Know Where You Stand Compared To The Jewish Sages

0:01Like when you see Chachamim say something and some average Joe or some average girl says, no, no, I don't agree with Rav Ovadia or Rav Chaim Kanievsky or the Steipler or whatever other Gadol is there. Or even a Talmid Chacham in a local kollel. No, I don't agree with them. I have different opinions. You explain what guided the rabbis in the Gemara. If there is one truth, how come some rabbis had different points of view and disagreed? Well, I mean, you have to understand the Gemara is not a history book where it tells you this is black, this is white, the end, and then somebody comes and says, no, no, no, it's something else. No, the Gemara is telling you how we derive... all of the information, whether it be laws or historical bits of information or different lessons of morality and so on, is from the Torah. So, in essence, the ultimate goal of the Gemara and the entire Oral Torah is to perfect servitude of Hashem. Therefore, the Chachamim are going to tell you this is the verse.

1:25...and this is the law. Sometimes it's clear as day, other times they're going to tell you there is no verse, and this is the law. Why? Because we know it from Moshe from Har Sinai, and no one's allowed to argue with that. Once something is identified as halacha l'Moshe miSinai, that's it. There's no argument; there's no debate. Other times they're going to say, this is the verse and this is what I'm getting out of it. But another Chacham is going to say, no, you cannot say that from that verse because that verse is already used for a different law. And you can't use the same verse for multiple laws. So, I have a different verse to prove that law or the opposite of that law. And in so many words, each and every one of them is going to show you how to specifically point to this: not only is this the law, but also why this is the law, how we arrived at the law or the lesson, and this is the information.

2:27and there are going to be times where they're going to say, well, this is a teiku, meaning that both of us have legitimate arguments that cannot be refuted by each other. Therefore, we don't know which one is the absolute truth, and we're going to have to wait for Eliyahu haNavi to come and tell us what is actually the conclusion. This and this are the words of the Living God. So, the Gemara is not just two different people arguing who's right and who's wrong. The Gemara is, in essence, the sages toiling into the intricate, intricate details of the Torah in order to perfect our servitude of Hashem and to make sure we all know what we have. where we got it and why it's this way, and in the process, they ask every possible question. So no one ever thinks that the argument wasn't considered, and I promise you that once a person starts learning, they start realizing very quickly that the thought process of the sages is not like any human on planet Earth that doesn't learn Torah.

3:47in any of the generations, simply the thought process of how they think and how sophisticated their thought is, is beyond the comprehension of anybody that doesn't learn Torah. In fact, one of the things that I learned about a decade ago from my Rav is something that I understood but superficially. It says that the more you learn Torah, the more you realize how much you don't know. And at the time, I understood it because when I looked at great tzaddikim like Rav Ovadia Yosef or the Rogatchover Gaon, all of the great chachamim, the Rambam, and so on, great sages whose Torah I was learning. hearing stories about them, it would upset me to see people rejecting the words of the Rambam or any of the Tzaddikim when you know you're an ignorant little nothing, and you're rejecting the Rambam. Like, look how much he wrote, look how much knowledge he consumed and published, and look how righteous he was. Look at his character traits. But again, at that time, I hadn't gone through everything yet.

4:58I scratched the surface. Ten years later, when you scratch a much bigger part of the surface, but still nothing in comparison to what's there, you actually start realizing how much you don't know. Why? Because you start getting into details that ten years ago, you didn't even know existed. You didn't even know existed. what's a mavoi and how do you make it, and all the different laws of the chatzer, all the different laws transferring things from one window to another, what if the bottom is water, why this is the case, why it's not the case, a million and a half different things that a person can learn and start realizing very quickly, number one, that they don't know anything, no matter how long they've studied. Number two, the greats not only knew this, but knew this thoroughly and much, much more because they took every one of these bits of information and published entire books and volumes explaining it and all the different intricacies that come from it. Now you start realizing, I'm just learning the little tidbit. I'm just learning that one sentence he wrote.

6:19Book, 500 pages, 1,000 pages, 2,000 pages about this thing. Like, look how much I don't know—I'm just learning this little tidbit. The Chazon Ish wrote 1,500 pages on it, and he is just one of the gedolim of this generation. Needless to say, look at the Aruch HaShulchan, look at, you know, the Rambam, look at the gemaras, the sages. So, you start realizing, the more you learn, the more you... less you know, not because you have less knowledge after learning more, but rather because the more you consume more Torah knowledge, the more you realize how much bigger the Torah is than what you thought, and the more frustrating it is to see people reject Daas Torah when they don't have Daas Torah, like when you see Chachamim say something and some average Joe or some average girl says, "No, no, I don't agree with Rabbi, uh, or the Steipler, or whatever other Gadol that's there, or even a Talmid in the local kollel. 'No, I don't agree with them, I have different opinions.'" You have no idea how frustrating that is when you realize that the comparison between

7:44A grain of sand is closer to that Gadol than the people's opinion sometimes. But the people don't understand that. And I know that half of you, if not more, don't even understand what I'm saying right now. And it's not your fault; you don't know it yet. But the reality is, the knowledge of Talmidei Chachamim, and I'm not just talking about the Gedolei HaDor, I'm talking about the Tzaddikim we have at our Beit Din, at our Kollel, one of our Tzaddikim, one of our Avreichim, and one of our Kollelim. I love Eliahu Kachlon, with no relation to Ephraim Kachlon. He's just a different tzaddik. He finishes the Shas every single year, multiple times, and he just made another siyum a couple of days ago. If you look at him, you'd see someone who looks like he's 150 years old, but he's still in his 30s—maybe late 30s, 37 or 38. But he literally looks like he's 150.

8:45...but he's just something special. Now, the amount of knowledge that he consumes in one day is more knowledge than most people are going to learn in their entire life, 70, 80 years. Now, I know that most people think that I'm exaggerating. Oh no, come on, it's not that much. That's the problem. The average person has no concept of what a real talmid chacham is. their best idea, What they compare in their mind to a Talmid Chacham is like their kids going to yeshiva and being able to recount a few stories at the Shabbat table that they heard in school. That's what people think is a Talmid Chacham. Or perhaps the rabbi of the shul who offers a few stories and some chizuk on Shabbat – they think, okay, that's what a Talmid Chacham is. People lack an understanding of what a true Talmid Chacham embodies: how much they know, how much they consume, and how much they do – it's truly mind-boggling.

9:48so when a person that does not have Torah knowledge anywhere remotely close to a Talmid Chacham, there's literally nothing more frustrating than that. The more I learn, the more I get frustrated by it because I realized 10 years ago when it was frustrating. It was because I compared that average person to that Talmid Chacham as far as what it looked like visually. He was righteous. He was a scholar. He wrote many sefarim. That's what I compared it to. I compared the superficial things. But after you delve into Torah day after day, for all the years, you start realizing more and more that the distance between them wasn't just the superficial stuff you were looking at 10 years ago, 15 years ago. No, the distance is much, much greater.

10:51It's much greater than you can possibly imagine. Why? Because once you start learning things that are beyond the scope of this lecture, you start realizing that the Torah is simply too big to imagine. And those that dedicate their life to it, are literally, like the Chazon Ish said, angels among men. They look like men, but they are 100% angels. And there's simply no way to compare that to a regular person. Even if that regular person is religious, and perhaps he even knows a couple of parashot in the Torah by heart, and he finished the Shas once or twice. Still, there's nothing to compare. And needless to say, most people don't qualify to what I just said even. are literally, like the Chazon Ish said, are angels among men. They look like men, but they are 100% angels. And there's simply no way to compare that to a regular person. Even if that regular person is religious, and perhaps he even knows a couple of parshiot in the Torah by heart, and he finished the Shas once or twice. Still, there's nothing to compare. And needless to say, most people don't qualify to what I just said even. Comparison of atomic to that is a world apart—a world. So, that's why all of those that followed the Torah scholars won. Those that didn't, unfortunately, lost. And usually, the difference between the two is ego. That's the one thing that changes. We are meant to be a light unto the nations, not to follow their misguided practices.

12:01unto the nations, not to follow their misguided practices. Remember, every Jew has to remember that he's a Jew and she's a Jew. We don't celebrate non-Jewish holidays, even if they seem harmless. It's a zilzul, disrespect to the Torah, and can lead to chilul Hashem, desecration of God's name. Stick to our holy Torah and our own holidays. That's the path of a true Jew.