The Era of the Rishonim - Rabbi Yaakov Lynn

[Music] okay guys I want to start with a little bit of review and then go on okay remember we talked last time about why there is what we call Mauch locus why you can end up with differences of opinion right I switch the order of what we can do today in exile by the way we're not going to Rebennack trees in today what is that next time today I want to go on a little bit in the flow of how the in the development of the earlier because the last time we talked about how you can have differences of opinion in that middle category of oral law that we talked about the part that is derived from soo Kim derived from the written Torah where we talked about you can end up with different realities and it's all true we just have to figure out which one that you to do is people are going to follow okay now remember we talked about so now in the grand scheme of things we have now talked about where we had the written Torah and the Oral Torah where the Oral Torah made or altos written down in the Mishnah written down by rabbi very good when we go to annossy and about the rigidly years later the Commodore in the mission was written the explanation which is Gomorrah and Gomorrah plus Mishnah equals tom wood excellent which Tom would know Talmud Torah means the study of her clothes the other one right Bob Lee right the Sun but Bob Lee is the Babylonian Talmud right that is the one that was written down later the one that we discussed his most prominently studied in the Jewish people today ok so we've discussed up until here and we said in the time of there are three different types of things right things that we have direct lines going all the way back to what was given to Moshe i'm at sinai things that have to be derived from the suqian from the written term we talked about their two different approaches to why was that either because as I've left us some of the work to do ourselves or because some things were forgotten but the tour was the emergency reboot disk right my man and then we talked about there's a third kind which is rabbinic enactments we're going to talk about sue coming attractions okay I wouldn't talk about what happened next right so in about the year 1000 where I'm sorry about the year 500 the Talmud was sealed that was over 1,500 years ago right so what happened after that okay like you remember if you lived here before the mission out so what you did when you studied Torah was you went any watched the people who sat in the middle right the Torah scholars have sit in the middle everybody will sit around on bleachers and they would watch them discuss the Oral Torah after the mission was written down what changed now what did you do when you wanted to study Zara you studied Doug Mishnah writing for the first time you might sit there were the book in front of you right and then after this if you wanted to study Tori's how did the Gomorrah right now just as we said that when the minister was written down it was written in a very terse way right which is almost cryptic and if you don't know what to do with the mission you look at it and say I don't know what this thing is I don't know what it means I don't know why it says what it says even if you read Hebrew right so the Gomorrah was the experts of the time explaining what the Mishnah means why use this were and what about if we change this variable and what does this mean why does it say it like this and how does this work with that other image no over there that seems to contradict it right that's all what the Gomorrah did now the Gomorrah is much longer as I showed you the missionaries and yet you don't know what you're doing you don't matter learned Gomorrah either I mean gamarra was written first of all about it what languages look more written in Aramaic but even if you speak perfect Aramaic anybody here speak perfect Aramaic because it was written in Babylonia and that's why it's called the Babylonian Talmud and a Babylonia they spoke Aramaic right the Mishnah was written in Israel ever it's written in Hebrew like a question ok so the Gomorrah is written in Aramaic but even if you read flew in Aramaic right so you still have to work out the Gomorrah it's not so simple exactly what it means there might be different ways to understand it and again what if I would change this variable and how do i adapt this to this new situation that came up right all of that is stuff that even if you could read all the words right you'd still have to figure out what exactly doesn't so the people who came after the kumara their job was to explain the gamarra right which is not just like reading a book it's a real process well you have to go through and try to understand what does it mean it could be registered like this it could be understood like that right maybe it means this maybe means that and what do I do with these two pieces of Gomorrah in different places that seem to contradict each other right they expect their not to be contradiction to the Talmud therefore if it seems to contradict each other must be we misunderstand one of them right so all of that is what you do when you study tomorrow now as time went on people became worse at studying tomorrow because you have less of a tradition of exactly how to do it so therefore we needed more things written down to tell us not only what it says in the gamarra but what the gamarra means right now the people came immediately after the times of the kymaro where people called the sovereign you probably have never heard of them and you probably you might never hear of them again right we don't have a lot of writing sometimes this fri am the muslims were lost but they that was the next time period by the way anybody remember we talked about this the rabbi's of the mission of period what were they called well they were some of the members of that time period but the general name for those people is Tanaka orrtanna right is the singular of that right the rabbi's are the gamarra period are called mo rahim or ammo row is the single of that right tonight again we said that mishna means teachings right so tonight our teachers right and i'ma write the word amor lai lai mord's anybody know what that word means good to say they were sailors because if they did was they talked about the Mishnah right so savile rahim one of them is called a salvo rai right and suffer i really means thinkers right what they did was they thought about the gomorian they said that's interesting what does that mean why does it say this why does it say that how do we resolve this difficulty right and that's what they started to do now after them came through people called the game what does gone you mean anybody know what a gun is a genius right so they were the real geniuses right singular of that is gone and again we don't have so many writings in that time period we do have some but the big time period for our purposes is the one that came next which is the time period of the rezoning or one of them is irie show right now again the rezoning primary job was to explain the Gomorrah right so you've heard of a lot of roshani but this takes us by the way up to this was the time period of about 0 to 500 the sovereign magana more about the time period of five hundred to a thousand and this is about the next 500 years right this period of five hundred years we have a lot of the writings from that time period and much of what we do when we study Torah today is to study the words of the rezoning okay now again you're about to hear a lot of work a lot of names that you might recognize right remember we said some of the most famous tonight where people like rabbi akiva rabbi meir rabbi yehuda my way Shimon Shimon bar Yohai Hillel Shammai those are all people from the Mishnah period as well tonight some of the famous amos album where people like Rob shmoo el rabbi Yochanan reish lakish rob a she raveena right those were all people from the times the AMA right okay so when you hear those names in your classes right if it's somebody like hell else am I rub Akiva rabbi meir that's itano if it's somebody like Rob shmuel Rebbe Oakland reach latkes that's an amaura by the way did you ever notice sometimes people are called Rob and some other people are called Rebbe yeah I will anybody know what the difference is again not talking about an hour generation in our generation these words are kind of used interchangeably right but I mentioned Rabbi Akiva right rabbi Yochanan are we keep it was a ton of every open i was in tomorrow but i also mentioned Rob Yehuda it wasn't a motor up right and we could talk about yes it's Rebbe may hear right so why anybody who lived in Israel is called ready or rabbi anybody who lived outside of Israel is called Rob right now all of the tenaya lived in well that's awesome but israel right up north remember we said in the Galilee right and he said you'd maybe go to us a little place called sapori which you can go to up north remember i talked about interview rode the donkeys right you were right here at sapori right okay so you ride donkeys up north no you will someday God willing right so when so all of the tonight are called rabbi know some of them are just got nothing like hello he was too great for the title rabbi he was above that right but you will never find any of the time we're called Rob right because they all lived in Israel whereas in the times of the AMA Ryan where do they live and like and and Israel all right some of the most of them lived in Babylonia but some of them lived in Israel right so therefore you have to contemporaries when it was called Rob his name was just robbed right and another one it rabbi Yochanan rabbi yochanan lived in as it was rabbi so where did he live Israel good whereas Rob Yehuda lived good now usually here's an interesting when there are two people named rabbi Yehuda and Ravi hooda when is rabbi you don't ones Rob Yehuda one of them was itano and one of them was in tomorrow which one do you think was which go ahead right some of the amar I'm were also rabbi but if I'm telling you one of them was rabbi and one was robbed and one was a ton of one was an amaura the one who was at Anna must be rabbi the one who was an amaura could be Ralph right so therefore rabbi yehuda lived in this braid but Rob you would have lived in this great yeah well again it's really the same word right rabbi just means my Rob write the word in Hebrew write the word Rob means teacher right and the word where Abby just means my teacher right yeah well it's a it's a demarcation it's actually a little more complicated that an Israeli had something called smita today we used to me that time in rabbinic ordination but back in the times of omission that there was actually a Toro dictated process called Smith hub right where they would actually the wordsmith actually means to lean on right and they would actually lean on the person's head and pass to them that they were the negative Rebbe of the next generation right the rebbe ease of the next generation right so once I let that can only be done in Israel so once I left Israel then they didn't get the status of rebbe anymore they're just called Ralph but today some people are you know rabbi Marcus and some people Rob so and so some people Rob their first name the brother last name Ralph Cobb whoever right and then in Hasidic circles you have the Rebbe right the Rebbe of satmar or the Rebbe of lubavitch or the review of breaths love right so the different today they're just kind of different words that people use interchangeably right okay you're welcome fine so then we get past this time frame we get to the rezoning now the rezoning are people like Rossi and we were here of him good anybody ever hear of the rambam good d from bun heard of him good um yes I'll talk about that in a second the rods but you might not have heard of ok these are always shown him now up until here well except for toes foes right why what do you notice about a lot of them never we played the game I can big balls when I can't bring other things right good they also are why do all these peoples names start with our good the answer is their names don't start with our right the rashi was not named rushy the rambam was not named rob um wait the ra's boat was not named raja but these are acronyms interestingly today in Israel there is in modern Hebrew there is a girl's name that girls are named sometimes in certain communities name Rashi right but there was no guy walking around in Rashi mirages name was and his father's name was yet stuck so how did he get the name Rashi Rabbi gets cocky right in Hebrew that's Rabbi from the house of Yitzhak it's hockey right so if you take the are the shin and the hood you get Rashi amazing huh the rambam somebody said was that the same person has my mana tease why is he called my mana tease no my moon was his father when he was rabbi moshe bend the son of my moon r mb m rambha right that's why rambha comes from right rather the rom bond was rabbi moshe then Nachman rom Banda and that's why people call him knock Monica's right because he's named after he's from the house of Nachman right if you go up north to Tiberias you can see where the rambam is buried and right next to him right you can go across literally right across from him the grave of my mom who was his father right so that's why he's called my money's he's got enough monies now how do you tell when somebody right especially rabbis when they are saying Rambam or rum button sometimes it sounds very similar how do you know which one they're saying so this is just a little tip right that when we say Rambam we always put the stress on the first syllable we say run bond please put the syllable stress on second syllable right so if you thought you heard the rabbi's a Rambam you've probably heard wrong right because he probably said wrong button if his stretches at the end right I always say we all started to tell you when we say the Run button right but that's always a room rom bond right Rambam or bun right the rahman live first so that's how you can remember that it's Rambam from button okay right the n etc for the rise of his name was sloosh well right actually the rush bums they were small I think the rest of also may be right the ritas name was young toad his first name right so the eye you wouldnt ebru rather than the tea is a ted yom tov been uh i'm not sure what the views were ashkenazi was his last name i believe but I benezra is actually Arabic right eben in Arabic Arabic means go ahead means been actually means son right but even in Aramaic means been in Hebrews he was the son of Ezra right so they called him son of Ezra right these are all people who period of the regime and what most of them their job was to do was to go through all written Torah and the whole world Zara and write commentaries right they were no longer creating at homewood that was over that was sealed after here they were now running commentaries so for example Rashi wrote a commentary on the whole written two out all five books of the of the written Torah what is it what's that called the five books homage right from the word commish right and what's when you add to that the other books the written Torah there's the books of the prophets which is called white anybody remember novita ve and then the books of the suva in the writings and all that together is called the Tanakh which is an acronym for torah Navi zubeen right so they r as you wrote a whole kinder accommodating the whole turn off the five books have written to all the books of the prophets all the books of the writings right and an almost a whole Tom would write really on the whole town would write he wrote a commentary wrote several versions actually of his commentary on the Talmud right by the way Raschi lived from the years 1105 I always tell people I heard one of my teachers taught me this once but I never forgot it Rashi lived from 1042 1105 it was the most productive 25 minutes in history get it right so at this point somebody usually says well she only lived to be which of course is not sure how to frost you when he died you can do it 65 right that's 1042 1105 65 65 years in addition to being a wine merchant right he wrote grooves on his own wine grape orchards and was a mine wine merchant and he managed to somehow write a commentary in the hole to knock and the whole Tom hood okay um what look it is possible I mean again remember like I said ma she never checked his Facebook you never checked his email right and the Sun went down at night and he SAT inside with a candle and there was nothing else to do right and he worked very very very very very very hard right you look at you know a law textbook or met a medicine textbook and it's you know six there's six volumes of a thousand pages each is out in the world somebody write that right so it somebody worked very hard on it so the hob deal we're actually dedicated his whole life probably from the time he was twelve to I am going to write a commentary on the on the turret know when Roger rodas commentary on the Torah at least his commentary on the Talmud he didn't write it remember we looked at a page of Talmud we saw that it's on the column right so he didn't write it on the page what he did was he wrote little pamphlets and he distributed them right and he didn't necessarily intend that this was going to become the primary commentary on the town would write but it came to the point where people he was so instrumental in explaining what the Camorra meant people couldn't live without it is i don't know how way anybody understood zalman before I she came along alright so they started incorporating this into the very text of the Talmud right and you'd have that middle column that we saw and then on the inside you would have Rashi when you have the commentary of Rashi there right many of the other commenters when they can refer to rashi they refer to him as the country's my country's means a pamphlet but they didn't call him by name they just called it the country's right the pan because that's how it was distributed to people okay now Rashi didn't have any sons and daughters right if you've heard that his daughters put until and that is an urban legend it's not true right but Rossi's grandsons started a school right and what they did in the school is fascinating they didn't have school they said listen we are going to write continue writing commentary on the town one but we don't just want to look at the Talmud like at this line or this page we want to get all 2711 pages of the Tomlin and figure out the interweaving of all the different parts of the Talmud with each other right so what this school of people did was they said listen we want great Torah scholars to join our school I want you to do is wherever you live across Europe which is where they all lived right we want you to become an expert obviously we've all learned the whole Talmud but become an expert in one tractate of download right so you're the expert in the one called condition which of our marriage and you're the expert in the one called get to which is about the worst and you're the expert someone called brockless which is about making profits and you're the expert in the one called shabbos to tread water Chavez right and well the two heads of school all the experts and everything and what we'll do is we will decide every six months we're all going to study the same track tape right and every time you come up with a question on that truck to have Masetto right I want you to write it down and when we come together and ever convention every six months you will ask the question they came together in our conventions one person was able to scribe for that convention the secretary right and everybody would go through and ask all the questions that they wrote down and somebody would say I have a question why does it use this word over here and somebody else would say well I'm the expert in the tractor called choppas and I know right now we're learning the tractor coil condition but there's something in Chiapas that answers your question somebody else would represent say wait a second I'm the expert in the technical bra hose and if you say that interest the question then what about this problem that it says this over your umbrellas and somebody else will answer that question and the scribe wrote it down right and then by reading by learning that you now could understand these things fit together what I can learn about this section somewhat based on what it says over there I'm gonna come learn about their base when it says over here right who are those people that was the school called Kosovo's right Tesla's Joseph vote means additions right either meant additions are 20 x 0 torment additions onto at the Talmud road right and eat that's what's on the other side of the page of the Talmud right so in the middle you have the download on the inside of the page you have Rashi and on the outside of the page you have what these the school of tosa folks wrote down right so when you look at a page of Talmud today which we looked at I'll bring it again next time right you have in the middle the Talmud on one side rocky and on the other side tow suppose right and that's what people the kind of bare minimum that people are learning when they learn gamarra they're learning in the gamar with the commentary of Rashi and then they look at the dose was and see how that fits with everything else right ok any questions up still here fine now that that explains how commentary was written on the written and oral torah right but there's something else there was another problem that people started to have if you want to know ahahaha a Jewish law how do you find it what do you do ask a wrap i could what does the rap i do asks is rabbi somewhere somebody doesn't have anyone else to ask right what does he do how does he find the answer you say rabbi am I allowed to brush my hair on Travis where would i look to find the answer to that question well there's a tactical chavez render the track that called Chavez has 100 and something pages right double sided right so I could sit down and learn the whole track tape it's not clear to where to look in there to find that question right so i could sit down look the bundle track they would take me a couple of years right and then i can get back to you with the answer right but seems our talks about whatever it is hard to me son so like whatever the language says that and then connected well let's say it's something I remember all doesn't a reader official yet but also the written Torah is don't do malaha on Chavez that's all says jobs you can do something called miwako we don't even know what more is right let alone that there are 39 categories of it right so yes I need and that's how I got to the tractor called Chavez because that's where it discusses the 39 will hold a third of malala's but I don't know which one is where necessarily there are chapters right and I might be able to say look this is the chapter that mostly deals with that kind of thing oh but I have to but even a chapter is might take me a month to learn yeah malaha is 13 categories of things we don't do a job is matzah is something it was rabina CLE added we talk about that next time which means that things that we can't use on job it's very simply translated things that we can't use on job is we can't move on Chavez even for example writing is a malaka since writing is a malaka I can't use a pen therefore a pen is mucked up yes yes all right lots of literally means set apart it's something that that's not for me on Chavez why because its function is for Malakal right okay good question ok so I would have nowhere to no idea where in the tractor kochava so look not only that but there you know the Talmud is written in very kind of prose form and even almost stream-of-consciousness form one idea can lead into another there could be other track dates that talk about some of the laws of Chavez for example there's some of the laws in Chavez and track they're called su vez which is about a ketubah right and it just happens that the turret gets to the Gomorrah gets to a specific law about Chavez and there are a few pages in the middle that are about the halls of Travis and there's another tractor called bait cell which is about what happens if an egg is born on unitive whether i can use it right but because during my yom tov so that track that also gets into a lot of shabbos right so if I'm looking for a law I basically have to involve 2711 pages of the kumara right and then I can figure out where it is now once i find out where it is there won't be three different opinions I remember last time we talked about what should I sit down or stand up when I say shema so if I finally found where that is in bras right so I would then find out oh wait a second base hell is this pshaw my says that what do i do right okay so until then all you could do was go to somebody who was a massive tourist caller who knew the whole town would write and could tell you I know where it is I know what it says they're different opinions and this is the one we follow right but as we went into exile and that wasn't so you so readily accessible all the time to find somebody like that the rezoning part of their job was to make sense of how to look up Jewish laws right how to look up Allah ok so several of the rezoning dedicated their lives to dealing with that problem right there was somebody named the riff who again his name wasn't the riff is it was right here to talk right but the riff what he did was he went and grew on every track date of Gomorrah he wrote a short version of the Kimura which just kind of got to the bottom line but some of his own commentary as well right so for example and there's a difference of opinion he wasn't only quote one of the opinions right so that you know this is what the Jewish law follows now that's not gonna help you if you don't know where to look right but at least it's going to help you if you find a locker you know who to follow right so that's what he did right and that was a revolutionary concept and to this day we have the reference in the back of most of the Comoros and we use it very often when we're trying to figure out the hahaha but then came along somebody who did something very monumental right back to our friend the the rambam right now what did the rambam do the rambam said you know what it's gotten to the point where not every week you learn the hotel mode I am going to make a hollow ha book I'm not only gonna write a commentary on the Kimura I'm actually going to make a new book all of the information in the book will be from the Talmud right the way I understand the Talmud right but i'm going to write a reference book so you can look up Aloha and he went through and it's kind of a thrifted but then he reorganized it into chapters so you could look things up by book by chapter by allaha in bullet point form right chapter 3 Aloha Wharton chapter 3 a lock on to chapter 3 a lot of three right and you can go through and he will tell you in that order what the hell on is according to him right now this was very very radical as the time he did this it was so radical you and I hear the word maimonides we hear about the rambam like one of the great figures of our history at the time they burned his books right it was so radical this idea of creating a new book right and not only that but he called his book the Mishnah Torah which in this context men the repetition of the Torah right in some ways the new version of the Tom would like the Tom lenders that they used to learn back then but now we're going to learn this right and people today still learn the rambam right now we often use as a commentary on the kymaro but some people just open them are moments are learning rambam right and the rambam is a hollow ha book who can actually look up the halacha in there right that was a very radical idea another reason came alone who we call the rush his name was rob a new washer right that's how he became the rush and he did something very similar to the riff he also decided when there were differences of opinion which one we're going to follow ok now that meant we had three Rijo name right there were others as well but these were the major three who went through the whole town mood and said every time there's a difference of opinion here should we follow what was the problem three Jews right to jews three opinions three Jews lots of opinions so sometimes they don't agree right so can I brush my hair on Chavez right they happen to agree about that one but let's say right I might look in the riff and he'll say no well then look at the wrong moment heels like yes oh look at the Ross and I'll say it depends right so what do I do now right okay huh pick your favorite all right good and so because you know they joke that there's a database in Israel that you can type in your question you can type in which answer you want and I'll tell you would travel to go through yeah yeah they probably have it right okay so I am where to talk next time what happened from there but at this point Mike would have been very confusing now thank God people came along later and made life a lot easier for us right but at this point these were the they're called the three pillars of Jewish law because they were the ones who went through the Gomorrah and took out for us what does the Jewish life follow okay from then we'll come what we have today as our sources of Aloha okay I'll continue with that next time you touch [Music] you