The Secret of Prophecy: How God Spoke to Moshe Rabbeinu - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

Okay, we were uh talking about the composition of the Torah. >> Uh I just got an email. Someone asked an interesting question. Uh where where did Mosher Rabenu was there a particular place where Mosher Rabenu wrote the Torah when Hashem would appear to him? Uh where did he write it? Uh and my first feeling was I have no idea. But then uh what I think of might be a very odd situation. it it's very logical that he actually wrote it in the kod shakadashim because where did Moshe speak to god once there was the mishkan the emmesis it says he heard the voice coming from the keshakdashim between the two kuruim over the auran and then moher rabenu would be niknas so Mosher Abenu even though the cohen goddle only goes into the kotes once a year Mosher Rabenu went in every time he spoke to Hashem. Hashem would summon him and he would go. Now, if it's true that every time Hashem speaks to Moshe is in the keshakim, then it would appear that when Hashem is dictating the Torah to him, he's speaking to Moshe. He's telling Moshe, you know, write these words. That would have been in the Keshuk. So, it's interesting that that could actually be where Mosher Rabenuh Mosher Rabenu wrote. Now we know that uh we read in last week's para para Baloska uh the story of the lashenhara that Aon and Miriam or Miriam actually just listened that Miriam said about Mosha Rabeno that he separated from his wife etc and uh her Tina was Aaron and I are also Naveim and we don't behave that way why is Moshe behaving in that way so Kalesh BU gave Miriam tooka gave her muser She became a mitz. And Hashem says that whenever a prophet gets prophecy, they get it in a they get it in a dream. They get it in a night vision. Moshe, my servant Moshe is not that way. Pab, I speak to Moshe face to face, mouthto mouth. So the Rambam is Majra you know one of the Yudgalik amuna one of the 13 fundamental principles of faith is there is something unique about the prophecy of Mosher Rabena. Mosher Rabainu was a Nvi and as we will see there are many many other Nvian besides Mosha Rabenu but the Nva of Misha Rabenu was Muad over every other Nvi. Now the Gmorrah describes it in different ways. One description of the Gomorrah is that all the Nim perceived Hashem beasaria through a lens a lens that's kind of dark a bit a bit not opaque but uh not fully clear. Mosha Rabenu perceived Takodesh Boru through aspaklaria mira a lens that was totally transparent. Now the Rambam explains that it's still a lens. Even Mosher Rabenu there was some blockage because he's a goof. He was a human body but he had the greatest degree of clarity of any Na'vi. And the Rambam also goes on and says that normally the state of Navua when a Na'vi receives a navua it's almost as if the Na'vi has to lose his bodily functions he goes into a trance he's unconscious it's as if as long as he's in as long as he is in possession of his conscious conscience conscious body he's not able to connect to navua so if you look at a navi while he was receiving Nva, it would almost be like an outof body experience. He's frozen. He's unconscious. His eyes are closed. He looks dead. Mosher Rabenu, this is P was able to speak to Akadesh Boro in full possession of his consciousness. And that's what uh that's what the puzz says. As a person speaks to his friend, Hashem could speak to Moshe. And the Rambam goes on and says all Nim required to prepare themselves to receive Nva. Now this does create an interesting chicken and egg problem. You see from Nak a number of places in Nak that there was a category of people that are called ben hanim. Now benhanim literally means the children or the sons of nim. But here it does not mean sons. It means the disciples. [snorts] They were disciples of naveim. What does it mean to be a disciple of nva? There used to be prophecy schools, right? You can go to school to be a a lawyer, an accountant. You could go to school to be a prophet. Ben Naveim were tell of the Naveim. It's one way another could make a parnasa could operate a school in which you learned how to be a prophet. Now, what are the what is the curriculum? Right. What's what what did you have in a novi school? Presumably you had general limit to file for sure. You know, morning said, afternoon was wasn't the yeshiva mamish. But these were things like meditation. These were things of preparing yourself. These are things of clearing your mind of any distraction. Now here is the thing what the Rambam says about Nvi school. Nvi school was not an automatic thing. Meaning you could prepare and prepare and prepare and prepare and you could take all the coursework and you can get A's on all the Nvi tests. Nva is ultimately a gift that Hashem gives you and it depends on your righteousness. It depends on your purity of character and it depends on deciding that you're a ni. So this is not like a course where if you do the course you'll be a nvi. But without the course you won't be a ni. Meaning to say a novi required preparation. A novi had to know how to put himself. So when we say for example that he's in a trance, he's like he's dead. That's both like what you do before in order to get nvoa and that's what you are during na. In other words, it's both a before and after. In order for me to get nua, I got to put myself in that state. And once nava hits me, that's the state that I'm automatically in. And that is what you would learn in novi school. So there are two points here. Number one, the Na'vi at the time of his nua kind of loses his connection with his body and his consciousness. And number two, he has to prepare himself for that state. Misha Rabenu didn't have either of those problems. Misha Rabenu could just talk to God whenever he wanted and he talked to God without losing his consciousness. So that does create a little bit of problem about Anvi like how does Anvi know when to do this? This is the interesting thing with Mosher Rabenu. It's fairly simple. When he needed to talk to God, he talked to God. When God needed to talk to him, God talked to him. Hey Mosha, got to talk to you. But if I'm a nvi, let's assume I'm, you know, I'm your mahi. So your mia couldn't just say to Hashem, I want to talk to you. In fact, even if he prepared himself and went into the meditative state, Nva wouldn't necessarily hit him unless Hashem had a message to give him at a time. So my question is just a very very simple question. How does a Nvi know when it's time for him to get a message from Hashem? Because you have a a catch22 situation. Because Hashem doesn't talk to the Na'vi until the Na'vi engages in this deep meditation. But even if he engages in the deep meditation, maybe it's not the time for Nva. So, how do I know? Now, it could be it could be if a Na'vi does have a very very specific question that needs to be addressed, he would put himself in that state in the hope that God will make himself available to answer that question. But that would presuppose a very specific issue that the NVI has that wouldn't necessarily be, you know, how would he know? He knows he wouldn't always know. So, it's an interesting question and we'll talk about this a little bit more. Like, how does Anvi know when God wants to tell him something since he's not going to know until he puts himself in that state? And even if he puts himself in that state, there's no guarantee Hashem is going to talk to him at that moment. Again, with Mosher Rabenu, there was never a problem since Mosher Rabenu didn't need to be in a particular state. So, Hashem would tell him, "I got a message for you. I want to tell you something." Or Moshe could say to Hashem, "Hey, I don't know the answer to or whatever it is. What's the answer?" You have a second active obviously >> there might there might be different signs. It's interesting, you know, we don't really know what they would be. But yeah, uh but but again, as I say that very simple questions, these are simple questions like, you know, uh how does God speak to a navi, you know, are not not so simple. With Mosher Rabeno, it actually is a simpler process because it was the same laavd as human interaction. That was Mosha's greatness. He could interact with Hashem the way one person can interact with another person. Yeah. >> Was it hard or trained nut to enter the state. I mean meaning like why wouldn't they just enter the state daily to check if there was a something in their inbox so to speak? >> It could be it could be that that actually might be the answer. Mean meaning to say theoretically it might be harmful for people who aren't under Madrega. It's like cabalistically elevating yourself to dangerous places. But it could be that a novi engaged in this type of meditation maybe the whole day. You know, maybe that's what it was. Meaning to say they would contemplate God. They would put themselves in these hypnotic states and every once in a while they would get messages. So, yeah, that that could be the answer as well. It's not that they needed some advanced warning to put themselves in this situation. This was a situation of duas. In fact, I mean I mean for lashall every time a na'vi davent this is how a nvidi dav a nvi davin through these particular states and every once in a while you know there would be you know a nvua from hashem. So yeah that could be a good answer. Yeah. Yeah mentioned in >> okay so the gammoran migillah says the following interesting observation. The Gmoran migillah says there are 48 male nim and seven female niot that are mentioned in Tanakh or in Nak this is after Mosher Rabeno and uh that gives you a total of what only 56 but the Gomorrah then says the following the Gomorrah makes the statement that when there was prophecy and we'll see that prophecy got discontinued around the beginning of the second bas. Okay. Nva stopped the last at the very beginning of the second Ba Mikdash are those are the last three of Treyosar and from that point onwards Kazal say has been taken away and the only people that have nua are shaitim are crazy people who kanim are children. Now you could you could learn the gammor two ways actually. You could learn the Gomorrah that says anyone who claims to be a prophet is either an idiot or a child. Meaning they're not prophets either, but they think they're prophets. Or perhaps the Gomorrah is saying that within Shaitim and Katanadim there are still aspects of of prophecy because Hashem doesn't want us to get prophetic clarity. So he interperses words of prophecy sometimes in the middle of crazy messages. I'm not sure if I mentioned it to you. Forgive me for I I had a very good friend growing up who uh unfortunately in the in the course of time kind of went crazy. I don't know what the diagnosis is exactly, but he wanders around and he gives speeches drushes and I see him once in a while and uh most of it is like totally incoherent. So I, you know, I'm always happy to see him, but I don't I don't really listen to what he says. It just goes on and on and on. But one time I was listening a little bit. And I was I was actually very amazed that in the middle of incoherent ranting, there was some very profound things. And I thought, wow, this is what the Gamorra meets that sometimes crazy people in the middle of their craziness. there's like aesh or that comes out. So I could say saw what meant that among the shaitim again I mean this is even in popular mythology the village idiot so to speak right has these deep profoundities that that that nobody nobody gets. So here's the thing. So in Tanakh we have 48 Nvim and seven Nvot and Rashi goes through the the listings of it. But then the Gomorrah says in reality when prophecy was given to Kali Israel you had 600,000 prophets you had the number of prophets equal to those who left Mitraim 600,000 and double 1 million 200,000. So the Gmorrah asks the obvious you're telling me there were 600,000 prophets and we're not given the manwoman breakdown or 1,200,000 prophets. So how come there's only 48 men and seven women? So the Garra gives a tremendously important. It says prophecies that have eternal value that every generation needs to learn. Those were the prophecies that were written down. And there were only 48 prophets and seven prophetices. All the other hundreds of thousands of Naveim were Naveim. And that actually means they reached the spiritual level of Niveim with all that that entailed. But their prophecies were ephemeral. They were temporary. They were necessary for a particular time and place or particular individuals and therefore they were not memorialized in the Kisva kodes. Which means any nava that is recorded in Kisva Kesh by definition must be something that every generation needs to hear. Because if it wouldn't have been necessary for every generation to hear, it wouldn't have been written down just like the Nva of the hundreds of thousands. So it's true. We're going to see that many many nvuos are are connected to historical events of the time Babylonia, Assyria, Mitza. So they are connected to particular historical events that already happened. But they must also have a meaning and an application for us. This is called nua hatrius. So you may ask so what exactly the naveim who didn't have an eternal message like what were they for? What did they do? What did those anonymous and by the way it could even be by the way that even the big prophets who are recorded many of their prophecies might also have been ephemeral in there's the same way that a novi is not recorded if his navu is not that could apply even to a big ni your mio might have had many many more prophecies that were not written down because they were not shar so it both refers to nim who were not duros and even the the ni that is recorded may have had that are not. What would an example be of that's not? So the MS says this may sound like a cheapening, but this was a gift of Hashem. Hashem says in the Torah itself that I don't want you to turn to a voter. I don't want you to go to astrology. I don't want you to go to magic. I will give you nim that will guide you in life. And this was a gift that Hashem gave us when there was nua that Naveim would give us all sorts of guidance in life. So the Vil Nagon explains in the olden days if you weren't sure if you should learn Beakius or Ian you could go to a Nvi and a Nvi now again maybe Hashem would answer it or not because again the Nvi is not in control but the Nvi would say I will try to ask Hashem and get an answer. Imagine this. You could get answers for individual questions that you had in life. Now once again remember the Nvi is not in control of when Hashem is going to answer him. So there's no guarantee. A Nvi can never say I will give you a prophetic answer. But there was such an such an application. We find by schol. You're going to see in the book of Shmo that uh how did Sha become king? Shammo anointed him. How did Sho meet Shaw? A very strange story. Shaw's father had donkeys that had wandered off. Had wandered off, right? Donkeys wander away. Uh and he's looking for his donkeys. Doesn't know where to go. So Shaul says there's this prophet Shu around. Let's go ask him where the donkeys are. He'll be able to have a prophecy. Where are our donkeys? What's the You're gonna bo about You're gonna bother Shuel who is Shakul Kamosha the iron. Shu is equal to Mosha and you're going to ask him about your car keys, your donkeys. The answer is yeah. Nim were used even for those things. That was a gift Hashem gave us. Now most of those noose are not written down. In the case of Shoal, it's written down because that's the precursor to Schul becoming king. But generally speaking, people could have asked Shammo a hundred times. Where are my car keys? Can't find my glasses. Shimmo would [clears throat] try to answer those questions. Right? Those were the answers. Of course, uh to me, this shows you that a Nvy must also have great patience [laughter] because, you know, I know I wouldn't want to I mean, I'm not a nie, but but I wouldn't want to be bothered, you know, every two seconds. Hey, where are my keys? >> [laughter] >> I got enough problem with my own keys. Uh I have to know where your keys are. Right? So uh we we got a problem there. But this was navua. So this is what it means that these were nuvoas but they were ephemeral. They were temporary. They didn't have any longlasting message for clal Israel. So they weren't written down. But therefore you understand the it puts on us. Therefore, any chapter in Nak that you learn that has a prophecy, you have to ask yourself, what are the lessons that we learned? You can't just say it was relevant to a particular time and place because it wouldn't have been written down had it only been relevant to a particular time and place. This is the ass of Okay. So that's kind of the answer of how many prophets. There were many many many prophets but only 56 of them are recorded uh in in Yeah. for the state. >> Well, again, theoretically that state is a sakana, but but if you're if you've reached the level of navua, generally presumably you're able to do it. Meaning to say you've trained yourself and you've reached a madrega. Uh for people who try to reach that madrega without being in that state, that is a danger indeed. Um this is the um the famous Gomorrah uh in Khadiga about the four great tanoyim much later. This is after nua who wanted to enter the parardase. The parardes is the orchard of the highest levels of kisakot. And uh one died and one became crazy and one became a heretic and only rabbi was niknas bashalam. He entered bisham yatsa basham. Apparently this and this was lower than prophecy but this was the highest level one could attain. So it is a dangerous level and indeed we find this all all over the place that the makubalima warned people that unless they fill themselves up with shas and postg and are married and are emotionally stable putting yourself in these states of devas bashm can literally kill you. It kills you in an interesting way. It doesn't kill you by a bolt of lightning, but it kills you because your nishama has such a desire to be with Hashem once it tastes that godliness that the nishama leaves the gof and you can't bring it back. So that's why it kills you. doesn't it's not it's not like a punishment but the devas separates the nishama that normally the nishama cannot break through the body but when the yearning is super powerful it breaks through and then you can't it doesn't come back and that's a dangerous that's a dangerous thing so that's why you need to be grounded you have to purify yourself with Torah and mitzvos and emotional stability and then you're able to hold yourself in uh this is part of the Reason why in the history of Kabala the great makubalim tended to die very young. As you know we know this uh the Arizal died at 39. Ra Mosha Karda the Ramach the devor died at 48. In more modern times uh Raari Kaplan who was really a modern a modern makob also died in his 40s. I don't remember the exact age but he died relatively young. And you know again obviously a doctor will say heart attack. I I'm sure I'm sure the arisal well the Arizal died from plague. And we know medically why he died. But what was really going on was this spiritual separation of the nishama from the gofy. >> Are any of the that weren't transcribed in recorded later in Garra? >> So it's interesting you know I'll give you an example. We'll come to this. If you look in uh which goes over the stories of the kings a lot of it repeats what's already in we'll talk about it. You'll see after every king it'll say oh the rest of this king's life is described in the prophecies of Ido the Na'vi or the prophecies prophets that you haven't heard of prophets who don't have their own books and apparently there were all sorts of so apparently even some of the ephemeral prophecies were recorded in books but these books were not considered kisesh and they they did not survive uh So we don't really have a record of these individual prophecies. I mean we have one example of the donkeys that is recorded in Tanakh but as I say that's recorded not because of the importance of the donkeys but because that was the way that Sha got introduced to to Shu but other than that we really don't don't have it. Uh but it's an amazing thing that Nvoua was you could actually go to a Nvi and get personal guidance in your life. Now the garbanabasra says the obvious conclusion that although nvua was taken from nvim we don't have nvim today but that type of insight was given to the in a nonprphetic way and that is the source of the idea that one should go to a kam for advice as to life because the tot became the yor Right. The became the of certain aspects of that come to the because of Torah. And the Gmorra even says may have a certain benefit over the Nvi because once again the Nvi is not in control. The Nvi has to look to Hashem for an answer and Hashem may give him the answer, may not give him the answer. The mukusher to the Torah. He has his Torah. The Torah is like a constant source that will give him that illumination. is explicit and motion talk back and forth. You get to the ni where the ni still has to do the work of interpreting like his and then eventually you get to the mastery of everything or else he won't eat >> right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically the idea would be nva is connecting to godam connects to Torah but Torah and God are one. Therefore, it's another way to connect to God through a different type of experience. And therefore, he is the yores. He is the y. And uh you're correct. The nvi must interpret nva and the kak must also interpret how to apply the Torah. So either way, you're interpreting the message of God. But the message of God comes in different in different in different media. Okay. So this is the the basic idea of Nvoua of Nvoua. Now just to put it in historical framework for a moment, what is the historical period of time that is covered by Tanakh? How many years? Again, I'm not referring to the prophecies about Mashiach, but just in terms of the years that are covered by N. So the kish itself of course starts from the beginning raises and it ends with the death of Moshe Rabenu and uh we know that uh that should uh let's see one second we know that Aramavina was born if you add up the years 1948 state of Israel uh and when Aramavina was 100 uh that's when Yitizuk was born so that's 2000 48 and 400 years after that issam. So Mitzim is in the year 2448 of creation. Everyone has that date. I always forget dates. So it's a right of the creation of the world was mitim and Moshe died 40 years after the Exodus. So therefore, the Tyra ends the Tyra ends in the year 20 488 from the creation of the world 2488. The book of Yeshua starts from that point. Now there are some important historical anchors that Tanakh gives us that that gives us a sense of all of the years. One of the most important is a PK in Malim that says Schlommo built the B mikdash the first B mikdash 480 years after we left Mim. That's in the book of Malikim and that's kind of the foundation of chronology. Now that all that means if the basik was built 480 after we left that means it was built 440 after we entered Israel because we entered 40 years after Mitraim. So once we get to the period of Yeshua, we have 440 years from Yeshua until the building of the Basam Mikdash. And we know that the first Basam Mikdash stood 410 years and then the Babylonians destroyed it. So how many years were we in Erit Israel from the time of Yeshua until the Bikdash? years. So that includes the period of the judges and the monarchy and the divided monarchy years from Yoshua to the Bam Mikdash. Then we had the 70 years of the Babylonian exile. So 850 and 70 is 930. Then we have the return to Erit Israel. >> Yeah. Did I add the numbers wrong? >> I'm sorry. Uh what did I say? In other words, we had uh 850 plus 70. Yeah. 920 I'm sorry. Yeah. 920 years. And then we have the return to Erat Israel and and the dedication of the second bas. So essentially Tanakh ends [snorts] around approximately the ending points are a little murky around 20 years after the dedication of the second temple. Around 20 years. So the period of Nak excluding the Torah is a period of less than 1,000 years. It's 800 and uh I'm sorry 440 until the building of the Basam Mikdash. the standing of the Basam Mikdash. 70 years of exile until the second temple and then another 20 or so years after the second temple was built. Okay? So if you add up all of those numbers that is the period that is covered by Nak that preedes [snorts] the Greek conquest of Erit Israel. In other words in Nak this is what we know. We start off with Yoshua and the Schaft. And after the Schaft, we have kings, scholo. After Schlommo, we have the breaking of two kingdoms. A kingdom of the north with 10 tribes and the kingdom of the south. Then we have Babylonia conquering Eric Israel. Well, well, Assyria exiling the 10 tribes and then Babylonia conquering Yushalay and destroying the Basam Mikdesh. Babylonia is conquered by the Persian Empire. And under the Persian Empire, the Bam Mikdash is rebuilt. And that is where Nak stops the story again around 20 years after the building of the second temple. Shortly after that after that Alexander of Macedonia conquered the Persian Empire and that starts the Greek period which is no longer again prophetically it's referred to prophetically it's in Nak but it's after the period of Nak is the period of the Ivanim the Kaneka story and then the Romans all of that is not in the historical framework of Nak. It is the postbiblical period. uh and that begins the period already of the tanoyam the anshasdollah the tanoyamim shimonadic who was a very early co-engt of the bay sheni uh who actually interacted with Alexander of Macedonia is post tanakh and he is even though he knew Ezra okay it's interesting so there are people post Tanakh who whose lives were still in the period of Tanakh. Shimonatic knew Ezra, but he's already after this period of time. And that begins the early Tanoim. The early tan is Shimatic is said to be the first person that we call the Tana and the like. Okay. So, basically, we're dealing with Nim and Kassuim. Of course, Kassum, it's a hell of a different thing, but but the historical the historical record of Nvan Kasuim is covering a period that is approximately 1,000 years long. And when you add to it the 2,488 years from Batius to Mitraim to to coming to Aratis, that will give you the the period that that we're covering. Okay, everyone understands the general idea of the historical period. So remember therefore that uh the Greek period did not take place until after the Nak was finished. Even though we're going to see there are many many prophecies about these future events that did not happen in the period of of Nive and and and Kua. Okay, any uh questions? Okay, so we'll stop here and uh have a good >> Thank you for listening to this awesome [music] production. To find out more and to partner in our mission, please visit or.edu.