The Philosophers and the Jews: Black Eggs and White Cheese - Tishah Bav - By Rabbi YY Jacobson

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi YY Jacobson’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

One of the greatest Jewish sages in our history was a man named Rabbi Yeshua ben Chananiah, Joshua the son of Chananiah. He was a Levite who still sung at the time of the second base hamikdash, the second temple. The Levi'im, as you know, the Levites would hold the daily concerto in the base hamikdash, in the temple, and Rabbi Yeshua ben Chananiah was one of the meshorerim, he was one of the Levites who was part of the daily musical concert. He was considered a legendary scholar, a philosopher, an astronomer, a brilliant debater. He watched the temple go up in flames on the ninth day of the month of Av, on Tisha B'Av. He was one of the students of the great leader Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai who actually carried him out of Jerusalem when the Zealots would not allow any negotiations with the Romans. And Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was carried out as a corpse from the capital of Jerusalem where he would ultimately meet Vespasian, the general who would later become the Caesar, who's under under his authority Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was plundered, the Jews were massacred. And Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai struck some deal with Rabbi with Vespasian to leave Yavneh to spare Yavneh and its sages not to destroy the place of the Yeshivas of the Talmudic Rabbinical Academy. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah was one of the Sanhedrin, was one of the members of the Jewish Supreme Court in Yavneh. And as I said, a fierce debater. Now, the temple was destroyed in the year 70 after the common era. And the following episode, which we're going to focus on, is a debate that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah had merely a few decades after the destruction of the Second Temple in the

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1. 0:52One of the greatest Jewish sages in our history was a man named Rabbi Yeshua ben…
2. 4:04And so the Talmud in tractate P'rakhim daf ches, page eight, shares with us a stunning…
3. 7:52came from a black hen and which egg came from a white hen?" Stuck? Defeated? Two…
4. 11:40profound insight. Namely, what the Marshall says is it takes 21 days for a hen egg…
5. 15:2821 days, beginning on the first day of Tishrei, Rosh Hashanah, continuing till the 21st day…
6. 19:09a white hand, but now your egg came from a black hen and it canceled out…
7. 22:18core in every human being. It represented the bond, the relationship between God and Israel. And…
8. 25:54also produces white cheese, just as the first goat that goes into the Holy of Holies…
9. 29:37the world. Even the hardships they faced were there to get them where they have to…
10. 33:28In physics, you will know there's a concept called a black hole. The gravitational field in…

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