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The shiur in English
The Yanuka’s own words in this shiur, translated into English by Lehallel · 3,093 words · 14:05. Press a time to hear it said.
0:00 I posed a question; perhaps your honor... the Rav is invited to answer it. To answer it. He says that King David asked to know the end. "Hashem, let me know my end, and the measure of my days, what it is" - right? Right. "It is a decree before Me that the end of flesh and blood is not made known"; "I do not make known to you the end of flesh and blood." For the Holy One, blessed be He, says: "I cannot give you the... reveal the end to you" - right? The end of flesh and blood is not revealed.
0:25 On the other hand, it is written in Shmuel the prophet, it says: "Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me" - so the end of flesh and blood is made known. So how did the Gemara not bring this? Why did the Gemara not bring this view? Why, I mean, was it not mentioned as... for the Gemara should have said "kashya," this is difficult. We learned from Shmuel that the end of flesh and blood is made known. Here is a proof, from Shmuel and Shaul. Why did the Gemara not address this? Not bring it? And indeed, here is another proof: we see that the end of flesh and blood is made known.
0:50 I mean, this is the Navi - it is not some story from another Gemara; it is explicit that it is so. Think about it - some way to settle it. But think. Nu, there, look how quickly he tries to answer us. I will always accept your answers, but go on. It says "with me," and Chazal say... he could have sweetened it, even without his saying so.
1:17 The Rav said that he could have sweetened it, but he wants to go with what the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees; he does not want to sweeten it. "Even though the Holy One, blessed be He, is not with me, I am going." Beautiful. I accept that too. I accept it. But with Hashem's help, when there is a chance, I will tell you my own view.
1:52 My view. Think about it; it is interesting. It is a real question, isn't it? My view, my view. - Give us a little vort, something, some chiddush. You give us something; give us a little vort. Right. That is what we are here for. May Hashem watch over you: health, a good life. We love you all very much. Well done; that is help from Above. In Shevuos, page 39a, it is written: "All Israel are guarantors, one within another" - zeh bazeh.
2:17 There is a difference between "zeh bazeh" and "zeh lazeh." When you say all Israel are guarantors "zeh lazeh," one for another, it is like this. "Zeh bazeh," one within another, is like this. The wording of the Gemara in Shevuos, page 39a, at the end of the line, at the bottom: "All Israel are guarantors, one within another" - they are inside each other. That is: Rabbi Akiva's students - Rabbi Akiva saw that they did not treat one another with honor. They did not show honor "zeh bazeh," one within another. That means the Torah must be learned as the Bartenura says: "Two who sit together and there are no words of Torah between them."
Read the whole shiur in English (25 more parts)
2:45 He explains: what does "there are none between them" mean? They do not share words of Torah with one another. They are playing ball. Now we are playing ball. We make a game: I pass you the ball, you pass me the ball. In the Yerushalmi, Taanis, chapter 4, it is written that Jerusalem was destroyed because they played ball on Shabbos. On Shabbos, my friends, we do not play ball. When you pass the ball, you are playing ball - only, all of you, not on Shabbos. I pass to you, you pass to me.
3:10 I pass to you, you pass to me, like this, as in a game. What does "there are none between them" mean? Today plenty of people sit in kollelim, and Rabbi Akiva and the students also sat, and there were no words of Torah between them. Each one who got the ball kept it for himself, and when he did want to give the ball to someone, he sent it back right at his head instead of throwing it into his hands. "There are no words of Torah between them." So this is the chiddush: "two... and there are between them." "There are between them": the words of Torah must be between us, and I must light up the Torah for you.
3:37 You must light up the Torah for me. I shine the Torah into you, you shine it into me. There is love, there is brotherhood. Words of Torah must not be in order to provoke, to be proud, to show you how much you do not understand, how much you do not know, and to mock you and laugh at you. One must lift you up with the Torah, and one must explain the Torah to you. One must lift the Torah up for you, for with Moshe Rabbeinu it says: "He even drew water for us." Moshe Rabbeinu drew up the Torah and brought it to us; he lifted the Torah up for us.
4:02 That is the meaning of it. And what should there have been? Honor, one within another. We need to understand that their words of Torah were in the way I described: "there are no words of Torah between them." Words of Torah between them - that is one thing; the honor with which I honor you, the honor with which I honor myself: honor, one within another. And then "the world was desolate": the Torah was forgotten.
4:29 In Tractate Temurah, on page 16, it says that Osniel ben Kenaz restored the Torah - the halachos that had been forgotten - through the power of his pilpul. He restored all the halachos that had been forgotten, through the power of his pilpul. Today people do pilpul and forget the Torah. And mostly the pilpul is not... there are crooked lines of reasoning. "There are words of Torah between us": we pass them across, we give and take on the matter, we illuminate, we resolve. That is called learning Torah lishmah, for its own sake.
4:54 As in "there are between them" - "and there are between them." I pass to you, you pass to me. I pass it to you: I throw it into your hands. I don't fling it at your glasses and smash them into your face. That is the meaning of learning Torah. So that is how we understand "and there are words of Torah between them." Do you understand? And that is the Gemara that says, "they did not show honor to one another." And that is the meaning of what comes after: that the world was desolate. And that is the meaning of what comes after, when the Gemara says: the Torah was forgotten. That strengthens everything I said. What is that, about the fifty?
5:20 That still applies. Right. Know this. We once said that bochurim should not go on trips during bein hazmanim... - No? They shouldn't go on trips? - Yes. But there are already disasters that happen from it. One should combine it with learning all the time. Rabbi Binyamin of Tudela was a great Torah scholar, and he traveled all the time - his "Travels of Binyamin." What journeys he made! So then, what is true pilpul? Is it the Torah of the Rav?
5:45 To learn truthfully, to hear the process through in your own way - that is pilpul. It is what the Meiri writes at the end of Tractate Niddah: when you learn and do pilpul in Torah in order to reach the conclusion. Where do you want to arrive? What do you conclude from all this? That is how he defined it. You learn in order to reveal the light that is hidden, to discover what Hashem's will is here: what is the halachah that was forgotten? Where is the halachah that was forgotten? And to rule on it. The sugya leads you along the way to the end. Tractate Niddah, in the Meiri.
6:13 That is called learning Torah; that is to say, that is called pilpul. See what the Shaagas Aryeh writes in his introduction, and the Pnei Yehoshua, and all the great ones. The Toras Chesed of Lublin, Rabbi Shneur Zalman Fradkin: the Rogatchover said of him, in his day, "He knows how to learn." He marveled at his wisdom, that of Rabbi Shneur Zalman Fradkin, the Toras Chesed of Lublin, our master Rabbi Shneur Zalman, may his merit protect us. There were giants of the world who knew how to learn the Torah, how to approach the Torah; they knew how to learn it, how to understand it, how to encompass it, how to explain it, and to learn it one with another.
6:42 Even small children - to sit with it, to learn and to understand. One must illuminate; the Torah is light, and one must shine it into the other. I must shine it into you, you must shine it into me; we want to illuminate one another. That is the Torah. But when you learn the Torah in order to provoke - as the Tosafos say in Taanis, page 7 - and to be proud, then it is called learning that is sama d'mosa, a deadly poison, because that learning is not called... there is nothing in that learning. The whole purpose of the Torah is to light up the world, to light up the souls of Israel.
7:10 And that is the meaning of the geulah that we await today, that we long for and wait for. So, in short, about going on a trip: one may take a trip, one may rejoice, but the main thing is to be "In all your ways know Him, and He will make your paths straight." It is already a mitzvah, when a person is on the road, to learn Torah, to strengthen himself, to be alone with Hashem, to speak to Hashem, to learn on the way. One who engages in Torah on the way is granted grace. There is a very great merit for a person who travels in a car and learns Torah.
7:35 It is many times more than learning Torah inside the house. You learn while being jolted about on the roads. A great, great many of my things I learn on the road. You will always see me sitting in the car with sefarim between my legs. Once I went on a trip to the graves of tzaddikim in the north - once in a long while I travel. They set up a small wooden shtender for me, I traveled with sefarim, to sit and learn on the road as we went. Why? Because learning on the road is learning that is not forgotten. You learn - I remember once I was in some garden; I learned Tractate Shevuos from page 2 to page 39.
8:04 I stayed there and learned, in the garden there, on a bench. I sat in some place, I sat in a beautiful garden, such a beautiful garden; I sat there - I remember where I sat, in which spot, in the winter, in some garden, under a kind of palm tree. I sat there some ten years ago, I remember; I sat there and learned there. One time I sat and learned a great, great deal there. From the morning I was there until the time of Minchah; I sat and learned and learned, suddenly...
8:36 It was truly Gan Eden. I enjoyed it, and to this day I remember those pages; I learned more. So this is not connected with "Any Torah that has no work with it"? No, no. - The sin...? - No, that is not connected. What is "that has no work with it"? One must also do things. Healing of the soul - today this is healing of the soul, for a kollel man, for a bochur, who goes out a little to unwind - it is for his soul. It is a mitzvah; it is also pikuach nefesh, saving a life. The soul today is under pressure. There are people for whom it is hard, who cannot manage - it is no luxury - the wife cannot manage.
9:01 What - because we see disasters happen? We do see disasters happen. - The disasters are from lashon hara, not from a trip. Lashon hara: when the mouth, the tongue, goes out on a trip, then the disaster comes. Better that the tongue stay in the shul, in the beis medrash, and the body go out on a trip, than that the body stay in the beis medrash and the tongue go out on a trip. What comes next? All with blessing. Ours, ours.
9:48 [singing] Give thanks to Hashem, for He is good [singing] Give thanks to Hashem, for He is good How lovely to see you. A week and a half ago they took out the feeding tube. The doctor says he is improving nicely. I am speaking in natural terms: he is also gaining half a kilo to a kilo a week. Two and a half kilos, a kilo a week, or three...
10:12 three percent - beyond nature. He is receiving a certain biological treatment, and we ask the Rav what he thinks of it. - Continue everything, continue everything, keep going; it looks very good, it looks very good. How are you feeling, your honor? I have missed you. So have we! They are playing a little joke on me... It is a children's toy. They laugh when I set it off, so they put it on the chair.
10:37 They didn't put it on the chair... they put it on the chair. Baruch Hashem. How are you feeling? But what you wrote to me strengthened me very much. What spreading of Torah he does! I look into it a great deal. Yes. Thank you, baruch Hashem. Thank you. - Your words are sweet. Thank you. - "Sweeter than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb." - Thank you. - Keep writing, keep lighting up the world, and revealing His G-dliness, blessed be He, in the whole world. Right. Right. Right.
11:06 ...with all his soul. Yes. When is the thanksgiving party? Where is it? Sunday. Where is it on Sunday? Sunday, between Petach Tikvah... Where is that? Not in Tel Aviv? Between Petach Tikvah and Kfar Saba. How many guests, do you say? Let's say around eighty. In terms of guests? Close to ninety. That's it; let's see, with Hashem's help, let's see. Pray that I have more than 24 hours in a day, and we will be all set.
11:33 Above time. Above time. You show them... so they don't start presenting me... that Hashem is everything, with them and beside them, and we love them very much; they belong to Heaven. And one who holds on to Heaven is above time. We tell them: it cannot be that you accomplish so much in a normal day. So you must surely have more than twenty-four hours. Reality - that is what I have: I have proofs, I have evidence from reality that you are above time.
12:00 So now too: above time, we will arrive above place. All right, with Hashem's help. Like the hunchbacked beggar - the hunchback. What about the hunchback? He has the quality of "above place." We will come with the hunchback, we will come with a horse-drawn wagon floating in the air, and we are already all set. One can come with a holy Name. With a Name; with a Name as well. About Yaakov Avinu it is also written of this: "For with my staff I crossed the Jordan." He crossed it without any Name, only by the power of emunah he crossed it: "For with my staff I crossed the Jordan."
12:25 Without any Name, without a Name or anything, only with emunah and trust in Hashem. When there is a real need to get from place to place, the Holy One, blessed be He, does for a person what he desires. In the sefer Bris Menuchah, at the end he writes of the secret of kefitzas ha'aretz, the leaping of the land. Yes. But today there is no need. Once, in the days when this leaping was done, they would intend a Name, walk four cubits, and you would find yourself in another country. You could say: now you don't need to pay for a flight, or the airport. You say it, and when he walks four cubits, you suddenly appear at the end of the world. - Wherever I intended?
12:52 Wherever you intended, on the other side. The secret of kefitzas ha'aretz. Kefitzas ha'aretz and all that. But no, today one cannot do it, because there are ways, natural ways to do it, like airplanes, trains, cars. A person may no longer do such a thing. Even if he knows how to do it, he cannot do it; I don't believe they would allow it. But when that too cannot be, when that too is not possible, or when there is a need to carry out some operation, a covert one, to go to some secret place, and so on, in order to bring the geulah - then there were tzaddikim who did this, so that they would not be seen in those places, for then people could know where they had been. Then they could indeed do it, and suddenly be in another place.
13:27 No, no, that is apparently from those who wanted to hasten... our master sent them. ...yichudim, and so on. Also in the time of our master the Chida - the same story too. That is a story. The Toras Chacham, Rabbi Chaim de la Rosa, Yes. They tried to force the end, to bring the geulah, together with the Rashash. It did not succeed. Everything - "a word in its time, how good it is." May the geulah come, of course.
13:54 And may it be His will that we already see "The voice of my Beloved - here He comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills." May the Holy One, blessed be He, already leap over all our obstacles and difficulties, and redeem us. Be strong, be strong! L'chaim.
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