Understanding Your Soul – Nefesh Hachaim, Part 3

What’s said in this shiur

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

Okay. >> Okay. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our Good evening. Good evening. The third part of Nefesh HaChaim. We're still giving ourselves a little background to the Nefesh HaChaim and Rav Chaim of Volozhin, the author. And this week I want to try and if we can finish up now the introduction and move on to the text itself. The Volozhin Yeshiva, as we mentioned last week, the Yeshiva in Volozhin was something completely revolutionary. Uh up to this point in time, people basically a local rabbi would collect some 10 or so students around him and they'd use the communal facilities to teach them. Other support They were supported by the local community. And they There was no dormitory. They they would live amongst the local community. And if, you know, sometimes they would actually sleep on the benches in the shul. It was a kind of haphazard arrangement. It wasn't really arranged. People learned, of course. So there were these provincial pockets of Torah learning, so to speak, without any formal organization. And the Volozhin Yeshiva was the realization of a dream that Rav Chaim had to reintroduce the concept of course the concept of existed in Babylon, the great Yeshivas of Sura, Pumbedita, etc. But this was something that had sort of lapsed through the galus, through the exile. And he wanted to reintroduce the concept of an internationally recognized Torah institution, >> [clears throat] >> which would of course increase the profile, the glow of Torah study, increase the the kavod, the honor, and the status of Torah learning. And he understood that this would have to be supported and not something that which just fall on the local community resources.

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00Okay. >> Okay. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our Good evening. Good evening. The third part…
2. 2:02>> [clears throat] >> So, first of all, it would have to appeal to an international…
3. 4:35Um briefly on R. Chaim's deathbed, R. Chaim issued two instructions to his son, R. Yitzchak,…
4. 7:09Um One thing he brings out here, which is that the ideas embodied in Nefesh HaChaim…
5. 9:11could [clears throat] lead Judaism outside its norms. He said he saw somebody who was getting…
6. 11:43essential. But it must always be kept in the service of the halacha. This is really…
7. 14:16But, if you just take away the one, the actual action, you're left with six zeros.…
8. 16:25But much worse than this, it potentially exposes a person destroying the very Torah principles which…
9. 19:01Um it's something extremely elevated. It's not something he's going to go into. This is for…
10. 21:38Not merely poetic, in a very specific but a literative sense. That there's something that he…

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