Q&A - Idolatry and Prophecy, Sinas Chinam, 'In G D's Image' - Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb

What’s said in this shiur

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

Okay, it's the first day of this month. So, if you have any questions or you have any questions that you recorded, we can start with those. Otherwise, I'll just talk. There's a thing I heard about a counter There's a There's a There's a wholeness and there's a purity So, there there's a wholeness and there's a impurity that counter balances in every generation. For example, the For example, the the I heard somewhere I don't know exactly the source. Sorry about that. There was a source that says that there's an image that the impurity that there Back when there's a Back in the past, there's a big Yetzer Hara for um There's big Yetzer Hara for idolatry. But in But counteracting that Yetzer Hara was Nevuah or prophecy. And when we lost the Yetzer Hara for idolatry, we also lost Nevuah. So, if the if the if the rabbi is aware of these counter balances, maybe he could talk about these counter balances. Yes, it's based on a famous verse, Zeh l'umah zeh asah Elohim. God made this corresponding to this. And the explanation is he made choices. And for everything that is a right choice, there's a corresponding wrong choice so that there'll be free will. So, you'll make a choice between two alternatives. And what you're referring to is a very well-referenced idea that about 2,600 years ago we lost prophecy. The last prophets were at the beginning of the Second Temple period. And at the same time, the urge to worship idols, what we call the Yetzer Hara, to worship idols disappeared. And it wasn't just a coincidence. Because idol worship and I and prophecy have something in common. And that something in common gives you two ways to develop. And that was the free choice. And if one is going to be removed, then the other one has to be removed.

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1. 0:02Okay, it's the first day of this month. So, if you have any questions or you…
2. 4:10Now, what is the common element that they that they share? The common element is a…
3. 8:59and there's only one direction in which you can go. No, no. Nothing's free. And that's…
4. 13:41Even among educated people. Had considerable following. Sometimes it was because of misinformation, sometimes because of…
5. 17:59And the Romans did also. So it's not just difference that attracted them. Uh Here are…
6. 22:45And I noticed that undergraduates um don't have a taste for logic too much. Um there…
7. 27:32Let's think of it as hatred without reason versus love without reason. So this is hatred…
8. 31:37that kind of hatred. Now, this, for example, in our circums- in our circum- circles, one…
9. 36:22the fight, the worker in the store broke the jaw of the other guy. And the…
10. 41:10And then as a result of a transgression God gave him the knowledge of good and…

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