In Defense of Artscroll (3) Being Murdered In Public For Teaching Pshat

1:17All the yeshivot accepted this answer. Not one rabbi went against him. He sent it to the yeshivot. He didn't send it to just a few friends. The answer was sent to all the yeshivot. Giant yeshivot, Rav Ovadia, everyone accepted this answer. No one said anything against it. He wrote this answer and later published it when he released one of his many books, "Ech Tov LeYisrael." "Ech Tov LeYisrael," how good is it for Israel. It's a pasuk in the Torah. And here, I think you have Chelek 1, Chelek Aleph. I give it to, okay, so this is good to read. So in Perek Aleph, he has about 11 dapim, 11 dapim about this specific issue. He says, he calls this, this Siman Aleph in Ech Tov Yisrael. He goes into details. I'm not going to go into all the details. He says, the people that spend too much time... going and trying to do pilpulim, which is like looking into the details of the details of the details of the details, not to know what the halacha is, not to know what the secret is, but for the purpose of mental stimulation.

2:27Which is good. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But he says here that the major Chachamim have said that, to some extent, if they're not corrected, these people end up doing so much digging that they end up learning nothing. And whatever they learn is wrong anyway. One of them happens to be in this specific situation where these people go And they actually start making fun of anyone that's learning in a different shitta. He says, I heard, you know, that's what people say, I heard. They don't say, oh yeah, for sure there's Rosh HaShana in the world. So I heard, distant hearing, that there are some people that dare not only say that their way is the only way, the best way, but they make fun of any other way of learning. This is, in essence, the same exact thing that’s happening with people from yeshivot who say that anyone learning in a different way—whether it's Artscroll or any other method—is wrong. He goes on to say, "I heard such a thing." He says many things about it. And now, I'll read you a few of those things. Here we go.

3:53He goes on to explain that, first and foremost, these people need to understand that someone who speaks such things creates a lot of anguish in Shamayim (Heaven), and that anguish in Shamayim eventually leads to suffering here. For whom? For them. Because they're not keeping their mouths clean. Someone who keeps their mouth clean keeps their body away from tzarot, away from suffering. And he gives you all types of verses. He says, ultimately, the biggest issue of what's happening here is that these people are poslim. They're canceling people out. But it already says in the Gemara, he himself becomes pasul. He himself becomes not kosher by going and making fun of other people. Why is it such a big deal? Because these other ways of studying... It's good for them. It's still Torah. They're still getting to the basic understanding. They're still getting to know what's going on. They're still learning Torah for Torah's sake. They're not learning Torah for any other reason. So what you're doing is discouraging someone from learning Torah. You are causing not only Chillul Hashem, but you're causing bitul Torah. Bitul Torah. In the Gemara, it says someone causing bitul Torah brings the death penalty to the world. Not just for him, for people. It creates war in a nation.

5:20And he says a lot of other things, but one of the best things that I found out from Rabbi Efraim is that the answer to all of this doesn't even need to be in my book. It's actually in the Gemara. It's in the Gemara. Gemara Masechet Shabbat, page 63. Page 63a answers anyone that goes against a different shita of learning. Some people say, listen, you know, you should learn the Gemara the way it's written and not learn it in ArtScroll because ArtScroll gives you... English translation: You should learn the Gemara in a language you understand. Some believe you must learn it in its original language, which is a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The only thing you're supposed to learn in its original language, if possible, is the written Torah. Why? Because the written Torah has secrets within the language itself, which we'll learn about shortly. The purpose of learning the Gemara itself is to understand what it means. Not the letters, not how it's written. Bottom line, p'shat. What is Hashem saying here? What are the chachamim saying here? What is the halacha? What's happening here? Not why is it written with this letter? Why is it written with that letter? Why is this sentence structured this way? No, no, no. This has nothing to do with the Oral Torah. This is not related to it. That's the Rina Torah you're talking about. The Gemara, you learn it in a language you understand. Which, by the way, is the reason why someone like myself...

6:47It's very sad to say. Sometimes I have people that come to me. They've been learning in yeshiva for 25 years. They come for one shiur (lesson). They say, "Listen. How do you know all of it? You've only been studying for a few years. I learned in yeshiva for 25 years and I don't know 5%." I said, "It has nothing to do with me. It's all Hashem (God)." "Yeah, but still, the Gemara that you read, I read it a hundred times and I didn't understand anything." I asked, "What language are you reading it in?" Learning whatever it says, I said. Do you understand Aramaic as you understand Hebrew? He goes, "Yeah, you know, I have this, I have that." I'm like, "Yeah, but do you understand like you understand English? When you dream, when you go to sleep, what language do you dream in? Bennett, what language do you dream in? That's how you know, by the way, what your first language is. What language do you dream in every time, not just once in a blue moon? Every time, what language do you dream in? When you talk to somebody, are you talking to the fish?" You're talking to the zoo animal or some other kind, or whoever you're talking to in your crazy dream. What language are you speaking? He says, "I speak English." I said, "So you have to read in English, my friend. Yes, it's good to learn the other languages, but not if you don't understand them. If you understand the Aramaic just like you understand English, do it. But, if you're honest with yourself, if you read a whole daf Gemara and you're only almost there and you don't understand what's going on, you're wasting your time."

8:08Give me a source. Here's a source, Gemara Masechet Shabbat. In Gemara Masechet Shabbat, page 63, it says that Rav Kahana, what did Rav Kahana say? Rav Kahana said, when I was 18 years of age, I learned the entire Talmud. He learned the entire Gemara already by the time he was 18 years old, which means much more than us learning Gemara at any age because for them, to learn the entire Gemara means he already knew it completely. And he says, but I never knew... A verse never departs from the pshat (plain meaning) until now, until I learn it from a drash. Now that I learned it, but until now I never knew that there was something beyond the pshat. I never knew! I thought that whatever it says, that's what you learn. There's no secrets, there's no exegesis, and no figuring things out and secret kodesh (holiness). Just the basics. What's the chiddush?

9:09So why is this written in the Gemara that he didn't know this for so many years, for two years, for ten years, for twenty years? What's the big deal? Why is this written in the Gemara? This is written in the Gemara for a reason. The Gemara says, why is this written in the Gemara? What lesson are we learning from here? We're learning from Rav Kahana. He's trying to teach us that first, a person must learn the basic pshat, the simple understanding of what it means. Then, after he knows this and he's comfortable with the entire pshat, only then can he even consider delving deeper into the more intricate and complex interpretations. It's essential to build a solid foundation before attempting to uncover the hidden layers of wisdom within the text. Reasoning and people lean and digging in and going for this and going for that and going for the secret and trying to figure out. No, no. First, understand the entire Gemara as it is, basic. Which means you have to understand what it says, my man. You have to understand what it says. You're learning the same daf Gemara for three and a half years thinking you could ask for Hashem. You're just an idiot. Why? Because you learn one page for three years? There's still 2,711 more pages.

10:13So this is a Gemara. The most important thing is to learn the Pshat. ArtScroll gives you the Pshat. First, finish the Shas, finish the entire Gemara, basic. Once, twice, more. After you're comfortable with it, then you can start learning it in different languages, original language, this language, that language, whatever. But first, learn what it says. You can't tell me you've been learning for 25 years, and you still don't know the difference between white and blue. So all these people that go against ArtScroll, they're going against the Torah. They're going against the Chachamim. Why? Because this is just to learn the basic pshat. And if you have a wrong translation of the pshat, of the basic meaning, everything else you're going to build on top of it, as we said yesterday, is rotten, it's wrong. Because if the foundation is rotten, eventually the building you build on top of it will collapse. So here, what's the result? What's the outcome? What does Rabbi Farbstein say about such people? Where does it all stem from? He says this all stems from the people that are making fun of anybody learning Torah. Where does it stem from? It stems from two things. One, ga'ava, which means pride. They think they're better than everybody else. Apparently, they haven't read this Mishnah in Pirkei Avot, which teaches about the importance of humility and respect for others, regardless of their status or knowledge.

11:34In Pirkei Avot, it says you can't judge people in such a way and make fun of them, regardless of whether they are a Talmid Chacham, a Talmid Katan, or a Goy. It doesn't matter; you shouldn't make fun of people. This indicates a lack of Yirat Shamayim. The Yirat Shamayim, they missed. And he asks, why? So how come they don't know this Gemara? They study Gemara, they go to Yeshiva for 25 years, this and that. Why? He writes in the book that it's because they're so busy making fun of other people. so busy focusing on one daf for the entire three months, four months, five months. They only learn one daf, two dapim, three dapim, for months, that they never actually get to the sixty-third daf of Masechet Shabbat. They never read the actual Gemara because they're still busy on the first daf. So, from your pin pulling, you end up doing bitul Torah, and people end up confused. The problem is that people are putting their olam haba at risk every day for no reason.

12:47No reason. Just learn. Do what you've got to do. You don't agree with somebody else, you don't agree with somebody else. You don't have to agree with everybody in the world. But to stop making fun of people in public, why? Why? Why make fun of people in public? Put their names out there, destroy them, destroy personalities, defame them, embarrass them. Why? For what? For what? What are you gaining out of it? What benefit do you get out of it? What, everybody tells you, ha ha ha, with you? Don't you know, don't you know there's a rule in the Torah. So the Gemara asks, why is it that someone who embarrasses another person in public has no share in the World to Come? My answer says because he committed murder. What is the big deal? Imagine his face turns white, all the blood from embarrassment rushes out of his face. If he didn't have cheeks, all the blood would spill out, and he would die. All the blood from his entire body would come out of his face, so you have to thank God for giving him cheeks. You just committed murder, 100%.

13:53Yeah, okay, fine. It's no problem, but I'm missing again. So it's a big me, but I say okay, fine, no problem. But what happens here is that somebody who commits murder faces the death penalty, yet he still has a share in the World to Come. You're saying that someone who embarrasses another person in public has no share in the world to come, as it's similar to murder. So how is it that murder itself can still have Olam Haba, but embarrassing someone is said to have no Olam Haba? It's the worst punishment. So the Ohr HaChayim HaKadosh says that when someone murders, the next day, he realizes he has just killed somebody. He understands that it's not good. He has a conscience. He's still human. He's not a tiger or a lion. He's a normal person. He's not completely crazy. There's some part of him that feels bad. If he gets caught, even more so. If he gets punished or goes to jail, something happens. If he kills somebody in this country, he goes to jail for five to ten years. If he steals a million dollars, it's thirty years minimum. It's the stupidest country in the world, but that's the law, and...

15:05steals money, he goes to jail pretty much for the rest of his life. He kills five or six people, goes to jail for ten years; if he's got a good lawyer, five years. There's only a couple of states in the country that have a little bit of common sense. So anyway, the Torah asks here, why is it that the guy who murdered has Olam HaBa? He is punished but still has Olam HaBa. The guy who did something like murder — embarrassing somebody in public — has no Olam HaBa. It's like murder; if anything, it should be less. Haim HaKadosh says that the guy who committed murder feels a little bad. He suffers somewhat because he knows, at the end of the day, he murdered someone. The guy who spoke lashon hara went against the rabbi in public, went against an ordinary person in public, started embarrassing his waiter in public, embarrassed his wife in front of the kids, embarrassed the student—think of whatever he did. Not only does he not feel bad, but he... He feels he's right. He did a mitzvah. He did a mitzvah like this tembel that made the recording against me recently. What happens? What does he do? I'm comfortable saying it simply because I know no one's going to ever find him. What is he doing? He's doing it for Am Yisrael, to fight the sheker, to fight the lies. So he publicizes my name and tells everybody I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm this and I'm that and I never did this, I never did that. He murders me in public.

16:33What happened? What happened? What are you doing? What are you doing? He feels he's right. He's doing chesed. He's doing a mitzvah. He's doing something good. That's why Hashem says, such a person, if he doesn't do teshuvah, such a person, why? Because he's never going to suffer for it. He's never going to say, I'm sorry for it. Even in Elul. Elul, 40 days of teshuvah. Nothing, it's never going to be 40 years, 50 years, 70 years on earth. He feels he's not only right, he's doing chesed. He's doing a mitzvah. He's doing something good. That's why Hashem says, such a person, if he doesn't do teshuva, such a person, why? Because he's never going to suffer for it. He's never going to say, I'm sorry for it. Even in Elul. Elul, 40 days of teshuva. Nothing is ever going to be 40 years, 50 years, 70 years on earth. Every year, one should sincerely say, "I'm sorry." What is it that I'm apologizing for? What should I be sorry for? I performed a mitzvah and achieved a kiddush Hashem. I publically embarrassed Yaron Reuven, and now he knows better. I embarrassed Archie Call in public. I embarrassed all the chachamim, esteemed sages such as Rav Dovid Feinstein, Rav Chaim Kanievsky, and Rav Aharon Leib Steinman. I went against all of them, acting as if I were Moshe Rabbeinu of the generation. I claimed to make a kiddush Hashem. He's never good. Not only does he not feel regret, but he's also proud of his actions.

17:41Proud of what he did. Ben Azzai says, don't be mean to people. It starts with a small sin. It starts by being mean to the guy who just showed up to the yeshiva for the first time. It starts by being mean to the average person, whether Jew or non-Jew, rich or poor, male or female. Don't be mean. Don't be mean. It's the basic level. He's not talking about Chassidut. You have to be this, you have to be that. He goes, basic human being. Don't be mean to anyone. It's meaningless. There's nothing resourceful or productive out of it. It's only going to bring you bad. It's only going to bring you suffering. It's only going to put your Olam Haba in jeopardy. Why? never be such a person that makes fun of others or disparages their efforts. Do not reach a point where you think you're the one running the show. Why? Because everyone else will get their time to shine. Ultimately, everyone has their talents and unique contributions, and their moments of recognition will come.