Why everyone started to think internal intention is the only good thing – Transcript

The Problem of Inner vs. Outer Goodness: What Does “Good on the Inside” Actually Mean?

Opening: The Nature of These Shiurim as Compressed Books

Instructor: Noor Aboy Sa’ib, good evening. I want to tell you a shiur [Torah lecture] today. You know how it goes. How do people write a book? Like a big scientist, big academic writes a book. It goes like this. He has some plates one day in the bathroom, in the shower. And then he finds some Arma Qaymas, some sources tied to it. And then he makes a parish based on that and three other books. And then he has a whole book. It takes him two years to write. Another year to get approved to the approval and then it goes to the approval that approves it and then the publisher publishes it and then the book gets published and then it gets reviewed if it’s Zohar [worthy] and gets reviewed by two people and then the guy that writes the encyclopedia reads the book or asks his child to read the book for him and makes a little summary of the book and says they can show the book in five lines and that’s what everyone knows and then the book stays on the shelf, right? That’s how it works.

So I realized that every shiur of mine is really a whole book. It’s just that it’s already to slap over the review, the chiddush [novel insight]. If you want, you can go and work it out into a whole book, but it’s a shiur that’s out, because nobody’s going to read the whole book anyways, so I might as well just start by the summary. And the chiddush, the chiddush. But it’s true. Every shiur is, almost every shiur you can make a whole book about.

So today I have a new book to write. New is Godless. Of course, it’s a continuation of the last week and the last two weeks that we were talking about the chiddush. And I realized today, yesterday, someday in the shower or somewhere, and realize that’s all connected.

Restatement of the Core Problem: Pnimiyus and Chitzoniyus

Remember that we’re talking about some problem like this. Where’s Luzzy that doesn’t understand the problem? Can we solve this problem a little? We’re talking about a problem about, that I call the problem of the inside-outside, right? The pnimiyus [interiority] and the chitzoniyus [exteriority]. Everyone knows that Purim is about someone, something, even the pnimiyus or the chitzoniyus, I don’t remember. Anyway, those are the words that everyone likes to talk about all the time.

[Brief interruption about heating]

It’s cold? Turn this on, it makes it warm faster. And everyone knows this is, plug it in over here under or somewhere and it’s going to make it a little warm faster. No, right here there’s a plug under me.

Student: Yeah, but that’s going to bother you.

Instructor: Okay, so you, no, don’t do it there, don’t do it there, it’s going to scratch the system. Over there.

Student: How far is it?

Instructor: Actually, it’s not going to crash. Same anyway. That piece is going to crash, it’s not, it’s not, okay, yeah, that’s anyways, we’re warm, it’s very warm.

The Tension in Understanding the Rambam

So what am I saying? We’re discussing this nasegyeh [topic] that’s called pnimiyus v’chitzoniyus [inner and outer]. And the ulam [question] is very tzemesht [pressing], especially Rabbal Luzer, that was here last week and didn’t come show up today. What are we tzemesht? That, tzad echad [on one hand], we’re going with chit tzerambam [according to the Rambam], we’re trying to teach the Rambam to chit [according to his approach].

On the one hand, it seems like the Rambam’s shiit [position] is very external. It’s all about actions, like, and you already told me, there’s a Peser Rambam [interpretation of Rambam] that the Chassidim misread and so on. But Lama Yisrael [nevertheless], that’s how I understand it.

Tzad She’eri [on the other hand], the Rambam was Chas Shalom [God forbid], not a matter of Litvak [modern Lithuanian-style rationalist]. Of course, this is the problem, that we’re stuck a little bit, okay? In Tzad She’eri, we’re about inner being a person. We’re not about being a machine that produces things, we’re about a person that produces being a person, a kind of person, which sounds like an inner thing.

So what is the ikr [essence]? What’s the nekudah [point] of the id [Jew]? What’s the nekudah of the good person? Is it inside or is it outside? The ulim [question] is very tawisht [confusing] about this. Not only about the chicken or the egg, it’s about what is the definition? What does it mean to be a good person?

Last Week’s Question: What Does “Good on the Inside” Mean?

Now, last week we got into this nekudah, that there seems to be also a sha’ala [question], this was my ikr thing last week, but I want to give you more context for it. Maybe we’ll understand better what’s going on. We got into this nekudah that there’s a shaila. What does it mean to be good on the inside? What does it even mean?

And I will tell you right now, there’s two things that means. I’m saying too much of a derusha [homiletical discourse]. We’ll get back to reality soon. There’s two different things that it means.

Critique of a Common Misreading: The Mishkan and the Heart

What does it mean? Everyone in all the battles should have come and seen him and say, you should know, even if you’re wearing a mask, you’re good on the inside. What does this mean that you’re good on the inside? What does it mean? What does that mean? But I’m serious now. I hear all these ruches [talks].

I went to shul on Shabbos. Someone gave a whole shmuel [talk] about the mishka [Mishkan/Tabernacle], not to believe the shmi. And that’s a… That means it has to be the shmah [lishmah: for its own sake], which means it has to have good intentions. Total misreading of the Rashi. Don’t tell them. I didn’t tell them. I should have seen this. I’m not telling you who said it. It’s total, total. The Rashi doesn’t mean the shmah. No. And in any case, and therefore, it has to be and this whole about the heart that makes the mishkan, because Hashem [God] is not in the na’isim [physical things], it’s in the leiv [heart].

They already heard Mashiach Friday that doesn’t answer the kasha [question], it makes the kasha worse. Why is your leiv better than a building? Nobody knows. That’s what this guy is thinking. There’s some intuition behind this, I just don’t know what it means.

The Core Question Sharpened

What are we talking about when we say this midbas al-leiv [matter of the heart], the rots in al-leiv, the pnimiyus [interiority] of the idwaan [Jew]? What do you mean? Could you tell me in English what does this mean? Does anyone know what it means? Do you know what it means?

Student: Yeah, what does it mean?

Instructor: It means that we don’t use the external. That’s a microphone. The external. What is external versus internal? What do they think words mean?

Student: It means nothing outside of the you is what makes the you good or bad. It’s the you that makes you good.

Instructor: Okay. That’s what it means. Could you elaborate? Spell it out. Tell me what this means. Of a different language and words that make sense to me. What is this you?

Attempting to Define “Inner Goodness”: A Socratic Dialogue

The Student’s Proposal: The Police Uniform Analogy

Student: Yeah, so let’s say I’m a very talented person, right? And I wear a police uniform, right? So a person can say, you’re a bad cop, right? So now you’re a bad person. Let’s say, right? Let’s say. In other words, the uniform is now telling me what I’m supposed to be, right? And let’s say I’m bad at being a cop, right? So now I’m bad me. Not bad me. I have 150 good talents. I can be the best comedian. I can be the best writer. I can be whatever, whatever, you have a police officer, you can’t get a police officer, right? So what people are saying, so this doesn’t fit in with the English me. And the way that people see the me is because the Hitzonis [externality] of the uniform.

Instructor: That’s not Hitzonis, that’s more like…

Student: Yeah, the uniform is telling you what I am, I’m not that.

The Instructor’s Critique: This Isn’t Really “Inner” at All

Instructor: So in other words, wait, but being a musician or whatever you think you really are, it’s also a uniform. All you’re saying is that you’re acting in the wrong way for what you are, not in, I don’t know what this mysterious you is, in a very simple sense, my talents lie in playing music, not in being a policeman, now talents are a thing, it’s not you, it’s something about you, right, it’s an accident of the you, we could say, something about you.

Student: No, I don’t know if it’s an accident, I think all the talents actually make you up.

Instructor: When I say accident, I mean, it was still an accident, right, not a car accident.

Student: No, I know, I’m talking directly to Aristotle, actually, from all you cheat him, in the past, I actually thought about this recently, I think the thing that makes up a human is all his talents.

Instructor: Okay, let’s say, and therefore…

Student: The ingredients that make up a cake versus lemonade, right? This is what makes up the movement, and that’s why there’s no same human, the same, because everyone has different ingredients, different talents.

Instructor: But that’s somewhat wrong, but we’re not going to get into this. We’re just saying, I’m just trying to understand what you mean when you say, so the inner, when you say the inner, you mean the thing that matches with your predispositions better. That’s what you mean. That’s not inner. There’s nothing more internal about this. It’s not inside you. Both of these are actions.

The Problem with Calling Abilities “Inner”

Actually, being a musician is something you do with your body, with your people hear it. If you’re a musician and nobody hears it, you’re almost like a tree that falls in the forest and nobody saw it falling or heard it falling. You’re Beizim [essentially] good at it. What does that mean? Good at what? You mean like a gun? Good at what? You’re Beizim good at what? Exactly. You’re Beizim good at what?

Student: At playing music.

Instructor: That’s something that you’re doing. The being good, which you’re calling Beizim, is nothing. I don’t understand. It’s just an ability. Be musical. So when you’re sleeping, you’re also a musician? If not.

Student: Okay, and what’s the point of that?

Instructor: To have musical dreams.

Instructor: Okay, then you’re doing something in your dream. Let’s say a dream is something, or not. That’s a different question.

The Table Analogy: Proper Function vs. Misuse

What I’m trying to get at is, what you’re talking about is just a person who is doing the wrong thing. Like, I’ll give you an emotion, because people are confusing. Tables are simpler to talk about. I like talking about tables. All philosophers like talking about tables. You know why? Because they get their class by a table, usually, actually. That’s why. Or a chair. You’ll notice the philosophers love talking about tables and chairs. It’s because the most obvious physical object in their vicinity. They’re never outside. They never see anything besides a table and chair, like classroom people.

So anyways, if I would be like on a wall, I would say a tree. Or if I would be a normal person, I would say a human. But humans are too complicated to talk about because a lot of things. But anyways, so if let’s, for example, I’m explaining what you mean when you say it’s a premise. When you’re saying it’s not a premise, just say it’s not internal. It’s…

This is a very nice table, and it’s the correct table for giving my class at, let’s just say. If I’ll use it just to block the door, that is mostly not using it as a table. It’s using it as a piece of wood, which is kind of a strong piece of wood. It blocks the door. It might even do that well. It might not do that well, because it’s not strong enough to block the door. But it might even do that well, but it’s still not what you’re calling the premise, because it’s sort of misused. It’s mismatched. It’s meant, you see, for blocking the door, I wouldn’t have this square shape, and I wouldn’t have the feet that it has. It wouldn’t be organized, so there’s something mismatched or not symmetrical, like it doesn’t fit when you try to, right?

Student: Yeah, it’s ill-suited for blocking the door, although it can be used for that, but yeah.

Instructor: And the same way a person whose talents don’t lie and being a policeman will be not doing it well, or will struggle, will suffer because the kind of person he is doesn’t fit very well into the policeman uniform. That’s very nice and true thing, but I don’t see what this has got to do with that just saying what a thing is versus what it’s for, what a thing is for, which is what it is or one important part of what it is versus what it’s not for but in some sense it’s possible to be used for, but it’s not for that.

The Unresolved Question: What Does “Every Human Is Good Inside” Mean?

But when people say you should know that internally every human is good, or if human is good, what do they mean? Do they mean that? What does that even mean? You have good dispositions? Well, I don’t know. Some people have good ones, some people have bad ones. Humans as such have good dispositions. What does that even mean?

The Problem of Inner vs. Outer Goodness: Examining the Historical Emergence of Pnimiyus/Chitzoniyus Discourse

Rejecting the “Suitedness” Explanation

Instructor: When we speak of good and bad, obviously we’re speaking after there’s good and bad humans, right? It doesn’t even make sense to say everyone is bad and good when you mean to say, well, humans are good at humaning. Well, yeah, I guess they should be good at humaning, or at least should be possible to be good at humaning, but that doesn’t make them good humans. What are you even saying? It doesn’t seem to mean that.

I agree that that vort [insight/interpretation], what you’re saying is a true vort. I don’t think it matches very well to this prioritization of the interior. I don’t see that that’s what someone’s saying when he says you have to have a good meaning well or have a good intention or have a good will—those are not the same thing as what you’re saying, right? That’s something else.

So what does it mean? Do you know what it means? I really wanted to go out there at the end and ask him, “Can you tell me what should I do because of your drasha [sermon]?” Like, what do you mean? But I realized that it would not be nice, so I didn’t. And I’m thinking about this all week—what does this mean? And then I discovered what it means.

Student: Maybe you’d be very nice. Might have been very nice.

Instructor: It’s true, it’s hard to know. It’s a new year, I don’t know it very well yet, so I don’t know. I have to learn it more.

Brief Digression: The Question of Tochacha [Rebuke]

Student: No, it’s like you see a person that’s limping and you can fix it.

Instructor: That’s true, but that’s a different shmuess [discussion]. So we’ll talk about that, because you’re not eternally good or you are eternally good—why I don’t do that?

Student: No, no, it’s true. It has to do with the mitzvah [commandment].

Instructor: It’s a very complicated discussion. I had a sheet about this in Monsey. I don’t know, I didn’t send you the sheet, but we’ll talk about that—different brayta [Talmudic teaching]. Not the one that I’m talking about right now. That’s champagne. We’ll talk about it again, because it’s very important. Remind me if I don’t. Write down your notes that I should and should.

Methodological Principle: Everything Must Make Sense, Including the Nonsense

Now, I want to say something else. So I’m wondering—now, you remember that one of the [principles] is that everything has to make sense, including all the nonsense. I don’t know if you already know this. We say that it can’t be that all the people until 1992 were crazy. It also can’t be that people since 1992 are crazy.

We’re always trying to understand what is the—there’s some puzzle here. Something very weird happened to close all the people since 1772 or 1992, whenever that happened, whenever what we call modernity happened to them. Whenever that is, we have to understand what is this—there’s some puzzle, something very weird.

Student: You must come to my problem. The first time I hear that, I’m hearing about the internality, externality.

Instructor: Yeah, so for some reason, to most people, this Yid [Jew] that said that drush [sermon] bar shasid [in the Chassidic style]—it’s not his fault. It’s a few hundred years that people are saying this drush. He repeated someone’s drush. And if you go back even a few hundred years more than that, nobody says this drush. Of course, people read that into it. But when you actually read it, you see that it’s always somehow that that [refers to something else], right? It’s a [different concept].

So now, it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t really read very simply. If you learn how to read things simply, you’ll see that it doesn’t read simply in any of the earlier sources. Why? He’s taught us about the inner will and things like that.

Student: Oh, like in the Dalai Lama game?

A Student’s Explanation: The Problem of Thought vs. Things

Student: I think there’s a problem that the world of thoughts is very different than the world of things, which may prompt you to assume that, or try to, I guess, figure out a little bit more about the thinker, right? But the thinker, if it can’t be characterized in terms of, I guess, the external world or the world of things, you sort of have to make it into something else.

Instructor: Okay, so how—I kind of maybe—so explain what you mean.

Student: When I hear someone thinks that it doesn’t make sense to me, I should do what?

Instructor: Yeah.

Student: So this is something that I tried to think about for a little bit and I don’t [have] it so clear myself, but I think that when you have—if you have a certain concept of what things in the world are, right, let’s call it just raw material, right, and then you have this world of thoughts that you have to…

Instructor: It doesn’t match to that.

Student: Yeah, that you have to find—people are saying all kinds of things that you don’t know what they’re trying to do. You have to find a model for, right? Thoughts doesn’t fit into the model of the world of things. You have to, besides reconciling thoughts, you also have to, or maybe you have to collapse that into some kind of thinker, right? I would say, this thinker has to be something like very distant from the world of things. And almost entirely non-participating, which makes you make it into a full type of thing. So then you end up with like, the easiest way to do this is, okay, so whoever is the thinker of all these thoughts is the you, right? That would be you, whoever this thought belongs to, the thought of the chair, whatever that thought of the chair belongs to.

Instructor: But how did you get to the thought? Wait, so you’re explaining why people say this. You’re answering my question. So wait, let me finish my reason why we have to answer this question. I don’t know if that’s a good reason, but that’s what I thought.

Student: No, no, we’re getting somewhere. We’re getting somewhere. I agree. I think you jumped one step ahead in my ma’aloch [progression] of my shiur [lecture].

Establishing the State of the Question

Do you understand my question? We’re still up to this level of state of the question. So I hear all these torahs [teachings]. People have been saying these torahs for some time now. They have not been saying them forever. And it seems to mean something to them. I don’t know exactly what. I think it’s hard to spell out exactly what. Inherently, we’ll try to explain that, and I also have to explain what happened that this started to seem to make sense to people, right?

In other words, like you said—I never said it like this, it’s true. It’s still true that nobody is meshugah [crazy]. Nobody is meshugah in the sense that—that’s why there are people who are meshugah. Only make a reason why I can’t go to that person, because I have to—in Chabad they say I can’t give a guy another head. You can give a guy a hand, a shovel, a lot of things. You can’t give a guy another head, which would mean the way in which he sees the world.

You could do that—that’s what a rabbi does—but not in a day, not in a month, not in a year. So in order for him to make—to my question to even make sense to that person, I would need to break a lot of ice, to open a lot of things for him to be able to see the world from the way where I’m coming from.

The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant: Understanding Perspectivism

Now my thing where I’m coming from is that you have to be able to see the world—first, we’re going to get into what you’re saying, but first, before that, I thought you were saying this—the world the way it is, and then why, from different people’s perspectives, they get stuck in different ways.

Like, for example, if I—you know, you remember the story of the blind people and the elephant, right? Very famous story that explains perspectivism, right? Very Indian mashal [parable] of elephant. Remember the story?

Student: You don’t remember the ma’aseh [story]? The stomping?

Instructor: But I know why it’s about an elephant, but the same reason they philosophize it about a table.

Student: Exactly.

Instructor: There’s an ultimate Indian mashal about an elephant. There are a bunch of blind men that they’re surrounding an elephant. Now they don’t know what an elephant is, they’ve never seen an elephant, they were blind from birth. So one guy says, standing by its tail, and says, “This is a thing with a long and fuzzy tail.” The other guy standing by its nose says, “This is some kind of long pipe.” The other guy standing by his photo is like, “This is a big fat pillar,” and so on. And the other guy is—some guy can see it, but they can only see one end of it. They say, “This is a big gray mass.”

So, everyone is saying the truth. Then comes one guy who can see and says, “This is an elephant. You just saw the tail, and you saw the head, and you saw the nose, and you saw the foot,” right?

This is a good explanation of why perspective is a meaning. When people speak things from their perspective, it’s partial because they’re blind to what they’re really seeing. They don’t even know that they’re seeing an elephant. But if you—what we’re looking for always is to open your eyes, right? That’s what philosophy is for. That’s what thought is for. To really see what is, right?

And then if you see what is, you will have to, by definition, be able to explain everyone’s mistakes.

The Aristotelian Principle: Nobody Makes Real Mistakes

This is also something that we learn from Aristotle. Aristotle always says, nobody makes mistakes. People only are partially right. Especially smart people. There are some crazy people that can somehow make real mistakes. That would be a big question. But usually people, the reason they say something is because they’re looking at something from a perspective.

And now when we’re talking—this is a physical mashal—but we’re talking conceptual things. Because their way their concepts are constructed, forcing them to see things from a certain perspective that leads them to certain problems, right? Certain aporia [philosophical puzzles], certain puzzles which cannot be resolved from their perspectives.

The Example of Reb Akiva Eiger’s Kashas [Questions]

Like Reb Akiva Eiger’s kashas [questions], right? All the Reb Akiva Eiger’s kashas are right. Everyone knows Reb Akiva Eiger has a good kasha [question]—not all of his kashas, by the way, but a big large percentage of them—they’re good kashas. But what they show is that Reb Akiva Eiger didn’t understand anything. Chas v’shalom [God forbid], Reb Akiva Eiger. You understand what I’m saying, right? Numbers.

But Reb Akiva Eiger’s kashas are always a good kashas. It’s like a very big kashas. It’s always, if you accept all of his assumptions, of which there are always a lot that he doesn’t even sometimes realize or doesn’t spell out, his question, you can’t budge it. You can’t move it. You can make up a funny teretz [answer] like some acharonim [later authorities] do, but that’s—everyone understands it’s not a good [answer].

The real answer, you have to dissolve it. In other words, you have to show why, where we got to this, and why none of this means any of it. The reality is something entirely different. Then the kasha doesn’t start. It’s like the kasha either doesn’t start or doesn’t end. There’s no world, right? There’s no world in which the kasha is a good kasha and the teretz is a good teretz. That’s not what I’m trying to get at.

The Criterion for Adequate Philosophy: Explaining Others’ Errors

What I’m trying to get at is that when we see the full picture, we’re also explaining the mistakes. Very important to decide. If your philosophy doesn’t explain why everyone else is crazy, and precisely in what way they’re crazy, that’s a bad understanding, because then you’re not understanding the world.

The Teleological Foundation: Why Meaning Precedes God and How Modernity Destroyed Natural Purpose

The Methodological Foundation and the Classical Teleological Framework

The Principle: A True Philosophy Must Explain Others’ Errors

And you also understand why he doesn’t see more, because there’s someone blocking it, for some reason there’s a piece of meat on the other side that makes you only see the foot, and so on. Right? *Stimmt* [Yiddish: correct]?

Now, in the same way, we have to explain what is it that causes everyone to see only—to see this—some internal kind of you or will. I think usually it boils down to will, some kind of wanting, some kind of internal state of mind, feeling, something in the person. And then they identify this as all the good, or the main good thing, and they think that the *Shechinah* [Divine Presence] can be showered on it even, it’s such a good thing.

And for me, none of this makes any sense, because firstly, I don’t even know what that is. Also, if it is, I think it’s incoherent, because wanting to do something, me, to do something. You got what I’m saying?

The Promise: A New Explanation

So I have the story, I’ll tell you the secret. And at least I don’t know anyone else that explained this so well as me before. Doesn’t mean anything, but people did explain it, not in the Jewish context, but people did explain it. And what’s his name? Charles Taylor probably explained more or less this, and other people. So people did explain it, but not enough for us to make sense.

So we’re going to do it right now, and this is a new book that we’re going to write, a new movement in *Yiddishkeit* [Judaism/Jewish practice] that’s going to resolve all the problems because of this basic thing.

Student: You remember, from a long time ago, all the way before…

Instructor: Yeah, but then you need a specific model, right? For how this…

Student: What I was trying to explain was not this set the stage for that model.

Instructor: Yeah, you were explaining why this…

Student: Why this specific model exists.

Instructor: Yeah, yeah, we’re going to get to it, we’re going to get to it. We’re not entirely in your way, but I’ll get to it, yeah.

Student: That’s Kant, what you were trying to explain. Why we get this, yeah. The shift.

Instructor: Mm-hmm. The Copernican Revolution.

Digression: The Kiruv Book and Its Backwards Argument

So let’s start somewhere simpler for my purposes. I hope what you’re trying to say. You’ll remember the old story, very old story, which is hard to even tell the people nowadays because they’re never always going to misinterpret the first part of it. But I hope that everyone that listened to enough of our classes and knows enough of what we’re teaching knows already this.

You already know, today I saw, today I saw a book, one of these books that’s written for teenagers that are not very smart, but a little smart, to defend *Yiddishkeit* to them. If you’re a little bit smart, then you right away see that it’s fallacious arguments mostly. But for people that are a little smart, maybe it helps. If you’re very dumb, then you don’t need the book. So I’m not sure who the book is for.

But anyways, with this book, it’s explained, and what he explains is true, but also because of Nebuchadnezzar’s blindness, he can’t explain it correctly. Explain that everything in the world depends on one thing. If there is a God. And if there is a God, then things have a purpose.

The Meaning Crisis

Also something that you have to help me. I had a dream this morning about that there’s going to be a—you heard? You heard that there’s a meaning crisis? You’re not on YouTube enough. There’s a meaning crisis. Did you hear of it? There’s many crises, like a *Shidduch* [matchmaking] crisis, the leaders crisis, whatever crisis, there’s a meaning crisis, there’s a lack of meaning in the world, meaning.

Student: Meaning, oh, oh, oh. Meaning, because everyone’s always having meetings.

Instructor: No, they’re always having meetings, that’s because of the meaning crisis.

There’s a meaning crisis, did you hear of it? So I had a dream that the government set up an office of meaning, and they’re going to give out meaning to everyone. Everyone, the communists said everyone should have the equal amount of meaning, and the capitalists said, no, everyone should have as much meaning as they deserve, and so on. That’s going to be the new ministry, ministry of meaning. *Misrad HaMashmaut* [Hebrew: Ministry of Meaning].

Student: *Misrad HaMashmaut*, exactly.

Instructor: And they’re giving out, and wherever they find some place with not enough meaning, they send a big truck with meaning.

So, this is what I dreamt in the morning. Who gets all the good dreams, like, in the morning? The good dreams are always like that before you wake up, when you’re halfway asleep and halfway awake. And I couldn’t figure out, like, how are they’re going to give out the meaning? That was, I woke up with the question, like, is it going to be a supernatural? Does this mean, like, they’re going to somehow give meaning to things? Or is this, like, some physical way? I couldn’t figure out how the story continues. That’s a meaning. A meaning. *Misrad HaMeaning* [Ministry of Meaning]. Giving out meaning. *Misrad HaMashmaut*.

Okay. Of course, you’ve got to allow a lot of forms.

The Correct Order: Meaning Implies God

Okay. Now, *b’kitzur* [in short], there’s a meaning crisis. And this *Yid* [Jew] said that… Why do all the *Yidden* [Jews] that shouldn’t speak in this tone? Can you explain it to me? I don’t know. Go on YouTube. All the *Yidden* that shouldn’t speak, they all speak like this.

And this *Yid* said that everything depends on one question. If there’s a God, and if there’s a God, then He created the world for a reason, and therefore everything has a meaning. And if not, then nothing has a meaning, and then therefore you don’t have to go to yeshiva tomorrow morning. That’s basically this guy’s delusion and he wrote 900 pages about it somehow.

Now this is right, 100 percent, that it’s backwards, right? Not if there’s a God, then meaning. If there’s a meaning, there’s a God. Or one way of saying it, right?

The Classical Discovery: You Cannot Explain What Something Is Without Explaining What It’s For

What do I mean by that? In the olden days everyone understood—I mean not everyone, this was discovered by Socrates and maybe Avraham [Avinu]—that’s what. That it doesn’t make sense to talk about the world without explaining what it’s for. Any natural thing. Not because it’s a God that gives it meaning. Because to explain what something is, you need to explain what it’s for. Remember?

This is called by the fancy Latin—fake Latin, fake Greek word—teleology. But we’re not going to say that word because it doesn’t help us. We’re going to say the word meaning. Meaning is the same exact thing, right? What is the meaning of something? What it’s for.

You cannot explain a table without explaining what tables are for. That’s just what it is. And therefore, the what-for-ness of things, which we call the *tachlis* [purpose/end/goal], or the end, or the completion, or all kinds of words that we call this thing, the goal, is more what they are than what they’re made out of and what made them into what they are, and what they are right now, and so on. *Nachon* [correct]?

Remember this? Right? Everyone knows about this very basic stuff. This is the fourth cause of Aristotle, and also something, what?

Student: And the first one.

Instructor: The first and the second and the first. Yeah, one of the four causes, famous four causes. But the important thing is that this is what defines most definitive of what a thing is, for sure for a living thing. A living thing is the kind of thing for which their form and their end and their—and their—what they are, are the same thing.

Okay, now in short, remember everyone remembers this, okay?

The Unity of Theology, Physics, and Ethics

And now according to that is the important thing. Rather going to that, for example, the important thing that this does is that theology, or what God is, or the for-ness that everything is for—that’s one definition of God—and what is physics, what things are, just science, and ethics, which is making things into what they are, having everything complete, achieve its completion, are the same kind of thing, right?

What everyone know or heard, you probably heard of David Hume who said that there’s something later called the naturalistic fallacy, is does not imply ought, that’s nonsense. Because ought is just the completion of the is.

There is a science, that’s why in *Sefer Mishlei* [Book of Proverbs], knowledge equals goodness. Remember? And nobody understands that nowadays, because they think that knowledge is knowing what things are, and goodness is being good. What’s that got to do anything with that? No. Goodness is just things being completely what they are, working well, right? Or we say in different languages, the good and the well are the same thing. The being good and acting well are the same thing for everything. *Nachon* [correct], everyone knows this. *Hakdama, hakdama chashiva, k’tzara keleh* [Introduction, important introduction, short and complete].

The Historical (But Not Only Historical) Destruction of Teleology

Then, and this is a historical story, but it’s not really a historical story, that’s why we should stop saying it as a historical story. Although it’s true that this history happened, but it’s also not true that this is only a historical thing. There were always people that didn’t understand this. That’s the *Avodah Zarah* [idolatry], that *Avodah Zarah*, when you had to burn their books, you have to understand that’s also what they thought.

It’s not a new, like, some *goyim* [non-Jews] came. It’s very, it’s a very, there’s another kind of, he called it the *yetzer* [inclination], the things otherwise. Then take out the whole historicism out of our story, because otherwise we get into historicism, that’s for sure.

So, but there’s, one way of saying the story is historically, I don’t like it, but we’re going to say it like this right now.

The New Science: Removing Teleology from Nature

Later came other people, *iver oysham* [may their name be blotted out], Francis Bacon, with his *Novum Organum* [New Organon], new science, and later other people, David Hume, very famously, and other, other, other people, and they said there isn’t any “for”s in the world. *Ein ba’olam tachlis* [There is no purpose in the world]. The world doesn’t have a meaning. The world has a cause but not a meaning.

Or they redefined the word cause to not include the word meaning, which is a very weird thing to do, but that’s what they did. Remember?

And what would be the difference? And, wait, the difference is that we don’t explain things by what they’re for, we explain things by what pushed them into where they are. Instead of saying that a tree is something that’s trying to be a tree—trying not in a human sense, right? When we said we’re trying, right away you assume that there’s a thinker in there, a separate soul or something that thinks. No, a tree is the kind of thing that tends towards being a full tree. That’s what it means to be a tree. You cannot understand the tree.

Now they say, no, a tree is just what happens to be when there’s all these forces pushing the tree into being a tree, into something, into nothing, because there’s no being, no such thing as being a tree.

Okay, that was, that’s the other *shita* [approach/system]. And it’s actually not a natural way.

The Theological and Ethical Consequences of Denying Natural Teleology

The Persistence of Teleological Thinking in Ordinary Life

Most people do think that there are ends in nature, just get hacked into their head by their science teacher that’s the most you think. But normal people still speak of ends in nature. Of course, it’s complicated. What kind of ends? What are the ends?

Bacon’s Fallacy: Confusing the Existence of Ends with Knowledge of Specific Ends

Every time this is what one of the big fallacies that that book, for example, makes. The fact that there are ends doesn’t mean that the end is to learn the Mori Toys for us. No, Jarek, it’s only two things. Then we have to do real science, find out what the end of everything is. That is the true science, as the Rambam [Maimonides] explains in he knew every tree, no, he knew what every tree was for, which is what knowing every tree was, which is why it’s the same kind of knowledge as knowing the Torah [the Jewish Bible/Law], which is knowing the good for everything.

Okay, now, but in any case, and if the good is causally prior to the partial existence of things, which tends toward the good, that’s what Torah means. But anyways, way. That would be like a more platonic way of saying things. The point is now we’re going way too fast. I have to go back to my mode of saying it.

The Modern View: Causes Without Purpose

Instructor: So basically it has causes without purpose. Exactly. There are pushes without purpose. Purpose is not a real thing. Now…

Student: And cause just means where it comes from.

Instructor: Exactly. Or it’s history.

History as the Consequence of Losing Final Causation

That’s the *oimek* [depth/essence] of why everything turns into history. Because cause explaining just means where it’s from. Don’t explain what it is and where it’s going to, that’s why I’m against history, because I’m for where things are going to, or what they are, which is, what they are is explained by where they’re going to, and not where they come from, because where they come from is true, it’s not like I deny that reality, just that I deny that being the most important thing, fact about things, the most explanatory fact about things. And I think that is obvious to everyone that thought for five seconds and stopped being brainwashed.

Now, but this is just me doing rhetoric, of course, there’s real, these people are smarter than I am, than I’m pretending now, and there are reasons this is why they thought all these things and you gotta learn this very seriously I’m just doing a short overview for my book this is just a review of the book remember this is not the book now.

The Theological Crisis: Three Possible Gods in a World Without Natural Ends

Now if there are no causes in nature then then God becomes a different kind of God very important theology looks very different right then we get into the question something called intelligent designer which is really a *Shein Dalet* [Shin-Dalet: demon/false deity] intelligent designer is *Metat* [possibly referring to Metatron, an angelic figure] it’s not God not our God you know.

The Intelligent Designer as Idolatry

Have you ever heard that the Jews are pro-intelligence design, that’s not true. There is an intelligent designer for the world, but he’s a *sheen dalit* [demon]. Okay, not a *sheen dalit*. You could call it a *noose* [nous: Greek philosophical term for intellect/mind], a *malach* [angel], a *sefirah* [divine emanation in Kabbalistic thought], intelligence. Not God. Not the one. Very important. Yeah, it’s the same idea. Relative to God, everything is *sheen dalit*. So, you understand? If you worship that, you’re worshiping a false god.

Rabbi, all the people who worship an intelligent designer are worshiping a false god who has a body. Because they imagine him as having plans the way that we have plans and they imagine the world having meaning in a fake way. Not inherently there are no imminent ends world by itself isn’t for anything. That’s what they say.

We need a God to make it for something like an artificial thing like a table isn’t doesn’t have in itself the tableness that it has. What wood has woodness in it tables only have tables by imposition by people that make them into tables then those who think of nature the world is has only external causes and God is some kind of mind outside the world that gives it purposes you understand what I’m saying? It doesn’t really give it purposes even it’s only serving him in some way which means that God means things which means that their God is a fake God. Okay, very simple. I’m not going this is only a summary so if you don’t understand it come to a different sheet there’s not a sheet on theology but you should just know that this is what makes the God this, therefore, says all of it.

The Three (and Only Three) Modern Theological Options

This is also the reason why there’s only two options in modernity. Either you can be a deist or a pantheist, or a *Magashen* [one who corporealizes God]. These are only three options. That’s the reality. There’s either deists, people that think that basically there’s no God in the world.

Option 1: Deism (The Watchmaker God)

There’s only God that, like the watchmaker, emotionally made the watch, but then the watch, so to speak, works by itself, because they don’t understand any kind or other kind of cause, a formal cause or a final cause. The watchmaker’s only an efficient cause, right? He only put the piece of the watch together. He didn’t invent idea of watches, and he doesn’t do one of the four watches, okay? But, God is a great matchmaker, that’s Newton’s *shitta* [position/approach], or one deist *shitta*, not Isaac Newton.

Or if you say that deism plus miracles, which means God sometimes breaks the watch. That’s what most modern Orthodox people believe. Deism plus God is a watchmaker that sometimes intervenes to break the watch. Very weird *shitta*, but that’s one option. I’m giving a very short of *Yeshiklali* [general overview].

Option 2: Atheism

Second *shita* is atheism, no god, or something like that.

Option 3: Pantheism (Chassidus)

Third *shita* is pantheism, *chassidus* [Hasidic thought]. God is the new watch itself. Okay, those are the three *shitas* that are possible according to, yeah, sort of. Those are the three *shitas* possible according to, more complicated, more complicated. But also *chassidus* is more complicated. I’m doing a great reduction over here.

But those are the three *shitas* possible according to the theory that there are no ends in nature. Those are the three kinds of theology, and you can know that every modern religious person, besides for me, is one of these three things. Either a deist, or a deist plus miracles, which is a weird kind of deist, or an atheist, which are many religious people are also, or a pantheist. No, that’s the options. A pantheist just collapses everything. There’s everything. There’s only God, and that’s fine. That’s fine. But he understands it in a material way, which means it’s also a big question material and what’s going on. But okay, let’s not get into this.

The Ethical Crisis: What Happens to the Good?

Now, what do I, now, a third thing, this is *Dilchis* [perhaps: *Darchei*—ways of] theology that happens. What happens to ethics? This is where we ought to get to today. Of course, everything is connected. But what happens to ethics? What happens to the good? To the human good?

The Strangeness of the Problem

Here, there’s something very weird. Why there’s something very weird? Like, Shmuel, you noticed. Here, there’s something very weird. Because, Because, and give me one of these seltzer things, yeah. Here, there’s something very weird. Why? Explain to me why.

Because if things, or activities, things in the world, things in the world don’t have ends, they don’t have meaning. No actions have meaning by themselves. In other words, if you look at an action or you look at a thing, you cannot explain from what it is what it’s for. This is the basic opinion of all modern people. Or if the *etzadot* [perhaps: *yetzer hara*—evil inclination], let’s forget saying *etzadot*, I’m going to stop, we’re going to flip the word. This is what the *etzadot* holds. The *sultan* [Satan], from the first day he holds like this.

The Anomaly of Human Intentionality

And therefore, but, we have this weird thing called human beings. Very weird thing, like the card said, humans are an exception. Everything is extension besides for mind. The mind, or the human mind, there’s only human mind according to him, maybe God’s mind. There’s no human mind besides for that. And he, that mind, has this weird thing called intentions.

Now, an intention is something that does not follow the laws of physics. I’m not even talking about free will and all these things. Intentions don’t make sense in the physical picture that we just discussed. Right? Intention means a thing being about another, something that is about another thing. Make sense? When I want something or mean means I mean something, am I about something else?

Now, that doesn’t exist. Only in the old *Shiddur* [system/approach] that all things are about something else, or about their own final state or something like that. But nothing is about something else, everything is just what it is. Being about something else is not a physical thing, you can’t see it. You can’t explain it by a pushing cause or a pulling cause. It can only be explained by a kind of formal cause or by a kind of final cause. Make sense?

Because literally what a final cause is, being towards something else, being about something else. Aiming at something else in a real way. Obviously humans do this. This is a weird straight. Obviously human minds do this. We form intentions, and we act, we make plans, we act towards other things, or at least we think we act towards other things. Whether we act towards other things, that’s going to be the *Mechlerikas* [point of dispute]. But we think that we act towards other things. We have dreams, we have plans, we have goals, we have aims, we have what we call wants and wills and desires and wishes. All of these things, they all break down, boil down, at least they all have the attribute of being about other things, or not even about, they’re towards other things, right? Towards things in the future, towards even myself in the future, right? And myself in the future doesn’t exist, so it can’t be that myself in the future is pushing me towards that, because it doesn’t exist. It only exists in my head.

The Mind-Body Problem as a Consequence

So we end up with this very weird situation, right? Very famously called the mind-body problem in Cartesianism. But, and Descartes knew that this is what caused the problem, he didn’t invent it. This is very clear, there’s not some conspiracy theory on inventing. The mind-body problem came to be because of the denial of intention in real things, in external things, right? Now, *Stimmt* [correct/does it make sense]? Makes sense? The story is correct.

The Loss of the Human Good

So, therefore, something very interesting happened. Something very interesting happened. So, there’s basically only two solutions to this problem. Or, again, there’s two or three solutions. I don’t have very clearly what the three solutions would be. But something like this.

So, what is the human good? In the olden days, the human good was not different than any other good, right? The human good is the best way for a human to be. The complete way, the fullness of humanity, what we call you, the *harmonia* [harmony], happiness, which is just the best way for a human to be.

Since there’s no such thing as the best in the reality, so it can’t be about, can’t be that. That, we lose that ability. Now, we are left with all kinds of other things that are, some of them are like *shiraim* [remnants] of that, and some of them, that’s one way of being left, like with what’s left over from happiness, without happiness meaning this. Or, we end up with something even more than we had before in some sense. Let me explain.

The Two Kinds of Modern Ethics

So one thing, this is basically the two kinds of ethics that exist in modernity. Now you understand something very interesting. You’ve probably heard that there’s only two kinds of ethics.

The Two Modern Ethical Systems: Utilitarianism and Deontology as Remnants of Lost Teleology

The Three Ethical Frameworks: Identifying the Correct One

Okay? The third one is virtuosic ethics [virtue ethics], which is the correct one. But in classic modernity, there’s only two kinds of ethics, right? If you don’t know this, you should take a crash course somewhere. In any case, there’s two kinds of ethics.

Utilitarianism: The “Remnant” Ethics

Bentham’s System and Nietzsche’s Critique

Utilitarianism is Bentham’s *shitta* [approach/system], the thing that Nietzsche really liked to make fun of always. And which is that, of course, we don’t have happiness in the real way, in the Aristotelian way, which is the definition of the human being, the best kind of human that he could be, because there’s no such thing as the best of anything.

The Survival of Subjective Happiness

But this thing that people were talking about seems to still exist, right? This is what I call the remnant *shitta*, or the *shiraim shitta* [the remnants/leftovers approach]. In other words, people still feel happy sometimes, and sometimes don’t feel happy, or they feel pleasure sometimes, or sometimes don’t feel pleasure. So therefore, we say, what is good? Pleasure. That still exists. Feeling happy. An internal sensation.

Something in analogy to a sensation, not a sensation, a physical, like a perceptive sensation, which is another problem, but something, an internal sensation, an emotion. What did they call it? A feeling. There’s another word that they used to use, people. A passion, a feeling, all this kind. That’s what David Hume said, reasons are the slave of the passions. Remember, this is how we got to this.

The Mystery of Subjective Wants

There’s still passions, I still want things in the sense of like some want arises in me somehow—it’s mysterious what this even means because it can’t be explained—but it’s a feeling, it exists. You’d say it’s subjective but it’s something that exists and therefore that is what you end up saying.

The Altruistic Twist and Its Problems

So what is good? Even if you want to make this into somehow sound good, so just being about your own feelings of happiness and pleasure sounds really evil, although some people just bite the bullet and say that. If you want to be nicer you say everyone’s happiness—for some reason I should care about everyone else, I don’t know why—but we still have this *mesorah* [tradition] that happiness has, ethics has something to do with other people also.

So we’ve got to pretend that it’s also about everyone being happy, but in the end, everyone being a hedonist, right? Everyone, hedonist—I don’t mean claiming that happiness is the good, because most things are the good. A really even weirder kind of hedonist than ancient hedonist, right?

Ancient vs. Modern Hedonism

Ancient hedonist still believes in something called the good, it’s just that human good is the final pleasure. A modern hedonist says, there’s no such thing as good. I know that this makes me feel good. People literally say this all day. If you go in any yeshiva, you hear people saying this, I hear even people pretending to say this in a good way, right? So therefore, if Torah makes you feel good, you should learn Torah.

So, subjectivity. Sometimes it’s called subjectivity. This is one solution. Of course, this is a remnant solution, is what I’m saying. It only has any moral forms because people still, the old people also spoke about feeling good and being happy. But they meant being happy in an objective way. And now being happy changes its meaning from being the best kind of human being to being someone that has certain feelings.

The Experience Machine Problem

And then we get the question of, how’s it called, in this little experiment about, what if I just have a machine that injects drugs to you all day that makes you feel pleasure? Is that what you mean? And the utilitarians…

Student: The dopamine problem.

Instructor: Yeah. The utilitarians have tied themselves up enough to figure out why that would not be good. Some of them have answers to this, but this is what you end up with.

The Inadequacy of Utilitarian Ethics

Okay. Now, the other *shitta*, that’s one *shitta*, that’s a gorgeous *shitta*, no one really holds of it. Everyone understands that that’s not really ethics. I think that everyone does. It’s not just for a few weirdos.

Student: Not a scam. Just pursuing what feels good.

Instructor: It comes with an altruist twist that tries to…

Student: Altruism is this weird thing which says, you should keep other people feeling good. But why is that better than me feeling good? It’s not really…

Instructor: That’s where altruism comes in, of course. Ancient ethics is not altruistic enough.

Student: Well, you stack it with… It has to be modular. You stack it with something, ultimately.

Moral Sentiment and Emotivism

The Sentiment Theory

Instructor: Okay, so you end up saying that there’s some… What you end up saying is that there’s a sentiment—that was the word I was looking for—moral sentiment, right? There’s a sentiment that says that I feel good when you feel good. That turns out to be ethics. Ethics is just one more feeling. That’s really what, that’s what’s called emotivism, right?

Student: Emotivism, yeah.

The English Theory and Nietzsche’s Mockery

Instructor: Okay, but that’s basically the modern theory. Or one English theory, okay? Like Nietzsche used to say, nobody wants to be happy, only Englishmen want to be happy. Okay, but he means this kind of habit, you were imposed like this very specific idea of what feels good to you, what’s called sometimes conscience, right?

Anscombe’s Critique of Conscience

And our teacher Elizabeth Anscombe wrote in her very important article in Modern Moral Philosophy that, again, someone called Joseph Bishop, Butler, I don’t remember, that was all about conscience. If you meet certain modern people, like Rav Hirsch, some Jews, in a certain period, everyone’s very talk about this inner conscience, which is also one interpretation of this inner thing. Like, everyone knows internally what’s good.

And then Freud said, yeah, that’s your mother’s voice. But anyways, and she says, well, seriously? I know people that internally really want to kill everyone. That’s not a very good, like, they just all imagine that everyone just automatically has this sense of ethics. That’s not what, not real, not true.

Conscience as Just Another Feeling

But that’s, but really, that’s just one more feeling. There’s no reason to think that that’s true. And you’re really not sure this is like, this is games. Like, you could say it nicely in a book that you know people that want to murder.

Student: No, there are people who are murdering. Right, even the murderers, like, when Ted Bundy was interviewed, like, he knew that it’s not good, right? Even the guy that wants to, he knows, he has an internal compass about what it is.

Instructor: I don’t think that’s true, but I’m not going to get into that right now. My point is more important. The more important point is, that’s just one more feeling. There’s no reason to think that that feeling is more important than any other feelings. Only, again, there’s a feeling that doesn’t tell you what good is.

The Distinction Between Feeling and Thought

Student: No, but one second, hold on. I think we’re also confusing the word feelings here. There’s two feelings that are going on. Feeling here means a sensation. That’s all it could mean. That’s what it means in this *shitta*. Right, and there’s like a feeling like, you know…

Instructor: It’s the same thing. That’s what it is. There isn’t, there isn’t another kind of feeling. That’s what I’m trying to say. There’s a thought, right? Thoughts are about things. But if there’s no such a thing as goodness then your thought is not about anything. So it turns out to be a feeling, right? The difference between a thought and a feeling is that a thought is about something and a feeling is not about anything.

Student: Why is the thought of me not hurting you…

Instructor: Let’s not argue now because I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. You understand what I’m saying, but now let’s move on.

Student: No.

Instructor: Okay, if you don’t, then come after the *shiur* [lecture] and ask. Okay. First adaptation. Okay. Now, because I’m just going to end up explaining to you at length, but I don’t have time for that. It’s very simple. What I have to say is like this.

Deontology: The Second Modern System

Introduction to the Kantian Approach

The other *shitta* is what we call… What’s the other *shitta*? Maybe this is something like what you’re saying, I’m not sure. But the other *shitta* is what we call the deontology, okay? Okay, the deontology is obedience of the moral law. Okay, that’s what counts, and that’s what Litvaks [Lithuanian-style Orthodox Jews] say.

Mapping to Jewish Communities

The first *shitta* is no *yid* [Jew] really says. Maybe there’s some weird Jew that says that. Like, from Jew, I mean, like, religious person. But the other *shitta* is basically what every Litvak says.

Student: Well, chassidim [Hasidic Jews] sometimes say hedonism. They just say your real feeling is Hashem [God]. But I don’t know if that counts anymore. Because that sounds very much closer to the objective happiness in the end.

Instructor: But it might be, in some sense. Some chassidim, I know some people that interpret chassidim that way. But I don’t think it’s a classic interpretation, so I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. And I wonder if… Yeah, it’s very complicated. Okay.

The Structure of Deontological Ethics

But the other *shitta* is to say that there’s some… This also doesn’t have a source, and also ends up relying on something like what you’re describing, that they’re closer to whether you’re describing it. Not a feeling that makes me feel… I feel fuzzy inside, but something like I feel outside something. I feel something imposing on me.

It still ends up being this kind of a feeling, but—that’s a criticism of Kantianism, that it’s also a kind of emotivism—but it has to be something, in some sense, from the outside, or something like Kant says, you give your own law. But a law is by definition something stronger than you. And you have some kind of idea or obedience to a law, which doesn’t say anything.

The Transformation of Law’s Meaning

The law is not saying anything. The law is not the fact. In the old way, the law is only the fact that this is good. You might not know it, so I’m letting you know that this is the good way to be a human being. And in this way, that’s not such a thing as good people or good anything, but there’s such a thing as acting in a good way.

The Distance Between Action and Goodness

Now, what this does, and the second way is really mostly where I’m heading. What this does is, where is the medicine at? What this does mostly is that it makes the relation between the action and the goodness of it very far, right?

Because remember, if there’s just things that have ends, then there’s good things and good actions and bad actions. Good actions are the ones that lead the thing to the end, and bad actions are the ones that destroy it. It’s very simple. It’s the *din* [law/judgment] in the action, it’s not a *din* in the intention.

The Kantian Framework Explained

But if there’s no such a thing, but we have some kind of idea, like a very general idea, something like following the moral law, or going against your base feelings is the good, right? Doing things for the purpose of following the law, and not for the purpose of being happy, right?

If that’s the Kantian kind of *shitta*, that says that the goodness of moral action is in following some kind of recognition of a moral law, of a moral truth, or a moral goodness, which is not connected with what you want, it’s not connected with what you think, and so on. It’s connected with some kind of obedience to a moral law. It ends up being a kind of obedience.

Deontology’s Implicit Theism

Student: As to society?

Instructor: Society? No, not society. Society is just one more person. A lot of people. It’s a God. It ends up being God. It ends up being God. I can’t say explicitly that this is God. God is this… One of the reasons that he [Kant] believes in God is because he feels that there’s a moral law. And God, there’s no way to explain that it’s not a God. There’s ways of doing this atheistically also, but it ends up being something like a God.

The Challenge of Cultural Relativism

Now…

Student: But is there a way to, like, challenge this if, like, you live, let’s say, in Africa, there’s one type of way…

Instructor: Not where… Not where…

The Internalization of Goodness: How Modern Philosophy Transformed Kavana and Shelo Lishma

The Source of Moral Law: Society or God?

Instructor: As to society? No, not society. Society is just one more person, a lot of people. It’s a God. It ends up being God. It ends up being God. You can’t say that this is God. God is this, so one of the reasons that he believes in God is because he feels that there’s a moral law. And God, there’s no way to explain that it’s not a God. There’s ways of doing this atheistically also, but it ends up being something like a God.

But is there a way to challenge this? If you live in Africa, there’s one type of way to do that? I’m not worried about this right now. There’s different problems. Those are different problems. Those are problems. All these *shittas* [philosophical positions/systems] are going to have these kind of problems. I’m trying to get at the form of the *shittas*.

The Core Thesis: Goodness Resides Entirely in Human Intention

What I’m trying to get at here is that now, if you have this idea of what good is, and this is what every *Litvak* [Lithuanian-style Orthodox Jew], like in many *sifrei mussar* [ethical/moral instruction texts], I think, what good is, then your connection with it, the way in which your action is good, becomes something very internal.

What “Internal” Means: Human Subjectivity and Aboutness

What do I mean internal? When I mean internal, I mean precisely this thing that humans have and doesn’t really exist in the world. Remember, according to this *shitta*, there is something humans have, which is subjectivity, or being about, the ability to be about something, the ability to be towards something, the ability to want, we could say. Now we call this word wanting. The ability to want or to desire.

Desire was always a specifically human way of being towards something. But now humans are the only things that are towards something. So now desire or intention is this very specific and weird and inexplicable in some sense, human kind of thing, maybe this is a human separate soul that can do it, that can be about something else, that can be wanting some other thing that doesn’t really exist. Now, the wanting doesn’t either exist, it’s only like a mental fact, it’s only something internal.

Intention as the Sole Source of Goodness

And now this turns out to be the only thing that can make you good. Because just doing something, if you do a good thing for the wrong reasons, it’s not even *shelo lishma* [not for its own sake]. Remember, the whole thing of *mitoch shelo lishma ba lishma* [from doing it not for its own sake, one comes to do it for its own sake] doesn’t really work in this *shitta*. It’s become very hard to explain. And you’ll notice that a lot of people have a big problem explaining it. While the Rabbah thought that this is simple and the most obvious moral factor is. Right?

Why? Because according to this *nusach shitta* [version of the philosophical position], the only thing that makes things good is the way in which you intend being good by it. That’s what the goodness consists of. The intending being good, the intending of being this universal moral law, or intending to be a universal rule, all kind of formulations of this same thing.

But the only way in which what you’re doing is connected to that, which your act is connected, is in this internal state, almost a feeling, might be more than a feeling if you want to say it that way, but it’s just a feeling, a feeling that I’m doing a good thing. Because besides your feelings, and we don’t have explanation for feelings, because feelings is this weird human thing nothing else has. There’s no feelings in the universe, right? The universe doesn’t care about you, you know this statement? The universe doesn’t have feelings, only humans have feelings, right? Only humans have aboutness, only humans have intentionality. Now, according to this *shitta*.

Therefore, the only way something can be good, only humans can be morally good, right? There’s nothing, there’s no way of saying that something is good or bad in a real way, only humans. And now specifically human intention, which is this weird, inexplicable magic thing that humans obviously still have, even after the theory doesn’t make sense, they still have it, right?

The Chassidic Formulation: Goodness Exists Only in the Heart

So now we end up with something very weird. We end up with this theory that, what is here said by *Sefer HaTanya* [foundational Chabad Chassidic text], that the only place where God is, the only good thing, is the intention to be good. It’s a kind of empty intention because, or we can say it’s not empty because it’s obedience to the moral law. But that’s the intention, the intender. Right, but there’s no, the link between the law and you doesn’t exist, right? Because that’s in your mind. The link is also in your mind, for sure, according to God, right?

So the only thing that’s really good is entirely in the human heart, and the human mind, and the human intention, human soul, however you want to call it.

The Collapse of Mitoch Shelo Lishma Ba Lishma

And now, firstly, this makes everything much worse. Like I said, the *mitoch shelo lishma* stops making sense. Or it becomes much bigger, but the effort than it used to be, right?

The Rambam’s Understanding: Habituation and Real Goodness in Actions

Because the Rambam did explain as the normal way of human training. *Mitoch shelo lishma* means you do the thing as a training level where you do the thing but you don’t entirely know why. You’re doing it for the wrong why but you’re still doing a good thing. You’re still a good person. Your actions are still good. They’re really good. They’re really good because they’re doing the good thing. They’re doing the kind of things a good person would have done.

Are they fully good? No, because you’re in what we call your internality and not good because in other words you don’t know why it’s good. So you don’t do it for the sake of itself. You learn for the sake of money, but learning is still really good, because goodness is still a property of real things. So learning is still really good. It’s you, you that are missing some part of the goodness. Your mind doesn’t understand it. So you don’t mean the learning, you mean something else, but that doesn’t make it entirely not good.

The New Shitta: Shelo Lishma Becomes Worthless

Versus according to the new *shitta*, that when you learn for the sake of something else, that’s totally worthless, like the Kotzker [the Kotzker Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk] could have said. It’s entirely worthless. It might be worth in some weird way, all the *chassidish seforim* [Chassidic texts] start with this assumption, if you read any *chassidish* text, you see, they all say, well, I’ve heard that but it doesn’t happen. They all say this very weird statement. They say, well, our experience shows that it doesn’t work. We need to add something to this. Because all the *Litvaks* never got to *lishma* [doing it for its own sake]. That’s what they say. And therefore, we have to ask, see this, and all kinds of things. But it doesn’t work.

This statement arises because of the destruction of the understanding that it always works. According to the theory of habituation, being basic moral training, it always works, because once you, I mean, I can’t say always, there might still be this problem where sometimes people stay by that stage always, but it works.

The Besht’s Approach: Retroactive Elevation

Firstly, it’s still really good. It’s not that the goodness of the Besht [the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chassidism] is only like Besht says, it’ll become Besht, it’ll be *ma lishma lishma* [elevating the shelo lishma to lishma], you know these stories of Besht? I mean, you can interpret that in the correct way, I’m not saying, but I’m explaining that there’s really goodness in being, in being pretend a good person, because goodness is a property of things.

That good person is not a fully good person, he’s still a halfway good person, because you could say his heart is not good, only his actions are good. But actions are really good. They’re really the ones that make a good person into a good person. That’s what’s in the action, not in the person.

But if you understand that there’s no such thing as goodness in actions, there’s only goodness in the human heart because actions by themselves don’t have an end. They can’t have a *kavana* [intention].

The Transformation of Kavana: From Action to Mental State

Now *kavana* becomes, now the word *kavana* is very weird. It has a new interpretation of modernity than it had ever before.

The Ancient Understanding: Kavana as a Din in the Action

*Kavana*, if you read any ancient text, any medieval text about *kavana*, you’ll see that *kavana* is a *din* [law/legal category] and an action. *Kavana* is a description of what you’re doing. It’s not a description of your internal state.

How do I know this? You’ll read every *sugya* [Talmudic topic/discussion] of *mitzvos tzrichos kavana* [whether commandments require intention] and you’ll see that there’s no *shitta* that the whole is different than this. I’m making a real statement so you can argue with me. But this is how most of the *kashas* [questions/difficulties] about the *sugya* of *mitzvos tzrichos kavana* and the same thing about *melacha machsheves asra Torah* [the Torah forbade purposeful labor—a principle in Shabbos law], there’s no, none of these are about your internal state. They’re all about what the action is.

Because what explains an action of course your internal state is part of it when there’s human actions. Humans act by internal states. I’m not saying internal states don’t exist. I think that the goodness is not totally, is not contingent only on that, like it is in eternity.

The goodness is that this is a good thing, because it’s for a good purpose.

Student: And it’s also incomplete independently, right, on the flip side, you have good intentions with no action.

Instructor: Exactly. Good intentions are the opposite. Exactly. According to the… Of course. Of course, good intentions which are only in an eternal state, and are not directed toward action, which is not a thing that even makes sense in the old system, which somehow makes sense in the new ones, because it’s always in some way like this. Because then goodness is an eternal thing, it’s just a feeling, or just kind of a disposition, or like an overcoming of your own egoism, or things like that, those are entirely eternal things.

Overcoming your egoism, which is what people in modernity think is what makes good actions good, is entirely an eternal thing. Nobody cares if you get to look at the overcoming egoism or for egoistic purposes, right? It’s the action that cares.

The Practical Difference: Visible in the Action Itself

Therefore, when you read ancient descriptions of *shelo lishma*, it always has a different, there’s always a description of the action that is different, and I think always, also almost always, it’s actually different. Someone who learns *shelo lishma* is learning in a different way than someone who’s learning *lishma*. It’s not just he has a different thing in his mind.

It’s true that the reason he acts in a different way is because he doesn’t understand the goodness of learning. So the difference is very simple. For example, someone who learned *shelo lishma* is not for the purpose of learning or maybe if learning itself is a purpose towards another purpose, doesn’t matter, towards that, he’s going to only learn as long as he gets money and the other one is going to stop learning, right? The moment he doesn’t get money, you’re honored for it. So there’s a real difference in the action, you can see the difference in what he’s doing. It’s not only a difference in his head.

The Chassidic Interpretation: Entirely in Your Head

The *chassidish* interpretation of *shelo lishma* is entirely in your head. Because according to them, if you’re learning for your own pleasure, for example, in other words, because you recognize yourself that it’s good, that’s also *shelo lishma*. Because they end up with this entirely outside giving of purposes to the world, where the world is empty of purpose not only God gives it purpose, but He doesn’t really give it even, right? It’s only purposeful in the sense that it’s what God likes, which is why that’s either a pantheism or a *hagshama* [corporealization/anthropomorphism of God], or a physical God, a human-like God, understand what I’m saying?

Very simple, very simple *shtikl toeles* [bit of practical application/purpose].

Application: The Rambam on Eating for the Sake of Learning

And therefore, for example, we learned last week, the Rambam of that. That talks about how you could be *oved Hashem* [serving God] with everything you do if you eat in order to learn, basically.

Now, people think that this means that when you eat, you have to think certain thoughts. It’s nothing to do with that. It’s not about your state of mind while you’re eating. In other words, the intention, *kavana*, in the ancient world, is the answer to the question why you’re doing it. It’s not the answer to the question what is in your head while you’re doing it. You understand the difference? That’s a very one-line difference.

Modern Kavana: What Is in Your Head While Doing It

In modern days, *kavana* and *mussar seforim*, *lashma*, *kavana*, all these nice words mean, what is in your head while you’re doing it? And in the Rambam it means, why are you doing it? What’s the answer to the question why you’re doing it?

What is in your head the whole day? Sometimes last week I called it, what is in your head the whole day? But it does not mean your head ever. It’s the answer to the question.

Resolving Reb Chaim’s Stira on the Rambam

This was the answer to Reb Chaim’s *stira* [contradiction] on the Rambam. It’s the answer to a lot of things.

Student: So the answer to why now we’ve been clapping before *Megillah* [the Book of Esther, read on Purim], everyone should have a mind to be *yotzei* [fulfill the obligation].

Instructor: Exactly. That’s nonsense. The *stira* of Reb Chaim. Of course, the Chazon Ish is trying to say this but he doesn’t have a way to say it. I don’t know if it’s a true answer. I think there’s a simpler answer to that, I’m just saying, it sounds a lot of things.

Like you’re saying, there’s no such thing as you go to *shul* [synagogue] while you’re reading the *Megillah*, because the *mitzvah* [commandment] is *laining* [reading] the *Megillah*. What do you mean I should have it in my mind? What should I have in my mind? Intention is not about having it in your mind. Of course you could go and have it in your mind, but that’s just the word. It actually makes it quite small in a way. It makes it weird.

No, it takes time.

Qualification: The Mind Still Matters, But for a Different Reason

Just to be clear, what is in your mind is very important. Your mind is an important organ. And what you’re thinking at every moment is an important thing to focus on, but not because of the *din* of *kavana*, because of a whole different reason, because your mind is in action in itself. You could have the good *kavana* *shalom* [intention, peace/completeness—transcript cuts off here]

Lishma as a Din in the Maaseh: The Activity of the Soul and the Proper Understanding of Torah Lishma

The Fundamental Error: Locating Lishma in the Mind Rather Than the Action

Instructor: Like you’re saying, there’s lots of things. As you go to shul [synagogue], why are you reading the Megillah [the scroll of Esther]? Because the message is lying in the Megillah. What do you mean I should have it in my mind? What should I have in my mind? The intention is not about having it in your mind. Of course you could go and have it in your mind. But that’s just the word. It makes it weird.

No, it takes time. Just to be clear. What is in your mind is very important. Your mind is an important organ. What you’re thinking at every moment is an important thing to focus on. But not because of the din [law/category] of kavana [intention]. Because of a whole different reason. Because your mind is an action in itself.

You could have the good kavana shelo lishma [intention not for its own sake]. You could have kavana as Rashash [acronym for Rabbi Shalom Sharabi] al di Shema [on the Shema prayer]. Because what you have in your—because the reason you’re doing it is not because it’s good, but because of some other reason. It’s like the Baal Shem Tov with the shofar [ram’s horn blown on Rosh Hashanah]. Maybe, I don’t know. You shouldn’t have any kavana. Right? The kavana is just—yeah, I don’t know, it’s complicated. What’s going on in those stories, I don’t know what you understand. We’ll have to go through the whole thing.

This is very simple. So this is very simple. So now we understand both why in the olden days, lishma [for its own sake] is a din [category] in the maaseh [action]. Lishma is a din in the maaseh. Lishma is a din in the maaseh. There’s stam maaseh [plain action], and there’s lishma, and there’s shelo lishma [not for its own sake].

Of course, since humans act with their heads, have something with your head, but it’s not a din in what’s in your head.

The Modern Predicament: Goodness Trapped in Intention

And this is why, of course, modern people, not only can’t imagine God resting anywhere besides their head, they can’t imagine any goodness, which is really what they mean, besides for in their intention, which is a very weird thing, because it’s kind of useless, and it leads to this weird thing.

Everyone wants to be good. No, you don’t want to be good. Wanting means wanting to do. What does that even mean? But if all goodness is in something, that somehow makes sense. It still doesn’t entirely make sense. But that’s why they end up thinking like that, because they must think like that.

Now, I’m showing you why they’re forced to think like that, because of their thought that there’s no goodness in the real world, in the external world. So therefore, goodness has to be—so it can’t be totally what you do, because that’s an external thing, and that’s not really good. So it has to be what you do, and therefore it has to be that even if you do it, if you want to do something good and you never do anything good, you’re still a good guy.

Student: So how would you know much of it? That’s what I’ve discussed many times. In my theory, it means—even if you can conceptually divide them, you still have a correlation problem, right? One second. That’s what you’re saying, right? Meaning, even if I can somehow separate the intention from the action, I still need some sort of correlation.

Instructor: Obviously, you have to at least say you don’t want it enough or something. That’s what I would say, or that’s what other people say. I mean, even other people would say this, right?

Student: Other people, yeah, they say something, but I’m saying that their theory forces them to say that the goodness is entirely in the internal state and not in the actual state, which is why they end up saying these funny things, exactly, and then they end up with this, because this is a question for them also, they agree that this is a question, and they make up their question, and I’m using that question to show that the whole thing is absurd, but they would say, I have to say this, and they have to find an answer, exactly, that they’re not crazy, they’re crazy.

The Machlokes of Nefesh HaChaim and Tanya: A Product of Lost Teleology

Instructor: The main puzzle piece missing and the reason causing all this weirdness and the whole machlokes [dispute] of Nefesh HaChaim and Tanya or whatever it is—well, lishma is all caused by the loss of lishma in the real world. Since people stop believing that the world is lishma, they start, they end up pigeonholed into one of these two options: either all lishma is in your head, or everything is because God said so, which is basically Nefesh HaChaim’s shitta [approach/position]. Understand?

Now when you say it’s on your head, then you end up with different problems. So therefore you have to say that your head is also God, all kinds of things. But that’s the basic story.

Machshavah Tovah Metzarfah L’Maaseh: Reinterpreted Through Disposition and Action

Just means—very simple—according to my theory, if a person has an actual disposition to doing things—doesn’t mean that I’m sitting in my room and thinking of good thoughts. That’s not what it means. It’s like the Gemara [Talmud] says, in other words, if I’m a kind of person that does tzedakah [charity] every year, but this year I have no money in my pocket, so for this year I’m still a good person. But at some point I’m not being a good person. By the way, because I’m really a doer of good, right? You really are a doer.

Student: Or just there’s something external stopping you, blocking you. So you’re still considered a good person. If I was never a doer, I wouldn’t be a doer.

Instructor: Exactly. You can’t say, even Aristotle, there’s a machlokes [dispute] on this. Aristotle goes so far to say, if you never had money, you’re never a baal tzedakah [charitable person]. If you once had money, and today you don’t have money, then we can say—that’s what the Torah has to promise you to have money. Because otherwise you can’t do mitzvos [commandments]. You can’t be a baal tzedakah. You need a body. That’s what Zalman [the Vilna Gaon] said, you need a body to do mitzvos. Otherwise you could want to do mitzvah, that wanting is not interesting.

That’s the big chalek [difference/distinction] and this is, I think, the reasoning why all this, why this machlokes, all the things that we discussed. And that’s Moshe Rabbeinu’s [Moses our teacher’s] answer to the malachim [angels], yesh bichem [do you have among you] this, yesh bichem that, in other words, you have to be able to do it.

The Activity of the Soul Without a Body

That goes to a different discussion, because there is goods for a soul without a body, just different activities. It’s very interesting, when we say, these two things don’t necessarily connect. That’s why there is an ancient, like I said, father [dispute]. Father wasn’t, I mean, and there isn’t anything like I’m saying that’s how many people think. Because what happens is, the question of what is good for a soul without a body is also to do something.

We’re very confused. We think that souls without bodies can’t do anything. They do things. It’s like thinking, or knowing, or maybe even wanting, or kind of things like that, which is a doing. The goodness of the soul without a guf [body] is not that he is choleim [dreaming], as if he’s a man with a hand, but he’s choleim in the flesh. In the flesh. He’s in the flesh. That’s also a maaseh [action]. For a soul, it’s a maaseh. Maybe for a body, it’s like a maaseh. For a soul, it’s like a maaseh. That’s its activity.

The goodness of everything is a kind of activity. It’s just that it’s not your kind of activity. So it’s not, we don’t, if you want to look for the kind of thing, that’s why this is weird. This is weird. Everyone will also tell you that what’s in your head is very important. What’s in your head is very important. Not in your head, in your mind. It’s very important because those are the kind of things the soul as a soul or the thinker as a thinker, the human as a human in the real sense is doing. Not because that’s an internal thing. It’s an external thing. It’s a maaseh. Machshavah k’maaseh [thought is like action]. Machshavah k’maaseh because that’s what it does. It doesn’t want anything else.

Two Kinds of Thinking: Planning vs. Contemplation

For a body, just thinking, thinking has two meanings. Thinking here has two different meanings, right? Thinking means thinking to and thinking that, right? Or thinking a, right? Thinking to just means planning. That’s just thinking roots and therefore, that kind of thing doesn’t make sense without a maaseh. But thinking of things that thought that ends with the thinking, that’s why, for example, according to the ancient thought, thinking thought about things that are temporary it doesn’t count as thinking, right?

Thinking about maaseh, it doesn’t have a maalah [virtue/elevated status] of thinking. The whole maalah of machshavah [thought], like the Tanya says, the maalah of machshavah, that’s the big advice, which is just a rip-off of Aristotle, is only true for thought about true things. It doesn’t work for halacha [Jewish law], that’s the Tanya’s big mistake, from the perspective of Aristotle. It doesn’t work from the perspective of halacha. There’s an answer to this mistake, I’m not saying it’s a mistake, I’m just saying from this perspective it’s a mistake.

Torah Lishma: Only in Kabbalah, Not in Nigleh

You can’t say, I’m thinking about what to do with tzedakah al pi [according to] Tur [the Arba’ah Turim, a major code of Jewish law], then you’re thinking about shechting [ritual slaughter] chickens properly, then it’s only good, like Mashiach [Messiah] have said. How can it be that the thinking about shechting chickens properly is better than the shechting chickens properly itself? It can’t be better. It’s worse. I mean, maybe it’s better in some sense because it’s organizing it. It’s giving it a form. It’s giving it the correct answer to that question. But it’s not better.

The only thing that is better is thinking that can actually end by thinking. That’s called the Shema [the central Jewish prayer affirming God’s unity]. That’s why Torah al pi Shema [Torah for its own sake] is the only way to learn Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism/esoteric Torah]. If you learn nigleh [revealed/exoteric Torah], you’re never learning Torah al pi Shema. Because it never has the maalah of machshavah. It’s always subservient or anything since forever, Torah lishma only means learning nistar [hidden/esoteric Torah]. Because those are the only things that they end with knowing. Their point is to know them. Because as much as whatever every Taz [acronym for Turei Zahav, a major halakhic commentary] and every Bach [acronym for Bayit Chadash, another major halakhic commentary], it’s only a little maaseh of what’s in the loch [hole/case].

Student: That’s what you mean?

Instructor: Yeah. Like I said, there’s complications in this. But yeah, the Taz is only about, at least from the perspective of it being practical wisdom, it’s only about what to do when this case happens. And therefore, it’s about things that are happening.

Shelo Lishma in Learning: The Case of Doeg HaEdomi

If you learn it and you’re not planning, for example, what’s atar [place] lishma, what’s the biggest lishma, lam lishma amalat [not for its own sake] l’masat [for the sake of]? If you learn and you’re not planning to do what you’re learning, that one, from that perspective, will be lishma. It’s a little counterintuitive to what you think.

Student: No, no, from this, in the level of maaseh and the level of how we level the maaseh it’s true, because that’s a bluff, that’s what I said last week, that’s called, that’s called he’s not learning internally, he’s learning externally, that’s called—

Instructor: The meaning of that kind of learning, the meaning, the why. Why do we learn not to speak lashon hara [evil speech/gossip]? Not to speak lashon hara. If you learn about it, and you speak lashon hara, you’re mosif al hachet [adding to the sin]. You’re just saying the words, but you’re not really learning. That’s what it means. But that’s not the maalah of learning for itself. That’s not shelo lishma on the real high level. There’s two different meanings.

Student: So if you’re learning about lashon hara, is that shelo lishma?

Instructor: What?

Student: Is that shelo lishma?

Instructor: Mosif al hachet it’s called. It’s not the same thing as shelo lishma. That’s what I’m asking. In this state we could call it—it is—it’s a different meaning of—for that—no, because that’s the exact problem. That’s what, that’s what, that’s the discussion. There’s no—someone who learns without planning to do it, there’s the—which is a different thing—learning about the good leads people to do good. That’s an interesting fact about human nature. If you learn a lot of halacha, you stop being—if you don’t plan to—that just has to do with—

Student: Mashir [influences] on Friday?

Instructor: Because we are influenced a lot by what we think. But, okay, but that’s a different thing. But if you learn like a Doeg [Doeg HaEdomi, a biblical villain who used Torah knowledge for evil], like a Doeg, like a toif [error], like that’s when I mosif al hachet, then no, then there’s no mitoch shelo lishma [from not for its own sake to for its own sake], then it’s making you worse. You’re becoming a daat [knowledge], mathless, I’m a novice kind of person, because you’re finding out all the tricks of the world without planning to not do them. You’re actually becoming a worse person.

The Natural Development of Lishma: The Kabbalah Example

The Rosh Hashanah [Jewish New Year] is when you learn things that are just theory, or even in this sense, you don’t yet plan to do it like we say the Murshid al-Maghzir al-Mutafsans [unclear reference], and slowly, for example, I tell you you should learn Kabbalah. You say, why should I learn Kabbalah? I tell you, you’ll become a mekubal [kabbalist/practitioner of Kabbalah]. Okay, I make sense. A mekubal is a good point of reference. I’ll learn Kabbalah. Then, slowly you learn Kabbalah, and you realize that learning Kabbalah is better than being a mekubal. Perhaps, because it’s taki geshmak [really delightful/genuinely good]. That’s lishma, and that happens all the time. I see that.

By the way, that happens. It’s not avodas Hashem [service of God], it happens naturally, because you start to think that it’s good. People that started learning Kabbalah because they thought it was going to be cool, and then they started actually liking it. That happens to everything. Because you start seeing the goodness, that’s why we keep on explaining. You think that it’s a bad thing, then you have to do it for yourself, and then you do it for your own money. That’s the problem. That’s why it’s not a very good plan to learn Kabbalah in order to become a mekubal.

Student: But a bad thing is about the feelings.

Instructor: No, not in that sense. Of course not. In the sense of seeing the good, seeing how it’s really good. That’s why it’s a bad plan. Someone who wants to learn how to become a—he has to actively work that way because otherwise he might start liking it even when he doesn’t make money. Many people, you know, I know so many people that started to get into learning, they thought it’s going to be a good business.

Purim as the Culmination: Chitzoniyus IS Pnimiyus, and Happiness as Fact

The Danger of Learning for Parnasa: A Practical Illustration

Instructor:

That’s the problem. That’s why it’s not a very good plan to learn Kabbalah [Qabula: Jewish mystical tradition] in order to become a Mekabel [professional Kabbalist/spiritual practitioner]. Bokishmak [Yiddish: nonsense] is about the feelings. No, not in that sense. Of course not. In the sense of seeing the good. Seeing how it’s really good. That’s why it’s a bad plan.

If someone wants to learn how to become a Mekabel, he has to actively work that way because otherwise he might start liking it even when he doesn’t make money. Many people, you know so many, I know so many people that started getting into learning. They thought it was going to be a good business. It’s going to be a good business. It turns out he just likes it. And then he stopped making money out of it because he doesn’t do the parts which make you money, right?

Something that really happens. It’s a very normal thing, this. It’s not a magic. But anyway, that’s not related to Rashi. That’s just to answer these questions.

Purim: The Embodiment of “Chitzoniyus IS Pnimiyus”

The Chassidic Teaching on Purim vs. Chanukah

Instructor:

The mind. I’m from Galazan [unclear reference]. Every oldest one would say this Torah [teaching], that that Pirim [Purim: Jewish holiday commemorating the events of the Book of Esther] means that the Gezonis [chitzoniyus: externality, the physical/outer dimension] is also the Primaeus [pnimiyus: internality, the spiritual/inner dimension]. Right? Remember?

It’s an old hand, I guess it’s just for him. Because Peter [Purim] was going to say it off the gift. I don’t think it’s true, but like Hanukkah [Chanukah: Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Temple], it was about the Kema Mitzvahs [kiyum hamitzvos: fulfillment of the commandments]. That Peter [Purim] was just about existing. Stimmt [Yiddish: correct]? That’s what they talk about.

And we learn that the gift [guf: body] from the Yid [Jew] is also Heilig [Yiddish: holy]. Now you understand what this means, according to my new chat [shitta: approach/system].

The Inversion: What People Call Pnimiyus Is Really Machshove Lachutz

Instructor:

It means the Primaeus [pnimiyus] is the Gezonis [chitzoniyus]. There’s no faith [unclear]. This whole wanting is that’s what people call [pnimiyus] is really what [machshove lachutz: external thought/intention].

You have a very [strong feeling] when you learn [Torah], it’s that’s [intense], you’re so [farkocht: Yiddish: deeply immersed/emotionally absorbed] and you love it so much and you want it so much, but you’re not planning to do it. Like most people, they’re so [emotionally involved] but they’re not really planning to do it. They’re planning to do something with a whole different state of mind than being [in that emotional state]. Two things [with no shaychis: no connection to each other]. So that’s, that’s, that’s [the distinction].

But that’s what Yavonim [Yevonim: the Greeks] said. What’s the witz [Yiddish: point/essence] of Pirim [Purim]? I want to tell you, nobody has Dwaikus [dveikus: spiritual attachment/cleaving to God] on Pirim [Purim]. Everybody has Dwaikus [dveikus] at Bluffing [unclear], or doesn’t have Pirim [Purim].

Purim’s Descent into the Concrete

Instructor:

Pirim [Purim] has Antarim [tantzen: Yiddish: dancing], and we have Meshlichmuris [mishloach manos: sending gifts of food to friends], and we have Tzachogs [unclear: possibly referring to the feast/seudah], and that’s Lamas [l’matah: below, in the physical realm]. That’s the whole point, at least from the beginning [at least in the bein adam l’chaveiro dimension: interpersonal relationships]. That’s the whole point.

The Rambam on Simcha: Happiness Is a Fact, Not a Feeling

Instructor:

Like the Rambam [Maimonides] says, the ik simcha [ikkar simcha: the essential joy], the Rambam says, means literally [l’sameach lev aniyim v’yesomim: to gladden the hearts of the poor and orphans]. That’s what makes, that’s what happiness is. Happiness means being a good human being.

Whether you feel it or not, this is [a kleine problem: Yiddish: a small issue], but that’s not the point. Happiness is not a feeling, happiness is a fact. And if you smite [be a mensch to] other people, that’s what happiness is.

Practical Conclusion: Matanos L’Evyonim

Instructor:

So in a while, everyone should give money to their local Matan al-Aviyaynim [matanos l’evyonim: gifts to the poor—a Purim mitzvah], and that’s a new Hasidic Shad [unclear: possibly referring to an old Chassidic teaching about giving personally/aleine], and Shain [everyone] should have a happy Yom Tov [Jewish holiday].