(Way# 45) EXPANDING YOUR IDEAS: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi uh aaron david poston of yemeni uh such a joy he's been teaching us so much uh uh beyond the seven for banay noah uh and we've been uh hot and heavy into uh um uh the 48 ways uh to wisdom and today we've got part 45 we're near in the end we hope that you all have acquired some wisdom uh uh from this course it's a profound profound a series and i highly encourage everybody to check out each and every video and pull out of there exactly what the rabbi wants to teach and learn and acquire it for yourself and you'll just see your your entire life uh just uh begin to take right off so let's just jump right in and see how the rabbi's doing tonight rabbi poston so good to be with you sir and uh we hope all is well with you and uh thank you for uh staying up so late in jerusalem for us well shalom shavuot of dan hodeshtov odmat for uh and uh hashem i'm still still still here with you you guys are still here with us and uh we broke hashem we thank you again just for having me and exposing these ideas of north weinberg to the world uh the 48 waves which is from mission and perkiavot this is wisdom for the ages for sure for sure and we hope that everybody acquires it literally uh it learns to integrate it into their being and uh let it become part of everyday living we think it will help make the world a better place for sure you know i think what you just said is is prime like a good uh preamble whatever introduction to tonight's uh to today's talk because we're on number 45 of the 48 waves which in hebrew is which means expanding your ideas but in truth i think i would have titled it i mean who am i to title it differently um but at least a translation because shomeo um means to listen and to add but i think what it really means underlying those words is to make an acquisition is to make that um to acquire okay so i will lead into that idea but let's just start with the title the title says show me uh which is to hear but we all know that listening is really understanding so there has to be a form a some aspect of trying your best to understand and then going beyond which is interesting because we're talking about beyond the seven to try to listen and incorporate and make a cane a true kenyan a real acquisition on the seven i don't think you really should try to go beyond but again we would discuss this in many details because beyond the seven really means that these are seven principles and there are many uh subcategories of them and i do believe one should attempt to uh to fully uh traverse that whole universe of what the seven and beyond the seven mean but i mean beyond the seven i mean even going beyond what we call the seven no high laws you definitely should make a kenyan acquire everything that the seven represents before you go to any any further step okay so shomeya umosif the roshiva uses the term expanding your ideas because what we're going to discuss is go again i'm going to use these words going beyond but it's it's um increasing well let's put it like this let's go let's go in order okay i want to go in order um i have a bunch of notes so he tells you it's not enough just to listen right you have to increase you have to add something of your own which is an amazing idea in judaism because in the bay midrash in the study hall which you guys are probably familiar a little bit with one of the i think we discussed this last week or the week before the idea of who's the roshiva who's the dean of the college going to try to choose as his son-in-law right we sent the best student but it's not just who is the best how do you how do you um determine that right obviously character trait character traits are going to be on the top of the list if that if you don't have that you got nothing right right you're hashem and working on your character refining your character but beyond that the student that's going to try to ask the good the best questions right to expand your own knowledge to the point that you're not even sure yourself in order to become clear and become sure of yourself and and where your your um your your your learning is going to lead you which is to the next step so in hebrew we'll call it and if you're familiar with hebrew those that are familiar with hebrew i would translate as a novel idea now there's nothing new under the sun so why are we always looking for a novel and you know what i'll do a novel approach so i use a analogy of connecting dots it's true like we're all artists in this journey of life and if you ever had received a gift or maybe you're an artist and you go out into the store and buy it um paint by numbers and i'm talking about a really intricate high level paint by numbers so you could um why am i bringing this up so it sounds very simple and very easy just follow the instruction manual but when it comes to real artistry right you'll you'll i'm assuming someone who has done paint by numbers in a in a true artist's fashion well maybe what's the word i'm going to use deviate a little bit from some of the actual color you know the true colors they'll still use a pattern right they'll definitely use the pattern and they'll use colors as close to it as possible but it'll be something they made right you okay i bought it from the store it's real simple to make it's got the even comes with colors and it comes with numbers but to add a little bit of green into the red and a little bit of i don't know yellow into the blue or whatever it is right to change a little bit because then it's yours well this is the torah is a certain sense we're going to say unchangeable there's no question about it there's nothing new under the sun but with the kiddush this is my interpretation okay so anybody doesn't agree that's fine the the numbers are there it's a way of perspective so um to arrive at a conclusion the conclusion is is a done deal the numbers are a done deal but perhaps one could communicate or express how to get to the same conclusion using a different number pattern perhaps right that that's so in other words you're connecting the dots colors can be yeah can be a fluorescent they can be a base they could be uh satin they could be you know matte yeah there's so many different uh hues uh uh or sheens that can be applied to you know color sculpture so apply that to language in other words what god said to moses moses conveyed to joshua joshua conveyed to the elders and so forth and so on but there's always a generation gap you have to um i don't like the word manipulate you have to change the scheme of your analogies to the generation that will be able to hear it and comprehend it and not every student in the set is the same so if the student is more visual perhaps you have to convey the lesson in a more visual way or uh if they're more audio audio is that the word anyway you'd have to so that's if someone was more into computers today so to use language to describe remember you're not inventing the language of computers already exists but you know that this particular student excels in this area and if you could convey to him a lesson of torah in a way that it would be easier for him to understand or make a decision for sure to connect the dots in this in a different way so that and again it's just changing the language perhaps when i'm arriving horse rabbi the first time i think the way the rabbi was trying to explain what you're you're trying to get across he used the phrase bilateral affinity in other words there has to be between the teacher and the and the student that bilateral affinity that that come coming to terms uh together on that point to to where the teacher can actually say here's the lesson and the student can actually reiterate reiterated back in in exactly what the teacher intended and that's what was transmitted exactly so if the person the student is not understanding the analyses or even the language so it's up to the rabbi to convey in a way that the student will be able to understand okay so um where do i want to go with this the idea is that as we say if you speak from the heart so then you will then the person who you're speaking to his heart will receive it right from the heart to the heart so if you hear this information but you're just regurgitating it you're just spilling it over like a bucket that's being full and then throwing it into the next bucket i mean you're going to lose you lose a few drops okay but it's not going from the heart to the heart so the the key is the teacher makes opinion the real true acquisition he himself is not exactly like the teacher right so he may have to come up with certain analogies for himself to fully comprehend doesn't mean you're really adding anything new but it isn't okay so first of all to a certain extent it is because it's your language and if anything bothers you it may not have bothered the teacher right everyone is bothered by something else you gotta close the circuitry uh to the light bulb in order to get it to turn on true but it's for yourself so we're going to speak next week about teaching learning in order to teach but so how am i able to teach it over if i don't even fully comprehend it myself very difficult so the key key right the first part is to make opinion for myself so i have to get all the difficulties resolved for myself first and hopefully i mean again everybody has different difficulties everybody might be thinking something else is bothering them when you convey that information but hopefully and hashem it will help you convey the information if you know your student like joshua knew his students well enough right he knew the heart of everybody so hopefully as a teacher you can also pray it doesn't hurt to pray but also to get to know your students so if you would know what's really bothering them so you could convey in a language where you know this is going to help them see or understand deeper or better but again you're also going to have to hear their questions when they bring up their difficulties and i think i have to work on this with a lot of patience with a lot of patients because what i think i'm teaching is so right so what are you questioning this for right so the truth is it's bothering them and i have to look to myself perhaps i didn't find the right vocabulary i didn't find the right examples and also to dig a little deeper ask them what's what exactly is bothering you right now sometimes we have some different different very difficult students who who are not always out for the answer they're just looking to slug you up but these are students you work with for a long time and you build trust that they're not out to get you they're out to really find the truth and then you as the teacher is trying to figure what is the block but just because i don't have that block doesn't mean they don't have that block okay so you have to have a lot of patience when you're teaching but right now i think we're talking about the learning part meaning you as a student or me as a student hearing something go through the process and we're going to discuss it what are my holdups what are my own questions and how am i going to resolve them and then what am i going to add to it okay so i want to show a few verses let's just start with a few verses so we have a better understanding of why it's so important of not just listening but beyond the listening part and that is first of all the the deep desire passion for knowledge itself so i want you to go to psalms chapter 119 verse 72. on here verse 72 [Music] says the instruction of your mouth is better for me than thousands of gold and silver okay so we note from the latter part of the verse right everybody wants money right everybody wants uh wealth everybody wants some level of stability in the physical world so what could be better than thousands of gold and silver well the truth is there's a spiritual world and the beginning of the verse says that the instruction of your mouth we're talking about the torah we're talking about wisdom god's wisdom so we have to have a passion we have to have a desire just like we have a desire to make money and to excel in business or be the best salesman of the month right get your name on the wall or to walk home to your you know home home to your family with a big check and say look i got a bonus because i did so well what about coming up with with a novel idea what about really truly understanding and we'll talk about the adding as well a little bit further so it's so beautiful this is a beautiful song in hebrew you know that i'm not a great singer but i will make a small attempt not to really sing it but to say in a little bit of a joyful way [Music] good is for me it's so good for me to have your torah in my mouth right your torah um from your mouth it's my i'm gonna actually make a kenyan it's now the torah that is from your mouth it's it's my torah right it's much better than what than thousands of coins i want you to go to ecclesiastes chapter 5 verse 9. ecclesiastes 5 verse 9 correct verse 9 says whoever loves silver will not be sated with silver and he who loves a multitude without increase this too is vanity okay now silver represents the torah and its commandments okay so if you love silva you love torah you love this wisdom you're never going to be satiated you're never going to be satisfied with the wisdom the wisdom that you get you just you just want more and more and more of it and again the word multitude also the rashi says multitude of the commandments right so we have so many commandments and again to the no height it's not just seven it's seven principles we discussed this in the very beginning of the introduction which again i employ i implore uh everybody who ever um didn't see the introduction go back to the first uh was it seven or eight before we got into the six constant mitzvahs and we before we started the 48 waves it was a pretty good i think overview um so that how how you understand the seven no high laws and how they're really some say 30 some say 60 plus some say over most i think everybody says anything logical any of the misses any of the 6 13 commandments that are logical you can come to your own conclusion this is the right thing to do moral imperatives yeah yeah you have an obligation okay let's go to proverbs chapter 1 verse 5. verse 5 says let the wise man hear and increase learning the understanding man shall acquire wise counsels now this really brings home the idea because we said it's um is to hear and moses to add now look at the words in hebrew yishmachakum the already wise should listen okay let the wise man hear again let the wise man delve deeper to his understanding and in english and increase wisdom the yossi the yosef lekkak it's a good purchase kenyan again it's an acquisition that's what the word let's means but it also is a word used for the torah itself the torah is a purchase is a gift um rashi mentions right there when it says let every let the wise man hear these proverbs i mean these these words of wisdom and increase his wisdom meaning he already is wise and he's going to increase so if you're wise and you know you're wise why aren't you reaching out for more that's another shot in other words it's a real simple shot when we say shomeo mosey it means that the person who's already wise should just try to increase his own wisdom but we're going to just discuss this on a much deeper level and that is towards the end of this rashi so this rashi says like this the understanding man right the understanding man shall acquire wise counsels rashi says who has knowledge superior to the knowledge of the wise man for he knows how to derive an idea from an other and he adds to what he has already heard unbelievable so we're talking about this idea of a novel approach you're already like who else right who has knowledge superior to the knowledge of the wise man i'll tell you who he who knows how to derive one idea from another this is you this is the use of your own wisdom and you're making a real kenyan a real learn how to learn yeah there you go that's it now i want to take the art scroll on proverbs chapter 1 verse 5. and i think it's it's pretty good to explain this a little bit and he mentions about the study of proverbs itself will help not only the credulous or those without wisdom but i'm going to add the word certainly those who are already wise right that a wise one may hear and increases learning and the discerning one may acquire strategies again it's the strategies that's what we're going to talk about how to do motif how to be how to develop these ideas so one who has learned much from others will hear these proverbs and add to his wisdom a wisdom of a navon and navon is a discerning person is superior to that of akam he derives one thing from another on his own and thus builds upon his knowledge and that's rashi anyway the word let cox is a general term for any teaching that is acquired from others so of course you're going to start you're going to go to a lot of classes you're going to try to learn as much as you can at the end he mentions about the word tach bulot takbo load is a great it means strategies um refers to counsel and thought it's related to the word that's like the root heavel is like in english a cable it actually means a rope okay a rope so the midrash and mrs rabba employs the parable of a deep well filled with cool refreshing water but you know what everyone who came to the well had their own rope or their own string and none was long enough to tie a bucket down but you know what if they all get together and string or not all the ropes together they can all benefit isn't that beautiful analogy so too what is the navone this understanding person do he combines one thought to another and one concept to another and therefore he's able to access new ideas and new thoughts this is what the key to critical thinking is all about isn't it beautiful beautiful idea now there's a gamora in aravind 54b and i did speak about this if i don't i'm not mistaken on the shiv lewis now shavuous i probably did not record it but i might have given uh parts of this prior to schwess there's a gemara that explains it's a 54b aravin uh in proverbs 27 18. you want to read that yeah i'll pull it up 27 18 reads he who guards a fig tree shall eat its fruits and he who guards his master shall be honored so the first part of guarding the fig tree then you will be able to eat of its fruit so the question that you wanna ask why are matters meaning why are things of torah matters compared to a fig tree so just as this fig tree whenever a person searches it he finds fixed eat now we have on my street fig trees and there's always almost i don't know what season i maybe there's a few months of the year that you don't find figs on the trees but almost the whole year round you find figs at different times different ones are ripe so the fact that something can always be plucked right that's the torah right so toad is compared to the fig tree whenever you search for it you'll be able to find it they don't all ripen at one time so that's the same thing with the torah a person should meditate meditate on them and slowly slowly through the through through the course of your life things will ripen it's the most beautiful idea but now here's a little bit we'll call it a risque so nachmani said what does it mean if you want to read proverbs 5 19. 19 says says a lovely hind and a graceful mountain goat her breasts will satisfy you at all times you shall always be intoxicated with her love so now we're going to ask the same question why are torah matters compared to a hind the hind is like a like a what's called a deer of some sort right so um it's to tell you that just as with a hind meaning this type of a deer its womb is narrow and it is cherished by its mate each and every hour like the first hour okay like i said this is a little bit risque um so too matters of torah are cherished by those who study them each and every hour like the first hour so remember the first time let's say the very very first time it might be a song like that right so the first time is something very special and so too when you come across torah ideas that are just fantastical right novel ideas for you it might be the first time you're hearing them they're fresh so you you or me as a newcomer would be blown away by them and will never forget them now the war continues what does it mean a graceful row which is the idea of this um of this hind is expounded as follows that the torah bestows grace upon those who study it fine let her breast satisfy you at all times now this is the important thing is why i mentioned on shavuot there's a min hog there's a custom where we eat a lot of dairy right whether it's ice cream whether it's a cheesecake right there's a lot of interesting customs of eating what we call dairy kalavi food so why are the matters of torah compared to a breast in other words this is where the milk comes out from in other words so here's the question i mean this is where i tied it into into shivohuis so just as with a breast whenever a baby searches it from milk to sako he finds milk in it so too with matters of torah now that was the first part wait till you're the last part because this is really the douche part first of all on sukho on on shadulot we bring a um a corbin of it's called khadash it's a new wheat offering and so it's interesting that the torah itself calls it khadash so here it says whenever a person meditate meditates upon them meaning the torah he finds new meaning in them but the gemura and other places go on to explain that when a child especially the clear car explains it whenever i i don't remember i honestly don't remember but if anybody does remember when they were a child an infant suckling and nursing apparently this is what's brought down that the child the infant has a new taste every time like now the only thing i can imagine i'm not really sure i have no idea if they say it's true it's true but what i imagine it to be is that children do not i may say children infants really young infants their their brains are still developing so i don't know what kind of memory they have so it could be maybe there's not a new taste physically they feel the zunu taste i don't know that's what it says but i'm trying to imagine it must be at least what i'm about to tell you that they don't remember what it tasted the last time it was like the first time so and uh you know they go right for it and um anyway it's a very interesting idea and i believe that is according to i think the clear card and other people wrote it down this is why we eat a dairy on shavuous to remind us of this idea that it's like tasting things for the very first time um anyway okay let's go back now into the roshiva's ideas oh he mentioned he wanted to bring us down as a couple there's a few examples but let's just say for example when you're in school and you learn a new word okay we've all been there and usually the workbooks we have after you have a few pictures and maybe even a few examples then it tells you right the teacher tells you or the instruction manual tells you now in other words even though it gave like a few sentences with blanks and you write it in you practice writing in the word now you write your own sentence using the word after a few what's the word you know a few exercises of writing the word seeing the root of the word seeing how it's used in other contexts then finally you're asked to develop i'm using the word develop right invent create your own sentence with the word that you are now familiar with so this is i think the russian it was it was a good idea because i think we can all relate to it right but what is it doing it's now making it yours and that's the most fascinating thing because that's what we want to do that we want the turret to belong to you now i'm going to read the wires right this is the matifta on purchase and it goes through the 48 ways and i'm just going to focus on this one where it says what does it mean to listen and to add so he says when you when you listen again when you hear when you understand the words of torah from your teacher i'm going to do my best to translate this as my understanding you make every effort you try very hard to add on those words something that was transformed from yourself it's a very interesting idea and it brought down as a proof text michele proverbs chapter 1 verse 5 which we read already right which said let every wise man hear and increase his learning okay and then he says ah you know there's debre bravo but make sure whatever you're saying is not in contradiction to what you and in fact you want to even share this with your rabbi and you're hopefully your rabbi is a good guy and he's happy that you came with this douche with this idea it's not contradicting him but it's adding to what he already said okay now there is um [Music] okay i'm going to skip that oh you know i think i think it's important to read also this is the footnote on that piece that says after it says however do not contradict your rabbi's words he does write in he he brings down in the name of the ravan he writes that one is maiden davar mitoch davar which i we said already english to understand one matter from another and we're going to discuss these ideas the roshiva brings down a list of things that we should be doing so hopefully you guys will listen to this list but that's a very important idea of understanding one matter from another you can call deductions you can call it inductions okay then he brings down another safer called pk motion he writes that this is actually a a warning um to someone who's very wise and you know messed a lot of torah that he shouldn't say his own words first this is interesting because even in a sanhedrin okay yeah we talked about this last week i think as well that if you if you if the sanhedrin is unanimous you have a problem so if the bigger people when i say bigger i'm bigger in size i mean bigger in knowledge if they speak first some of the smaller students lesser students lesser knowledgeable students might have a fear fact they might be afraid to say anything that would contradict the words of their rabbi so if you're in that position remember it's it's shomeya or mosif so make sure other people can do that if you're a big person and people are going to listen to you you know that because you have the many students however it is that you know that people are gonna listen to you you're not like delusional oh yeah i'm so big everyone's gonna listen you know i mean like really you truly know that when you speak everybody listens so you you should be the kind of guy that speaks last okay because you want to encourage people to develop their own ideas again hopefully they will but you want to hear their ideas first to be influential beautiful so i'll just read it again this is a warning for someone who's great in torah shiloh yama has devoured he shouldn't express his words first shri lo yaklur katani me meno listers because it's almost impossible it's like unfit for someone who's smaller than that person to then contradict his words ella yishma tahila he himself the wise person should just listen at first to the words of the smaller people right whatever smaller means we know it means less knowledgeable but okay and only afterwards add on to their words which is very interesting you know we call piggybacking you know after someone gave you know that encourages them yeah a small younger student i say younger you know less knowledgeable and he'll say something so um you could add onto his own words you know you give like you said encouraging you're showing him that he's really on the ball he's hit the mark and that you're i use the word piggybacking it's probably not the best term to use i'm trying to think of another term to use but anyway i do use that a lot we all know what that means okay uh springboard yeah yeah okay uh this is very important for me so that pharisee shirau explains that what the tan in our mishnah the forty waves is expressing it teaches that a person should really listen to the words of his students and not push them off you know i know i'm guilty of that a lot i know so my students are watching me and they they they're involved you know and i have different reasons why sometimes it's because i myself don't know i'm like you know guilty you know well let's let's uh let's not talk about that now it's not really relating truth is it probably doesn't relate but i might not because it doesn't relate and i didn't study it it's probably uh not worth going into for my ego right but um i have to learn more to not push off my students um i just as an example i won't mention his name but a certain student sent me something we were having a class and he made a comment and i pushed it off i wasn't sure if i did the right thing by pushing it off at the moment but then he sent me a proof what he was saying from a conservative rabbi so then now i felt more justified in pushing him off but i told him that what you said actually was was right but you got to bring some better sources um that's all anyway okay so let's move on so that was the safer um i want to go to one it's going to take a long time to explain this but uh before we start um in perkiavo chapter 3 mission 18. the truth is in different books it's found in different numbers but it is rebbe akiva so it shouldn't be that hard to find in chapter three just let me allow me to read it because i want to just skip to one point he mentions uh beloved is man how great man this hadith means beloved adam should never sell him he was creating the image of god okay now that's really the only point i wanted to make but then the mission is says it we know this we it's indicative of the greater love that it was even known to him that he was creating the image of god right and that is that he was told in other words in genesis 9 6 just being creating the image of god is one thing but the fact that god told us in the torah where it says like you just quoted the verse in genesis chapter 9 verse 6 for the image of god he created man that's all i wanted to read because the point here is the rosh yeshiva of noah weinberg goes through a process he says what could you learn from that not only that let's take another example we're sticking with the same example but in leviticus uh chapter 19 verse 18. you have it yeah 19 verse 18 yeah 18 reads you shall neither take revenge from nor bear a grudge against the members of your people you shall love your neighbor as yourself i am hashem okay so just keep in mind if we all know we all know the reach you should love your neighbor as yourself and we just read in perkier chapter 3 verse that man is beloved so what's the connection what can we learn from this right god says man is beloved that means he loves man he created us in his image god loves man and he tells man to love each other now we're going to do an exercise because this class is not on the myths of loving your neighbor okay it's not that's not that's not what this class is about this class is about trying to think and learn one thing from another so we're going to go through a list i have nine things if you want to write them down we're going to talk about the basic point then we're going to talk about number two what are the implications of that number three what is the conclusion of that point number four what are the derivations of that point five are what are the extensions of that point i'm gonna i'm gonna define all these words okay what are the parallels of that point what are the corollary point what what's the what is corollary now that's as opposed to parallel we'll see what the difference is what are the consequences of this point and what can you appreciate from this point then there's no doubt in my mind if you can go through these steps you will have acquired the wisdom of whatever point it is we're just dealing with one particular point the idea that god loves us and that he tells us to love each other what do we know from this number one number one the basic point is that we should act with love towards each other that's just the basic point we'll call it the main point how you should act now what are the implications now implications i actually looked up [Applause] i looked up each of these words in the dictionary what does this imply without being said that's what an implication is so without it being said that love can be defined if i have a command to do it that means i have to know what it is it has to have a definition it is a command so then what is the definition of love now we discussed this already so remember this class is not in this point this point this class is in right teaching you how to think the number one okay that it can be defined what is its definition so you'll have to accept our definition you'll look somewhere else but our definition is to appreciating or taking the pleasure in someone else's virtues okay now what's the implication everyone has virtues if god says love everyone then everyone must have virtues okay so to love would mean to excuse the faults and focus on the virtues gotta find them everyone has them number three the conclusion now what is conclusion conclusion means the it's the opinion that you have considered after all the information had you have received and assimilated okay so again it's your concluding opinion after considering all the information correct that's conclusion so now if god said love all human beings then human beings must be intrinsically lovable this is confirmed by the fact this is like it has to be a fact right okay there's always exceptions to the rule it has to be the fact that there's at least two people in the world that loves every human being and that would be their parents of course there are exceptions to the rule but let's just assume that some people have not a whole lot of there's no big fan club right ain't no people waiting on the side of the road to throw petals of flowers and you know what i mean blow whistles and confetti but there are at least two people in the world most likely two people in the world who do love that person okay and they are we'll call his parents so now if you're ever having trouble loving somebody then ask yourself if i were his mother or her mother what would i love about them now you'll probably come up with something hopefully okay there are exceptions right now this would unlock a whole new dimension everything's got to hear the roshi of his voice this is go every human being is gorgeous every right we just have to see it we just have to take the blinders off so okay that the conclusion is that right that everybody is actually could be lovable okay now what's the derivation derivation means it's a necessary consequence meaning based on logic it's based on previously accepted statements now what do i have here pretty much the same thing okay so that's what a derivation is so you must ask yourself what exactly is lovable about human beings it must be something that's common to everybody if ever right everyone could be loved everyone must have it and this is drum roll please i mean we're it's almost full circuit back but humans are creating the image of god every human has created the image of god now either we accept it we don't accept it but we're saying this is a statement that we know to be true okay so that's going to be a derivation what about an extension what does an extension mean now we have extension cords right we have uh you're applying for a test and you know you don't know the language you have a uh a learning deficiency so you might ask for extra time we know what extension is but an extension is an amount by which something is increased or something added to something else okay that's simple enough okay so what's the extension here i'll just say again it's something that leads to something else okay so since we are commanded to love others this means love is something which can be commanded we already mentioned that we believe that so this goes against common perception that while it's nice to love others love cannot be obligatory i mean this is right if it's if it's emotion how can i be commanded to have an emotion we already said well it's really not it's a trigger when you when you um it's an emotion that is trigger or pleasure that's triggered from focusing on the other person's um the other person's virtues so what does judaism say otherwise it is an obligation that's true so if that's true that means someone is able to teach me how know that it's an obligation and that it can be taught it can be learned okay this is the extension what about a parallel so parallel means something very similar to something else or a similarity between two things whether it's analogous or interdependent something like that so what is the parallel here now remember if the almighty is instructs us to love others it must mean that he loves us how do we know that because when we love somebody we do want others to love that person as well and since god loves us he wants us to love each other too i just think about parents you have kids don't you just want your kids not to hate each other it would be nice if they could just get along right if and and then the cherry on top they actually love each other that's like the ultimate why not and hashem my kids all love each other at least at least today anyway the corollary so now what's the corollary corollary means it's it's inferred immediately immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof because you don't need it it's something that naturally follows so part of loving someone is protecting them from harm you might ask yourself why are all these jews involved in the um the civil rights movement way back in the late 50s the 60s the 70s right why in south africa all these jews were put in prison with nelson mandela like why why what's going on here unbelievable so what is the corollary part of loving someone is protecting them from harm therefore love your neighbor means fighting for human rights working against injustice stopping violence putting your you know putting action and now what's a consequence consequence means it's a result from a particular action something that happens as a result of either a particular action or a set of conditions i added also import it means that it's important well maybe that's really the next thing appreciation okay let's let's leave that so what is consequence here now the consequence is that if everybody in the world would practice this right we would have were no more right meshiach right as it says on the isaac of the the united nothings over there in new york right the isaiah wall that um you know that all the all the weaponry would be turned into plow shares and we would no longer spend money on the uh i guess defense or offense of military hardware but we would put it on to research and development for curing all kinds of diseases and whatever you know what i mean so he says if everyone practiced love your neighbor the world would operate with a greater degree of patience tolerance understanding communication appreciation unity this one principle would kind of each other yeah this one principle would transform human history when we love each other and take pleasure in each other and we work together we harness the full potential of the universe and he asked in his juvia way do you sense the power isn't that would that be great right now to end appreciation remember you can apply this to anything we're trying to teach you how to think how to learn how to make an acquisition acquire this this is what the roshi has said for him himself and he totally embodied it this was his whole being what i just shared with you now what's the appreciation appreciation is the ability to understand its worth its value um full awareness or even the understanding of something and that we use the appreciation when something goes up in value right appreciated right something more valuable so he says like this look back at the whole history of the world right you have the greeks the babylonians the egyptians what did they do i mean i can add a whole bunch of other groups of people in that they murdered they enslaved they impaled history shows that it was judaism with its innovative declaration to love humanity because we're all made in the image of god and this is what introduced and inspired civil rights and justice into the world it's the jews who said we're all in the image of god and you got to love humanity this idea succeeded succeeded because the torah specifies detailed laws how to translate love into action and gradually the jewish message became accepted by all mankind absolutely incredible so we took just one principle maybe two but we combined them and um we created a lot of dots that already there we just you know um we strung them together so this is a great exercise and he suggests doing this okay now you have to stay on target this is an important thing because if you go through this process if you have one wrong thing in your equation right you're doing math on a on a board and if you have wrong one wrong equation you're going to come out i it the whole thing is wrong right so wherever you went wrong is where things spun out of control uh i heard the analogy like golfing uh with the driver you get on the tee box you got 400 yards to the to the hole and if you're off by just a slight degree and you're whacking that ball real hard in golf it you know it might not seem like it could be just one degree off but over that distance say 300 yard drive you're way off the field yeah okay look i don't know much about goth i'll just assume you're right i'm sure those who golf think this is a great analogy i'll bring something for people who all we all played with blocks when we were young and maybe as a all adults we've built uh walls with bricks but let's just say you take these blocks and you're building just a simple you know castle or whatever you want to build if your bricks or your blocks towards the bottom are not straight or not evenly spaced or tilted in some way as you build up and up and up the likelihood of it falling increases because something towards the bottom the asode the basic points as you go through it is is off then it's going to collapse so maybe you do with cards maybe you do bricks maybe do legos i have no idea but we all have done this that if you have a foundation the foundation is not solid you you're building uh like in in a sandbox you're building on sand and it's not gonna last so you have to use otherwise people to throw up your ideas and that is why as a teacher should never let's say you know what i'm talking for myself i'll think about it let me think of that let me let me meditate on that right as opposed to na na na na na okay uh so he just says the same the same he brings the idea of the bricks if you don't have a if they're not all perfectly lined up the structure is going to collapse the same idea is true with ideas when drawing conclusion upon conclusion upon conclusion if you're off just by a little bit all subsequent conclusions will increasingly will be increasingly wrong and you'll wind up with a very strange and dangerous ideas and this is something that you you need to check check here you should monitor your conclusions by bouncing your idea off of other people it's this give-and-take uh will correct errors while they're still minor right and will also expose new ideas that would not have otherwise emerged from your own mind as we say like there's a there's a verse i forget where it is exactly but iron against iron sharpens right and there's the idea of two students working out a text obviously they have to be honest with themselves and honest with the person and not just try to be right um okay so we've discussed this idea before um another idea is make sure that you do discover your mistake in thinking right on the surface many ideas seem to be harmless just a harmless idea but if they're in they're inconsistent with any ideas that we have in torah it doesn't matter how many you know dimensions and you know conclusions you drew from it it's gonna it's gonna like you said with the golfing thing it's just gonna be out of bounds yeah okay you're gonna have to go all the way around the whole world to come back to the same point right um and here's here is here's his example okay he gives another example of working through these steps and then coming to a wrong conclusion okay we've discussed going to the right conclusion here's one so many people think there's no such thing as absolute truth now we have a lot of people today and so they say no truth it's relative and um it's different for everybody so let's let's take that let's assume that's true for a second so there's no right or wrong right so how can we ever judge a mass murderer for being wrong or being evil right according to his standards right without absolute morality all you have to say is the murderer did something you don't really like but you have no right to call them evil how about if your child somebody's child comes home from school and complains about someone beat him up on the playground right got beat up in school now who are you as a parent right and if all morality is relative so then you can never really assert any the injustice of any position for the bully beating up little guys is part of his personal moral system right if so how can you ever condemn it so he says it's absurd of course it's absurd this is why it's crucial to take the ideas to the logical conclusion if there's a false perception then by developing the theme a few steps to its conclusion you'll see the error of the original premise and you will see one idea may contradict another idea and that you you believe in it and then you can determine whether your ideas are true or false hopefully you'll come to the right conclusion and making it a daily practice so of course we have to do this right as a we talk about before you go to sleep you make a hedge bone and netfish you have to think through your day so again take time to reflect on the ideas you heard during the day right if you read something you went sightseeing you sat in a meeting right you had you can have a lot of insights during the day but unless you go over those daily experiences you're not going to internalize it you need time to internalize to process and then process and then possess like we said to make opinion to make a true you have to have time to process you got to digest it and ingest it yeah yeah so he ends with this idea as an exercise take five of your favorite pieces of wisdom things you consider the most important tools for life so whoever you are you think you have these five tools that you know these favorite pieces of wisdom check it out go through the drill find a corollary a consequence a derivation and a conclusion right do this step-by-step approach and it will hopefully open up a potentially infinite infinite chain of conclusions and he ends this idea and this is a little bit metaphysical in fact the sages say that if you just do one mitzvah that you're theoretically drawing a picture of all 613 misses by following logically the consequences derivations in other words it takes a real master to do this if you concentrate on just one mitzvah then there is a mission of perky i would say rare at mitzvah a mitzvah drags the other misses with it or the reward for a mitzvah is the other mitzes this is a very metaphysical idea in a great way all 6 13 mitzvahs are all interconnected every jew is interconnected everyone on the human on the planet is connected right there's the the theory of connectivity so could one just think of one particular mitzvah and somehow consequently you know draw themselves it's amazing because that really fits in with loving every human being loving every jew loving to do the mithras everything's interconnected anyway if it's really true and i do believe it is that one could ultimately end up understanding so much of the torah just by delving deeply into any one particular subject in other words when we learn in my groups we can learn one particular sentence or one particular word and we can discuss every aspect of the torah in one you know however many hours it takes there's all these tangent tangents we're going off on tangents so it's an amazing thing okay so that's it for today beautiful beautiful session rabbi yeah beautiful session i think there's so much there that we can apply uh practically if uh if uh you just let it uh get into your heart like he's talking about today it will eventually make its way into action just beautiful beautiful stuff and uh rabbi i want to thank you um hashem willing are we going to do 46 next weekend hashem willing or is your schedule no this is going to work out this week but the following week sunday night will be um tu b'shvat so i have a lot to prepare for tubercula we're having a an unbelievable party i should i say uh by invitation only uh we really don't know what the rules will be about how many people can come but we're not planning on uh limiting we hope there won't be any limitations put it that way um but we have rabbi breitowitz is going to conduct the seder for us very mystical ideas and we have the famous heimdall he is the one if you ever listen to our videos the very first i guess 28 seconds 27 seconds is his song him singing it so it actually his song buddy he it's his artistic uh song so this is beautiful and so we have uh four cups of wine or grape juice for those who are interested so will that be will will any of that be posted on your ebony uh uh youtube i haven't decided how we're gonna do it yet i don't think we're gonna do it live for next week yeah i mean we'll definitely record some important parts maybe we'll let it go live i don't know yet but um yeah so uh we are on for part 46 next weekend but we may end up having to take a break after that before we wind down to 47 and 48 we're coming down to the very end it's been a long journey these 48 ways to wisdom but each and every one of them are like diamonds and uh we hope that you all uh uh acquire what the nugget is in each and every episode uh very important stuff and it's been a journey rabbi and i'm so thankful you've taken the time thank you to get into it with us i just want to make one more uh statement a point how grateful we here at yubanet all of our teachers all of our staff um for the response that we got for the end of the year campaign we exceeded our expectations number one we do two small fundraiser drives through the year one before passage one before circus and people give anyway all year round but i just want to really show the appreciation we're going to hazrat hashem uh hashem should give us the kawak the power to use the resources that were given to us by the community to give back right we will increase whatever it is we can possibly do to increase our um i know we call it our teaching footprint right um we're just it's just i'm i'm astounded i'm really happy by the response that we got and uh the people should feel that it's going to the right place and that we will we're transparent we're a non-profit organization we have a board and everything and we're just and if you come to jerusalem which i hope the skies will open up feel free to pop in at any time and we'll be happy to know your person hashem willing you know i've got it on my bucket list and uh you know i'd love to meet you in person there in jerusalem um someday hashem willing uh he knows so uh uh let's call her a day for today but we will be back next week folks have a wonderful wonderful week [Music] is