LM 23.1 — Tzivisa Tzedek, Part 1 of 7 · תורה כ״ג

We're going to start a new תורה, תורה כ״ג. We're not just going to be learning one תורה, but we're going to be at the beginning of a series of תורות, כ״ג through ל״א, that are going to explore a series of exchanges between רבי יהושע בן חנניה and the wise men of Athens, the סבי דבי אתונא. The גמרא itself with with where these exchanges are found is on דף ח׳ עמוד ב׳ in בכורות. And we'll just give a sort of a high-level introduction to the series of תורות and to this תורה itself, and then we will jump in.

So, the the discussion found in the גמרא is between the initially between the Roman Emperor and רבי יהושע בן חנניה about the gestation period of a snake. And when רבי יהושע בן חנניה answers, the Roman Emperor challenges and says, "What you're saying, רבי יהושע, is not what the סבי דבי אתונא, it's not what the wise men of Athens say." And רבי יהושע בן חנניה says, "Well, even if they're wise, we are even wiser." And the Roman Emperor challenges him to to go outsmart the סבי דבי אתונא. And thus starts a story where there ends up being a series of interactions.

Now, it's important just one brief note that we've mentioned before, I saw in רב וולבה and I forget who he quotes, that when we encounter גמרות that are אגדתא in general, and certainly גמרות like this, it's it's important to note that they they they don't have the same tools. It's it's not the same as הלכה גמרא. הלכה גמרא is meant to reveal. It's meant to compare, contrast, to bring out certain points. And therefore, there's a certain system of how we learn הלכה גמרא, שקלא וטריא, comparing, contrasting. We learn רש״י, תוספות, and we bring out we bring out points as we present contradictions, we reconcile them.

That's that's how one learns a גמרא that's designed in order to reveal things. אגדתא is חז״ל hid, it's designed to conceal. Some of the greatest secrets are hidden there, and the only way to address it is when one has the keys. And רבינו is going to open up some of some some of the secrets that are embedded in these גמרות. So, to the extent that they seem almost silly or trivial in the back and forth, this is how some of these unbelievable, foundational יסודי האמונה are hidden. The מהרש״א, quoted by רב חיים קרמר in the note, also addresses this question.

He explains how could רבי יהושע בן חנניה have entered into these seemingly trivial questions with so much at stake? And he says there's no way, in fact, to interpret this exchange literally, but rather it's a metaphysical debate between רבי יהושע בן חנניה and the wise men of Athens, the progenitors of Western civilization, about topics that include אמונה, faith, receiving the תורה, the uniqueness of the Jewish people, the importance of attaching oneself to God, prophecy, reward and punishment, the eternal nature of the תורה, exile and the coming of משיח. I'd have to go through and line all of these up, but it seems that most if not all of them are in the י״ג עיקרי אמונה.

And he goes on to say that this is essentially a discussion between science, between the scientists, and religion, and רבי יהושע discussing discussing whether science should is the acceptance of science rather as a guide for morality. Now, we'll just mention one other point, although not explored fully, that the it's a little bit of a misnomer whenever there's a presentation of science versus religion. They're not operating at the same at the same altitude. When we talk about science, I'm going to just look up a a quick definition over here: Science: a systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world, which means that the starting point of science is a physical and natural world, those are givens, we're not working beyond that, through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.

So, the natural world and this system and that evidence is the starting and ending point for science. When we talk about הקדוש ברוך הוא creating the world, then science is not the appropriate tool. Inside the world, science can explore cause and effect and how things interact, and certainly we we're in the עולם העשיה, we use the world for מצוות. A person certainly has to understand how gravity works, and has to explore many things in the world. You have to know how plants work in order to understand in order to understand כלאים and הלכות. It doesn't mean that there's no place for science, but when we're talking about the תכלית, the תפקיד, the morality, אמת, attaching oneself to הקדוש ברוך הוא, science only, in this physical world, only exists at a certain altitude much later on in the chain.

And not necessarily chronologically, but, so to speak, הקדוש ברוך הוא had a רצון to create the world. Why? It's not a question that we can ask, right? A person can go for ice cream and they can prefer vanilla over chocolate, and therefore they'll they'll choose one thing, and then they'll decide, "Well, what goes better with that flavor?" But at some point you say, "Well, why did you do that? Why did you do that?" And you say, "Because I like it better." And you say, "Well, why do you like it better?" At at some point, once you come to the core of רצון, then there's no questions beyond that.

So הקדוש ברוך הוא decided to create the world, that's our starting point, רצון השם. השם did not- that when we say the this is not my הערה that the תורה is the instruction book for the world, that that's not exactly accurate. That means that you have a world, you have a machine, and you need to know how best to use it. Maybe you're able to use all of the parts to accomplish that purpose, maybe you don't need all the parts, but the instruction manual is designed or enters the picture after the fact. Here I have a world.

How, within the world as it presents itself, do I achieve what I need to? The תורה, we've said before, is not an instruction manual, actually, it's like a physics book. There's nothing in the world that the תורה is an expression of these principles. It's bringing things מכח אל הפועל. הקדוש ברוך הוא אסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא. The תורה is the blueprint of creation. And therefore, there was a רצון of השם, הקדוש ברוך הוא expressed this רצון, this רצון is embodied in the תורה, this is brought into and actualized in in the world as a stage for כלל ישראל.

The כלל ישראל, ישראל ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוא, for כלל ישראל to fulfill and to attach, to become one with רצון השם, to become one with the תורה. We have a נשמה which is a חלק אלוק ממעל. And therefore, when we're talking about the the bringing- being מקדש the world, having the world be an expression of מלכות, not that the שכינה should be in גלות, seemingly removed, but that the entire world should we should make a קידוש שם שמים, should be elevated to become a full expression of the מלכות of הקדוש ברוך הוא, then to say that that to have any sort of discussion at that level of of what the purpose of the world is, and what the right thing to do, how to attach oneself to the אמת, science and religion Well, you know, if I'm in the world, you could say, "How am I supposed to know what רצון השם is?

How do I know what God wants from me?" Because there's נבואה, because there's a תורה, because we have חז״ל, because there's a system. הקדוש ברוך הוא didn't leave us flying blind. There's a מסורה, and and this is the תורה that we have, this is the תורה that we're studying. Framed like that, there's no real discussion to be had between science and religion. Science is simply not the appropriate tool, and it's not well suited to operate at that altitude. Be that as it may, this is this is the discussion. רב חיים קרמר also points out that the that the the series, the order of the questions that we're going to have throughout these תורות do not coincide with the order that's in the Talmudic passage, that's in the גמרא.

And he he goes on to say רב נחמן once turned to his followers and said, "Where are we holding in the prayers?" and later explained that his lessons followed the order of the prayers. And added that it was likely someone could one day pray in accordance with these teachings (brought from צדיק #366). And the lessons will discuss many of the individual sections of the daily prayers: the regular offering, the תמיד, the קטורת, הודו, פסוקי דזמרה, so it goes on. We're going to see the idea of תפילה thread throughout these תורות. We've discussed already in the past couple of in past couple of תורות the interaction, the dynamic, תורה and תפילה together.

A full discussion of a lot of those ideas is going to be beyond this limited introduction, but we can consider just two high-level ideas about תפילה, at least one נקודה about תפילה. As we work through the process of coming close to הקדוש ברוך הוא, we're we're at a certain level. We want to grow, we want to expand, we want to come closer to הקדוש ברוך הוא, and at every level we become נכלל in the higher level. So at any point, we we're at level one, we strive to be at level two. At that point we move up, now we're at level two, and then we encounter level three, and then we we proceed, hopefully, up that chain.

When when we daven, when we do עבודה, you're being מבטל yourself to something, you're addressing something, you're requesting from something, you're praising something. So תפילה is our relationship with הקדוש ברוך הוא. We work towards the next step where at some point where we going to become we're going to have a התבטלות, and then we become one with הקדוש ברוך הוא, and one with רצון השם. And then we encounter the next level where we're sort of I wouldn't say opposite sides of the table, we can say on the same side of the table, but there's an encounter and we try to be מבטל ourselves.

So תפילה represents our relationship with הקדוש ברוך הוא. And the second idea that I would mention about תפילה, which we mentioned in other תורות, is תפילה really is over טבע, right? I think תורה ז explores this idea that that when we daven for somebody is sick and we daven for them to get better, תפילה in a certain sense represents נס, it represents miracle, it represents something outside the system. Now, that's one way of presenting it. The other way of presenting it is saying that if we live in a reality where הקדוש ברוך הוא is the one who controls the weather, controls פרנסה, controls health, wealth, happiness, all the good things, so then going to the source and making a request is perfectly within the system.

It's just a greater system than finds itself in the world, which loops back into our discussion of science versus religion. It's not that we're operating with no rules, it's just that we're operating with different rules. Generally speaking, one of the rules of רצון השם is that הקדוש ברוך הוא wants the world to operate as normal, but certainly there is a there is a relationship and there's a system there where we can interact with הקדוש ברוך הוא, and הקדוש ברוך הוא will be and will act responsive to us because והיה אם שמע תשמעו, right? Because הקדוש ברוך הוא tells us that that's what he's that's what he's going to do.

As far as this תורה is concerned, it's לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה, so where most of the תורות were either recorded by רב נתן or other תלמידים after they heard the teaching from רבינו, the תורות that are לשון רבינו were either copied verbatim from רבי נחמן's manuscripts or transcribed by רב נתן from רבי נחמן's dictation. This תורה כ״ג, the main themes are truth, faith, especially as it relates to business matters, שמירת הברית and the great importance of of guarding the ברית, מזוזה, and the evils of עצבות, of lethargy. The historical background of this תורה specifically relates to רב ליפא, one of the first חסידים living in נעמיראוו to become a follower of רבי נחמן, and, in fact, it was his סליחות which inspired ultimately רב נתן and רב נפתלי to journey to the רבי for the very first time.

That was at the end of 5562, which is that's the Hebrew year, and the English year would be 1802. During the next winter of 5563, it seems that רב ליפא became involved in business and he was drawn by a burning desire for wealth. Now, one of the things that's just important to note says that it's brought, רב נתן says, במה יזכה נער את ארחו לשמר כדברך, אני יודע שרב ליפא היה כשר ממני, וכעת איפה אני ואיפה הוא. I know that רב ליפא is even greater than me and look what's become of him, and look where I am.

Even as we talk about רב ליפא, it's not in the context of judging other individuals. People experience challenges at their own levels, and the greater a person is, the greater his יצר הרע is, and there's different ways to understand what that means exactly, but suffice it to say, one lesson that we can take out of it, not long ago we ליינט פרשת שלח, and רש״י tells us that the מרגלים were listed in order, not in order of the דגלים, not in birth order. The order that was used in terms of their greatness, and יהושע and כלב were not number one.

Now, when we talk about greatness, greatness, what does that mean? The level, how much is a person learning, how much are they דאווענען, the height that they've reached, so to speak, or is greatness the percentage of potential that a person is utilizing, is bringing out, is greatness in terms of capacity? People have various circumstances in life that lend themselves to being where they are on a linear scale, but that does not dictate, like we see what happened from יהושע and כלב, what happened to the other to the other מרגלים, that does not dictate where a person is going to end up, and when when when a great man stumbles in something, there definitely are lessons that can be learned.

In this particular context, we're going to be talking about תאוות ממון, which we'll explore as we as we look into the תורה, but the story specifically over here is that the רבי understood that achieving wealth would undermine רב ליפא's spiritual growth, said to him, "I don't want you to have money." Now, this is not a curse. Having money could be a big ברכה, generally speaking. We do relate to to wealth as being a ברכה, but for some people, maybe that would be a tremendous downfall. They wouldn't be able to handle it. So, not not not in terms of a curse, but רבינו said to him, "I don't want you to have money." רב ליפא refused to accept רבי נחמן's advice, perhaps thinking that it wouldn't take effect.

He avoided visiting the רבי for the next few years. Later on, he did return, but never regained his original commitment. It's brought down in כוכבי אור. The story is told that רב ליפא was one time sitting at שלש סעודות, and I'm sure it was after the זמן, and he said ברוך המבדיל, but he did get called out to address a business deal, which was very embarrassing for him to leave in the middle of the רבי's תורה discourse because of financial matters. The רבי remarked, "She ensnares them with wealth in this world, and afterwards kills them." Ultimately, this was not fulfilled with רב ליפא himself, but with his grandson, רב משה וועלוול, who was traveling had a tragic story.

He was traveling with a wagon driver who had been in his employ for some time. The wagon driver was going he turned off the road and was going to kill רב משה וועלוול. רב משה וועלוול asked for a last request to be able to דאווען מנחה. The wagon driver was so impressed he decided not to kill רב משה kill רב משה וועלוול, who realized that the wagon driver was untrustworthy, so he fired him anyway, and then the wagon driver came back and killed him. So, it was a it was a tragic end. As we begin the first of these תורות, the note over here mentions that there were 12 of these interactions in מסכת בכורות, eight of them are found within the next nine תורות, the two of the them are discussed actually in ליקוטי הלכות which also talks about the lead-in to the discussion, that would leave two other ones, which I'm not sure

about, but perhaps we'll see as we go through. Let's begin the תורה כ״ג, סבא דבי אתונא אמרו ליה מילי דכדיבי. The wise men of Athens said to רבי יהושע בן חנניה, tell us something false. אמר להו, he said to them, הוי לן כדניתא דילדה. We had a mule that gave birth, a mule can't give birth, והוי תליא ליה פיתקא, there was on the neck of the newborn a note, a שטר, וכתב בה, and it said דמסיק בי אבא מאה אלפי זוזי, your father's estate owes me 100,000 coins. We're learning that according to the מהרש״א, there's another another explanation, the opposite according to the מהר״ל and the גר״א, that there was money that was owed to the ולד, to the newborn.

Be that as it may, אמרו ליה, they said back, וכי כדניתא מילדא, can a mule give birth? אמר להו, he says to them, היינו מילי דכדיבי, this is the this is the false statement that you asked me for. The next one: מלחא כי סריא, they said when salt spoils, במאי מלחי ליה, how can it be preserved? And רבי יהושע בן חנניה answers, בסילוסא דכדניתא, with the שליא of a כדניתא. The note over here that I have in my print points out that a סילוסא, which we're translating as a שליא according to רש״י, in the time of חז״ל, there's there's really two aspects with with what ultimately would be contained, I guess, in the afterbirth, but the there's two things that service the baby.

There's the amniotic sac, brought from the ברטנורא, the עור החופף את הוולד for protection, some sort of a a pouch that the עובר is in, and then there's the שק שפיר, which is the placenta, it provides nutrients. So when חז״ל use the word שליא, it's actually talking about the amniotic sac. So he says, בסילוסא דכדניתא. So they asked him, ומי איכא סילוסא לכדניתא, is there a שליא for a mule? So רבי יהושע בן חנניה responded, ומלחא מי סריא, can salt spoil? לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה. Let's just see the רש״י's. מילי דכדיבי, דבר כזב, is something false.

כדניתא, it's appeared as a mule. תלא פיתקא, there was a note hang on the ולד's neck. שטר צווארו של ולד, there was a note on the neck of the ולד. היינו מילי דכדיבי, אלו הן דברי כזב, this is what you asked me this that I'm telling you false a statement that's false. סילוסא is a שליא. This is לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה, which we said before, and רבינו is מקדים, צוית צדק עדותיך, you commanded the justice of your testimonies, literally, but that the עדות, the מצוות that הקדוש ברוך הוא commanded are צדק, they're just, they're אמת, ואמונה מאוד.

And we're going to be discussing the dynamic between אמת, אמונה. We'll talk about this פסוק as we go. Finally, we begin paragraph א, כי יש פנים דקדושה. Before we get caught on the first word, let's at least read a sentence and then we can comment, but we really are laying the groundwork as we as we go into it. There is פנים דקדושה, the face of קדושה, which let's leave for now, שהם אנפין נהירין, and this is the פנים מאירות, the shining the shining face. If you have a light, a source of light, the face of something, which we'll discuss what a face is, and then when it shines, or for that matter, think about if you have a fire and then you have the heat.

You have what's essential, the way that you encounter something, and then you have the way that you relate to it. So, if you have a light and then when it shines, you relate to the shining coming from the light, or in my other example, you relate to heat coming from the fire, we have פנים דקדושה שהם אנפין נהירין, that is the shining face, בחינת חיים. This is a בחינה of חיים. I'm hesitant to actually translate the words חיים as life, but once we put a translation on it, it sort of puts it in a box, the idea that we're going to be using these concepts, but more broadly.

But in any event, so we have the פנים דקדושה, which is אנפין נהירין, this is a בחינה of חיים, כמו שכתוב, באור פני מלך חיים, in the light of the living King is חיים. רש״י says, מי שהקדוש ברוך הוא מסביר לו פנים, רש״י says over there, he who הקדוש ברוך הוא shows his face, חיים הוא לו, that's חיים for him. Just in line with what we said, if you think about what חיים is, what's the difference between a live plant and a dead plant? You can have a live leaf that's turning brown, you can have a very fresh green leaf, but if it cuts off the tree, it's essentially dying a slow death.

Or for that matter, a person can have a living person who's very weak or a person who is in the prime of his life who רחמנא ליצלן dies, the idea is whether they're connected to a source of energy. So, just in line with what we're saying, we have the פנים דקדושה, which we haven't really gone into to give it a second, which is אנפין נהירין, this is the shining, the way that we relate to it, the way that that that a person is זוכה to relate to the פנים קדושה, that becomes a בחינה of חיים, which is essentially this attachment to energy, as it were, בחינת שמחה.

Now, we're attaching this the the פנים to חיים to שמחה, כמו שכתוב, the beginning of a פסוק in תהלים says, תודיעני אורח חיים, links the idea of חיים, make known the way of חיים, in a future tense, שובע שמחות, the fullness of joy or endless joy, רש״י says in תהלים, שובע שמחות את פניך, the fullness of of joy in your פנים, but again, we're at least linking together these concepts, which we have not yet unpacked, of חיים, שמחה, and פניך, וכתיב, and it says also ותחי רוח יעקב, זה בחינת שמחה, when יעקב heard that יוסף was alive, he had שמחה, and it says ותחי רוח יעקב, so it links together שמחה, שמחה and חיים.

So therefore, we see that a person who is זוכה to the הארת פנים דקדושה, the אנפין נהירין, he's זוכה also to בחינת חיים and בחינת שמחה. Let's just, before we go to the next line, let's just comment over here on פנים דקדושה, and I think that this will, this is really going to set the stage going forward, so I know we're spending a lot of time. ליקוטי הלכות in יורה דעה חלק א, הלכות גילוח ד, א on our תורה, brings the following language. He says, כל אדם צריך לבקש תמיד פני השם. Every person has to constantly be מבקש, has to constantly seek פני השם.

Brings a פסוק in תהילים, בקשו פניו תמיד. Another פסוק, לך אמר לבי בקשו פני, brings several פסוקים. And he goes on, he says, כי האמת היא בחינת פני השם. He links, we didn't say this in the text over here, what's בחינה of פני השם? אמת. And he goes on, כי מי שזוכה לידע האמת על בוריו, a person that knows אמת with clarity, כמו שהוא אמת, השם יתברך ברא הכל יש מאין, הקדוש ברוך הוא is the creator, מחיה ומקיים, he, like we said, the source of life, הקדוש ברוך הוא gives energy and sustains everything on an ongoing basis.

The example we used, I think earlier, was if you look at a flame now, and a flame in a second, it looks like the same flame. It's actually an ongoing flow of energy. Or another example that I've thought about is if you have a fan, and it's creating a constant flow of air, if you were to, let's say, have some way of measuring it, it would be a constant pressure, but it's not the same air. So הקדוש ברוך הוא in terms of reality is constantly feeding the, the motion picture, is constantly sustaining it. So הקדוש ברוך הוא gives energy to it, and he's מקיים it, sustains it, הכל ברצונו, משגיח על הכל בהשגחה פרטית.

זאת הידיעה האמיתית היא בחינת הארת פני השם. The הקדוש ברוך הוא is, we, we said has, so to speak, כביכול, not that הקדוש ברוך הוא has פנים, but as far as we're concerned, there is the פנים דקדושה, the פנים of השם. What is the פנים of השם? The, the, the essential reality. A פנים, the face, is the essential feature, רב חיים קרמר says, through which something is identified. That feature would be its face. What is the פנים דקדושה of הקדוש ברוך הוא? Actual אמת. Everything else could be a presentation of something, it could be representative of something, but the actual core, you strip everything away, הקדוש ברוך הוא היה הוה ויהיה, the, הקדוש ברוך הוא is not a presentation of, הקדוש ברוך הוא, כביכול, חותמו of הקדוש ברוך הוא is אמת itself.

And then there's how do we relate to the פנים דקדושה? A person has to be זוכה to the אנפין נהירין, a person has to be זוכה to relate to this פנים, to relate to this אמת. What is the אמת as we have it that we're in this world? The אמת is that הקדוש ברוך הוא created the world, gives energy to the world, sustains the world as it is, all the laws of nature, all the laws of everything. Everything that we have in the world is constantly, consistently sustained by הקדוש ברוך הוא, and הקדוש ברוך הוא also has active involvement.

This אמת, that's the true reality, that's the פנים. I'm just going to quote, I happen to see the very first few words in the הקדמה of a ספר called דרך תבונות, the רמח״ל says, and I'll just quote from the first line in the Feldheim translation, "The desire for truth, the חמדת ידיעת האמת, is a natural trait of the intelligent soul that exists in every one of us. A normal, healthy person will make the utmost effort to reveal the true nature of anything he observes, and banish falsehood to the fullest extent of his abilities." Now aside from what the רמח״ל is talking about, this is certainly true from a practical perspective.

If a person doesn't know what's the root and what's the symptom, what's a characteristic that's essential to something and what's tangential, a person will be someplace between making the wrong decisions, or decisions that make no sense, and just being completely paralyzed from being able to do anything. One example is, let's say a person has a fruit. The fruit is a green apple. If, what makes it an apple, what makes it a fruit? Is it the fact that it's sweet? Is it the fact that it has seeds? Is it the fact that it grows on a tree?

Is it the fact that it's green? Then what happens when they see something else, and it's green? Do they classify it as a fruit? I think that we would say that's silly. Maybe it's a green tie. Is the fact that it's sweet, maybe it's candy? In order to be able to do anything, you have to actually know what's essential and what's true, and we're talking about truth as being the essential, the essential characteristics and defining features of a thing. So that's certainly true practically speaking, but even beyond that, I think it's something that we observe, whether we talk about news and media in terms of events that are going on, where we, it's not something that's going to be practical from our perspective, we just have a desire to know what's going on, whether it's academic research, if you would look at some of the papers that are published, and some of the the dollars,

the thousands and thousands, millions of dollars that are that are spent to know certain things, and it's really only to for for the purpose of knowing, for the purpose of understanding. Space exploration, again, putting aside the practical considerations, there is a desire of human beings to know the truth. The problem is that research in general, or knowledge in general, is going to be shaded by נגיעה, right? And it's going to be shaded by certain presumptions and certain assumptions going in, because we're all basing things on our experience and what we've been exposed to. You know, hopefully, if there's a collective if there's a collective group of individuals, and they're able to base knowledge on certain things that are already established precedent and facts, then you can account for some of those of some of those externalities.

It's one of the problems if, let's say, media becomes essentially glorified editorials, and everybody is just using the media in order to perpetuate a certain opinion, but that's totally other topic. Now, I didn't actually get past the introduction. In this ספר, the רמח״ל goes on to discuss the Talmudic method, and it looks it looks very interesting. There's several ספרים that are put together in one volume over here. But what are ways that one could validate validate the truth of something to measure up, understand if what he's observing is the truth? If you have something that's objective, if everything that you have is anchored in something that's true.

This could take on different forms. Maybe this is a validated מסורה going back to a national revelation, which if the national revelation to 600,000 people, which would represent the שלימות of humanity, would would would already be, you know, checked, would already be checks and balances against any individual perception, if it's a revelation that it's matched up across all of all all of the possible human perspectives and personality. If you had the תורה, you validate נבואת משה רבינו, we have the י״ג עיקרים, הקדוש ברוך הוא communicates to us, and we have נבואה, and we believe in נבואה, and we have ways to validate נבואה.

So, the the way to the way to have a check against making sure that what we understand to be the truth is true would be those statements and those ideas that are coming outside of whatever our observations are that are either not true or not necessarily true. Back to our point, so we said that the פני השם, as it were, is אמת, and the אנפין נהירין, the הארת פנים, is a גילוי of that אמת. It's the way that הקדוש ברוך הוא, so to speak, shines the אמת on us. I'm not going to go back and quote from תורה ז׳, from תורה א׳ in terms of everything being חכמת השם and finding the חכמת השם in in every single thing in the בריאה.

Again, הקדוש ברוך הוא is not just coming on the scene after the fact. חכמת השם is is the design, it's the code behind everything in the בריאה. רב חיים קרמר says, how are we זוכה to this אמת? רב חיים קרמר explains from רב נתן. He says רב נתן goes on to explain, to attain absolute truth, one must have faith. Absolute faith is only possible with the truth. To to to understand, we actually quoted the פסוק, צדקתך צדק, עדותיך, ואמונה מאד, tying together אמונה and אמת. אמונה and אמת travel together. We had a whole discussion of this actually in תורה ז׳.

This works in both directions, actually. אמונה is built on אמת. The way that we framed it is what's the difference between, let's say, believing that a medication is going to help you, and you have to take it or else there will be disastrous consequences, if it's coming from a doctor a doc- or somebody in the street? Well, if the doctor is the one who told it to you, and this doctor you did due diligence, you understand where he went to medical school, you understand that he knows what he's talking about, he also has a proven track record, and that track record is also with you and your family, and you've personally validated it, and so on and so forth, and you take this to the nth degree, and now this doctor comes and says, "Everything that you know as אמת leads you to the conclusion that you should trust what I'm telling you, but there's

a gap over there. You haven't validated that this particular medication works." So אמונה fills that gap. Based on אמת, you can, as a rational person, say, "אמת brings me to a certain point, and that tells me that the rational אמת'דיק decision is to have אמונה towards this direction." If you're walking around, and you happen to be mentioning to somebody that you something hurts, and then somebody on the subway comes over, and he says, "You know, you you should do this." Based on no other information, that's not called אמונה, that's that that that would be foolish.

In both In in both cases, you might be taking a medication or taking some sort of a treatment, and then you're putting trust in another. What's the difference why one thing is called אמונה and one thing is really digging your head in the sand, and it's foolishness? Because אמונה is built on אמת that brings you to the point where your אמת'דיק decision is going to tell you to to to give over that that your decision is to give over the decision-making capacity to something. By the way, we do this even on a local level, we give over our we give over אמונה, so to speak, we believe in what our eyes tell us.

There are people who have some sort of רחמנא ליצלן if they have some sort of a distortion in their vision, in their hearing, they maybe they they have a distorted way of thinking. So, I mean that's a very like, almost like very subtle way of looking at it, we all are believing, how do we know that anything is fact? We all have אמונה in something. On the other hand, אמת is also built on אמונה. What do we mean by this? There are many things that we take as fact besides for something that's immediately observable. 2 + 2 is 4 is immediately observable, but think about how many things in life we take as a 100% fact, and where did those things come from?

Those things came from our parents, they came from our kindergarten teachers. Unfortunately, many things come from media. Depending who it is that you're believing, you could have drastically different versions of whatever is taken as fact, and yet we decide to put our אמונה in something, and we read those things, and we understand those things as fact. And again, back to what we said before, our own eyes, things that we've read, especially things that we read, let's say, when we were younger, and these become, especially if we're young enough and we're not questioning it, or maybe it was in a textbook, we take these things as fact.

But those things aren't fact, that's because we really decided to put our אמונה into something and then we build our fact, we build a whole structure based on those things that we really were not validated. So if you if you understand this in both directions, אמונה and אמת actually travel together. So for our purposes over here, a person is זוכה to אמת based on the אמונה. Why is it אמונה and אמונה פשוטה? Because the אמונה is also based on אמת, and again, these process go hand in hand, like similar to processes we talked about in the last תורה, like נעשה ונשמע.

So going back to our תורה, we have the פנים דקדושה, the essential אמת, the אנפין נהירין, which is a which is a גילוי of that אמת. We associate those with חיים, which is a a personal relationship with that energy to the extent that it's that that it provides vitality. It plugs you into the source. You're able to be a a participant in life and a participant in reality, and we actually tie that together with שמחה as well. I'm just going to quote something from a ספר called The Joy of אמונה by Rabbi ראובן שמעלצער, which I think we quoted actually in the last in the last שיעור as well, just briefly, says Rav משה שפירא says that the the sensation of שמחה is one of breaking out of limitations that confine a person to his physical borders.

He has a whole discussion over here that when when a person gets married, when a person has children, we we relate this to מעין עולם הבא, when identity expands, breaks out of natural boundaries. He says the ultimate שמחה is relating to our limitless רוחניות'דיק dimension. And he explains further, the sensation of pleasure is actually the feeling of being alive. I think Rav נח וינברג actually in the in one of the articles in about pleasure, I think, on the Aish.com website, he talks about this also, the joy of being alive, or maybe in the 48 Ways, if you look at שמחה in those articles, is one of the features, one of the the mainstays of the אש התורה שיעורים.

Says when a pleasure is experienced, it's an injection that provides the sensation of I exist. So this really look at it this way, this really this really comes together why understanding that פנים דקדושה, essential truth, our exposure to that truth gives us vitality, and שמחה, which is the way that we just explained, it's the breaking out of one's limitations, which is חיים, vitality, attachment to הקדוש ברוך הוא. Opposite this, back in the text, ויש פנים דסטרא אחרא, opposite the פנים דקדושה, which the גילוי would be the אנפין נהירין, the light, the the light coming off the face, there would be the פנים דסטרא אחרא, the פנים of the צד טומאה, the פנים of the other side, שהם אנפין חשוכין, which is interesting that we don't relate to it as like an alternate form of light, since there's only one form of truth.

I've said before, I don't know if it's a if it's my own little quip saying, but something that's 99% true is 100% false, you know, with those distortions. So if we're saying that הקדוש ברוך הוא the the פנים דקדושה is אמת, so anything and that that's represented the גילוי is light, anything other than that is not like an alternate form of light, it's just a question of how dark it is. When you're limiting this light, it can manifest as some other shade, but it's essentially a form of darkness. So that's אנפין חשוכין, מרה שחורה. If you google the four humors, the way that the ancients used to look at emotional health and and and energy, we're going to get into it more, but there was four, there was red, green, black, and white.

And מרה שחורה is associated with עצבות, with lethargy, we'll see, and he says it's a בחינה of עבודת אלילים. כמו שכתוב: לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני. This is עבודה זרה, and he sums it up, he says that there shouldn't be אלהים, אלהים is a power, it's energy. הקדוש ברוך הוא is the true אלוקות, the true source of all energy of all vitality in the world. What would be אלהים אחרים על פני? I think we spoke about it in תורה י״ב, is that a person actually chooses where their vitality comes from. הקדוש ברוך הוא puts a system in place, אין מזל לישראל, where כלל ישראל has an attachment directly to the source, but הקדוש ברוך הוא implemented systems.

Other nations have another מלאך, or the way that we look at it, a person can relate to their energy as coming from one of these systems down line. But that's going to be very limiting. I'm just going to read and then we'll just say two more words on this, a תרגום, the Hebrew translation of a piece of זוהר over here from יתרו. It says: בוא וראה אשריהם ישראל לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא (we'll translate אשריהם for now as fortunate, but אשרי כלל ישראל before הקדוש ברוך הוא) שאחוזים בפנים עליונים של מלך, they are attached directly to the source, that on top, behind everything, like the top of the pyramid, באותם פנים שהוא ושמו אחוזים בהם, והם ושמו אחד הוא.

That הקדוש ברוך הוא and his שמו, the way they relates to us is אחד, it's totally aligned. שאר העם אחוזים באותם פנים רחוקים, the other nations, they actually attach themselves to something to פנים to a source, to what they perceive as their vitality, something that's far away from that, it's down line from that. באותם פנים תחתונים, it's at a lower altitude. ולכן הם רחוקים מגוף המלך, they're far from the גוף המלך. אמר רבי יהודה משום כך הקדוש ברוך הוא הכריז ואמר לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני. So to speak, the true פנים דקדושה, there's the אמת, and then there's things that are later on that become superimposed on it.

Let let let me give a an example. We've used the משל before of let's say white light. Let's say you take the prism and you split the white light into the seven colors of the rainbow. If one attaches themself at the level of the white light, then it could be that the light is too bright for something, so they'll employ whatever colors or whatever mix or something whatever filters they need in order to accomplish something. In the level of חינוך we've said, a person is a מחנך, sometimes they need to be the disciplinarian, sometimes they need to provide love.

Whichever avenue, חסד, גבורה, תפארת, whatever avenue a person needs to employ to get to רצון ה׳, to attach themselves to the source, a person is not necessarily limited by any particular by any particular thing. But let's say a person has red glasses, right, the colors of the rainbow, they they already get their vitality, their perspective, their lens, they're rooted in something that's down line. Well, that means that anything that they perceive is going to be limited by where they their attachment point. So there's actually a מדרש. It says that הקדוש ברוך הוא presented the תורה to the nations, and each nation asked about something, and they said, "Well, if that's what the תורה says, we don't want it." My interpretation or understanding this probably doesn't come from me either, but what does that mean?

If you have nations that are defined by a a particular מדה, that becomes the כלי, it's like if you put water in a כלי, so then that water will take on the properties of that כלי. כלל ישראל relates to הקדוש ברוך הוא, they relate to the אמת. We're not limited. It doesn't make a difference any particular מצוה, any particular expression. We're rooted in the אמת. Whatever what whatever we need to get to that, that's what we have. But if you have, let's say, another nation, and their מדה is going to be rooted in a particular thing, whether it's גבורה, whether it's חסד, anything, when you have something that's incompatible with that מדה, the way that I expressed before, let's say somebody's has a red lens, well, they're not going to relate to the other orange, yellow, blue, they're not going to relate to the other colors of the rainbow other than through that lens.

Everything takes on that color. They won't be able to relate not only to the source, even if they look at white light, it'll be through the red lens, but they also won't be able to relate to other colors. They're limited to where they take on their source of vitality. So it says, לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני, a person should not get their אלהים, their source of where they enter the picture should not be something else, something down line, something that's more of a צמצום, something that's פנים חשוכין, something that relates to death more than the actual source of vitality of life.

בני בכורי ישראל, we have the chance to relate to אבינו שבשמים like that, and what do we need? We need to be זוכה to the אנפין נהירין through אמונה, we need to be זוכה to attach yourself to the אמת. Back in the text: ואלו בני אדם הנופלים בתאות ממון, there are people that fall subject to תאות ממון, we spoke we spoke at length about תאות ממון and we'll express a lot of these ideas as well, תורה י״ג, you can go back, we're going to explain this תורה, my note over here mentions different ideas along a spectrum of subtlety depending where a person is holding, how they relate to the idea of תאות ממון.

Number one, a person doesn't conduct משא ומתן באמונה, they don't conduct business באמונה, the חזון איש talks about it, I just saw a quote from פלא יועץ. A person is stringent, they're very religious, they relate to הקדוש ברוך הוא in a variety of areas. When it comes to business, business is different, right? Number two, a person has a tremendous amount of יגיעה, they exert a tremendous amount of effort. Think about what they give up: family relationships, personal health. I think I heard one time, I'm not sure if it was בית יוסף that quoted it, it said a person when they're young they give up their health for money, and when they're old they end up giving having to spend their money on health.

So a person gives excessive amount of exertion towards פרנסה. Even after they have פרנסה, the way that they reflect back, כחי ועוצם ידי, it was due to their own efforts. Number four, a person is not שמח בחלקו. A person, when we say שמח בחלקו, by definition that means that they have a חלק, they don't have it all. We say every morning, עשה לי כל צרכי, הקדוש ברוך הוא gives me what I need. If a person is not שמח בחלקו, a person is not satisfied, they don't realize that they have their חלק, no matter what they have they're always focused on the lack.

They could have ninety-nine and be missing one, they could have one and be missing ninety-nine, but that consumes a hundred percent of their outlook, or at least enough of it to bother them. They're not שמח בחלקו, which means that they say either הקדוש ברוך הוא didn't give me what I deserve, He didn't give me what I need for my purpose in life, they're focused on that, and or a person becomes selfish, they guard their money, they don't want to give צדקה. A person's, one of the things that we have like מעשר, the גמרא says that אין מעשר באומד, so I think the לשון is a person shouldn't estimate מעשר.

Why? Maybe I'm going to overestimate, because if I'm estimating מעשר, that means it's mine to give, I can err on the side of being overly giving, but that's because I'm a giver. If a person gives מעשר exactly, what does that mean? The way that they look at the world, הקדוש ברוך הוא gave me ten because nine belongs to me and one of them was to pass on, that didn't belong to me, that's an exact calculation. I can also give more צדקה, but as far as מעשר is concerned. So over here it says a person, how do they relate to their money, they don't give צדקה, or I'm adding on parenthetically, even how they actually give צדקה, but a person who they have בעלות on their money ואינם מאמינים שהקדוש ברוך הוא יכול לפרנס את האדם בסיבה קלה.

They don't believe, they're not faithful, they don't internalize, not just have knowledge, but acknowledge. It's not integrated into how they relate to their פרנסה that הקדוש ברוך הוא can give פרנסה through any reason. Now, that doesn't take away the need for השתדלות as a חיוב, but in terms of the result of money, people sometimes will put an incredible amount of effort in one direction and then they'll have they'll have פרנסה from someplace else, and in a certain sense that's a huge ברכה. I think I saw something that led to that idea from the שער הבטחון, I couldn't find it afterwards.

I think I went back, I thought I knew where I saw it, but I heard a story one time the חזון איש, this is how I heard the story I think, the חזון איש sent somebody to collect money, and when the person came back, the person didn't want to go to the חזון איש because he wasn't successful. And the חזון איש called him and he ended up treating him with a lot of כבוד, and he says, כבוד הרב, I didn't collect any money. And he said, Yeah, we got fifty thousand dollars. He said, It wasn't from me.

He said, Of course it was from you. I had a חיוב השתדלות. In response to the חיוב השתדלות, הקדוש ברוך הוא gave the money that was coming. It doesn't make a difference whether in practical terms that was the correlation was when you put in your חיוב, then הקדוש ברוך הוא gives you פרנסה, whether or not the way that we see it, one is directly a cause and effect of the other is not relevant. ורודפים אחר פרנסתם ביגיעות גדולות, a person spends incredible effort chasing פרנסה. Over here the note over here brings ליקוטי הלכות that very often we, if a person believes that it's coming from הקדוש ברוך הוא, so at any point in time when we're going to work, the question is what does הקדוש ברוך הוא want from me?

That could relate to a חיוב השתדלות, which is responsible. Again, שער הבטחון, as much as שער הבטחון, the שער השתדלות, it talks about if a person has certain skills and a person tries, he thinks something else is better פרנסה, so they do something outside of their skill set which exhausts them overly, it makes them travel a lot, they're giving up, they give up a lot of time again with self-development, with developing relationships and family. What does הקדוש ברוך הוא want from me, and translating that into השתדלות? Instead a person can can be tremendously become exhausted and weary and sacrifice a lot for sacrifice a lot for פרנסה.

Our השתדלות, our חיוב is to generate כלים and not to be לדחוק את השעה. We addressed I think, maybe it was in תורה כ׳, that one of the one of the tremendous נסיונות of great people is even when they're chasing the right thing, but the right result, we talked about it in terms of אדם הראשון, I think we brought a מדרש, or a מאמר חז״ל, I don't remember, that had אדם הראשון waited until שבת, he would have been able to eat from the עץ הדעת, he would have made קידוש over the wine. We talked about going into ארץ ישראל before the time was ready.

It talks about the people, I think from the tribe of אפרים, that after the עגל they wanted to go in. So being לדחוק את השעה, we want to do things on our terms. So, when a person is רודף אחר פרנסתם יגיעות גדולות, they don't look at it as, "I have to see what's the reasonable amount of effort that הקדוש ברוך הוא would expect from me and now I did my השתדלות." I want it faster, I want it more, I want more money, and therefore they think that if they exert more than what הקדוש ברוך הוא wants me to do.

Once I put in the right amount of השתדלות, then I'm not going to gain any more, certainly if if חס ושלום I do things that are dishonest. I'm not going to, if I put in less than my השתדלות, then I haven't done my חיוב. But once I put in my חיוב, I'm not going to have more just because now I eat into my time that should be spent on other things. והם אוכלי לחם בעצבון, and they end up eating their פרנסה בעצבון, in sadness, and again, because this person is has become overly weary. The פסוק in תהלים says, "שוא לכם משכימי קום." People, it doesn't even talk about שקר, talk about wrong, it talks about שוא, for naught, it's a waste, it's not representative of a שבועת שוא doesn't mean that a person's lying, it's that they swear that it's daytime in the day or nighttime in the night, there's no reason to take the

oath. People that wake up early and מאחרי שבת, they stay up late, אוכלי לחם העצבים, they eat the bread of toil, and רש״י says that these people, בעלי אומנות, that wake up and stay late more than is reasonable, more than is beyond their חיוב, and they have פרנסה בעצבון וביגיעה, לחם העצבים של טורח. כמו שכתוב, by the קללה of אדם הראשון, the פסוק in בראשית says, "ארורה האדמה בעבורך," the ground will be cursed because of you, "בעצבון תאכלנה," you'll eat in sorrow, in in in extreme יגיעה. Now the the question that we would have is this seems to be תמיהה.

How do we understand this? If the the פסוק tells us that there is this curse, then this is the state of affairs, and the the way that Rabbi עטיה goes on goes on to explain says that this curse in the original in the original state of affairs things were immediate. It says that by אדם and חוה two people were together and immediately there were children. People would plant, the trees would the bread would be would be growing in its ready state of affairs, so there was a certain amount of יגיעה, of effort, of toil, of waiting, that was that process that was now built into the בריאה.

But the way that we relate to that, it comes out, I'll just read from his note, he says, "נמצא שקללה זו ניתנה לבחירת אדם." The way that this בחירה is applied, we dictate our relationship with הקדוש ברוך הוא, like we said before, "לא יהיה אלהים אחרים על פני," other powers. Are we limited by certain process, certain things within טבע and the way that הקדוש ברוך הוא set up the system? It's up to us לבחור באיזה דרגה להיות נכלל בה. How should this relate to us? We have the גמרא in שבת, the same God that lights the oil will light vinegar.

A person can't rely on a נס, for him it wasn't a נס. Now we don't we don't even relate to it at that level, by us, of course it's a נס. We we don't relate to the idea that once you have fuel, what's the difference if it's oil or vinegar, but a person, we are subject to process, but we dictate, it's up to us to have that בחירה. How do we relate to this toil that's necessary? How do we relate not only to the knowledge that הקדוש ברוך הוא runs the world, but the acknowledgment that הקדוש ברוך הוא runs the world, that every that that everything is coming from הקדוש ברוך הוא?

And he says that this is בעצבון תאכלנה, עצבות הוא מרה שחורה. עצבות is we said is lethargy, עצבות is פנים חשוכות. I'm going to quote for a second from זוהר in פרשת נח, he says, "בעצבון תאכלנה," in the Hebrew translation, "עצבון, עצבות ורוגז בלי הארת פנים." We said that שמחה is expansive, שמחה is חיים, שמחה is going outside of who I am, an attachment to the source. Like we said, a corpse has all of the body parts over there, but what makes a corpse alive? That it's attached to a נשמה, that it has an influx of energy from outside, that there is we said the פנים מקדושת הקדוש ברוך הוא, but we're attached through the הארת פנים, through the גילוי of that אמת, through the אנפין נהירין, that we related to that as light.

עצבות is when a person is detached, they're far away from life, they're far away from שמחה, they have the עצבות, that's the מרה שחורה. And when a person makes himself subject to process and they don't relate to the direct בטחון to הקדוש ברוך הוא, the direct influx of energy subject to our doing the חיוב of השתדלות, that is the opposite. אלו בני אדם נקשרים בפנים סטרא אחרא, the אלהים אחרים, like we said, these are the person that are now operating at a lower altitude, they have the חושך. The גמרא in ברכות brings this language of חושך.

The גמרא in ברכות on דף ו׳ says that says, "אשר הלך חשכים ואין נגה לו," those who walk in the darkness, "יבטח בשם ה׳ וישען באלהיו," they should rely on השם. And what's it talking about? A person who שלא בא להתפלל בבית כנסת מחמת שטרד בפרנסתו. "I have no time to דאווען because I have to do my השתדלות." Well, wait a second, if הקדוש ברוך הוא, if פרנסה is really coming from directly from הקדוש ברוך הוא, subject to your doing השתדלות and working to create the כלים, your great השתדלות is to have that meeting with הקדוש ברוך הוא, and then you'll go on to everything else.

But to skip the meeting with השם in order to go do the work, so then you're you're you're inserting yourself at a down down line, right? Now instead of being connected to the source of נהורא, of life, of שמחה, of חיים, you're by עצבות, חושך, מיתה. This is a בחינה of מיתה, כמו שכתוב: במחשכים הושיבני וכולי, continues כמתי עולם, it's a פסוק in איכה, but it relates darkness, setting me in darkness, and it relates it to מתי עולם, so it links חושך to מיתה, as opposed to before we linked light, נהורא, to חיים. ועליהם, on these people that exert an excessive amount of יגיעה, נאמר, it says in יחזקאל, וזהבם לנדה, that their זהב will be like a נדה, like be impure.

The the full פסוק with רש״י and the מצודות, the פסוק says, כספם בחוצות ישליכו, they'll throw their silver in the streets, וזהבם לנדה יהיה, and it'll be as if their זהב is unclean. Why? כספם וזהבם לא יוכל להצילם ביום עברת השם, because their gold and silver wasn't able to save them. נפשם לא ישבעו ומעיהם לא ימלאו, and they're not satisfied from this gold and silver that they were chasing. Actually, it was a מכשול עונם היה, it made them stumble. Why? Because they they had put their בטחון now into these physical things, into the gold and silver, and now they they realized that it was totally for naught, it was שוא, it's not able to save them at all.

This applies to anything that we put a put our trust in. And it relates over here the idea of זהב, of gold, to a נדה which is impure, היינו בבחינת עבודת אלילים, כמו שאמרו זכרונם ל- חכמינו זכרונם לברכה, מניין לעבודה זרה שמטמאה כנדה. It's a פסוק in ישעיהו, but it's a גמרא in שבת, which links the נדה to עבודה זרה, שנאמר, תזרם כמו דוה, cast away. The פסוק is talking about עבודה זרה, and it uses a לשון of דוה, which is a לשון of נדה, impure, cast away on the outside. But in any event, so when we link it together, we see that this idea of the impurity of נדה is linked to עבודה זרה, and again we link together תאוות ממון to עבודה זרה as well, which which we we spoke about.

You're really putting your trust in something אלוהים אחרים על פני if you if you're relating to ממון as being its own force, whether it's כחי ועצם ידי, your force, or you're expecting that it's going to save you. It says that afterwards they rejected the gold and the silver, they threw it in the streets because they were relying on it, and we we spoke by י״ג, we'll speak again about why the ממון is like the תאוות הכולל, it's like you're subscribing to something else and in a very extreme way also like עבודה זרה. אבל אלו בני אדם שמשאם ומתנם באמונה, but these people that do conduct business with אמונה, like the five ways that we laid out in terms of how people relate to תאוות ממון, they they conduct business honestly, they don't have this feeling of כחי ועצם ידי and so forth.

They they subscribe, again, not just knowledge, but acknowledgement of הקדוש ברוך הוא, they put in the right amount of effort that is in line with their חיוב, they make a חשבון הנפש, but not excessive exertion and עצבות, הם דבקים בארא פנים, or rather, sorry, הם דבקים באור הפנים דקדושה. These people are דבוק in the אור פנים דקדושה. We said that פנים דקדושה relates to אמת, relates to, כביכול, to הקדוש ברוך הוא, and then the אור, what emanates, the way that we relate to the light bulb is from the light that's coming off of it, the people that are דבוק in the אור of פנים דקדושה are the people that have אמונה, כי אין אמונה בלא אמת.

We said before, this really works in both directions, that אמונה is built on אמת, and אמת is built on אמונה, they really travel in tandem, but let's let's read the words as he's developing the idea: there's no אמונה בלא אמת. Now he's going to quote, כמבואר בזוהר, we're going to read the words. הקדוש ברוך הוא built a structure for the world, and the structure is intact. There's צמצומים, as it were, but the same way that there's a structure in the spiritual worlds which reflects itself in רמ״ח אברים שס״ה גידים, the 248 positive מצוות and negative מצוות, and the same way that it reflects itself in the physical world in the צורת האדם, the צורת האדם reflects also the צורת המשכן, the structure and the relationships are intact.

That's why we talk about, let's say, חסדים on the right and גבורות on the left, those relationships reflect themselves accurately, although they reflect themselves differently in both the higher realms and the lower realms. So, though we've been talking about the idea of אמת and אמונה the way that we relate to it, he's going to he's going to talk about this in terms of מלכות is מלכות is אמונה, תפארת is אמת and also רחמים. He's going to say that when you have that מלכות could either reflect itself in אמונה, or מלכות could reflect itself in צדק, in justice, which would really be more מידת הדין.

In order for אמונה to in מלכות to reflect itself fully in terms of אמונה, so then that's when it's also associated with אמת, it's aligned with תפארת, and therefore it will be אמונה. Again, if this is hard for us to relate to, but at least it's reflective conceptually to the idea that אמת incorporates and is built on and comes off אמונה at at every altitude. So he's going to use the זוהר to prove it. The פסוק says, והיה in ישעיהו, the פסוק says, והיה צדק אזור מתניו והאמונה אזור חלציו. So over here he says, היינו צדק היינו אמונה.

If צדק and אמונה are the same thing, both of them are a כינוי to מלכות, both of them refer to מלכות, so why does the פסוק have to mention them both? ומסיק שם אמונה אקריאת כד אתחבר באמת, that מלכות is only called אמונה when when it's מתחבר with the מדה of אמת, but without אמת it's called צדק, and therefore it's not just doubling up and talking about the same thing. For something to be fully אמונה, to reflect itself as אמונה, then the אמונה has to be built on אמת. Let's leave it at that. נמצא שעיקר אמונה על ידי אמת.

So from what we read, it comes out that the עיקר אמונה comes through אמת, although I guess you could have אמת without closing that up and going through אמונה, but to go towards אמונה, to have אמונה it's by definition incorporating incorporating אמת, ואמת הוא אור הפנים, and we said that אמת is אור הפנים. Now, this really incorporates what we said before, number one that we gave a lot of examples why אמונה is built on אמת. I mean, there is an infinite amount of things that you could believe in, or subscribe to, or fill in the gap for where something that you don't understand, and one of them is true.

The truth is true, and everything else is false to some degree, but it's some sort of a distortion of truth, and where you fill in those gaps and you subscribe to, you cross that bridge has to be an extension of something that's truth, it's just something that's beyond you. On the other hand, over here it says אמת is אור הפנים כידוע, and he finishes over here by explaining that a person who's, like we said earlier, a person who's זוכה to אמת is also זוכה to אמונה rather is also זוכה to the אור הפנים, which is אמת, because if אמונה is now going to bridge the gap between you and הקדוש ברוך הוא, so now you're going to subscribe to הקדוש ברוך הוא and relate to the תורה, relate to the נבואה, relate to what הקדוש ברוך הוא tells you as אמת, well, I needed that gap.

There are certain things that I already take for for a given, I take for אמת. There's הקדוש ברוך הוא is one source, so to speak, but I I I need to fill in that gap where I have אמונה. Once I use the אמונה based on the אמת, based on the understanding, whether it's through what I understand, through מסורה, through through through various things, now I take certain things as a given, I have אמת, I know where to place my אמונה, I attach myself to הקדוש ברוך הוא, since הקדוש ברוך הוא is אמת, so now I attach myself to אמת through being זוכה to אמונה אמונה.

And as I grow, that place of where the אמת stops and when the אמונה starts, and then where the אמת that then comes the אמת again, which is something that I now incorporate, it becomes a sliding growing expanding scale. Just one one other interesting point: why why do I need to be in a situation where I need אמת in order to I need אמונה rather in order to attach to אמת? Why can't it just be totally clear to me, and I'll attach myself to הקדוש ברוך הוא through אמת? Why the need for אמונה? And and the note over here explains because if the whole idea of this world is עבודה and בחירה and and breaking down the סטרא אחרא and shining in the light, that's בעצם the עבודה.

הקדוש ברוך הוא doesn't need more מלאכים, the point is not to for us to be a מלאך, the point is not for us to be on God's level, so to speak, then הקדוש ברוך הוא could have just created us wherever he wanted us. The point is for us to be growing. I mean, it's a very profound concept, right? If a person is just at a plateau, it doesn't matter whether it's high or low, the person is not growing. The perfect person is not somebody who is at a high level. The person the perfect person is a person who's growing to the extent that he's able, growing towards a high level.

The perfection is in the process of growing. If we were already exposed to אמת, then we wouldn't be able to engage. That's the actual purpose of of of of of creation is for הקדוש ברוך הוא to give, not to have נהמא דכיסופא נהמא דכיסופא, so that we can earn our reward. That is the process, that would be eclipsed. We wouldn't be able to have that if we would just start off with the clarity of אמת, then we would be מלאכים. But we know from נפש החיים that a person is greater than a מלאך, not necessarily in the altitude at which we're at, but where we will be.

Why? Because what we're going to have where we will be, the reward, our spiritual level is going to be based on our growth. מלאכים don't have the capacity to grow. Where we're going the the עולם הבא and the reward that we have is going to be in direct correlation, it's going to be what what we build for ourself. That is associated with growth and the process, and for that we wouldn't be able to have that if we were just at the level of אמת, and therefore we're working towards אמת, but we're זוכה to this through אמונה.

Okay, we're going to stop here. It didn't go as far in the text as I had wanted to, and then we're going to start with וזה שאמרו חז״ל next time.