dollars you have to report it because so the government should be able to track you if you put drugs. Okay, that’s a law but not helping me at all, right? Not helping God. Maybe it is, Christ, but probably not.

Moshe Rabbeinu’s Utopian Project

But so now *Moshe Rabbeinu* came and he said, let’s imagine how this—how do we organize? We have to do a lot of things. We have to make a king maybe or not a king or a *Kohen* [priest] or whatever. But also we have to make laws. So let’s imagine the list of laws that are going to be the best. They’re utopian. All the laws are utopian, almost all of them.

They’re not extremely utopian because they’re referring to the power that people have, like we discussed in the last year. But they’re utopian in the sense that if you look at them as a unit, as all together, they’re describing some kind of ideal situation and they’re solving all the problems.

Of course in reality you never solve the problems because whenever you make a law to this direction there’s a problem from the other direction and you need a living *Beis Din* [rabbinical court] to solve this kind of contradictions. Every law is opposite law, right? You shouldn’t get to look at but not too much, right? Like we talk about their comments and so on.

But ideally if you read *Parshas* [the Torah portion]—or *parshiyos* [Torah portions]—they’re all about creating this fully perfect laws.

Student: Yeah, yeah, that’s the opposite position that I would talk about last week.

Instructor: Now I’m just trying to tell you what this—like it. But what is the point of this law? It’s not that this you have to do, you have to do it maybe. But the point of this giving these stories I’m like telling you is something like—

The Aseres HaDibros as Utopian Vision

And the *Aseres HaDibros* [Ten Commandments] are a version of this, right? We had a lot of *shiurim* [classes] of this *Chumash* [the Five Books of Moses] to explain what the *Aseres HaDibros* were. But what explanation would be something like: Let’s think of like the most basic things that in our ideal world, this is what everyone will follow. Very simple.

They’re going to believe in one God and they’re not going to swear on his name falsely, which is the main use of believing in one God, by the way. And they’re going to respect their parents and keep *Shabbos* [the Sabbath] and not steal or lie specifically in court—or yeah, we had a *shiur* about what that means—and they will not take other people’s things, they’ll respect property and not their women, not their property, not their honesty and so on.

That’s the story. That’s a beautiful story. You want to make it real? You’re gonna figure out a lot more things than just this list of ten laws. But it’s a very beautiful story. What it’s describing is like a vision of how everything could work in this most beautiful society.

And if you would say, oh, I need some more details. They say, you know what? Let me tell you. There’s this thing called slavery. I think it would be really nice if we have a special law that slavery has to have a time limit. Oh, but wait, sometimes we’re being very perfect here. Sometimes it’s for the good of the slave to stay there. Okay, so we’ll have some special institution called [*Eved Nirtza*: a slave who chooses to remain in servitude] that will solve that problem, and so on and so forth.

Student: Are you saying it incorporates full reality, essentially, instead of just thinking of one specific person?

Instructor: I’m not saying, but I’m saying just one point: That instead of reading a whole list of things that have to be done, you read it as the script of utopia. Imagine you would write down, you have better laws, you know something, make your own laws, no problem.

Student: Like a current state utopia.

Instructor: Yeah, utopia, a realistic utopia. It’s not a not realistic utopia where like, we’re going to have no private property and we’ll share our women like the *Republic* [Plato’s Republic]. No, it’s very realistic utopia based on solving all the problems that I can think of that I can see you have now. But it’s not there to give you just what you have to do.

Reward and Punishment as Evidence for the Utopian Reading

And how do I know that this is not what a *Torah* is doing? Because it always promises something called reward and punishment. What is reward and punishment? Everyone knows, *Ikara d’Torah shekhar v’onesh* [the essence of Torah is reward and punishment].

Reward and punishment means, look, now you’re in punishment. You’re in *Mitzrayim*. Why are you in *Mitzrayim*? Because *Mitzrayim* has bad laws. They serve the king and everyone else should suffer. That’s called being in *Mitzrayim*.

We’re going to have a *Torah* for free men and we’re going to have an organization of society that’s worthy of free men. And that’s the reward. It’s literally said the reward is you’ll be free, right? That’s what it says.

The Egyptian Tax System vs. Torah’s Redistribution

Or you have laws in *Mitzrayim* that are—you read *Parshas Vayigash* [Genesis 47], you see the laws of *Mitzrayim*. All the agriculture of *Mitzrayim* is organized so that the king should have his 20% tax. That’s basically why they plant over there. And what do they do with the 20% tax? God knows what.

And we’re going to have different laws. We’re going to have also taxes but they’re going to be for your benefit and they’re going to be for all the poor people so they’re also planned. Very different than *Mitzrayim* that all the money goes to the rich get richer.

We’re going to have this whole system of taxes which is going to end up supporting the *Kohanim* [priests] which teach people to be good people and supporting the poor people like it says in *Sefer Devarim* [the Book of Deuteronomy] more explicitly.

We’re going to have this whole law of harvest and we’re back to where we are. We’re going to have this whole law that when you harvest you make sure that you’re not the only one that enjoys the harvest. All the poor people—the *Ger* [stranger/convert], *Yasom* [orphan], and the *Almanah* [widow]—we have all kinds of random tricks of making sure that when you harvest it’s not you, it’s not just the you and the five people on top that make all of the money, that get all the product. It’s going to be also for the poor people. That is what the *Torah* is.

Why Chag HaKatzir Equals Zman Matan Toraseinu

Good story. Now, and for such a story you should make a holiday, not a *shiur* [class]. And you should call us *Matan Torah* [the giving of the Torah]? No, but *Matan Torah* we’re not saying something different than *Chag HaKatzir* [the harvest festival]. We’re just saying that we have a better one because we have a *Torah*. This is what the *Torah* was about.

Student: What do you mean? That’s going cultural.

Instructor: Yeah, but like I said in—in the agricultural society which is the whole world until like 250 years ago, the main—like the main economy is that like being successful means—and still means that in some sense but we’re living we’re in a lot of distractions—but basically means that.

So maybe you can say but right, you know *Shevet Levi* [the tribe of Levi] and *Kohen*—and *Levi* is a *Levi* also. That’s why we have all these *pesukim* [verses] in the *midbar* [desert], in *Devarim*, that’s why we have to go in the *moadim* [festivals] to *Eretz Yisrael* [the Land of Israel] to *Yerushalayim* [Jerusalem] to give the *Levi* that they should also have a *Yom Tov* [holiday]. Otherwise they wouldn’t have—

Yeah, but it’s not—*Torah* doesn’t—it’s not even the *Rambam* [Maimonides]. *Shevet Levi* is—when he has a *Yom Tov*, he doesn’t need the *Yom Tov* because he’s always learning. But his *Yom Tovim* [holidays] are still, in the literal sense, like I said, we were saying the *pesukim*, because everyone is trying to say complicated things, nobody understands.

The *Shevet Levi* also enjoys the harvest. That’s what it says explicitly in the *pesukim* of *Shavuos* [the holiday of Shavuot], the *Levi* is also enjoying the harvest. Of course, everyone is going to use it. The point is not just to live and have money. The point is to do things with that, with your life. Nobody disagrees with that. And then, like the general, there’s people like *Levi*, or whoever you want to call it that do more of that. That’s not a problem.

But it’s still the *chag* [holiday] is still a *Chag HaKatzir* and it’s the *chag* of this ideal idea that when you live in the *Torah*’s *Torah* life then you have a better *katzir* [harvest] and you have more money and you’re more happy and your wife is more happy, your children are more happy, the poor people are more happy, they’re less poor or at least provided for. And that is why it’s *Matan Torah* [the giving of the Torah].

I think that’s the best *pshat* [straightforward interpretation]. It’s very good *pshat*.

Conclusion: What We Actually Celebrate

So what do we celebrate? That we got a lot of money. Unfortunately nowadays we’re not—they’re not my kind of *Torah* and we don’t have more money so we should not celebrate, we should cry instead. That’s what they go—*Nishma* [we will do and we will listen].

The True Meaning of Shavuot and Ezra’s Takkanah: Reading the Curses Before the Festival

The Real Celebration of Shavuot

Instructor: So what do we celebrate? That we got a lot of money. Unfortunately nowadays we’re not—we’re not my kind of Torah, and we don’t have more money, so we should not celebrate, we should cry instead. That’s what they do in Nishina [unclear reference], but they don’t realize. That’s why I have to learn all that.

What is the actual celebration? I’m celebrating what? This idea of that ideas were given of how to make the world… Not we’re given, we’re living it. We only do the holidays living it. The Yom Tov [holiday] is living it. It’s not talking about it. Talking is worthless.

So we’re celebrating the day… After, it’s in the Torah. It’s when you’ll come to the… Again this is the part—there’s only one time of the year, or one week, it’s not a day, it’s worth it—it’s the weeks, it’s that period. You can’t dance around or whatever you do that’s called celebrating holiday—you do it one day, but it’s like a choice. It’s not one day, it’s the period, right? And this is the time where you actually pocket the money that you worked on all year. And how did it work the money? With the Torah. Without the Torah it wouldn’t work. Yeah, that’s not specifically the day.

And what is obvious? I have a whole different delusion [discussion?] for the second part for that. It’s not what’s obvious. It’s obvious who is making it is different, is different than wait… Yeah.

Student: Okay, so you already know you can—you shouldn’t go home.

Instructor: I had a lot of other theories to say about that. But this is a very good pshat [interpretation]. No, but I have to finish this, because it doesn’t actually work.

The Problem: We Don’t Actually Have Torah

In other words, we’re not there. Not entirely there, at least maybe to some extent we are. This last year there was a post-Shavuot drasha [sermon] to explain in which sense we do have a Torah, and we should be happy. But in many senses we’re not.

And obviously, how do I know that we’re not? I mean, already in the times of the Torah, it was not. That’s why it says that Yamim Tovim [holidays] are kind of fake, if you’re not mekayim [fulfilling] the Torah. And there’s all kind of prophets that say this and say that nobody needs your Yom Tov. It’s not just about having a lot of cheesecake. It’s about this system that is supposed to work and make you more happy and make everyone more happy. And that’s what’s called a Torah.

Unfortunately, at least if you believe that there’s something called galut [exile], which the Torah itself talks about, right? And it says very clearly that it’s because you don’t follow the Torah—in other words, it’s going to destroy you. In that sense we don’t have Shavuot. We don’t have any other Torah.

Is it bad or is it just… Oh, it’s just… Then you come up with all kinds of Torahs. You start talking about obligation and you start talking about links up all night, talking about all kinds of random things, because you don’t have the basic thing and you don’t even have the language.

And you come… I mean, why would we cry? We seem to be doing great. Okay, no problem. We also didn’t know what Shavuot is, so nothing is working. That’s a real problem.

Ezra’s Takkanah: Reading the Curses Before Shavuot

I could even tell you a drasha about this problem if you want. Not a drasha, something very important. Also, I’m going to explain you something that seems like just a mando [?], mystical school in a very simple, serious way.

Anyway, it says in Talmud Bavli [Babylonian Talmud] that Ezra HaSofer [Ezra the Scribe] was metakein [instituted] the takkanah [ordinance], that we should read Birchot HaKlalot [the blessings and curses] before Shavuot, remember? That’s why we read Bechukotai [Leviticus 26] usually in our order—I don’t know if that’s what Ezra meant, but in our order, usually Bechukotai is one week before Shavuot, right?

And in order… Bavli doesn’t really understand this. It says, “Tichleh shanah v’killeloteha” [Let the year end along with its curses]. Okay, what does that mean? A siman [sign]? We should talk about klalot [curses] in the end of the year, so… Do you know what that means? What does “Tichleh shanah” mean? It’s like you should be sad on Rosh Hashanah so the next day you should be happy. What does this mean?

The Inadequacy of the Standard Explanation

That’s what we need Ezra for. Ezra, the one who basically created the reinvention of the Torah, that we still have in some sense. We need him to tell us a nice segulah [spiritual remedy], that we should read all of the Torah before Rosh Hashanah. And also before Atzeret [Shavuot], because you know that in the beginning of the lesson Atzeret was like a little Rosh Hashanah. And very nice, it’s a nice random segulah. It’s worth a bit as much as eating apple and honey in Rosh Hashanah.

So I’m going to ask you, what is your… My name is Ezra. Ezra, I’m from Israel, I’m a little kid, I’m from Atzeret, and I’m learning Atzeret. What do you like about it?

Good question. People have asked this question or this question before you, but that’s what it says in the Gemara [Talmud]. It’s probably… That’s what it probably doesn’t mean. This—our order happens to work out that we do this. Doesn’t perfectly work out, but probably as they just did a keriah [reading], they read it, nothing to do with the say that I should or whatever. I don’t know if Ezra had this parasha as I did it even. That’s it. Yeah, it’s their own thing. That’s budget shop [?].

But what is going on? I don’t know what’s going on. This is one of these things—you read and everyone talks about it, it’s like random thought. Nobody knows what it means. Yeah, it’s a good poetry, but seriously doesn’t mean anything.

Okay, so I’m going to tell you what it means.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a nice round… Yeah, you should eat all half a lot of honey on Rosh Hashanah so you should have a good year. Did you ever—did anyone ever test out that if you eat more happily on Rosh Hashanah you have a better year?

Yeah, it’s cute. I’m not saying what works for me. It works? Yeah, it works. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but it’s like that. Nothing interesting.

But I think that if you know the context, you’ll see that it’s very serious. Not very serious, not very simple.

Understanding Ezra’s Context and Mission

You remember Ezra? Who was Ezra? Ezra was the one who read Birchot HaKlalot, who read Parashat Bechukotai and Parashat Ki Tavo [Deuteronomy 28], but maybe even more Bechukotai in some sense, and said, “Wow, this is the story that happened to us.”

It’s so obvious that some apokalipsis [apocalyptic scholars?] said that Ezra must have written it, right? Remember? What I’m just showing from that is that it’s very obviously talking about him, right? He was the one from his work, from his project, his life project—you can see that this is what he internalized. He’s living in this framework of the Birchot HaKlalot of the Torah.

Ezra’s Diagnosis of the Problem

Ezra came and said, “Klal Yisrael [the Jewish people], we’re stuck in this. We’re post-exile in some sense, but we basically didn’t solve the problem of exile yet. We had this beautiful kingdom, right? Malchut Beit Sheni [the Second Temple kingdom]. It ended. We got stuck in exile. And we’re struggling to restart the thing, right? Not working very well. We have the Zerubavel tribe. Struggling, struggling, struggling. Jerusalem is not very good, well-protected. Look at these problems, right?”

And then what does he come and he says? “Well, we have a plan for this problem. What’s the plan? My basic plan, Klal Yisrael: If you see people struggling, if nothing is working very well, it’s because we don’t do the Torah.” Not because it was a fundamentalist, like that guy that says he’s going to have the economy of the Mekka [?], because he said, “Wait, we have to create a society. We’re in exile because we don’t know how to manage our society well. So we’re going to learn how to manage it, and then we’ll have a better life.” That’s what it says in Birchot HaKlalot. This is the Torah, right? Results-based validation.

Ezra’s First Public Torah Reading

So Ezra came, and he told people this. He said, “Look,” and he was the one that invented—I don’t know if invented, but he was the one that did the first recorded keriah ba-Torah [public Torah reading] in history. Came to Jerusalem in the seventh month, in Rosh Hashanah. It says in the Birchot HaKlalot. And he read them the Torah. Which part of the Torah did he read them? Sefer Devarim [the Book of Deuteronomy], Sefer Shemot [the Book of Exodus]. Certain parts he talks about, but we…

He read them the basic idea that he took from the Torah and he explained that. It says in the Torah that if you will deal clearly with your… This is what Ezra said, okay?

Ezra as Malachi

He wrote a book called Malachi where he explained himself very well. And he said—Malachi, this is Ezra. Two words. Of course this was Ezra. If it wasn’t Ezra, then it was his gilgul [reincarnation]. What’s the difference? Same idea. He came and he said—it was his pen name.

Student: What do you mean?

Instructor: Malachi is a fake name. It’s the most obvious pseudonym in the world. Malachi, “my messenger.” Okay, who? Malachi.

So he said… And he said in the book… So he said, “Look, you’re not going to work out if all you’re going to be doing is trying to integrate with the local elites, and you’re going to not care about your own women and children. Every person who has his wife that he married when he was young, and now she’s not beautiful enough for him and he’s richer, and he goes and he hangs out with the Bnei Yishmael [children of Ishmael] over there, like Mahmoud and Kalyan did, like the story of Bnei Moav [daughters of Moab] and Parashat Pinchas [Numbers 25], Matos [Numbers 30-32], like the Torah says will happen. And then of course you will not be successful. Your society will lose its coherence and you will fall apart.”

That was one of the things he said. And he said a bunch of other things in that vein.

Ezra’s Systemic Reforms

And he said, “Listen, we have a good system.” He was very into the economic system—the ma’asrot [tithes], the terumah [priestly offerings] and so on. He said, “Look, if you’re going to be taking ma’asrot and not doing anything, not being an accountant, not doing the job of a Kohen [priest], not teaching the people, not making them better, you’re just a ganav [thief]. You’re not helping Hashem [God]. You’re destroying Him.”

He made all kinds of takkanot [ordinances]. And he tried to say, “We have to follow the Torah. We have to do Shemitah [the sabbatical year]. We have to do all these things in order that the system works.”

So he was the person whose life project was implementing the plan of Birchot HaKlalot, the plan of the Torah. That was his project. Ezra HaSofer. That was his life plan. And he explicitly—this is not my Torah. He explicitly says this. He explicitly told them, “This is what it says in the Torah,” and tried to get them to follow the Torah. “And then things will be better for you.” Okay?

The Meaning of “Tichleh Shanah”

And we explicitly know that he did this when… So, I guess it says in the Gemara before he read… So that… What does “shanah” mean?

[Chunk ends mid-discussion]

The Agricultural Cycle of Torah: From Survival to Thriving

Ezra’s Teaching on the Harvest Cycle and the Four Periods of Judgment

Ezra’s Reading Before Rosh Hashanah: Understanding “Shana”

Instructor: Okay? And we explicitly know that he did this when, so, I guess it says in the Gemara [Talmud], he read, so that, what does *Shana* [שנה] mean? Thank you very much. *Shana* in the year. *Shana* in the harvest cycle, right?

So, if your harvest didn’t work out very well last year because you didn’t do *Ma’aser* [מעשר: tithing], like it says in the Book of Malachi, you don’t have *Ma’aser*, nothing works because everyone hates you and people steal your stuff and you don’t have a very good society. Therefore, what do you have to do? You have to start doing *Ma’aser* and then the next year, after Sukkot [סוכות: the Festival of Tabernacles], you’re going to do planting again. The next year is going to work better. Right?

And the Gemara said, or imagined and said, that there’s basically two times when we talk about this. One is Rosh Hashanah [ראש השנה: the Jewish New Year], so Ezra was the one that basically created the idea of Rosh Hashanah as we discussed, it doesn’t say in the Torah. But Ezra very explicitly told everyone to be true about Rosh Hashanah, and that makes sense. But also, very obviously on Shavuos [שבועות: the Festival of Weeks/Pentecost], because Shavuos is what it says in the Torah, you’re going to come to the land and you want things to work out well, so you’re going to do the *katzir* [קציר: harvest], and you’re going to give your poor people their stuff.

Well, every single person here is on their phone. It’s amazing.

And you’re going to give the poor people their stuff, and you’ll have a better year. You’ll have a better year. So he taught the people this before the harvest, like before the year cycle starts, which is why Rosh Hashanah is the year of *Ma’adin* [מעדין] for the people, and after it started or in the time that it’s already starting to happen and show them did you have a good harvest this year? Well if you did it was because you did it. If you did to the extent that you didn’t it’s because you didn’t get the tires. I tried to start this again.

The Mishnah’s Four Periods: Agricultural Logic, Not Random

Instructor: And when it says *me’arba’ah perakim* [מארבעה פרקים: “in four periods”], well I’d say it’s a *parashat* [פרשת] on remember that it’s also not random right? Why it says *arba’ah perakim*? What does it mean? You’ve been *cheesed* in Swiss because it says I thought what’s the point. What is this all about? What did Mishnah [משנה: the foundational text of the Oral Torah] get this from? What is this all about? Who told them all these things?

Student: Exactly.

Instructor: It’s as simple as can be, right? As we discussed. On Pesach [פסח: Passover] is when the *tevuah* [תבואה: grain/cereals] starts coming. So Pesach is when we see if the *tevuah*, which the cereals, right? The grains, barley and then the wheat and then all the grains if you have are coming. So on Pesach, that’s the time when we see if the *penicillin* worked out. Alright, the *tevuah*, right?

Then, if you ever went to a farm you can see this even in Lakewood, you’ll know that the fruit trees or tree fruits, right? Like, what kind of fruits basically grow later in the summer. Each one has their period.

Hebrew Agricultural Vocabulary: Kayitz, Zamir, and the Harvest Seasons

Instructor: For example, the word *kayitz* [קיץ], you know the word *kayitz*, right? But *kayitz* people think means summer. *Kayitz* means fig harvest, right?

Student: What?

Instructor: *Kayitz* means cutting figs, specifically. Yes, read in the Torah, you’ll see, always. *Kayitz* is something that has to do with *te’ena* [תאנה: fig]. And *zamir* [זמיר] means, *et hazamir higi’a* [עת הזמיר הגיע: “the time of pruning/cutting has arrived”], means cutting grapes and so on.

Student: What?

Instructor: Yes, yes, yes, we do. In Venezuela and so on, we have words for this, because if you live in this world, it’s obvious. There’s specific words for this. And *kayitz* just means, it’s the latest I think it’s one of the latest things that’s why we call it *kayitz* like *Tammuz* [תמוז: the Hebrew month of Tammuz] of before that we have like for example like it says I mean maybe *kuran oven* right which time of the year was the time when the grapes get ready right that’s about *Tammuz* more or less a little bit a little bit after *chayos* [חיות] so and in other words are the things that grow in the summer.

The Progression from Survival to Luxury Through the Agricultural Cycle

Instructor: You’ll remember something very interesting that we discussed that the further you get into the cycle the more we’re talking about luxuries about thriving instead of surviving right? From Pesach when we go on Pesach we have barley we could survive we could live on that somewhat from what yeah it gets better and better. From Shavuos we get bread we can make bread we can make *chametz* [חמץ: leavened bread] bread it’s *geschmacka* [געשמאַקע: Yiddish, “tasty”] bread we can make a *lechem mishneh* [לחם משנה: double portion of bread]. You go a little further you get wine you could even drink some wine right it was just above they went to the *keramim* [כרמים: vineyards] I think that’s what they come are done then they’re being harvested so you could like have a dance there and so on. You’ve got even like sweet fruits, all these kind of things. These are as…

That’s sort of weird. Who cares? The Torah doesn’t work in America, I understand. Yeah, it’s later, but it’s the fall. It’s like the latest. It’s after everything. Okay. I had a big barbecue. It was too much fat. A big barbecue with food platters, you know, a few ladders.

That’s why the summer is like a time of fun because the summer is when all the fun fruits grow. You don’t just survive, you have wine. You get, by the way, olives even later sometimes all the way into Chanukah [חנוכה: the Festival of Lights]. Anyways, yeah, that’s why we like Chanukah, you know. I didn’t make up this chat about Chanukah. The kids at Hamas said that the olives get pressed at that time.

Shavuos: The Festival of Luxuries, Not Survival

Instructor: Yeah so the kids are a miser this is what I said as a parasite means you understand so in and of course *Hag* [חג: festival] on *mine* because it’s before right there then after that is the period when it has to start raining us on so as they gave this Russian Russia nobody also the same dress he said on she was and why they say that she was because remember this is the *mind* but my main point going back to his original point actually it’s about luxuries like it’s like what says says, like, we have *manty* [מנטי] to eat, *dvash vechalav* [דבש וחלב: honey and milk], right, *milchiks* [מילכיקס: Yiddish, “dairy foods”], and sweet things, right?

Because the point of the Torah is not just to survive, for that we have Ecclesiastes and *Tzai* [צאי], but the point of the Torah is to have fun. To eat *chametz*, exactly, not survive, no, we’ve got to eat *matz chametz* [מץ חמץ: unleavened and leavened bread], and we’ve got to eat cheesecake.

Nobody ever didn’t survive because they didn’t have cheesecake. Also, nobody ever didn’t survive because they didn’t have the whole Torah, understand? We have to have *mitzvah* [מצוה: commandment], that’s enough to survive, at least. But if you want to have cheesecake, then you have to have *taryag mitzvahs* [תרי״ג מצוות: the 613 commandments]. That’s the price. That’s the *moshach* [משך].

Student: What is it for? The?

Instructor: The clickbait.

Student: Ah, what time is it?

Instructor: 10-11.

Student: Ah, it’s another whole sheet.

Instructor: Oh, no. No, you can’t do that. There’s no campaign next to this. I can do whatever I want. Hello. We’re supposed to be having fun. On the book. This sheet itself, by the way, was the… I can tell you, but it can be too quick for you to understand. This is the basic. Okay, so the *mat* is like this. The *chumash* [חומש: the Five Books of Moses] is like this. But you’re all falling asleep already. Make it even colder there. There’s not too much about weeding. There’s not too much about harvesting. There’s a limit to how much harvesting can be interesting. It’s very interesting, rather.

The Problem with “Ratzon Hashem” as an Idol

Destroying the Pagan God of Abstract Divine Will

Instructor: Okay, so like this. So like I said, everyone is confused because they all think that the Torah is something they have to do for some random reason. People in the lake were called called *Rotzen Hashem* [רצון השם: “the will of God”], which is a certain *gechka* [געכקע] called *Rotzen Hashem*. If you ever meet it, you should destroy it, like I remember when he destroyed his father’s idols. *Rotzen Hashem* is a pagan god.

Student: How is it that it’s optional? I’m saying it because… Wait, you want to have click-bicked or you want to ask… I want to know if you want to get killed or stoned or whipped, then why would that be optional?

Instructor: You don’t get killed and stoned or whipped. That’s part of the nice story that we have. Listen…

Student: If you find any sidekicks?

Instructor: What? You should just burn it?

Student: No, they can’t say it.

Instructor: Of course, there’s a that doesn’t mean that right not the thing that the thing that the thing that worships no no no that’s different okay okay.

The Real Reason for Mitzvos: Because It’s More Fun

Instructor: I’m talking about something very simple. You want me to say, you want me to actually understand, you want to actually understand you can be here until next week. Yeah. I’m trying to understand first. What do you mean?

What I mean is that people in this town think that, in the neighboring town, in the small neighboring town next to Howell, people think that the reason why we do the *mitzvah* [מצוה: commandment] is because of something called *Ratz Nashem* [רצון השם], okay? That’s not the reason. The reason why we do the *mitzvah* is because it’s more fun. That’s what it says in the Torah. If you’ll do the *mitzvah* you’ll have more fun.

Student: I can’t live like this. I’m trying to do sorts of things when a *huchim* [חוכים] talks about it. What does he mean everything that’s not the point say all the same things that mean other things that’s always the truth okay because you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.

Instructor: No no no I have to say it I have to say this and and this is a big problem it’s a very big problem you want to know what’s the problem but I have another not one more thing that I have to say about this but we’ll get to it another time this is the big problem you understand that what is the problem why is it a problem the simple problem is like you could see on certain places and we discussed a little before Pesach that then when anyone realizes so I’ll tell you the problem okay I’ll tell you my clickbait *drusha* [דרשה: sermon/homily].

The Clickbait Story: A YouTube Claimant to Multiple Messianic Titles

Instructor: It starts like this but it’s not the whole *drusha* you could start the video if you want but it’s gonna take too long so so don’t do it no no don’t do it what don’t do it no no everything is with a *drusha* without a *drusha* doesn’t work so this thing is like this I want to tell you a story I want to tell you a story 9 it’s now no leave it over here 10 15 I’ll tell you a story.

Stories like this. I was going on YouTube one day as one does and I met a guy. I met him like I saw the guy’s channel saying that he is the promised something the second. He’s both the second. He’s the second coming of not the second the first question is coming the pope himself. He said that the pope died and and nobody, he claimed the popehood before anyone else did, so he’s the true pope. And also, he said that he is also the true Mahdi [المهدي: the Islamic messianic figure] that was promised for the…

The Abdullah Case Study: A Contemporary Prophet and the Challenge to Religious Authority

Abdullah’s Prophetic Claims

They all laugh at him, like, “Pasuk doesn’t say that, it doesn’t mean that.” And he’s like, “You are a bunch of hypocrites. I’m saying exactly what Muhammad said when he came. What did he come? He didn’t say, ‘Did you read the Quran? Does it say, but what it really means, a pasuk?’ Very simple. I’m a messenger, Gabriel spoke to me. He said, go and speak this and this. And that’s what I say the same exact thing. I’m a messenger, God sent me. I’m coming to the same thing. I’m the one prophesizing the pasuk that I will come. I’m the one that Jesus said will come. All you are believing false versions of that, but I found the correct version.” And people believe them, right?

You are about the person that happened to have been born Muslims or Christians and therefore you have nice stories. Yeah, the pasuk cost of fear, but the basic emunah [faith/belief] you don’t have, right? If someone comes and says the exact thing that your prophet that you claim to believe in said, you’re like, “Eh, the guy’s either a meshugana [crazy person] or a rasha [wicked person].” Like, at least you should, you know, something, maybe I’m the wrong one. Did you check? Did you review the three rashas [wicked ones] that are the real one? You don’t even look at it, right? Because it’s not a tefila Torah [prayer of Torah], it’s not a pasuk [verse].

What’s going on with you? Because it’s a pasuk, right? You’re a bunch of hypocrites.

The Instructor’s Assessment: An Amazing Kushya

Instructor: This guy, I think that this is an amazing kushya [difficult question/challenge]. Anyone that never…

Student: It’s a great question.

Instructor: If I should have been here today, I would think he was nuts.

Student: No, no, it’s a deeper question.

Instructor: He’s saying that the original founder of your religion wasn’t the chacham [wise scholar]. It was very simple. You read the Quran. It says things like this. He said it’s going to rain, and it rained. Okay, I’ll do the same thing. He said that this king will die, and the other king will become, and that’s what happened, and then everyone believes him.

And the Jewish people don’t even take… It’s not the problem that you don’t take me seriously. Don’t take this whole kind of thing seriously, right? Your whole thing is that you take this kind of thing seriously. Some guy came and set a pasuk and let people go and then he split the sea and of course most of the chachamim [wise scholars] probably also were saying that it’s some trick and the few tmimim [simple/innocent believers] that followed him, they’re the ones that you praise on the Amazon. You know, the companions of the Prophet. The few narunim [fools/simpletons] that followed him. And so there he goes and he calls his friends the companions. I forgot how it’s in Arabic like the real… see them and everyone else is just low lives there, they’re not real, right?

Student: Wait, wait, so you could this is like one answer it’s not okay I’m not gonna talk about that answer that the point is the point is this is a great kushya I don’t think a good terutz [answer] is to say but our miracles were true okay I don’t like that then now no problem for you you can go out with it I don’t I think that…

Instructor: But if the kushya is bad, then that’s it. So I think that this is a very good kushya. And I have six terutzim [answers], which means I’m not very good. But what I think is something like this.

The Purpose of Torah: Making Things Better

So what do I think? I’ll tell you what I think about this kushya. I think it’s a very serious kushya. And you have to think about it very seriously. So what I think is something like this.

You’ll remember that the point of any of this, of this Torah thinking, is to make things better, okay? All the disruptions that I gave you that I can have more money is only one level. There’s also other, my neshama [soul] and your soul, okay? But the point is still to make things better and more true and more beautiful. That is the point, okay? That if you don’t accept that and nothing starts, if you think that it’s only because that you only follow the Torah because God… there’s no shem [name/reputation] according to me you’re an apikoros [heretic] and with the evidence out of dominion because I’m a good guy I’m realistic but when I say you’re fake that’s what now he’s not masking but what should I do kids said.

Now therefore what I think is very… but I think that… but but I do think but right and then you have to say okay very nice but Muslim or whoever whichever religion you believe in did something like this right? He didn’t say my drush [homiletical interpretation]. I mean that’s a midrash [homiletical interpretation] if you read it if you understand it but he also did all the mofasim [miracles/wonders] and all the sticks and all the miracles and all these random things and basically just it seems like that right?

The Problem: The Simplistic Nature of Original Prophecy

So it seems like this. It seems like you read the Chumash [Five Books of Moses] and it’s the most simplistic thing right, okay? And like if someone would do that you would you would basically laugh at him. Not only that, we would laugh at him. Specifically the people that claim to be the biggest believers in the Torah would laugh at him even more for various reasons. The reason that I gave before that it’s not sophisticated enough, it’s only one of them. But there’s other reasons because they’re just dogmatic believers in whatever they were taught. So of course they wouldn’t believe this new guy that comes and has a new God. Conservative people, there are all kinds of reasons.

But this is the question. And I think that the answer can’t be that okay, therefore you should follow every upstart that says the claims that God spoke to him. Hello, it’s true that we shouldn’t. And I think it’s also true, I think it’s also true that this is also like a real question that doesn’t make any sense but right. Because if I would have been him then I would have been him and not me. But if I would have been in the times of whichever prophet you believe in very much and it would come in the style that this guy comes on YouTube I would go, “Wow, it’s kind of cool how dumb people are that he has…” If you want to see them, the guy besides that I don’t learn anything from it, right? That’s what I would say. And I would say it to your original prophet too, I think.

I mean, again, if I would be then, then I wouldn’t be me, and the situation would be different. But if it would be me from now, and that from then, the way you’re imagining it, the answer is correct.

The Miracle Question: Would You Be Convinced?

Student: If I could be the person who follows after Moses, I’m not Moses.

Instructor: I’m saying, even if someone would come to me and say, “I have a sun miracle for you, and I’ve split the sea, and I’m going to make a big thunderstorm on a mountain,” I’m not very impressed by that either and what… no I will not convert his religion. I’ve heard this story before. I’m not interesting. That’s me.

Student: You would decide it but I want…

Instructor: No harm, no harm you wouldn’t. I want but just to be clear these stories don’t actually happen that way. They always… every in… and it’s recording the Torah that many people disbelieve Moshe [Moses] so obviously wasn’t as clear as you pretend that it was. So there’s always like the feed and believe. If they don’t understand, they’re more like, “Yeah, I was stuck in there, but I still don’t believe it.” There’s always misnagdim [opponents] like that. That kind of people. You could call them kshonim [stubborn ones], apikorsim [heretics], but there’s not any kind of revelation that solves that problem. That ever happened in history, including in the Torah.

There’s always people that said, like, “Who are you? We’re smart guys,” and they’re recording the Torah. They say, “Hmm, okay, so you said.” They were there by the time I’ve seen her or whatever. So, yeah, okay, so we didn’t disagree.

Toward a Different Understanding

We get into arguments about details. The point is, I think that this argument is true. And I think that we have to have a much better thought about all of this. And I have a lot of them. I don’t know which of them is true or to what extent they’re true. But I think that we have to think a few things like this. Maybe I’ll jump all the way to the last thing that I think. The last thing that I think is, and I can tell you the previous things.

The last thing that I think is that this is just a wrong pshat [interpretation/understanding]. It’s not true. And that’s what Shomani was trying to say. I think this is extremely wrong, and it’s not a motion ever did, or anyone.

Analyzing Abdullah’s Model

In other words, if you think, this guy, let’s understand something like this. Let’s talk about this Abdullah guy, because it’s easier than talking about the Jewish thing. This Abdullah guy, he thinks, and he’s basically Mohammed, and he’s basically reading, he thinks in the Quran, instead of the other guy saying, and he’s very clear. Just like he said a pasuk, and it was true, and it’s God’s trade to him, he does the same exact thing. He has a pasuk. Or he even says the old position, and it means then.

The Problem of Prophetic Imagination: Why We Misunderstand the Original Form of Revelation

The “400-Year Rule” and the Hypocrisy of Sophisticated Belief

The Abdullah Example and Temporal Distance

Instructor: In other words, if you think this guy, let’s understand something like this. Let’s talk about this Abdullah guy because it’s easier than talking about the Jewish thing. This Abdullah guy, he thinks that he’s basically Muhammad and he’s basically reading, he thinks in the Koran instead of the other guy saying, and he’s very clear. Just like he said it and it was true and it’s God’s straight to him, he does the same exact thing. He has an opposite or he even says the opposite and it means then it’s simple as can be, right? And he’s in his imagination you’re just a weirdo that you only, you could only be, basically you could only believe a religion after 300 years old because first watch your ears it’s simplistic, then there’s all kind of philosophies and toys and minus you awesome and it does mean then you start becoming, there’s not become, right?

Every religion start like this is one of like arguments of people like this, right? Every religion, at least most religions, start basically like this. There’s like a very simple, simple message and there’s some simple see them around the guy that has a message. And then a few years later there’s like people that are born into it or that even that convert to it, it’s not necessarily born into it, but they’re like more complicated people and they have all kind of fancy philosophies and theologies.

So basically theologians are the kind of people that would never convert to a new religion, only to old ones. And for some reason that makes sense to them, okay? And they’re very good, that’s one, one up to one up just to say.

Student: Yes, very good. And we’re the kind of people that only convert to religious 400 years old because that’s when they may start making sense. If this guy will concede that I have your religion 400 years, no problem, we’ll start taking his claim seriously. That’s it.

Instructor: Yeah, that’s, I think that that’s a little bit too much, but you get, you get, you get—

Student: Wait, wait, wait, wait, no, but wait, wait, this is a, this is a practical answer but it’s not—

Instructor: Wait, wait, I have another sheet. I told you I’m not gonna finish this sheet today. I’m just going to make you shake it with kashas [difficult questions].

The Reform Movement Distinction

Student: See, this is not a new religion. It’s a reformer, some kind of reinvigoration of an old religion. That’s the easier thing to do. It’s not the same thing. You don’t have to have this claim.

Instructor: Could be, but it’s not this problem. They don’t have this problem because they don’t even claim to be a new religion. To claim to be a new religion or even something like the Mashiach [Messiah] of an old religion is a much stronger claim than what things like Hasidus [Hasidism] or anyone else is doing. It’s very different.

I’m gonna get bigger bags that don’t make so much crunches. Very annoying. You’re gonna hear the video, you’re gonna hear most of the time.

Student: From what?

Instructor: The Coilers of Reckon. Yeah, makes a lot of noise.

Student: Pushes?

Instructor: Anyways, next time, my bigger bags. It only takes once.

The Cumulative Wisdom Answer and Its Limitations

Instructor: No, it’s great. I’m just saying, is point is, my point is that I think that you could have subtract the answer and say like, okay, you’re like a conservative guy, you believe in like in the cumulative wisdom and you say what, we don’t actually know the word nation celebrate choice, you should celebrate some holiday celebrating like, like why am I should celebrate but not sure what’s right, like what was, what happens thousand years after the original revelation what already makes sense. But sure is, is like three guys around the mountain, okay, six hundred thousand guys, doesn’t matter, around the mountain with a guy saying simple stuff and saying God spoke to him, okay? Nobody among us would go for that religion besides for you if there’s impressive enough lights, but most I wouldn’t figure it, no problem.

So that’s one answer. It’s not a good answer. No, it’s not a good answer because it doesn’t answer this like claim of this argument, this accusation of hypocrisy, right? Even those complicated people, they’re all going on, they do celebrate, right? They go on around this, they’re the meaning of the original revelation and there’s so much depth in it and all of that. And then you are, you confront them with the original revelation as it was perceived by people at the time, you know, like right there.

The Reb Meilich Principle: *Achrei Mot Kedoshim Ta’amru*

The Letter to the Rebbe of Lizhensk

Instructor: But a mile says it, says, you know, right, the reminder wrote a letter making this exact argument, right? Someone wrote, wrote to every mile of legends [Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk] that he doesn’t believe in the city there are a bunch of fakers and michigan [Messiah claimants] and losers. And he said, yeah, people like you said said the same about Moshe [Moses] and about David. And he said, every time, like, the next generation, they said it’s a lie. The previous Tzaddikim [righteous people] are great, but the Tzaddikim are fake. The point is to believe in the Tzaddikim, not in the previous ones.

There’s a very strong argument, but it’s making the same kind of, it has the same structure as argument, right? You can’t say, yeah, because when people are alive, it’s not proven if they’re true. This, like, idea of, actually has a lot of wisdom in it, if you think like you people are saying, but you say, how could you know when someone’s alive? Firstly, he could become like a tzadariki [righteous person] after 80 years if he wants.

The Midrash on Not Calling the Living “Men of God”

Instructor: This is a medrash [Midrash]: we don’t claim any living person as a man of God, only after he’s dead. We don’t say only after Abraham is dead, because it doesn’t work that way, okay?

But it’s still the claim of hypocrisy, like the claim that therefore you’re not taking the idea of someone being a man of God seriously. There’s a real problem here. Say, well, I do take it seriously, but I just think it’s not you. But that’s like an excuse. It’s like everything. Theoretically, I believe in prophecy, but there’s no real prophet that I would ever accept, besides for one that’s dead and I can’t really check. It’s something very problematic here.

I think that these practical answers are practical answers, but they don’t solve the basic tension that this kind of question raises.

The Practical Objection

Student: So what does resolve it somewhat… The worst reason to believe in an avi [prophet] is because he’s an avi and not to go for his ideas.

Instructor: Okay. But again, the novim duks [the prophets themselves], they do say that you should believe in them because they’re an avi. It’s like you’re a baton player. It’s like we’re there, it happens, you’re saying your word there, it’s better amazing, right?

Everyone that says I believe in because I don’t know, I believe because I was not about if I was busy, I was like, look, the kugel wasn’t so good, the seltzer was very, what are we, warm by the time I got there. Yeah, yeah, it was a good event, but like, oh, after 500 years people are talking about it, okay, it becomes a big thing.

Yeah, it’s a real question.

The Beginning of the Real Answer: Our Imagination Is False

The False Imagination of Both Sides

Instructor: This I think that we have to have a better kind of answer, and the answer begins like, try starts, I started the game from then it begins by by explaining that our imagination is false and this Abdullah’s imagination is false. His Mohammed never came aren’t spoken his way, you know, I know because he actually, well, he might be a mama lost only a few and just seen them when he was starting off and then he became big, so I can never know. No, it’s not, that’s not the answer thing is, yes, that’s that’s the first answer that I’m not so happy with.

Muhammad as a True or False Prophet

Instructor: I think that their answer is because the real way, firstly Muhammad isn’t a little bit, that that’s why we don’t, we Jews think of him as a false prophet for the most part. Such are a few weird Jews, I think he was a true prophet, like Rabbi, and what was the guy’s name from from Thailand, but anyways that wrote to the Rambam [Maimonides]. No, you know what I mean. Anyways, the person who the number brought together Thailand, he wrote a book saying that David Muhammad was was a true prophet. And that’s why I’m going to answer this.

So, just said to them, Arabs, whatever you are, Arabs are Torah. Now, but most Jews don’t believe that because they say, okay, but it’s still a problem.

The Core Principle: Prophets Spoke in Normal Rhetorical Conventions

Instructor: But I think that even talking about that example, I would say something like, it’s not true that the original prophet was a weirdo that claimed to be a prophet. How do I know this? Well, like he said, because he was successful. But it’s not quite successful. Let’s assume that normally he actually managed to talk to normal people, not just the cultists, like the people that are agreed to be part of his cult. Sometimes he fights with them, sometimes he, there’s those kinds of ways of convincing them. Maybe those ways of convincing would not be very convincing to you, but within the structure that he is living it obviously made sense, right?

And what I mean to to say is that this guy’s like this: if someone comes and says a stickl story [a piece of Torah] for the sheer [the lesson] and his master mystical Quran correctly and you’re like, yeah, it’s a good job, good by itself, it’s good as a child, it’s true, I accept it. If so I’ll just is the Quran himself, it says camera sham blah blah blah blah, I worship me and follow me and and you’ll have a good life, like that’s nonsense. But the Quran is those, those kinds of sentences, that’s all it is, right?

But this is how those sentences sound like after a thousand years that nobody speaks that original language, that nobody knows their their conventions of poetry, their conventions of preachers. It’s very possible that on Muhammad’s day, that’s what every darshan [preacher] said. He wasn’t just have better drushas [sermons] than most people. He wasn’t doing something quality, like in his form wasn’t different than the form that that the next guy, the the of the the pagan prophet the next, the next time was saying. He was, they were both saying the nice mr drushas and somewhat poetic meter. And he did the same thing. He had better content and he was really from God according to the Muslims. Therefore he was accepted and he was more successful.

The Illusion Created by Historical Distance

Instructor: But you have this weird imagination that because there’s obviously all those other books were destroyed because who will not remember those guys, right? But you would think that the way to be a prophet is to speak in this way. No, the way to be a prophet is to speak like a normal person, to explain to people in ways that they understand.

Of course, there’s always tons of conventions. Even nowadays, there’s not only one rhetorical register that you could speak in. You could speak like a chassidish dachshund [Hasidic sermon], you could speak like a literature dachshund, you can speak like an evangelist, you can speak like an Islamic guy that talks on the radio and gives his political opinions, you can make a podcast, you can do a lot of things. None of them are pretending to be something that doesn’t exist anymore or some kind of convention or some kind of form that happens to be the way that your ancient prophet spoke.

Move on.

Application to Tanakh: The Case of Yirmiyahu

The Biggest Chiddush: Form vs. Content in Prophecy

Instructor: And I would say the same thing about the Tanakh [Hebrew Bible], right? And we’ll talk in a second about Pascha Nevo [piskei nevuah: prophetic verses/form], which I think is just about the form, it’s not about the content, as the Chachamim [Sages] himself explicitly say.

What I would say is something like this. We imagine that Yirmi Anovi [Jeremiah the Prophet], people imagine Yirmi came and wrote these nice poetries about how everyone is immoral, and they said the Tshuva [repentance], and he wrote it in this prophetic form, and he said, and therefore he must be doing something qualitatively different, entirely different from what Yermash Giech [a contemporary preacher/teacher] is doing.

The Value and Hurt of Torah MiShamayim: Reading Scripture as Teaching Rather Than Authority

The Prophetic Register vs. Practical Moral Teaching

Instructor: What I would say is something like this. We imagine that Yirmiyahu [Jeremiah], people imagine Yirmiyahu came and wrote these nice poetry about how everyone is immoral and they should do teshuvah [repentance], and he wrote it in this prophetic form, and he said, “Ko amar Hashem” [Thus says God], and therefore he must be doing something qualitatively different, entirely different from what your mashgiach [spiritual supervisor in a yeshiva] is doing when he says, “Boys, you’re not having a good life because you’re not acting correctly. Stop cheating on your wife and maybe you’ll have a better life.”

But Yirmiyahu doesn’t say that because he doesn’t talk about real problems. But that’s what he should have said, right? Yirmiyahu is saying like that, right? “Stop worshiping avodah zarah [idolatry].” It didn’t mean [actual idolatry], right? You’re in the real one, right?

So that’s what today we try to say that means, because we’re living in the olam ha-bechinah [world of approximation]. We’re not real. But you understand what I’m saying?

The Yeshiva’s Core Principle: Emunat Chachamim Redefined

Instructor: What I’m saying is, and therefore what I think is that I have a big claim. What’s my big claim about the ancients, right? What is my big claim? You’ve got in the yeshiva—as if you saw, the seminar, one of them is called “The Meaning of Emunat Chachamim” [faith in the sages]. And what it means is not that we believe everything that the chacham [sage] said, right? That’s not emunat chachamim. That’s… what do we call that? We have to find the word.

Student: What?

Instructor: Shemiah [hearing/obedience]?

Student: No, it’s like…

Instructor: That’s not… exactly. Something like that. Not exactly. It’s like more obligation, right? The concept of authority. We don’t believe in authority. Well, we believe in something called teaching, right? We believe that maybe… like the Berditchever Rav said.

The Berditchever Rav Story: The Power of “Maybe”

Instructor: Maybe there is a God. Remember the story of the Berditchever Rav? I said it in one of my speeches about the campaign, right? It was a big… they came to all the rabbonim [rabbis] and nobody was able to convince them. He wrote long speeches with everyone, nobody let him work. And then he came to the Kedushat Levi [Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev], and the Kedushat Levi, he was walking back and forth like the guy was telling him all this, and he was, you know, like a chassidishe rebbe [Hasidic rabbi], and after all, I think he walked up and said, “Maybe there is a God.”

Maybe. No, no, it didn’t mean—people think that it means solving the Pascal’s Wager. Oh, what he meant is like, “I’m sure you’re… you just wanted to open him when I saw closed up.” The apikores [heretic], the oldest guys are closing to maybe. Yeah, not saying maybe, “I’m therefore you should make a wager.” Just maybe. Yeah, listen for a second. There’s a guy that’s claiming they have observed something, say maybe. Yeah, right?

I like this “maybe” very much because it’s like, it’s opening.

The Big Claim About the Ancients

Instructor: So my basic belief is that all these ancient people that were taught very much in our societies to like say, “They were weirdos and those days people believe this,” as if that’s an answer for why they believe that, right? So maybe. Yeah, maybe he’s trying to tell us something. Doesn’t mean that he’s always right. Probably not. He’s a human being. Does that mean we should accept him on faith? No. Well, you should listen, right?

Applying This to Torah and Nevi’im: Torah as Teaching

Instructor: Now, since this is the talk we talk about leadership itself not as well, but I want to make the claim that this is also true for the Chumash [Five Books of Moses] and for the Nevi’im [Prophets] and so on. I don’t think that the best way of reading them is in the “take it or leave it” way, as like, “This is the authority, God said so, and therefore you got accepted. If you don’t accept it, you’re not the kofer [heretic] or a chashash kofer [suspected heretic], and that’s the way it’s read.”

I think it should be read as teachers, like Torah, literally, as a teaching. Maybe saying something. And if you say it’s divine, okay, what isn’t divine? That’s not a very interesting claim. Of course, it means something that they say it’s divine. I mean, but what it doesn’t mean is therefore you have to accept it. What it means is that this is about very real stuff. Please listen to it. Very different than “therefore you have to accept it.”

And then there’s like the only modalities are either accepted or you don’t accept it. And if you think of prophets as just people that are struggling with certain human problems, including about God, or maybe mostly about God because that’s a big human problem, right? And they’re expressing it in the register of their time. Of course they’re speaking in a prophetic verse.

Prophets as Human Thinkers: Philosophy in the Biblical Canon

Instructor: I’m not saying that they wrote philosophy books, although some of them did, like the book of Iyov [Job], and maybe it’s not prophecy, and the book of Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] and so on, which are still part of the Bible, part of the… but they’re just philosophy books, right? But even Yirmiyahu and even Moshe [Moses], they’re just giving thoughts and they’re trying to teach you something.

The Paradox: The Apikores Has More Reason to Read Torah

Instructor: He said it. I always tell everyone that if you believe in the God with the Torah, then it might not be interesting, because God, who understands God? Maybe he has a meshugaas [eccentricity]. That’s not a gem. But if you’re an apikores that thinks the human wrote the Torah, then you have to read it. Because there’s a guy that actually thought this made sense, right?

Student: Yeah, for sure. Four.

Instructor: But that really doesn’t matter because this has to do with hilchot nevuah [laws of prophecy]. Not the point for now, but the fact that it’s ascribed to God doesn’t mean that humans didn’t write it. It’s not a state of these two things. But for that, you have to understand a lot of theology. And I’m not doing that now.

Student: Also, is it possible from the different sefarim [books] of the Devarim [Deuteronomy] you see different types, the language specifically?

Instructor: Yeah, of course. Like we say, speaking different people, it’s resolving different problems. It sometimes changes according to the reality. Of course.

Why the Ancients Should Be Listened To

Instructor: The point is not that this is… the point is just that this is something you should listen to. You should listen to it because it’s people, and we assume that are smarter than us. How do I know? Because he wrote a book. I didn’t. I mean, number one. And what a book! If you wrote a book…

Student: Editing and re-spacing his book.

Instructor: Who, me? Yeah, yeah, that’s an edition of the book. It’s not a book. It’s not the book. I don’t claim to be the book. And you should listen to it. That’s all. You understand?

Critique of the God-or-Folklore Dichotomy

Instructor: And in this sense, the idea of Torah MiShamayim [Torah from Heaven] has the only meaning of… Torah can only have a meaning. Like people say, “Otherwise it’s folklore.” By the way, what’s wrong with folklore? Folklore has a lot of wisdom in it. Folklore is just a word that some romantic made up to explain the wisdom of folklore, by the way.

But, right, we have this literature saying either it’s God or it’s folklore. I don’t know, maybe it’s both. I don’t know, maybe it’s neither. Maybe these categories are weird.

The Shmitta Example: “Maybe It’s True”

Instructor: You know why I started in? Because then maybe it is true. That’s the big threat. Even Yirmiyahu, most from guy, he basically think that there is nonsense God told it. Maybe it’s true. In other words, maybe, right? It’s also means kofer [heretic] in a lot of things that you believe otherwise, right? Maybe it’s true that would be good to have shemittah [sabbatical year] every seven years. We’re sure there has to be a nes [miracle], right? You asked me about the nes.

It doesn’t say that it’s a nes. It says berachah [blessing]. Berachah, because what the whole thing is about giving you blessing, makes things work. Doesn’t say that it’s a nes. Maybe it’s correct. Maybe it works. But we’re so sure that it sure doesn’t work because we know exactly how nature works, like, and everything. It can’t work. It must be God’s meshugaas. No, maybe that’s how it works.

Of course, that’s also what it means. Clearly, because when you take too much ownership over things, that things don’t work. Acknowledging God’s management of the world, or nature, is better way of living. You have more money if you do that. And maybe it does work. But very few people are ready to entertain the thought, “Maybe it’s true.” They’re very comfortable thinking that it’s probably not true. I’m not sure in the sense in the human sense, but I don’t know.

Student: Is what it makes us not understand the Torah, because you’ll remember the understanding this Bible, this is not my fault they know.

Torah MiShamayim as Obstacle to Understanding

Instructor: Okay, okay, okay. I have to finish here. I have to finish. I have to finish. I have to finish. I did not clickbait. I did. I’m speaking for half an hour at this point and I’m enough. I’ll get enough lift gate, but I’m going to give you a source since we have to say everything in the name of tzaddikim [righteous ones], otherwise you think that I’m an apikores.

Source: The Rebbe Rashab of Lubavitch on Emunah vs. Sekhel

Instructor: I’ll tell you who says this. I’ve told you many times. I want to read the description of my insider from this, from the biggest apikores that was there. Otherwise it’s not interesting, right? Of course the believers say things. They always say things.

And this said the Rebbe Rashab of Lubavitch [Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn]. So the Rebbe Rashab was kind of worried about this problem. He, not for himself, but obviously was worried about it. And in a few places he says that there’s two things called emunah [faith] and sekhel [understanding/intellect]. And for him emunah means what we call Torah MiShamayim, or it’s like, not exactly because he probably has a more complicated understanding of what emunah is, but, and sekhel means understanding things.

And he said, he says many times that, theoretically, an apikores, someone who doesn’t start from the emunah, would have a better haskalah [understanding], have better ideas of the yediat Elokut [knowledge of God] than a ma’amin [believer]. So there’s a few times in his writings. Why? Because he’s not biased. Very obvious, right?

We are learning to say this, but it’s kind of fake. We try to understand God, but if we don’t understand, we’re still going to believe in him. So we’re kind of never going to really understand. The only guy that’s really going to understand is the person that starts without believing. Maybe they don’t believe also, because there’s something to believe also. But that’s the person.

Then he has all kinds of to try to solve this. Like, what do we do with this problem? He’s kind of worried about this problem. He’s trying to say, what do we do? We could still somehow work with both. He’s worried about this.

Student: This is a Crescas [Chasdai Crescas, medieval Jewish philosopher]. Crescas has this problem with mitzvah [commandment], right? That, that is. If it’s a mitzvah, it can exist without the God on top of it.

Instructor: Yeah, okay. Yeah. It might be complicated. Yeah, yeah. I’m not going to, I’m going to try to solve that problem.

The Clickbait Answer: Value and Hurt of Torah MiShamayim

Instructor: Point is, people have noticed this problem. And this is why I claim that, oh, so now you have to, I didn’t finish the main thing. So when I say Torah MiShamayim, the answer to my clickbait title, what is the value of Torah MiShamayim and what is the hurt of it?

The hurt of it is obvious, because it makes you not understand the Torah. Then it’s not divine either, it’s just some random getchke [idol/object]. But also the value of it is what I just explained to you. We have to realize, we have to try to read things this way.

Final Image: Moshe Was Not a Breslover—He Was a Litvak

Instructor: We have to realize that in the time of Moshe, or in the context of Moshe, or in the context of Jesus, if you’re a Christian or whatever it is, he was not a weirdo. He was not a Breslover [follower of Breslov Hasidism]. Moshe Rabbeinu [Moses our teacher] was the biggest Litvak [Lithuanian-style rationalist].

Not a Breslover. What’s a Breslover? When I mean Breslover, I mean someone that comes and says, like the world says, but I have a bumper sticker that says, and that changes everything. And if you don’t believe me, you’re not a kofer. So my cult are the people that believe in this.

And people imagine Moshe Rabbeinu was basically this, because the whole world didn’t believe him. He had a bumper sticker saying, and he went around hooting his horn, whatever his belief was. But something, the point is not that, of course he had a better belief than Nanach [a Breslov slogan], but it was functionally the same kind of meshugaas. Everyone thought it was meshugaas. And he went about it and he said, and it worked, right? That’s the basic. That’s the claim that we said in the name of this Abdullah before.

And I’m here to tell you that that’s false. We should stop imagining Moshe this way. Moshe was an emesdik [truthful/authentic] guy trying to convince people of a truth. Of course, he convinced them in the language that they understood. Maybe they weren’t great philosophers, so he made miracles for them. Maybe God made miracles in order to speak to them in their language.

Why Miracles Don’t Work Today: The Loss of Epistemic Language and Moshe’s True Authority

The Fundamental Problem: Miracles Are Not Our Language

It would be a waste of time. Not like the Rambam says he doesn’t do miracles for some random reason. He doesn’t do miracles because it’s not the language that we speak. I know the guys that work with miracles. They’re going to have *meshugoyim* [meshugoyim: crazy people]. God doesn’t speak *meshugoyim*. God speaks always through this [consciousness/understanding].

Student: No problem. I’m not talking about them. If you would have continued always, this wouldn’t have been a problem.

Instructor: It would. It would. It would. It would. It would. It would because it’s *socher* [socher: stupid/foolish]. If it didn’t take 10 years, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Student: No, it would. It would. Personally, it would be from nature.

Instructor: There’s a fundamental problem.

Student: Another thing that never happened before. Another thing that never happened before.

Instructor: Yeah, yeah. And then you have to keep on raising the bar and we’re going to end up with like—no, the world has to—there’s a reason why the world isn’t the way it is. I mean, there’s a *shiur* [shiur: measure/limit] how much sugar you can make. You can split the sea once and twice and ten seas. At some point we’re going to be living in outer space. You got to make something.

Student: No, I don’t think—I don’t think so. I think—

Instructor: I think so.

Student: I don’t think so.

God Speaks to Everyone in the Way They Understand

Instructor: I think that the reason these things don’t work is because they’re not supposed to work. God’s supposed to speak to everyone in the way that he understands it, in a normal way.

Moshe’s Miracles Were Not Categorically Different

When Moshe did miracles, like Pharaoh said, there was nothing weird about Moshe coming and claiming a miracle. Everyone was claiming miracles. He was just the best miracle guy around. Nowadays, you have to be the best.

Student: Very good. That guy can only make a stick into a stick. He can make the sticks while the sticks. *Gevaldik* [gevaldik: wonderful/great], you’re a better miracle.

Instructor: But this is a language that made sense. And obviously, by the way, if it made sense, maybe there was some science about it or some ways of learning or some schools of how to make miracles and magic. And Moshe didn’t claim to be entirely categorically different, although some of the *shittos* [shittos: opinions/positions] thinks this—I don’t think it’s correct. He said I’m the best and therefore my God is better than yours and I’m explaining about God clearer. I’ve less mistakes in my theory of God than yours because my theory works more than yours. But it wasn’t coming and saying—

In other words, the Moshe that you have to imagine something like this: now that everyone believes in AI, Moshe has a better—it would be someone that has a better one, not that has a totally different thing. The scientist sounds weird because science we have weird kind of science that don’t connect to anything. But the point is there’s no reason to imagine we have this weird thing.

Student: Let me finish, let me finish, let me finish.

A Truer Understanding of Reality, Not Magic Tricks

Instructor: No, not a better magic trick—a truer understanding of reality. A truer understanding of reality. He didn’t do any magic tricks. He only did things that showed that he had a better command of reality than the Egyptians, and he did.

If he would tell us nowadays his understanding, we probably wouldn’t understand it because it wasn’t *Mitzrayim* [Mitzrayim: Egypt/Egyptian]. We don’t speak the language. There’s no way to speak the language. Even though if you would speak the language, you’d know all the concepts, you don’t know what it means.

We Have Only Remnants of Remnants

But we only have like—we have like—we don’t have the Torah, right? We have like remnants of remnants of remnants and we try to interpret it and it has been reinterpreted in so many different registers and nobody knows anything anymore.

The Central Error: Confusing Distance with Essence

But the important thing is that we should stop imagining it. We have this—I’m just going to say this point, and all your catches, you’ll think of at night.

And we have this weird thing of assuming that our distance from the language and the way in which it worked is essential to it, and essential to what it is. And we forget that at every time and every period and every time when it’s real, it’s precisely the opposite.

Why Biblical-Style Miracles Don’t Work Today

The reason why we shouldn’t believe people that pretend that do miracles in the style of the Bible nowadays is precisely because in the times of the Bible it wasn’t the Bible—it wasn’t *amal* [amal: unclear/possibly “strange”]. Once you’re out of sync with the reality then you’re worse, you’re not better.

We should believe and we do believe people that speak to us in our language. Of course they can explain the previous revelations and they can explain how everything means that and so on. But you can’t assume that the fact that we speak differently—we have different things that work.

Pragmatic Concessions and Pluralism

By the way, there’s some people that maybe that works—no problem, speak to them in that way. I don’t say—I have different theories for why it doesn’t work for most people out there. I can give—yeah, I don’t think it’s anything wrong if you have people that are gonna believe you by claiming that a snake spoke to you and that’s the only thing they believe to become good people, you should tell them a snake spoke to you, 100%.

But for us it doesn’t work and there’s nothing wrong with it not working and what does work. And you have to forget that—stop, stop imagining that what is interesting is the weirdness.

Final Summary: Truth, Not Weirdness

What is interesting is the trueness, not the weirdness.

Make sense? That’s my conclusion. That’s in the way in which it both helps and hurts. To believe in *Tavayim L’shaman* [Tavayim L’shaman: unclear reference, possibly “Torah min Hashamayim” – Torah from Heaven].

Closing

And everyone should have a happy *Yom Teshuvah* [Yom Teshuvah: unclear—possibly referring to Shavuos or another holiday]. Send me a lot of cheesecake. And have a lot of good harvest. And *Shalom* [Shalom: peace/goodbye].