The Yanuka Rav Shlomo Yehuda-הגאון הינוקא בסיום הרמב＂ם בבית חב＂ד רמת אביב השיעור והניגונים

3:59 He was very, very, very troubled and in great sorrow, and he poured out his heart before Hashem. He was in very, very great pain over the passing of his brother, Rabbi David, who cared for him greatly and supported him; the Rambam leaned very, very much on that brother. Our master the Rambam, beyond the journeys he went through in his life, his learning, and the method of his learning, is a very, very, very, very lofty learning.

4:24 You know that in his time he even wrote to his son that he should study his work, which includes everything, so that afterward there is no need to study other works. That is what he said. In the introduction you can see many of his paths and his ways and his method of learning, in the commentary on Tractate Berachos. He also has commentaries on the Mishnayos. At the end he writes there that every matter of emunah that comes up, this is what he writes, that wherever he sees a hint to a matter of emunah, he goes and explains it, because for him it is a very important foundation to clarify and explain this whole matter. Every time he sees it, he says, it is one of his foundations to explain and interpret this matter. Wherever he comes across something through which he can explain emunah,

5:07 our master the Rambam opens up and illuminates that foundation for the whole world. And everyone needs to understand that the Rambam, beyond the commentary, beyond the halachic rulings, beyond what he merited, our master the Rambam was also a great man of emunah, who revealed to us wonderful mussar and emunah within his writings, there is no measure beyond what our master the Rambam revealed. They say that our master... once, Rabbi Pinchas of Koritz, one time he was in the beis medrash, and a poor man came and knocked on the door, to his wife, and asked for charity.

5:40 And back then, books were something very, very expensive. So the Rebbetzin, the wife of Rabbi Pinchas of Koritz, took a set of the Rambam and gave it to the poor man. When Rabbi Pinchas of Koritz came back from the beis medrash, he came home, looked for the Rambam, and asks his wife, "Where is the Rambam? Where is it?" So she told him, "I gave it away." So he said, "What a pity. Now he will have some benefit from it, but now we will have no fear of Heaven.

6:05 Because a house that has no Rambam in it has no fear of Heaven." That is what he said. He put it that way because a place that has a Rambam in it has so, so, so much fear of Heaven. The Rambam, beyond his power of understanding in what he did in his work, in the Mishnah and in the Talmud, you know, to gather the whole Talmud, to fold up the whole Torah, and to bring each discussion to its conclusion in line with the halachah, as the Meiri writes at the end of Tractate Niddah, that means drawing the halachos out of... to take the Talmud and draw out of it all the halachos, everything that can be ruled in practice.

6:40 Our master the Rambam, in all of his work, it is to learn and encompass the whole Torah, truly from the beginning to the end, truly to draw out the pearls and the things one can learn and apply and fulfill, and through them all the paths and pathways of the Torah. That is why it is very important to learn Rambam, because it is a very, very, very great foundation. Our master the Rambam: we see that many of the great ones of the world, our master the Rogatchover, the author of Tzafnas Paneach, every evening, when he went to pray, he would say every day that he should merit fear of Heaven like that of the Rambam, so much was the Rambam his master and teacher; that is how he would speak of him, that he is his master and teacher, and he wants to have fear of Heaven like him, and he wants to be holy like him.

7:25 That is truly what he would call him: his master and teacher. And many more holy ones: the Divrei Chaim, every day before he said Krias Shema, two and a half hours to say Krias Shema. I don't know how much time he had left to sleep, but that was his practice, to do it with such elevation and deveikus; two and a half hours he would spend on the bedtime Krias Shema. And at that time he would ask: "Master of the world, lead me in the way of truth, like Your servant the Rambam." That is what he would say. In his time, when he wrote the letter to the sages of Yemen, they held him to be very great, even as the Mashiach of his generation; they would say in Kaddish: "in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon."

8:04 So greatly did they honor the Rambam, for his greatness and his power, and all that he was. In Part 3, chapter 29 of Moreh Nevuchim he writes... he was very much a man of the plain meaning, and he very much wanted people to hold on to emunah strongly, but on the other hand not to be fools. So he writes that the masses always lean after follies. That is what you always see with the masses.

8:30 Usually the world's outlook, the whole world is always running after, always looking for the End, looking for all kinds of things that are... instead of taking hold of the meat of the Torah, instead of taking hold of the main thing, the true purpose, to cling to the Holy One, blessed be He, they are always looking for when Mashiach will come, how he will come, all kinds of things. Also in the letter, in the letters he wrote, he wrote the same thing: that really, when will the Jewish people be redeemed, they yearn and look for the End, they keep calculating the...

8:58 Rabbi Yonasan said: "May the spirit of those who calculate the End expire." So he said that all the nations of the world will look and say of the Jewish people that they have no kingdom and no rule; and the stargazers too, all of them will testify that the Jewish people no longer has... has no... as if everyone has abandoned them, as if Hashem has left them. They will look at it that way and see that they have no remedy, as if they will not be redeemed. So he says: precisely at that time, the Holy One, blessed be He, he says, will redeem Israel, when all the nations of the world look at them that way.

9:26 Our master the Rambam writes: that is the time. Look at this. And no human being, no one, will be able to know exactly when Mashiach will come and the geulah will come. That is what our master the Rambam teaches. See what thought he had, and what a revelation of G-dliness. With all his power and the wisdom of his Torah, he very much liked for people to grasp things and be very much on the ground, with a settled mind, and not be too much up in the air.

9:54 Also in the Laws of Acquisition and Gifts, in chapter 12, halachah 16, our master the Rambam wrote about tzaddikim, the pious and men of deeds, that they do not agree to accept gifts, for "he who hates gifts shall live." He says that they trust in Hashem, blessed be He. He teaches, every time he reaches some halachah, from within every halachah you can see in the Rambam so, so much revelation of G-dliness and chassidus for drawing close to Hashem, blessed be He. That is how he writes also in the Laws of Shechitah, chapter 14, halachah 16, on the mitzvah of covering the blood, and the earth with which it is covered: he says one should not cover it with the foot, so that it should not look, Heaven forbid, as if the mitzvos are contemptible to him. He covers it with the hand, to show in this way that Hashem commanded us, to honor Hashem and to be blessed through the mitzvos, through what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us.

10:38 So from this you can see, very, very much in the Rambam, how many words of emunah and how much revelation of G-dliness there is throughout his work. One learns halachah, but one learns a great deal of fear of Heaven in the Rambam's work. And therefore it is very, very, very important to learn it, to value it, to delve into it, to learn, and to understand that the main point of this learning is to bring us to emunah. Our master the Rambam was great; his lineage went back to Rabbi Ovadiah the Dayan in Cordoba, who was one of the great ones before the Rambam. He was the grandfather of the grandfather of the grandfather: Rabbi Ovadiah the Dayan of Cordoba, who fathered Rabbi Shlomo, who fathered Rabbi Ovadiah, who fathered Rabbi Yosef the Dayan, who fathered Rabbi Yitzchak the Dayan,

11:21 Rabbi Yosef the Dayan, who fathered Rabbi Maimon, who fathered Rabbi Moshe. That is the whole lineage of the Rambam, back to Rabbi Ovadiah the Dayan in Cordoba, the first one. So our master the Rambam was a son of a son of a son of glorious dayanim and great sages who had no equal, and he was immense in his wisdom and in all that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him. And so may we merit to receive from his Torah and from the merit and from taking part in this learning, as we make a siyum together, of Torah learning. There is the Gaon of Nezhnov, in Nachalas Yisrael, siman 10; he writes that every time the Jewish people make a siyum together, there is a novel point in it. I once explained this too: when a siyum is made together, now a siyum of Rambam, a siyum of Mishnayos, a siyum of Shas, a siyum of Zohar, a siyum of Talmud Bavli, Yerushalmi, whatever siyum is made, everyone who takes part is counted as having completed it. Why? One can understand from this a very beautiful thing.

12:19 We know that on Shabbos... with the measure of good, it is five hundred times as much: in the Tosefta, in Tractate Sotah, chapter 4, mishnah 1, and in Sotah, page 11a. We know that the measure of good stands at five hundred times; so all the more so when we do a matter of kedushah that is so good, and make a wonderful siyum before Hashem with all that we are completing, the main importance of it is that we merit to take part together, and it is counted for us as a siyum.

12:45 Because, say, on Shabbos, when you do a melachah, a person now does a melachah; two who do a melachah on Shabbos: if the two are each able to do that melachah, and they do it on Shabbos, the prohibition drops to a rabbinic one. But if there are two who cannot do it on their own, the outcome of the melachah depends on one another; one comes, one cannot do it alone; it takes one and another one together with him. If they do that melachah, the prohibition is from the Torah.

13:12 Once each of the two can do it by himself, it is rabbinic. So writes our master the Rambam in the Laws of Shabbos, chapter 1, halachah 15, halachah 16. We see from here a very, very great thing that can be learned from this: now a siyum of the Rambam is being made. Each one can finish on his own, but to finish the whole Rambam is very heavy, it is very hard, so each one took a little upon himself, each one took something. Now, once two have done it together, all of us, each one alone could not do it, each one came and completed his fellow, it is counted for us, for all of us, as if we made one siyum, great and most wonderful, on the entire Rambam.

13:51 And may it be His will that this merit of our master the Rambam protect us and all the holy congregation, and that we merit together to begin, to learn and to teach, to keep, to do and to fulfill all the words of the study of the Torah of Hashem, blessed be He, with love; and may you go on shining the light of Hashem here in the community, and may we merit to gather together again. And I bless you with all the blessings and all the good bounty, and may you have miracles and wonders.

14:19 I will say a little from halachah 1, on the revelation of G-dliness, on the knowledge that Hashem, blessed be He, is the Master of the world, Maker of heaven and earth. In chapter 1, let us begin the very first beginning, so as to merit to enjoy this learning, and also to merit its beginning. "The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms": notice that the opening is the initials of His Name, blessed be He: Yesod, Hayesodos, Ve'amud, Hachochmos: it is the initials of His Name, blessed be He.

14:49 Just as many of the great ones of the world opened their book with the initials of His Name, blessed be He, so too we see here that the Rambam very much wanted the initials to be those of the Name of Hashem, blessed be He, to reveal His G-dliness, blessed be He, in everything. That is how our master the Rambam was. "To know that there is a First Being": he is speaking of the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is present everywhere, and He was also the beginning of everything. For everything that has a beginning has an end.

15:16 Everything that has a beginning of something, this is a rule: whatever has a beginning has an end. That is how one must always understand it. But the Holy One, blessed be He, notice what the Rambam says: "to know that there is a First Being." He does not say a first that had a beginning; he says that He already existed, that is, He did not begin. And then it does not contradict itself in the rest of what follows, in the other chapters, in chapter 2, in chapter 4, in halachah 6, in halachah 10; you can see it in several places in the Rambam. Whoever knows can truly understand the precise wording of our master the Rambam, who says: "to know that there is a First Being."

15:50 He did not... that is, already, Hashem, blessed be He, exists, "and He brings into being all that exists": everything that exists in the world, Hashem, blessed be He, brings it into being; He formed and made all created beings, all of them. "And all that exist, of heaven and earth and what is between them, exist only from the truth of His existence." That is, everything in creation depends on Him, blessed be He, and all its life-force it draws...

16:15 all its life-force it draws from Hashem, blessed be He. That is, there is no existence apart from Hashem, blessed be He. And so from here we see that the Rambam teaches us so, so much revelation of G-dliness. These are the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, where there are so, so many pearls, gold and pearls, teachings for drawing close to Hashem, blessed be He. And may it be His will that we all merit to enjoy this learning, and that you, the honored rabbis and all your holy community, go on shining the goodness of Hashem in the world; may you have all the blessings and good bounty, in good that is seen and revealed, with joy and gladness of heart. And let us merit to do a few Chabad niggunim together.

17:07 That is strong.