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The Thinking Talmudist Podcast shares select teachings of Talmud in a fresh, insightful and meaningful way. Many claim that they cannot learn Talmud because it is in ancient Aramaic or the concepts are too difficult. Well, no more excuses. In this podcast you will experience the refreshing and eye-opening teachings while gaining an amazing appreciation for the divine wisdom of the Torah and the depths of the Talmud.
Every week a new, deep, and inspiring piece of brilliance will be selected from the Talmud for discussion by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH (Houston, Texas).
This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by David & Susan Marbin
00:00 - Intro (Announcement)
You are listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Thinking Talmudist Podcast.
00:13 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
All right, welcome back everybody to the Thinking Talmudist. Today, this beautiful Friday, we are going to learn a piece of Talmud in the bottom of 32a in Tractate Kedushin. We've been talking for many, many weeks, many episodes, about whether or not, not, whether or not, but how a child should be respecting their parents and perhaps how a parent should treat their child. We talked about that as well. But now we're going to talk about whether or not a father or someone else who is due honor can they renounce their honor, can they say it's okay, you don't need to honor me, you can sit in my seat, you can eat before me, you don't need to wait for me to walk in the door.
00:56
You know there's many laws, many halachas, about how to treat the man of the house. You don't walk into the house in front of them. So if you are, you know, walking into the house with the balabayis, the person who owns the house, the person who is the head of the household, you let them walk in first, why? Because it's their home, the proper thing. Halacha says they walk into their home first Also, even a homeowner, even the head of household. They walk into their home first Also, even a homeowner, even the head of household should never walk into the house in a surprise. Always knock on the door first. It could be just one little knock on the door, but there should be that one moment for a wife, for a child, to prepare themselves, to compose themselves.
01:40
Now another thing. Just, we see this interestingly from the Kohen Gadol. The Kohen Gadol, the high priest, would walk around the temple in his garments and there were bells on the bottom. Why were there bells on the bottom? Imagine they were probably a young Kohen or two that were running around playing tag. But when the Kohen comes, they should know, they should be forewarned. Don't surprise them, don't catch them. Don't surprise them. Don't catch them, don't catch them. There's no mitzvah to catch your children doing something wrong. It's probably not a good thing. Don't catch your children doing things. Let them stay positive in your eyes, because when you tell them positive, they will be positive. We spoke about this previously. If you charge your children that they're negative, they will be positive. We spoke about this previously. If you charge your children that they're negative, they'll be negative. Right, why do you lie to me? They'll lie. You say in our family we only say the truth. They'll say the truth Because they're going to live up to the standard that you expect from them, right, doctor? Doctor agrees here we go. Guys, don't argue, don't, don't argue. The doctor says All right.
02:46
Says the Gemara, rabbi Yitzchak Bar Shiloh. Rabbi Yitzchak Bar Shiloh, rabbi Rav Masnah, rabbi Rav Chizdo. Rabbi Yitzchak Bar Shiloh said in the name of Rav Masnah, who said it in the name of Rav Chizdo? Again, remember, when we say Talmud, we say Talmud. We have a great scholar of Talmud here, right? Gary is studying Talmud already.
03:10
How many times did you go through the Talmud? It's unbelievable. Every morning, going to the Dafyomi with Rabbi Nagel is really incredible. But you know what Half of the Talmud is? Just quoting names.
03:17
And the question that we've asked so many times right here is why is it so important to say oh, it is said so-and-so in the name of so-and-so. Who cares? Just tell me the facts and goodbye. Because we are all invested in truth. Everything in our Torah is about truth and if we don't have a chain of custody of where this information comes from, how do we know it's truthful? So we quote and it's very, very interesting that some say it's from so-and-so, some say it's from so-and-so or so-and-so said it in the name of so-and-so Because everything. There's no such thing as said it in the name of so-and-so Because everything. There's no such thing as anonymous sources in the Talmud, anonymous sources, no such thing. We want to know exactly who it is, because if you are invested in truth, you bring the source. Okay, ha'avsham ochal al-kvodo.
04:21
If a father renounces the honor due to him, kvodo mochol, his honor is renounced. He's allowed to say it's okay, my son, you can sit in my seat. My son, you don't need to stand up for me. My son, you don't need to tie my shoes. My son, you can eat or drink before me.
04:42
But a teacher who renounces his honor due to him, his honor is not renounced, says the Talmud here. It is a biblical command to honor a sage by standing before him. As it is written before an old man, you shall rise and you shall honor a zakein, a sage. Zakein means someone who's old. Our sages tell us. Zakein means someone who acquired wisdom, as someone who's considered a sage, which is why we say in the Pesach Haggadah that one of the great sages. It was like he was 70 years old. He was really 18 years old. Why His wisdom was so great. It was like he was a sage of 70 years old.
05:35
This mitzvah is discussed at length below in the next page of the Talmud. The reason a teacher cannot forego his honor is given below the Talmud. Now. The reason a teacher cannot forego his honor is given below the Talmud. Now continues A dissenting view.
05:49
Rabbi Yosef says Even a teacher who renounces his honor, no, his honor is renounced, as the verse states, hashem went before them by day. We find that God himself renounced his honor and led the people in the desert. Certainly, then, a teacher can renounce his honor. If God can renounce his honor, so can a teacher. Rava defends his view. He says as follows Omer Rava.
06:21
Now then, this is not a valid comparison Over there. In the case of the Almighty, blessed is he, it's His world, it's kind of Hashem's world, not kind of Completely is Hashem's world and the Torah is His. Therefore he can renounce His honor. However is his. Therefore he can renounce his honor. However, in our case, the case of a teacher, is the Torah his. That he may renounce his honor do it Meaning? The Torah that one possesses is not his Meaning. What we honor in a sage is not the person we're honoring. The Torah that he possesses is not his Meaning. What we honor in a sage is not the person, we're honoring the Torah that he possesses. He can't renounce the honor of his Torah. So let's put this.
07:16
I'll tell you an amazing story. There was a big dispute in the Bezdin, in the court of Reb Chaim Ozer Grudzinski. Reb Chaim Ozer Grudzinski was the leading rabbi in Europe. Like by miles and miles, everybody understood that his Torah, wisdom and knowledge and judgment was so great, so powerful. He was the leading sage of the generation. So all the court cases came to him.
07:48
I'll tell you two stories, two beautiful stories. Number one is that someone once came to Reb Chaim Ozer's house and he saw that Reb Chaim Ozer was again. You're talking about the leading scholar of the generation. Reb Chaim Ozer was holding on to a child's hand and onto a man's hand, and the woman was holding on to the man and child's hand and they were all dancing in a circle. This person who walks into Reb Chaim Ozer's house asks the Gabbai. He says what in the world is going on over here? I mean, let alone dancing in the middle of the day. He's dancing with a woman. What in the world is going on over here? Obviously, he wasn't holding her hand. You don't touch a woman who you're not married to. So he says let me tell you what happened. He says this father and mother came to Reb Chaim Moser the day earlier and they said to Reb Chaim Moser we want to get divorced.
08:41
We want you to put together a divorce document. Rabbi Chaim Moses says okay, no problem, do you have any children? They said, yeah, we have one child. He says no problem, come back tomorrow with the child and I will draft the divorce document. The next day came and he sits the father down, he sits the mother down and calls the child. He says come, sit on my lap. He starts talking to him and he says to him is this your father? Yes, my father. Is this your mother? Yes, this is my mother. He says do you love your father? He says yeah. He says do you love your mother? Yeah, I love my mother, I love them, I love my parents.
09:13
He says they're planning to end their marriage today and by ending their marriage it's going to start a whole dispute. The father is going to say this against the mother. The mother is going to say this against the father. It's going to be an endless struggle, an endless battle and basically you're going to lose both of your parents. The kid started crying, crying and crying and crying, and then the mother started crying and then the father started crying and they decided you know what? Let's just stay together, let's figure it out, let's work it out. So they started dancing Because now it's like a new relationship, it's a new beginning, and that was the story. So I use this as almost a philosophy on marriage. The story. So I use this as almost a philosophy on marriage.
10:10
Marriage is very important to do everything we can to work through a marriage and not just throw the white flag and say that's it, I resign divorce, goodbye, I'm out. Do everything you can if it's therapy. And there are many, many, many young couples today who are not only not guided, they are misguided in marriage. They're misguided because we have a world of media that shows a fake world of what relationships are. It shows a fake world of Hollywood where everyone is just hunky-dory, everything's exciting and everything is, and all the movies end. They walk peacefully, skipping in the sunset on the beach and everything is just perfect. They don't show the fights, they don't show the challenges, they don't show the overcoming of those challenges, how to work through it and that's how a relationship grows.
11:05
I sat with someone recently and I asked him. He was married for over 30 years and got divorced. I said to him I'm not questioning your judgment, your ex-wife's judgment. I said I just want to know did you guys fight a lot? He said we never fought. He said there was no relationship, it was a mutual convenience. They didn't fight.
11:31
Now fighting, is fighting a sign of a good marriage? Fighting is a sign of a living marriage. Two living organisms don't necessarily get along all the time. That's normal. It doesn't mean you fight and become bitter. It doesn't mean you fight and become bitter. It doesn't mean you fight and become angry. It means that there's a collision that you've. So now you have to learn to modify and make whole with it, make peace with it, and now you'll have a new challenge. And every time what you do is that strengthens the relationship. It strengthens it, doesn't weaken it. It makes it better, or it should. That means just because this is a dispute doesn't mean that it's the end of the marriage. On the contrary, it can be a strengthening of the relationship, to make it only better, to learn to overcome those challenges.
12:24
People have sensitivities. Pay attention to those sensitivities, didn't realize how much that would be annoying for you. I didn't realize how challenging that would be. Okay, work it through, talk it out, make it work, okay, but either way, the second story about Reb Chaim Meuser is, I think, more important for our topic, and that is Reb Chaim Meuser was once presiding over a court case between two publishers. The two publishers were arguing who had the rights to print the Talmud. So it was a big argument and one side was a widow and the other side and the widow is irrelevant to the story, because whoever's right is right and whoever's wrong, whoever wins wins and whoever's not right. So Reb Chaim Ezer ended up siding with the widow, for whatever reason. The other side put out, like people do today in media.
13:22
They put out a statement about Reb Chaim Ezer. He was paid off, he was this, he was that. They did a whole hit piece on Reb Chaim Meiser. He was paid off, he was this, he was that. They did a whole hit piece on Reb Chaim Meiser. Reb Chaim Meiser didn't respond. Obviously he's a very holy man.
13:39
But eventually they came to their senses and they said how can we have said such a thing about Reb Chaim Meiser? I mean, reb Chaim Meiser is like the leading sage of our generation. How in the world can we say such a thing about him? They came to ask forgiveness. Rabbi Meuser said I can't forgive you Because on my own, on my own, I'll forgive you, but I represent the Torah and I represent the Jewish people. I'm the representative of the Jewish people as the leader of the Jewish people. I'm the representative of the Jewish people as the leader of the Jewish people. I can't renounce their honor. I can't renounce the Torah's honor Mine personally, I have no problem. But the Torah and the people I represent, that's a different story and we have to be very careful. Chavetz Chaim talks about this in the laws of Lashon Hara To be very careful not to talk about different sects, right? So you have this group, that synagogue, that. Be very, very careful what you talk, because to get forgiveness from all of those people is a very difficult thing. The person has to be very careful. Yes, david, no, but it definitely is.
14:50
No, I'm not saying that a couple that's always fighting is destined for a great marriage, right, there should be an amicable resolution to disagreements. There should be, but to never have a disagreement. You're just not in the same. Look, I never have a disagreement with people. I never meet People I know nothing about. I never disagree because we have no interaction. But someone, you have interaction. You can have different ideas. Okay, we just painted the walls. We can have a different idea of what's a nice color for a wall. That means that we're engaged. Right, you can have different agreement how tall the shelves, but it doesn't make it. You understand what I'm saying. It's like okay, my dear friends, let's continue. No, no, no. This is a great question. It's a very good question. It's very important for us to understand.
15:45
But I think children today, young children who are getting married, people getting married in their late teens or early 20s, or even late 20s or early 30s, they think that uh-oh, relationship is over because we got into a fight. My rabbi would say he says he was once in yeshiva. A young married man comes in after he gets married. He's all happy, smiling, he's like everything is great. One day he comes to yeshiva and he is totally. His face is down. He looks depressed. He says what happened? He says you got into your first fight, didn't you? He says yeah. He says, mazel tov, now you got married.
16:23
You think that that when you got married was walking down the chuppah and everything is bells and whistles and everyone's dancing and everyone is singing. That's the wedding. No, no, no. The wedding is now. You're starting to build your relationship Now. You're starting to grow as a couple, because when you work through that now, you become stronger as a couple. You learn to be more sensitive to each other, more caring, more loving oh, nothing different.
16:50
So let me tell you so, just because I don't like the word arranged marriages I hate that phrase because it's not. You didn't say that. But I'm saying people say arranged marriages. There's no such thing as an arranged marriage. Let me explain to you how it works. Okay, is that, it's a suggestion that comes from a mutual friend, from a shatchan, from a matchmaker.
17:10
But the Torah says you are not allowed to marry a woman. A woman is not allowed to marry a man without them seeing each other and agreeing to marriage. It's not, like you know, in Pakistan or in Saudi Arabia, where an 80-year-old man is married by force or she's forced at the age of 9 or 12 to marry a man. That's not the same thing. Okay, very not the same thing. You are not in the Torah. You're not allowed to marry someone that you don't want to marry. If you don't want to marry them, you are not going to marry them, okay?
17:44
So any of those videos or movies or Netflix series that say, oh, I was just put into a marriage and I was forced to marry this guy, that's not true. It's not true, okay, it's a total lie. You are not allowed to by the Torah, you're not, by the way, under the chuppah. You know what I say when I arrange a wedding, when I'm there officiating a wedding, I look at the guy, I look at the girl, the bride and groom. I'll say do you want to marry this guy? Do you want to marry this gal? Yes or no? This is your chance to say no and we'll end this right here. Right, but they have to say that they want to marry one another. No, but there was a guy actually I was under the chuppah, I was a witness under this chuppah and the rabbi turned to her and said do you want to marry him? She's like, eh, okay.
18:35
Now, I don't know if she said it for effect, for humor, or if she said it. You know real, but they're still married many, many years later. I, you know, I was. This is going back. I was in Israel for this wedding. I was a witness under the chuppah. It was very funny. The whole place laughed.
18:51
But you know, maybe there is something there, maybe there is Thank God. Today they have, I think, three or four children and they're happily married. But it definitely is something that needs to be known. Just because they were let's call it prearranged or set up in a way they didn't just meet happenstance in a bar. They met with a criteria of this is what he's looking for, this is what she's looking for, someone puts them together, they investigate, they do a lot of investigation, a lot.
19:23
Now, it's not a whole colonoscopy, but it is a real research that you need to do to make sure that this person that you're about to date, that you know all the information, whether it be health issues, whether it be family issues, whether it be other things, behavioral issues. You need to know what's going on with the other person and you're not going to be able to tell that until you're actually living with that person for some amount of time. And sometimes, like my wife and I, from the day I heard her name to the day we were married was less than three months. Less than three months, right? So from the day we met to the day we got engaged, then there's no need for a long engagement. Better to date for a longer period of time than to be engaged for a longer period of time. Why, once you decide you want to get married, just get married. Like, why suffer, just get married, okay. So, either way, it may not be enough time to know all the things that are going on in their lives. So you do your research and you call friends and you call teachers and you call principals and roommates and you find out information. The idea is not to find out negative things. You want to know what's really going on with this person and to know is this person healthy, is there any skeletons in the closet and is there anything I should be aware of? Again, not because you're suspecting there is something, but you don't want to be surprised later that you just didn't know about it.
20:48
Okay, so now we continue with talking about whether or not they have marriage issues as well. Yes, there are. There are, even though they're set up and even though their families are very identical or similar or have similar again, any two human beings that come from different lives. They come from different families, different things that are normal. I tell this to my children all the time. I say you think that everything I do is normal, because this is what you grow up in, this is the life you live.
21:19
You get married and your husband or wife are going to say that's the craziest thing I've ever seen. I said just be ready for it. I said everyone thinks that their family is normal and everybody else is crazy. I said your husband or wife, right, my sons or my daughters, right, may think that everything we do the way we celebrate Hanukkah and the way we have the Pesach Seder and the way we do this and the way we do that they might think we're crazy, and maybe we are, but this is us right. But just to understand that it goes the other way as so, but just to understand that it goes the other way as well, I want them to understand that their spouse is not necessarily going to fit into a box exactly the way they imagine it. Oh, in our family, this is what we do. So I'm going to just find the guy or the gal that I want to marry and just put them into that box. No, you're going to start your own life together, which is why a brother and sister do not get married. Relatives do it not? Close relatives should not be why Hashem wants new creations, new worlds to be created. Don't marry someone who's exactly like you. Find someone who's different than you and make a new, beautiful world together. Okay, so Rava retracts his argument. Hodar Amarava.
22:33
Rava then said Ein Torah Dilehi, yes, a teacher's Torah is his own. Dixiv so Rasa, so Yehegei, yom HaVololah and his Torah. He meditates day and night because the Torah says in Joshua, the Torah says that one should study Torah all day and night. Whose Torah? Your Torah? Make the Torah yours, which is a very important concept, that the Torah shouldn't be left, shouldn't be put in the corner. Yeah, I have my beautiful library here and that's my Torah. No, no, no. The Torah should be in here, not on the shelf. Torah should be within me and make it my Torah, make it your own Torah. Rava's conclusion is that a teacher can renounce the honor due to him. The Gemara questions whether this is in fact his opinion. Ain't he Is this, so that this is what Rava says? V'ho Rava mashki behi luladivrei.
23:33
Rava was once serving drinks at the wedding celebration of his son, v'da le'kasa l'rav papa, l'rav hunah berei l'rav Yeshua. And when he offered a cup to Rav Papa and to Rav Hunah, the son of Rav Yeshua, v'kamu mik, to Rav Papa and to Rav Huna, the son of Rav Yeshua, they stood up before him in his honor. He's giving out wine or drinks at his son's wedding and they stood up in honor. Why? Because he was a great scholar. And when he served Rav Mari and Rav Pinchas, the son of Rav Chizda, and they did not stand before him, rava took umbrage, saying rhetorically these rabbis Rav Mari and Rav Pinchas, who do not rise, they are rabbis. But those rabbis Rav Papa and Rav Huno who did rise for him, they are not rabbis. But those rabbis Rav Papa and Rav Huno, who did rise for him, they are not rabbis. So we see here that he was very comfortable not being honored by the other rabbis. So we see that you could forego your honor.
24:49
So although Rav HaRav renounced his honor by serving drinks, he believed that honor still should be accorded him. This contradicts his own conclusion earlier that if a rabbi renounces his honor, the renouncement is effective. So what do you do here with this contradiction? So, before resolving this problem, the Gemara records a similar incident. Another incident Rav Papa was serving drinks at the wedding celebration of his son, abba Mar, and when he offered a cup to Rabbi Yitzchak, the son of Rabbi Yehuda, rabbi Yitzchak did not stand before him. Rav Papa took offense to this. The Gemara now resolves the contradiction in the utterances of Rava and he says as follows Although Rava renounced his honor at his son's wedding celebration, nevertheless they even though he said it's okay, it's okay, I forego my honor they should have accorded him some token of honor on their own.
26:05
They should have understood to have honor for him. That means, even though he said it's okay, still they should have accorded proper honor. Now what we need to understand here is that honor is something which you give value. Honor means value when you value something. You give it. Honor when we value ourselves. That means that we have a respect, a dignity for our own worth. If a person doesn't have self-respect, then they carry themselves in a way that's unbecoming.
26:44
I was once giving a whole series on the topic of honor and dignity and two things happened reformed, conservative, orthodox reconstruction as temples, and we would talk about these different character traits and we talked about honor and dignity. Then one week I came in and they said, rabbi, you won't believe what happened. You talked about how we should have proper decorum for the synagogue there's a Torah scroll there but for ourselves to carry ourselves with a proper menschlichkeit, to have a proper decorum, a proper dignity, they said. On Friday night the rabbi walked in in shorts and a t-shirt and flip-flops and he was so excited that he had come all the way from Galveston special for the service and he was like hoping people would praise him, like wow, you're such a hero. When they had just finished a class talking about honor and dignity. And they're like this guy has no self-worth. This person, right, is okay. That was a very interesting story.
28:08
But I had another story during that same period of time we're going to finish in one minute that someone asked me. He said do you think I carry myself with proper honor and dignity? And I told the person this is someone I learned with privately. I said, yes, you absolutely do. You're always dressed properly, you walk around, you make sure your car is clean. You're always dressed properly, you walk around, you make sure your car is clean, you carry yourself with a proper dignity. He's like wow, I said, but till you open your mouth. Once you open your mouth, it's a toilet bowl and he asked me. He says no, no, be honest with me. I said that was.
28:44
I said someone like of your stature who has employees and has a big company, right, it's not proper, it's unbecoming for you, for your status, to use the language that you use. It's not. Is it a bad thing? Does it make you a bad person? That's not for me to judge, but it's definitely not dignified. I said you walk around, you walk the walk, but you don't talk the talk, and that's a problem. And every person needs to be careful to ensure that their inside and their outside match. And if we are a vessel of the Torah, we should carry it around appropriately as a badge of honor and a badge of dignity, and not the opposite. God forbid. My dear friends, thank you so much. Have an amazing Shabbos. Welcome to the new Torch Meyerland campus. It is an honor and a privilege. Thank you so much. Have a magnificent Shabbos.
29:41 - Intro (Announcement)
You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by Torch, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston will be on a podcast produced by Torch, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.