Rabbi Breitowitz Explains Some of Judaism's Most Misunderstood Practices

What’s said in this shiur

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

Hot button issue and I'm getting too much uh I won't say hate mail, that's a little strong, but uh too much mail, so no tocheiles discussion tonight. Okay. Anyway, [snorts] uh if it's not about tocheiles, feel free to uh to ask. Yeah. >> All right, here's a send-in. Why is there zero tolerance for pictures of women in the yeshiva world when the Torah abounds with explicit depictions of women? For example, we have a godata about prostitutes and marital relations, and Hazal darshans through King David's anatomy as a mashal. >> Yeah, so the issue is about uh the zero tolerance policy of pictures in of women in many religious publications. Uh first, let me just backtrack a little bit on something you mentioned in your question. Uh the shaila is sometimes raised that in the Gemara in particular, there's a lot of sexually explicit discussion. There are discussions about intercourse, about uh male anatomy, female anatomy, uh the Torah itself gives us stories about rape and and the like. And Rav Elyashiv was asked the question, is it proper, as it were, to censor these materials and not make them available either to younger children or even to unmarried singles. Uh should we not learn those sugyas in the Gemara and the like? And Rav Elyashiv uh gave us a very important rule that he says that anything that is in the context of limud haTorah will never damage your neshama, it will only strengthen your neshama. So, uh even if you're talking about sex and intercourse and rape and genitalia and

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1. 0:00Hot button issue and I'm getting too much uh I won't say hate mail, that's a…
2. 6:13>> Between? >> Between being a kofer and >> Oh, kofer >> [laughter] >> Yeah, what…
3. 12:20a day, and then you have nine of the daylight hours as well as the night…
4. 18:31United States. Calling for jobs and the like. Right? So this goes back to the old…
5. 24:38were lumber merchants. And they would work on selling uh lumber for four hours a day.…
6. 30:48listening over and over and over again, I'll internalize it and eventually feel it. But but…
7. 36:55some people say it, a lot of people don't say it, right? It's not officially part…
8. 43:06So, mimila, they say Tammuz is the beginning for zarizin, for those who are zarizin, those…
9. 49:14if you don't have a yetzer hara and you do mitzvahs, do you get reward for…
10. 55:22Right. That that that actually is a very good question. The Torah itself uses the words…

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