LM 28.1 — Bani Lan Beisa, Part 1 of 3 · תורה כ״ח

בעזרת השם יתברך, תורה כ״ח continues our discussion, our exploration of the exchanges between the סבי דבי אתונא and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya brought in Maseches Bechoros. These discussions appear on their face to be incredibly mundane, and yet they contain within them some of the יסודי יסודות that we're going to discuss. And I think that's actually an apropos introduction to this particular Torah, we will see. Rav Chaim Kramer brings in the first note that we don't know exactly when this Torah was given, and he continues to mention some of the main themes that we will be discussing: the false leaders who oppose true leaders and Torah scholars.

This is something that we addressed earlier, I remember specifically Torah י״ב, I believe, had a discussion, for if we remember. Faith, kindness, and hospitality, especially towards talmidei chachamim, and further we are going to explore saying the parsha of קרבן תמיד before davenen, as well as Shlomo Hamelech building the Beis Hamikdash, as well as his marriage to בת פרעה. Okay, I'm going to read first the passage from the Gemara in Bechoros, the discussion between the Athenian scholars and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, and we will begin the Torah. But I think, at least what helped me, we'll lay out a few questions and then perhaps take a step back and discuss a few ideas that I think will help open up this particular Torah.

So, לשון רבינו זכרונו לברכה: בני לן ביתא באוירא דעלמא - the Athenian scholars said to רבי יהושע בן חנניה, "Build us a house in the sky." אמר שם - רבי יהושע בן חנניה said the שם, the note over here brings that the שטה מקובצת says it was שם המפורש. קם - he stood, ותלי בין שמיא לארעא - and he was suspended between the שמים and ארץ. אמר להו - he said to them, אפיקו לי לבני וטינא מהתם. Now that רבי יהושע בן חנניה is between the heaven and earth, he said, "Bring me bricks and cement from over there." אמרו - ומי איכא דמצי לאסוקי התם?

Can anybody bring these building materials to there? אמר - ומי איכא דמצי למיבני ביתא בין שמיא לארעא? Is there anybody that can build a house, a structure, between the heaven and earth? Now we'll begin the first the first paragraph, and then we will then we'll we'll speak a little bit. So, the first paragraph says, המתנגדים, המבזים, והמחרפים יראי השם - those who oppose, disgrace, and, could say, abuse יראי השם, זה מחמת שמקבלים תורה מתלמידי חכמים שדים יהודאין. This is because the Torah that they have - so immediately we notice we're not just talking about amei ha'aretz, somebody that's just going against leadership.

There seems to be some dispute over here between people that have Torah and the tzaddikim, the יראי השם. But the Torah that they have comes from תלמידי חכמים שדים יהודאין, which we'll leave undefined for now, although we learned Torah י״ב, which was the first time I think that we discussed this idea. כי תלמידי חכמים שדים יהודאין, so they have Torah, they're תלמידי חכמים, הם מקבלים תורתם מהשדים. The Torah that they have is coming from the שדים. So, this is still not 100% clear. Torah is אמת. Torah is an expression of רצון השם. What would be the difference where you received it from, the Torah is pure?

Says, שיש להם תורה נפולה מאלפין נפולין. The Torah that they have is fallen Torah from the from the fallen אלפין. Now, we don't exactly know what this means. Obviously a lot to say here, but the just the couple of points to take note of are: First of all, we we have to understand a little bit the difference between מתנגדים, מבזים, מחרפים - this week is Parashat Korach, so I guess it's an appropriate Torah as we dig into the sugya - and machloket. In principle, machloket generally, the idea that people disagree, is the bread and butter of the Talmudic process.

It's what we engage in all day with our חברותות, it's the Gemara that we're learning, it's the Mishnayot that we're learning. So, we don't, in principle, have a problem with the idea of machloket, and yet there seems to be a subtle, you know, but a but a fine line between those who oppose tzadikim. Is it the idea that they're challenging the tzadik because he's a leader, they should be deferential? Is it the idea that they're disagreeing? Is it the idea that they're opposing the sugya? So, for one part, I think what we can just say that they're מתנגד, מבזה the the תלמיד חכם, the yirei Hashem, at that point it's personal.

So, one idea, and we've actually said this before, if tzadikim are disagreeing about a sugya, then really I am looking upwards, I am trying to understand the truth, and another person who's looking upwards is trying to understand the truth, we are actually aligned in trying to understand the truth. We might take a very serious position because the truth is extremely important, but neither one of us are arguing, so to speak, horizontally. We're both trying to work our way towards the truth, and and we're aligned in trying to understand that. In fact, I believe we one of the earlier תורות we mentioned an idea that if people see legitimate tzadikim who were having a dispute, and they perceive that as being personal, they should actually look inwards at how they relate to Torah.

If they if when they see two people arguing about a sugya, trying to get to the truth, and they perceive it as a personal machloket, then that's because through the lens of their eyes, they understand that arguing even in Torah is personal. So that would actually be a cause for inward reflection. So the idea of a machloket in a sugya is not a problem. It's when it's personal: the ניגוד of the tzadikim, the מחרפים. So that's that that's point one. The question, though, is, well, if what what's the what makes the person into a תלמיד חכם?

What makes a person into a yirei shamayim? His attachment to Torah. So over here, we're framing not people who have, let's say, personal personal priorities, you know, they they just don't want to align with Torah. We're saying that they were mekabel Torah from a different source. So this is this is also extremely difficult to understand. On one hand, we say, הא תורה לא לשמה בא לשמה. If the Torah is רצון השם, the Torah is emet, the Torah is truth, it's ביחוד with Hashem, so once they receive the Torah, what difference be'etzem does it make a difference where they got it from?

Unless you're going to say that it was distorted, it wasn't really Torah. On the other hand, there's a Gemara, there's a Gemara in Ta'anit, it says that a that a person who's learning לא לשמה, it says terrible things about him. So what on one hand, we're all zoche, baruch Hashem, the person who, however he came to it, the Torah should should really light him up, should purify him from within. On the other hand, there's a Gemara, one particular Gemara I pulled up in Ta'anit, it says, רב בנאה אומר, it's a ברייתא, כל העוסק בתורה לשמה תורתו נעשית לו סם חיים, and it quotes עץ חיים היא למחזיקים בה, and it says כל העוסק בתורה שלא לשמה נעשית לו סם המוות.

So over here we see that a person who learns לא לשמה, okay, I don't know if that's exactly what we're talking about over here, becomes a סם המוות. Be'etzem, what's the difference why he learned it? The truth is the truth. If he subscribed to it, it shouldn't seem to matter. So this this this is very hard for us to understand. The whole idea of this dispute, the people that we relate to as being talmidei chachamim who seem to be acting in an inappropriate way towards tzadikim, from our point of view, all the way at the bottom, when we look up and we see two different sets of talmidei chachamim, it's on us to distinguish who's a righteous talmid chacham, who's not a righteous talmid chacham?

What's the difference from my point of view? One cloud is a 1,000 foot in the sky, another's 10,000 feet in the sky. It's hard to really know what to do with it. So I'm going to quote from the Zohar actually. We've I've seen it quoted, so I didn't know where it was, but we've we've discussed this in the past, I couldn't find which Torah. It's in Beha'alotcha דף קנ״ב עמוד א or page תע״ו if you have the Matok MiDvash. I'm reading it mostly from the from the Matok MiDvash, which is Hebrew instead of Aramaic, maybe it'll be easier to follow.

But it says the says the Zohar: רבי שמעון אמר, ווי ליה ההוא בר נש, okay, so he says, אוי לאותו אדם שאומר שהתורה בא להראות ולספר סיפורים בעלמא ודברים פשוטים של לבן ובלעם וכדומה. Oy vey to the person that looks into the Torah and he reads it as being stories. שאם כן, if you would say that the Torah is coming to convey events, stories, אפילו בזמן הזה אנו יכולים לעשות תורה מדברים פשוטים, we could make a competing Torah, we could tell stories, maybe we could even tell better stories, if anything we have the benefit of the stories in the past, we could develop them further.

ובשבח ויופי יותר מכל הסיפורים שבתורה, we can be even more poetic. כלומר במעלות יתירות כפי שכל אנושי, we can use the full scope of everything that we know, we have maybe technology, we have communication, we can put together something that would be even more profound and more better praise, better stories. Or אם התורה בא רק להראות ולספר דברי הימים של עולם, maybe the Torah is coming just to tell us chronicles, it's a newspaper, it's telling us what happened that was relevant. אפילו אותם השרים והשלטוני העולם שיש להם ספר דברי הימים, יש בהם דברים חשובים מעולם יותר, ללמוד מהם חכמה ומוסר.

There's other It's true a student of history learned a tremendous amount, but there are other kings, there are other, you know, people that have put together chronicles, history books that we can learn things from. Why should those be in principle any worse than the Torah? אם כן, נלך אחריהם ונעשה מהם תורה כדוגמתם. We could make another Torah. It doesn't necessarily have to replace it, but why does that leave the Torah as being unique? אלא, he says, rather, ודאי, כל מילין דאורייתא מילין עילאין אינון ורזין עילאין. Every all of the דברי תורה, even the parts of the Torah that present themselves as sipurim, are actually lofty things and contain great secrets.

We see actually the second-to-last pasuk in Megillat Esther hints at this idea. Just read the pasuk, it says, כל מעשה תקפו וגבורתו ופרשת גדולת מרדכי אשר גדלו המלך. After discussing everything about Mordechai, you should know all the mighty powerful acts and a full account of the greatness that the king gave to מרדכי, הלא הם כתובים על ספר דברי הימים למלכי מדי ופרס. If you want to have the greatness and you want to have unbelievable stories, then those are actually recorded and specifically comes to distinguish the megillah, מגילת אסתר is not that. The megillah is not just recording events that are important, but that we can learn from.

It's the, this is actually not a newspaper. So what is it then? This is you should, if you pull this up, this is a good, it's a good piece of Zohar. It's not Kabbalah, this is the mussar aspect of the of the Zohar and it's definitely a tremendously yesod'dik piece. So further, ta chazi, come and see. Like ta shma, in Zohar they say ta chazi, it's a greater level of revelation, sight over hearing. עלמא עילאה ועלמא תתאה, the upper and lower worlds, בחד משקלא אתקלו. So a משקלא is like a scale, but what he's saying over here is an idea we've discussed and it's tremendous.

We'll give a couple of examples and hopefully bring out the point. The, when we talk about worlds, a lot of times I use the word systems instead of worlds, instead of olamot. We're not talking about worlds that exist separately, you know, on parallel tracks, but rather they're independent, but they're also interdependent. An example that I've mentioned before, this actually comes from Rav Avinoam Frankel, he gives an example from a piece of paper, if the example helps, but we'll apply it in a second. He says, what is a piece of paper? In addition to being a piece of paper, it's also made up of paper molecules.

If you look at the molecules, those are made up of atoms, which are made up of subatomic particles and quarks and so on, with everything factoring down to energy, and no scientist alive has any idea what this underlying energy actually is, and therefore doesn't even know what the energy is made up of. So now, on one hand, we have a piece of paper. On the other hand, we could talk at different altitudes entirely within that presentation about, we can have some sort of a scientific conversation, a molecular conversation. They're all simultaneously true, and we can have a self-contained conversation within any one of those levels.

But any change, anything that would happen at any one of those levels would affect everything else. It would all be it would all be reflected. So if you would change the atomic structure, or you would change the makeup, the order of how things are lined up, that would also affect the presentation of the of the piece of paper. However, so what is the benefit, so to speak, or in this example, of things existing on different levels? Well, it's the point at which we interact. You could draw on a piece of paper, but you wouldn't be able to draw on atoms.

Not only couldn't you draw on atoms, it just wouldn't be a, it wouldn't be a relevant discussion. Let's talk about this in a different form. Let's say the idea of action. We could say that it comes to, it starts off with ratzon, I have a will, I have a desire for something. My desire will reflect itself in an idea. A general idea will reflect itself into pieces, aspects of this idea that I can work with, I can compare, contrast, I can put them together in different ways, and ultimately that might translate into speech, into some sort of a communication, into action, and ultimately into a result that really should be reflective of that original ratzon, which really we could say, translates back to pleasure.

Now, all of these things exist in their own world. We can I can work with a thought, I can work with words, and I can work with action. The way that I think about or communicate something will ultimately reflect how it works in action and what the end result is. So we see that all of these all of these levels will work independently, but they're also independent with one another. Now, if you would have somebody who's speaking where it's not at all attached to the thought process or to the idea, then those would just be totally empty words.

They would be meaningless. They might not even communicate an idea if they weren't tied together by anything underlying. It would be a person babbling without any thought process. On the other hand, if a person has a thought, that might be very meaningful, but on the other hand, it can't translate itself into action. So, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, as it were, again, you know, for our purposes, but just want to hone in on a particular aspect of this example, there's when we talk about a hishtalshelut of the olamot, as we go up, right, one thought, one isolated idea or even that ratzon will ultimately contain, if everything is lined up, everything that unfolds from it.

The ratzon will contain the idea and all its components, and ultimately what translates the idea that I want to make a birthday party, that might translate down the line into thousands of details, depending how you break it up, right? I'm going to set the table, not setting the table, I'm going to put the fork here, one centimeter away from the knife, away from the spoon, here's where the plate goes, it's a thousand details. The presentation of all of that and all of that myriad of details and maybe a lot of time of all be contained at the higher levels in one isolated immediate thought and the ratzon, "I want to make a nice party." So, the higher up you go, the more yichud there is, the lower down you go, the more pirud there is.

And if everything is consistent, then there will also be the most gilui, because I'm taking all of these separate parts that are all coming and combining in order to affect what was contained in the original idea. So, now, if you have two people who are discussing this table that's been set and they're both going to describe it, one person was aware of the original intent and ratzon and everything that that supports, that comes behind, that's at the depth of what the gilui is, and he says, "This is something that will appeal to the birthday boy.

This is something that will appeal to the occasion, the wedding, the siyum. This is something that's perfectly designed in the ratzon," and he speaks about it in those terms. This person is a בן עולם הבא, right? This person is somebody who is living at the higher altitude, even though he is interacting at the lower presentation. Another person just walks in the door, he doesn't know if it's a siyum, he doesn't know if it's a wedding, he doesn't know if it's a Bar Mitzvah, he says, "Oh, that's a nice fork." Who's right? Well, in a in a very snapshot in time, if you were to if somebody else were to walk in the room and say who's right, you you might even say, you know, the person who's describing where the silverware is is right, because you have just no idea, no relationship with everything, with all of the ideas, all the depth that comes behind it.

So, at best, you would have no idea who's correct, you just have no way of judging it. And at worst, you might say that the person who's looking at the table and judging it in the most gas, in the most physical, the most boorish type of terms is correct, because that's what you see. But if you had the true perspective, which we can label, for instance, as HaMakom, the universal context of everything, then the one who had the broadest perspective, who was looking top down, would actually be correct. And, therefore, תא חזי, again, עלמא עילאה ועלמא תתאה בחד מתקלא אתכלילו, they're all in the same scale, they're paralleling each other, they're all interdependent.

So, even though there is an upper and a lower, so they are parallel, they're independent, but they're also go together. ישראל לתתא מלאכי עילאה לעילא, כלל ישראל is exists as it were, we're interacting, we are here at the lower level or in this world, and the malachim are at the higher worlds. מלאכי עילאי כתיב בהו, by the upper malachim it says, עושה מלאכיו רוחות, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created them with ruach, without a physical guf. HaKadosh Baruch Hu created them at the higher levels. בשעתא דנחתין לתתא, and yet let's see what happens when you take this malach and you put them into the world.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu, for whatever the reason, wants a malach to be interacting in the world. מתלבשי בלבושא דהאי עלמא, by Avraham Avinu, when the malachim came to this world, the malachim had to go into a levush that was appropriate for this world in order to interact. A ruach can't interact with a guf any more than a idea can shake somebody's hand. It's a it it's in a different it's at a different level. ואי לא מתלבשי בלבושא כגוונא דהאי עלמא, and if the malach, who is essentially a ruach, would not be enclothed within a physical presentation, then it would not have a basis to interact.

לא יכלו למיקם בהאי עלמא, it wouldn't be able to exist, it wouldn't be meaningful, ולא סבל לון עלמא, and this world would not bear it, it wouldn't impact the world. Now, if this by the way, if anybody does learns Tanya, is learning the Chitas, this aligns very well with with what the ידע is discussing today, which is as I'm recording this, it's כ״ט סיון, but the ואי במלאכי כך, if this is true at malachim and people, which from the levels of the higher hishtalshelut and creation of the world is very far down that chain, so אורייתא דבר בהון וברא עלמא כלהון וקיימין בגינה, this Torah that the Torah exists at a much higher level, much earlier in the chain, HaKadosh Baruch Hu create used it as a blueprint of all of creation, על אחת כמה וכמה כד נחית להאי עלמא, אי לאו דמתלבשא בהני לבושין דהאי עלמא לא יכיל עלמא למסבל.

If you're going to tell me, let's, for purposes of this conversation, say that people, this world is at a level 100 down from the level one, which we'll say is the highest. If and let's say, for the purposes of this conversation, that malachim are at level 90, so a malach is a level 90 and a person is a level 100. If a level 90 can't interact with a level 100, right? If a level 90 needs to enclothe itself in for something that it's a level of ruach needs to somehow, even though the guf is not inherent to the malach, needs to put on a guf in order to interact, then the Torah, which is going to be all the way high, we call it for for this let's call it a level one.

If a level 90 has to totally take on a presentation of a 100 in order to interact, even though it inherently is not holding at that level, then the Torah, in order for us to interact with, to learn the Torah, to have a relationship with it, al achat kama vekama, it's so far removed that it will certainly have to take on a presentation, a physical or an expression that relates to the עולם העשיה, to the physical level, it'll have to take on that presentation in order for us to interact with it. If those two things try to interact directly, it's totally meaningless.

ועל דא ספור דאורייתא לבושא דאורייתא איהו. So now, these stories of the תורה, מאן דחשב דההוא לבושא איהו אורייתא ממש ולא מילה אחרא, the תיפח רוחיה, the the person that thinks that the outer levush that the Torah is presenting itself actually comes to define the Torah is First of all, he totally doesn't understand what the Torah is, and תיפח רוחיה, he he could die. In other words, what does it mean his ruach will leave him. But going back, I guess, in the literal sense, we said that the malachim are ruach, the spiritual part of We have a ruach, nefesh, ruach, neshamah.

We have a spiritual aspect of ourself and a physical aspect of ourself. The malach only has the ruach aspect of itself. If we are not tapping into the spirituality of the world around us, then we're not relating What What do we need it for? Right? If we're going to translate everything we have into physicality, and we don't understand the spiritual aspect, then we're not engaged with it. Our ruach, chas v'shalom, can go away, right? So it says literally it means he dies, his ruach should leave him. But we are we are not defining ourself by a ruach with a companion guf, as it were, to bring out that purpose.

We're not even relating ourself to a ruach at all. ולא יהי חולקא בההוא עלמא דאתי. We have no chelek in Olam Haba, not as a punishment, but because we have we we are not relating to it. It's our choice. Do we say that we have a chelek, we have a portion, we exist at different altitudes, we have a chelek in Olam Haba, and the way that we effect that netzchiyut is through the interaction at the physical level? Or do we just say that, no, we just take a very We are We're living a horizontal life.

We're all the way down here, right? We're all the way at the bottom of the pyramid. We don't even understand this as being an extension of what comes above. And therefore David HaMelech says, גל עיני ואביטה נפלאות מתורתך. David HaMelech himself is saying, open up my eyes, as it were, what I can see, what I can have a perspective on, and I can gaze I can understand the נפלאות מתורתך, מה דתחות לבושא דאורייתא, that I can understand what is behind the Torah, what what's underneath the Torah, what is the Torah an expression of. And he goes on, again, it's a little bit long, but I think that it opens up totally this Torah, and I think that it's worth it.

תא חזי, אית לבושא דאתחזי לכולא. There is לבוש that is apparent to everybody. ואינון טפשין כד חמאן בר נש בלבושא דאתחזי לון שפירא. And these טפשים, when they see a person who wears a לבוש, they think that that's the person. Whatever garment a person is wearing, right, that that defines the person. ולא מסתכלין יתיר. What The depth of a person, a person has so much behind them, and they say, "Oh, what do you do for a living? Oh, you're a doctor. Oh, you're a lawyer. Oh, you're an accountant. This is who you are." This is one interaction that the person has.

This comes to define them. Yes, this is an expression of who they are. These and even more so, he just says in terms of the clothing that they're wearing, חשיבותא דההוא לבושא גופא וחשיבותא דגופא נשמתא. So, they think that the חשיבות of the לבוש is the גוף, and the חשיבות of the גוף is the נשמה. They just judge everything by the most outer trapping. The same way they say the person is defined by the clothing, they say that the spirituality is defined by the by the physical. Just one more one more paragraph, and then we'll we'll move on.

כגוונא דא, אורייתא אית לה גופא. The Torah has a גוף, as it were, or a presentation of a גוף. ואינון פקודי אורייתא דאקרון גופי תורה. The mitzvot, the דינים, these what we call they are the גוף of the Torah. One way of learning, I mean totally different way of understanding this. We're not looking at that as saying, "Oh, that's the גוף, that's the core of the Torah." No, that is the way that we interact. We have mitzvot. This is the way that we are able to relate to the רצון השם as it presents itself in the גוף of it.

This is the גוף as opposed to the נשמה. האי גופא מתלבשן בלבושין דאינון ספורין דהאי עלמא. What is the גוף of the Torah, the presentation of it? This is what presents itself as stories, which is all the way all the way the tip of the iceberg. טפשין דעלמא לא מסתכלי אלא בההוא לבושא דאיהו ספור דאורייתא. A person that understands the stories of the Torah, this iceberg goes infinitely deep, and this is what they see, because this they live above the sea level, so this is what presents itself above sea level. And it's accurate, and it's extension of what comes below, but instead of extrapolating from that and using it as a heichi timtzi to understand the depth to relate to Hashem, they say, "Oh, this is what it is." ולא ידעי יתיר.

And they don't know anymore. ולא מסתכלי במה דאיהו תחות ההוא לבושא. They don't look at what's underneath it. אינון דידעין יתיר, if they would know more, לא מסתכלין בלבושא אלא בגופא דאיהו תחות ההוא לבושא. If they would have a deeper understanding, it would never even occur to them to look at the clothing and define the person by the It's an indication, there's a reason, it might relate to one particular role, right? A person is a doctor, he also might be a husband, he also might be a father, he also might be somebody's son, he also might have community involvement.

This is one aspect, and it's not wrong, it's not a lie. They are also a doctor, this is the role that they're operating in, but if they would know more, they would understand what it is that they're looking at. חכימין עבדי דמלכא עילאה, the chachamim that do the that are the עבדים of the מלך עליון of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, of the רבונו של עולם, אילין דקיימי בטורא דסיני, those that stood at סיני, לא מסתכלי אלא בנשמתא דאיהו עיקרא דכולא, אורייתא ממש. The people that stood at Sinai, the people relate they had a level of נבואה, these are the people that understand what they're looking at at the surface and what what its place is in the greater construct.

ולזמנא דאתי, זמינין לאסתכלא בנשמתא דנשמתא דאורייתא, and le'atid lavo we will attain this greater understanding. But be-ezrat Hashem the people that the people that relate to the Torah like that will be זוכה to an understanding. So now that we we we can see that the the Torah that we learn, actually we choose how we relate to it, and we can be if there was one of the תורות I I I'd have to look at the לשון, it talks about being מגשם the Torah. Now, let's go back into this piece of Likutei Moharan, and I I I think that it will be much easier to understand the relationship with the Torah of of who it is that's learning the Torah, what it is that they're transmitting, and now how the whatever they're transmitting to the recipient, the recipient will be bound by whatever it is that's being transmitted to them.

Now, so let's go back. Paragraph א. המתנגדים והמבזים והמחרפים יראי השם. Now you have people that are כנגד, they are opposing, they are disgracing, they are abusing, okay, however these words exactly are translated, the יראי השם. Who are the יראי השם, by the way? The צדיקים, the talmidei chachamim. These are people that embody the Torah, they have they have יראת שמים, their מהות is defined. So, this other person that opposes them, we with the way that we explained it earlier, we said that they're opposing them personally. They Since they don't relate to רוחניות as being all the way high up, or very deep, I mean, depending on how you look at it.

So, what they are their perception of this person is, I have Torah, they have Torah, but you can't even that's actually not true because the two people are relating to Torah at in totally different ways. So, I see this person is disagreeing with me in פשט, there's me, and there's him. We have different ways of learning, we have different approaches. Maybe my approach is even better because it seems to be more practical, and I relate to the Torah as being practical. It's coming in this world, like we saw in the Zohar, it's at this level.

So here comes these people and they oppose the צדיקים, they oppose the יראי שמים. זה מחמת שמקבלים תורה מתלמידי חכמים שדין יהודאין. Why? Because what is a The talmid chacham is the person that embodies Torah, so what is Torah? I know what Torah is. I also was מקבל תורה from a Rebbe, but the Torah that I have was coming so to speak from a different place. It wasn't being given, it was he wasn't I wasn't getting the iceberg, I was presented with the tip of the iceberg, and I was presented as that as representing the whole.

It's totally distorted. כי תלמידי חכמים שדין יהודאין הם מקבלים תורתם מהשדים. The the the talmidei chachamim are being מקבל תורה from the שדים, שיש להם תורה נפולה מאלפין נפולין. And the שדים are giving over the Torah which is called a תורה נפולה. It's not a Torah that's all the way up high, I'm getting only the outer trappings of it, it's something that's fallen. We'll give maybe a little bit of a hint, these are very lofty concepts, a little bit of a hint to maybe understand it, and they're getting it from אלפין נפולין. Let's just hold this concepts for now.

ובאלפין אלו, with these אלפין נפולין that are responsible for the Torah that's being given over which is really just the shell, right? What am I looking at? I'm looking at an orange and I define an orange peel. No, that's an orange. The peel is the protection of the orange, but if I would ask you what this fruit is, you define it as what it truly is. These people are defining it, relating to it entirely in terms of its outer trappings, the klipah. It's it's it's not authentic, it doesn't have integrity. ובאלפין אלו, and with regard to these אלפין, כתיב בשלמה, I want to read through the paragraph first and then we'll speak about just a couple of the concepts, but let's just get the paragraph, כתיב בשלמה, ״וידבר שלשת אלפים משל״, that Shlomo Hamelech said 3,000 משלים, Proverbs, right?

״ויהי שירו חמשה״, and his songs were five, the five is there were three I think פרקים or three sections of Mishlei that start with the words Mishlei Shlomo and then there's Shir Hashirim and Kohelet, that would be five, ״ואלף״. And so there's three but so אלפים can mean a thousand, either it's describing the משלים that he gave 3,000 Proverbs and then his songs were five and אלף, but if you say instead of saying thousand we say שלשת אלפים, three אלף's plus an אלף, that would be the four אלפים, which we just said are zeh le'umat zeh, there is the appropriate אלפים, and then there is the אלף נפולות.

Everything in the בריאה has things that are corresponding, so Shlomo Hamelech is the one who had the four appropriate אלפים. Just bear with us as we go forward, כי שלמה זכה להן בקדושה, because Shlomo Hamelech attached himself to the אלפים בקדושה, אבל תלמידי חכמים שדים יהודאן מקבלים מדרך הקליפות. They also have some form of the presentation of it, but they are getting it at the lower level. They are not even the ones who are choosing, they are receiving it. The תלמידי חכמים שדים יהודאן are getting from the שדים, who are now passing it along, ובשביל זה כל דיבורם דרך משל ומליצה טעמם נעלם כי שורשם מאלו אלפין הנ״ל, because all of their Torah is being given over in the story form, but not as a משל for something that is a deeper principle that just has no real mode of expression in this world, and therefore the integrity of the principle is preserved in a presentation that is fit for this world, but rather they receive it as a story.

That is what it is, it is a משל, and therefore the Torah that they give over, they are going to be limited by giving over only what they received and what they understood. That is why they give, you know, these derashot, and you know, things that sound fancy, and some of them might even seem attractive to somebody, especially to a מקבל who also exists, he functions at the lower world. Instead of providing him the gift of an attachment to the upper עולמות, this Rabbi, as it were, is just giving them something that appeals to them, but it actually has no real depth.

ואלו התלמידי חכמים, these תלמידי חכמים, again, they know something. They are using all the right words, all the right terminology. נאמר עליהם המעט מכם הלאות אנשים כי תלאו גם אלקים. The pasuk literally says, is it not enough for you to weary people that you would also weary the Rabono shel Olam? It is coming from mussar, from a discussion that the Navi Yeshayahu is giving to one of the wicked kings, Achaz, but essentially says, not only are you doing a disservice to the people, you are also being incredibly disrespectful to the Ribono Shel Olam, or to הקדוש ברוך הוא.

We are not going to go through the story there right now, but over here also, we have these תלמידי חכמים שדים יהודאן, כי מיגעים אנשים שבאים לשמוע דרושם ותורתם. They are making weary the people that come to hear their דרושים, והאנשים חושבים שיבואו לאיזה לזה תועלת על ידם. Over here, again, if we think about the presentation of Torah in a drush, if it is the tip of the iceberg, it is able to bring to the surface something that is really anchored in tremendous depth in a way that people can relate to it and ultimately develop an attachment to something that is much, much deeper, so then that is real Torah.

But if a person is only appealing to something at the surface, then what is leading them? I guess you would say what is palatable to people, what people want, what people are interested in. What the people who they are speaking to are interested in might be something that is more exciting, it might be something that relates to their behaviors or that does not make them feel too bad. It is not anchored in אמת. I mean, it may or may not be saying things that the Torah says, but it is not בהכרח, it is not by necessity, it is not a presentation of Torah concepts, it is using the Torah terminology to present what people want to hear.

But it is dangerous, because it is one thing if people are not listening to Torah, so they are doing their own thing, but when people are listening to these drushim, then now they think that they are attached to הקדוש ברוך הוא, and if you take a step back, they say, "We are working on ourself, we are going to the shiurim, we are listening to these דרשנים, these are תלמידי חכמים, people that are presenting Torah, this is my Rebbe." And they are being totally misled by this distortion. Their attachment to this person that is using Torah concepts to present things along whatever system of priorities is actually this תלמיד חכם is not a ירא שמים, he is not a צדיק, he is not somebody who through his ביטול and ענוה is actually factoring himself out so that he is just a pipeline between the reservoir of Torah and the recipient.

He actually has ישות. It is the opposite of a צדיק. It is the opposite of what a תלמיד חכם is supposed to be. It is the opposite of somebody who is making himself totally subscribe to the אמת and his job is to channel it towards the תלמידים in a way that they could hear it. It is actually somebody who is injecting other priorities and then layering Torah on top of it. But now these people are going to have certain expectations of chas v'shalom to say, but how they are expecting the world, הקדוש ברוך הוא, whatever it is, to respond to the way that they are following Torah, right?

Even though we know שכר מצוה בהאי עלמא ליכא, but you know there is a פסוק, you know the application of it is for another time, והיה אם שמוע, if you listen to the Torah and מצוות, ונתתי מטר ארצכם בעתו, right? ואכלת ושבעת. There is going to be rain, people will eat, be satisfied. satisfied, and then people don't see any of the ברכות, and they're they're totally in a living in a distorted world thinking that their going through the motions is a fulfillment of their obligation. So again, these people who are the Rebbeim, the ones who are being now מקבל the Torah from the שד and then presenting it to the people, they are wearying the people and also totally disrespectful to Hashem.

They're taking the the the words of Torah which are which are the expression in this world as we can have it, or the Torah as we relate to it, of of Torah, the blueprint of creation at the highest levels, and it's just a total totally putting it out of context. היינו שיבואו לדעת את השם איך לעבוד. These people are coming to these דרשנים to figure out how they can attach to השם, והם האנשים אין משיגים שום תועלת, and they're actually not reaching any תועלת, any betterment, any תכלית. They're they're not they're cut off from the source.

The the maalah of attaching oneself to Torah is attaching oneself to the source, and these people are not attaching to the source. They're actually, like we said, being מגשם the Torah. By taking it out of context, they're detaching it. They're just using the חיצוניות. כי תורתם של אלו התלמידי חכמים אין בה כח להדריך את האדם בדרך טוב. The Torah that they're presenting doesn't have this כח, because the the the כח of the Torah is that it's it's plugged into the source, it's plugged into the wall. When they detach it and they they just use the outer terms, it no longer has that energy.

It's not attached to אלהים חיים. כי מבישא לא הוי טבא, because from something bad, nothing good can come. Things can things have to be rooted in a source. If something is not rooted in it, then from where will the benefit come from? ולא עוד, כי תלאו גם אלקים, okay we'll comment in one second, not only is it a disservice to the people, it is also a disgrace to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. כאילו לאה הקדוש ברוך הוא מלעזור לעובדים אותו. It's as if they're wearying Hashem. What what does it mean to hold Hashem back? To not give HaKadosh Baruch Hu kivayachol, make Hashem tired that as if to say, it's hard to say the words, that Hashem doesn't have the strength to give bracha to help out the people that are serving Him.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu set up a world where we connect to Hashem. The the ball is in our court. This is how we are able to invest. We become a noten, we're not just a mekabel. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the ultimate giver kivayachol, he's HaKadosh Baruch Hu's a mashpia. How does HaKadosh Baruch Hu allow us to align to become a mashpia, to become a noten? Hashem gives us the ability to give, the ability to sacrifice, the ability to earn, the ability to turn on the faucet and open up those channels to connect with Him. Now, here you have people, and the the people the simpler people that are looking for a rebbi, they don't exactly know what they're looking for, they be'etzem want to be doing the right thing.

And now, instead of attaching themselves to a rebbi who is going to allow them to align the pipes up appropriately and allow the shefa to flow through, you have these people that are misleading the these the these false talmidei chachamim that are misleading the populace, and they're building they're building a pipe to nowhere. Now, on one hand, this makes a lot of sense, it's also very hard to swallow, right? A person goes for any profession and they have a professor that doesn't know what they're talking about, they're getting information from a wrong source, you know, they go to engineering school, at the end of the day, if they have somebody that misleads them, they're not going to know how to build a building.

There's you know, so there's what we're saying makes sense it's a lot of common sense. What is very difficult for us to swallow is, you know, are we saying that people really be'etzem want the right thing and they're just misled and they pick the wrong Rabbi and they don't know? So, you know, that's a question that perhaps we'll be able to explore as we go through the Torah, not for now, but, you know, with correct emunah in talmidei chachamim by following one's rabbeim, by davening to HaKadosh Baruch Hu to align in the appropriate way, by doing due diligence, finding the right people, and we'll have to see as we explore the Torah, how do we find the right rabbeim, in any context, if we we want to find the right person to help us, whether it's a doctor, a lawyer, a plumber, whether it's to educate us, or whether it's just to be able to perform the duty, we we always have to there are certain steps of hishtadlut, and including davening as hishtadlut, that we have to take in order to to come to the appropriate source.

So that is I I think that that makes sense, but we'll leave aside for now. Another point that we're going to come back to soon is the idea that good can't come from bad. It seems to be a very black and white type statement, but it doesn't seem to always always be true. Avraham came from Terach, Yishmael came from Avraham, so we we will have to understand how we can relate to that and why this principle can be true without it being violated by what we see. Now, forward, נמצא שעל ידי זה, through being people being mekabel the Torah from the wrong source, אלו בני אדם, these who listen, noflim b'kefirot gedolot, because they think that והיה אם שמוע, like we like we said, a person gives maaser, then their money is going to be blessed.

What happens? They're giving money to sources that are anti-Torah, they're not actually giving tzedakah. They hear that there's a promise that if a person gives tzedakah, then their money will be blessed. So they give it to local politicians, they give it to the local YMCA, they give it to whatever causes, something that they're giving some of their money, but in no way, shape, or form does this constitute tzedakah. Are they going to be zocheh to the promise? וחושבים חס ושלום היראה ולא יבין אלוקים במעשה בני אדם. And now they have questions. They're working totally with the wrong principles.

I saw recently Rav Dessler in one of the essays says that there are questions that have answers, and then there are questions that are just based on a faulty premise. When a person has a question on a Chazal, if a person says, "Well, you just didn't understand the Chazal appropriately, or you looked at a pasuk and you didn't understand that through the lens of תורה שבעל פה, you implied a definition or an explanation that's just totally false, well then the resulting question is just based on the wrong premise." So over here, these people just have totally the wrong premise.

They have a total wrong understanding of the Torah, of their attachment to Torah, of their attachment to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and based on this, they have questions. ועל ידי זה, את יראי ה' לא יכבדו. So now they are not going to be מכבד יראי ה', because in their mind, what really is the difference between the tzadikim, yirei Shamayim שמים, the true talmidei chachamim, talmidei chachamim that they saw? And remember, they've never attached and understood the definition of a tzadik as somebody who has התבטלות, who factors themself out, who's just a channel and a pipeline to something deeper.

They're just looking at people that give nice speeches. What's the difference between apples and oranges? I don't know, they're just more of the same. And therefore, when they see that it's not working, they come to be koferim and they come to come against HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the words of Torah, and even if they don't want to express something against Hashem', they'll say something against those who represent ה', and they will come to denigrate the true tzadikim. ועל ידי זה, את יראי ה' לא יכבדו, they're not going to be mechabed the yirei Hashem', which gives meaning to give honor.

Kavod, by the way, כבד means heaviness, it means substance. They're not going to attribute anything substantial to the tzadikim, they will come to say the talmidei chachamim, the real true tzadikim are just empty, ומחרפים ומביישים אותם, and they will come to denigrate, to have no problem shaming God-fearing people, true tzadikim. They don't even recognize their own shortcomings. They think that they've done everything, and therefore they just attribute, if the problem can't be in me, or the people where I looked for Torah, so then the problem might be somebody else. And they come to just scorn and disgrace religious ways of life and people that are committed to just ancient rituals because we see that it was empty.

They see that it didn't help, and it's just based on a totally wrong premise. ובשביל זה בושה נקרא עבודת אלילים. This is why the term בושה, shame, is applied to עבודה זרה, כמו שכתוב, like it says by עבודה זרה, וינזרו לבשת, that people separated themself, they consecrated themself to בושת, to shame, to עבודה זרה. כי הבושה והחרוף נעשה מהכפירות, because coming from כפירה, coming from עבודה זרה, that results in בושה and חרוף to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So that כפירה, which is an aspect of עבודה זרה, leads to people disgracing the tzadikim and disgracing, it causes בושה to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

Now just a couple of ideas that I want to highlight, not necessarily in the order they came up, but just for completion, they were a little bit tangential. One of them, we had said a line, כי מבישא לא הוי טבא, from a bad source, as it were, good can't come, and from a good source, bad can't come. This, by the way, is an incredibly complex topic. It's probably responsible to a large degree for a lot of עבודה זרה. If God is all good, then how can you have bad in the world? And that is a question that has to be dealt with, that is dealt with, but this is the question, this is the paradox that would lead people to say that there are competing forces in the world, however exactly that works.

The question would be, when we look back, we see that Avraham came from Terach, Yishmael came from Avraham, David HaMelech came from Rut. We see all sorts of places within Tanach, within Chazal, which don't seem to line up with this idea. So without going deep into it, we will at least just mention that there are sources which we could say are all good. Over here in the note, he's quoting from the Zohar really, but he talks about people attending the meal of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, being able to receive Torah, to eat from the bread, from the staff of life, the ones who are eating from the כולה טוב, that would be from the עץ חיים.

The שדין יהודאין are the ones that are not attached to the source at all, and in the middle it would be the עץ הדעת טוב ורע, which we've mentioned before, the Nefesh HaChaim has a whole discussion about it, of the complexity in the world, that everything is a תערובות. post the, post the חטא, in terms of the עץ הדעת טוב ורע, and a lot of our עבודה ultimately is to make these birurim. So, it doesn't necessarily help, I guess, in terms of having a clear path, but at least if one were to have the question, is if if everything is just so linear, then how do we deal with the complexity?

The two other, two other brief points that came up. One of them was explaining this idea of the fallen אלפים. What does it mean that the Torah comes from the אלפים? Where was it? It says שיש להם תורה נפולה מאלפין נפולין. The Torah נפולה comes from the אלפין נפולין. Now, Aleph is the first letter of the aleph beis. אלף also means to to teach or to learn. I'm just going to quote this, an idea over here, and I don't know that it will be given full treatment, certainly not for now, but just to to get a little bit of an understanding.

The Rebbe, I think, mentions in note 11, he quotes really from a Zohar over here, from the הקדמה of the Zohar, but he says, he comes from a פסוק in Iyov, it says אז ראה אז ראה ויספרה הכינה וגם חקרה ויאמר לאדם, that that the Torah went through a process of seeing, telling over, preparation, investigation, but he says כנגד ארבע פעמים ההם כתוב אז ראה ויספרה הכינה וגם חקרה, ברא הקדוש ברוך הוא את מה שברא, and then הקדוש ברוך הוא ultimately created. He brings from the פסוק Bereishis, there's an אלף in the word בראשית, ברא has an אלף, אלוקים, את, and then comes השמים ואת הארץ, creation came after four אלפים.

Perhaps, perhaps we can say the Torah is the blueprint of the world. He doesn't align it up over here, but we know that that contained within Torah there's pshat, remez, drush, sod, there's a lot of places where the the dynamic of four comes up, and we could say that as הקדוש ברוך הוא presented us with the Torah, this is me suggesting it over here, as הקדוש ברוך הוא presented with the Torah, embedded in the Torah, the Torah is coming from, we we just explained, an infinite source, the Torah of קודשא בריך הוא ואורייתא חד הוא, but הקדוש ברוך הוא, as it were, embedded in the Torah, somehow there was four different layers, four different types of teachings.

An idea that we've quoted before is that pshat, remez, drush, and sod, they are all consistent, but on the other hand, they're also independent. You could have something that's pshat where the remez is not relevant. I can write you a story where the story makes sense on its face for argument's sake, and the idea of, let's say, roshei teivos or the idea of what color ink I use is not relevant. On the other hand, maybe I'm trying to write you a letter, and I'm trying to give you a letter in code, and therefore it will be based on the roshei teivos, it will be based on the first letter of each word, and what those words are, the story can be actual nonsense, it won't make any difference, it's only the רמיזה that's important.

We have the Torah where there is different layers of meaning that are all embedded in the Torah, and they all have their own their own meaning and their own significance. HaKadosh Baruch Hu embedded somehow these four אלפים, whatever exactly it is that they represent into the Torah, but we know that there's זה לעומת זה. So to the extent that there are these four ways of learning, these four ways of relating to the Torah, so then there also is a קליפה associated in some way with the fallen אלפים, which we said, what does it mean fallen?

We said if the Torah is really coming back, it's השתלשלות coming all the way all the way from the heights, it's coming from the highest place, so something that would be the חיצוניות, something that is detached from that, as it were, it would be a way of learning, a way of attaching ourself or associating ourself with the Torah as it presents itself to us, but fallen, just at a much lower altitude, something we discussed in depth. And just one other nice idea over here, just tying back into the מאמר חז״ל originally, we said building a house between the heaven and earth, and then we ended up quoting Shlomo HaMelech.

Shlomo HaMelech, who is explaining the attachment to the Torah through the four אלפים as opposed to the people that have this superficial relationship with the Torah, which is through the the אלפים that are the fallen אלפים, quotes over here in Likutei Halachot that the עיקר שלמות התיקון was in the בית המקדש, שהוא עיקר הבית שעומד על מקומו בבחינת בית שבין שמים לארץ. Shlomo HaMelech himself was the one who built the Beit HaMikdash. That was the עיקר תורה, the Beit HaMikdash, which was a place that really was where where where heaven touches earth. It was a place which was nisht ahin nisht aher.

It was a place where reality itself is almost a little bit fuzzy, all bets are off. It says in Pirkei Avot, it goes through a lot of the ניסים that happened there every day or at particular times, and therefore Shlomo HaMelech was the one who understood how to achieve in this world something that really represented things much higher, and to the extent that he built the Beit HaMikdash, the Beit HaMikdash was almost like a level higher, was a level up, it was just it it definitely represented the idea that what we see in this world is not actually it's in this world, but it's not of this world.

It's something that really is is just our interface with something that is a level over the טבע, and the Beit HaMikdash is שם עיקר תורה, and that's why Shlomo HaMelech specifically built the Beit HaMikdash, because he was the one who is זוכה to these אלפין בקדושה, the one who is זוכה to attach himself to the idea of Torah, the idea of teaching, learning, attaching himself to HaKadosh Baruch Hu with the understanding that we're actually associating ourselves with something at a much higher source. Okay, be that as it may, we'll stop over here, and just to quote from R'' Chaim Kramer's summary, we'll just literally read it: Torah knowledge has its source either in the holy alephs, in which case it leads a person on the correct path to help improve his ways, or it's drawn from the fallen alephs, in which case it's destructive and can lead a person to heresy. Those whose knowledge is in the latter category of fallen Torah are those who disgrace and vilify the righteous and God-fearing people. We will stop over here, and we will בעזרת השם יתברך continue on our journey the next time.