DIVINE RULES: Contradictions Exist In Torah Intentionally (10 Minutes)

0:14There is no wrong answer. There are certain things in the Torah that have multiple opinions, and they're all right, even if sometimes they contradict each other. Even if one says black and the other one says white, they're both right. They're both right, and Hashem wants both of them to be in the world. Both of them studied, and even if one of them is clearly wrong, it's still considered the words of the living God. Why? Because the Torah is not like the simple secular subjects that you learn, whether it be 1 plus 1 equals 2, or 1 times 2 equals 2, or 3 minus 1 equals 2, and everything is just basic, you know, like black and white. The Torah is something living. The Torah is something that's divine. So it's not necessarily all black and white all the time. This, for me personally, was one of the most difficult things to accept throughout my teshuva because I constantly, you know, in the secular world, I studied a lot, psychology, math, sciences, and all types of things. And I was used to rules. Black, white. Black, white. Black, white. No gray. There's no gray.

1:33There's no gray. There's no, you know, one guy is up, one guy is down, and there's one guy in the middle. No, nobody in the middle. That's just theoretical. If it's theoretical, it just means it's an educated guess, which is the reason why I like to make fun of people that love these theories and accept their facts like dinosaurs lived three zillion years ago, three billion years ago, 50 million years ago, and there's a lot of theories running around, but people act as if it's all facts. It's not facts, just theories. Theories mean an educated guess, and... So for me, I was used to black and white. So when I started learning and I started seeing, like, wait, you know what, a lot of things are indeed black and white. There is a lot of black and white where yes, allowed, not allowed, allowed, not allowed. Moshe was Moshe, Yaakov was Yaakov, and so on and so forth. But there are certain things in the Torah that are more complicated, where it's not necessarily black and white. The right and the wrong are both right and... Meaning there are two opinions that contradict each other, but in some cases, they're both right. Why? Because it's a living Torah. Both Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel are right. Only in this world, we go with Beit Hillel for the most part, not all the time, but for the most part, we go with Beit Hillel. But the Chachamim say that when Mashiach comes, we're going to go with Beit Shammai. Why do we go with Beit Hillel if Beit Shammai technically is ultimately going to be the one that we follow forever? Which is much longer than the 70-80 years we're here. Why?

3:02Because for this world, Hillel is the appropriate answer. For the next world that doesn't have Yetzer Hara, Shammai is right. Shammai is more appropriate. Shammai we can't handle here. Why do we have Yetzer Hara? It's too stringent for us. Hillel is the only thing we can barely handle. Barely. We're like skidding in with Hillel. So that's the thing. So sometimes some of the Midrashim that talk about different ages, There are different opinions because there are multiple answers to the same thing. And there are certain things that we simply don't know actually, like for example the real significance behind Parah Adumah. Like, how does it work? Why is it that the Kohen who is pure makes everyone else who is impure, pure, but then after he finishes his job he becomes impure himself. What happened? Why does the purifier become impure? And why does the impure become pure? If it was just him making everyone else pure when they became from impure, fine. That's no problem. If it was that they stayed the same and he becomes impure, fine. But the fact that the same activity makes both the opposite of what they are does not make sense logically, and... everyone else that's impure into pure, but then after he finishes his job he becomes impure himself. What happened? Why does the purifier become impure? And why does the impure become pure? If it was just him making everyone else pure when they became impure, fine, that's no problem. If it was that they stayed the same and he becomes impure, fine. But the fact that the same activity makes both the opposite of what they are does not make sense logically and

4:25So how is the answer to that slow moment that says it's far from me? He doesn't know. It's far from him even with all of his wisdom. He didn't know there are certain things that are just simply divine. Simply, we're not gonna know in this world. But for the most part, there are answers for everything, and just sometimes those answers are a little bit more built up. One of the biggest reasons for that is because if everything was simple, black and white, no one would toil in Torah and... They would learn it. They would memorize it and become robots. They wouldn't just toil at it. If Mussar, for example, was simple to learn, you just have to learn it. Okay, learn. Don't be angry. Why? Anger is Avodah Zarah. Okay, I read it. Okay, I'm finished with Avodah. I'm finished with anger. Okay, don't be stingy. We're raising money. Okay, I'm gonna say how much. Okay, no problem, five thousand. No problem here, finished. I'm generous now. If Mussar was that simple, where as soon as you learned it, similar to other intellect, you would change, everyone would do it. There would be no purpose for this world. When you learn math, you go to school, you learn math. The teacher tells you forevermore one plus one will always be two.

5:45Forevermore, it will never change. If anyone tells you otherwise, you send them to a mental institution. One plus one will always be two. One times one will always be one. One divided by one will always be one. One minus one will always be zero. These rules will never change. It doesn't matter who the teacher is. It doesn't matter if he's tall, short, male, female, black, white, Indian, Hindu. That doesn't make a difference. The answers are the same. Can't change it. Nothing changes. You say, no problem. I read it. I know it. It never changes. It's stagnant. It's here. It's permanent. It becomes a tattoo engraved into your head. Now, Torah is not like that. Torah is not, you learn it, you finish, you're done. Torah is moving. Torah is dynamic. Torah is something that's applicable today, but tomorrow it will become applicable in a different way completely. You learn the parashat hashavua this year, for whatever your parasha is right now, you will find a chidush that's applicable to you right now. Next year, the same exact parasha, the same exact pasuk, the same exact line will mean something completely different to you.

7:01Because something completely different is applicable to you at that moment. It's something living. It's something dynamic, and that's what makes it divine. That's what makes it different than anything else that you'll ever have. So when it comes down to the Torah, Hashem made it this way because that's the way that will constantly keep you coming back to toil in Torah, because there's no way for you to finish it and You can read the same parsha a million times. Not a thousand, not a hundred, a million times. You can read the same parsha, the same pasuk, the same word, and it will always have some other significance. Always. If it doesn't, you haven't read it enough times.