Parashat Toledot is not a storybook. The Zohar HaKadosh in Parashat Beha'alotcha is very critical of those who think the Torah is just telling stories, anecdotes, and episodes of the tzaddikim (righteous people). The Zohar HaKadosh levels a very severe curse—I guess there’s no way to say it—against those who relegate the Torah to mere stories and don’t believe there are things underlying these stories that we can learn from.
The word Torah means instruction, coming from the word Moreh (teacher). That means every Pasuk (verse) in the Torah has to be a lesson to us. It has to teach us something and guide us in some way or form.
In this week’s parasha, we have a great challenge: to unravel what we might consider very inconsequential, even though the Torah spends a lot of ink and a lot of pesukim talking about Yitzhak Avinu and the wells he’s digging. Wells. We don’t question whether he dug the wells, and we don’t doubt the Torah’s veracity. He dug wells. But we can’t understand why the Torah would feel that this is important information to tell us.
I mean, Yitzhak Avinu clearly was Kodesh Kodashim (the holiest of the holy). He had the status of a Korban (offering). He wasn’t allowed to leave Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel). He is the Korban of the Akedah (binding of Isaac). His zechut (merit) is still meriting us today. But the Torah has no problem telling us that he was digging wells. Clearly, he didn’t work for the water department, and the Avdi wasn’t a plumber. It doesn’t seem that he needed all this water, because we’re going to see that he digs a lot of wells. You might dig one or two wells for your family, but the Torah goes out of its way to tell us about them in great detail.
I struggled with this episode for many years, trying to get something out of it. I’ll read the text a little, just to get a flavor. The Torah tells us that all the wells that Avraham Avinu had dug, the Philistines stopped up and filled with dirt. So what did Yitzhak do? It seems that in those days they used to give wells names. Avraham Avinu named them, and Yitzhak Avinu called them by the same names his father had given them. That doesn’t tell us the names, but it seems the names were known. It doesn’t tell us how many wells there were. The Mepharshim (commentators) say that it has to be at least two, and v'chol is three, so they say Avraham Avinu dug three wells, and Yitzhak Avinu unclogged them after the Pelishtim (Philistines) stopped them up.
Then the Pasuk says the servants of Yitzhak get to the Nahal, the river, and find a well of living water. Then, of course, there’s a fight over who the water belongs to. In the olden days, how did I learn it? Water was a commodity, so you fought over it. Yitzhak Avinu calls the well, “Vayikra shem ha-be'er Esek” (He called the name of the well Esek). Esek (quarrel) means something like a quarrel or a tumult; there’s a dispute, so he called it “Dispute.” That’s the name of the well. Not the warmest name for a well. But then again, we don’t name wells. If I went to your house, saw you had a water cooler, and asked, “What’s the water cooler’s name?” it wouldn’t have a name. What’s your dog’s name? A dog has a name. A dog’s name is Waldo, but the water cooler doesn’t have a name. Here, they named the wells. The Torah tells us the name, and I say, “Who cares? This is a book that’s teaching me a lesson.” Oh, he called it Esek. Now he can sleep tonight.
So he digs another well, and, of course, they fight again. Deja vu all over again. This time it seems to be a deeper argument, so he calls the second well Animosity, Hatred. He digs yet a third well. Good news: they didn’t fight over the third well, so he calls it Expansion. He says, “We have finally expanded our position, and we are flourishing in the land.”
It’s not done. There is one more episode. Abimelech comes along and makes a peace treaty with Yitzhak, similar to what he did with Abraham, and they have a whole ceremony. They eat and drink—of course, the Goyim (non-Jews) have to drink something—and then they make a shavua (oath): “Vayashkimu baboker vayishavu ish vayishavu ish le'achiv” (They rose early in the morning and swore, each man to his brother). They swear to each other that they can have peace.
“Vayehi bayom hahu vayavo'u avdei Yitzhak vayagidu lo al odot ha-be'er asher chafaru” (That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug). “Vayomru lo matzanu mayim” (They said to him, “We have found water”). We found water. So that’s number seven: the three of Avraham, the three of Yitzhak, and this is the seventh well. The Pasuk then says that’s an appropriate name. He calls the seventh well “Seven,” and that’s where you get the name of the city in Israel today. It’s called that because that’s where the seven wells were, and it’s an appropriate name. Again, if I’m naming the city, that’s one of the utilities it had—water—but I’m sure there were other necessities in the city as well. There was a supermarket, a bank, a post office, a saloon. But he names the city “Seven Wells City.” Again, it sounds very incidental: seven wells, and you call it Be'er Sheva (Well of Seven).
Just a side point, to clear this up before we go further. We have to get a lot of things out of the way before we make our journey into this well business. It seems that Yitzhak invents Be'er Sheva. This is his patent. He names the town Be'er Sheva, although, if you remember, Avraham did this already. I had a problem with it. I go back to Perekh Chaf Aleph and see that Avraham Avinu is also dealing with Abimelech, and they need to make a peace treaty. The Pasuk says they swear, they make a shavua: “You don’t touch my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I won’t touch yours.” That’s fine. So Avraham Avinu calls the place Be'er Shava. That’s where they made the shavua. I’m wondering: Yitzhak, with all due respect, your father already named the city two parashiyot ago. They didn’t have to change the signs or the chamber of commerce. It was already called Be'er Sheva. That was the name Abraham gave it. So what’s Yitzhak’s Chiddush (novel insight)?
So Hatam Sofer makes a very important observation. He says Abraham did not call it Be'er Sheva. Abraham called it Be'er Shava, and it was Yitzhak who changed the name from Be'er Shava to Be'er Sheva. We always thought it was some grammatical issue, but Hatam Sofer says no: that was a different name for the same place. Avraham Avinu wasn’t naming it after wells. In his time, especially, it wasn’t seven wells. He named it after the shavua. After the oath, he called it Be'er Shava. Now Yitzhak Avinu, after he has the seven wells, comes along and changes it from Shava to Sheva.
Hatam Sofer notes that from Avraham’s time, any time the Torah calls this town by name, it calls it Be'er Shava. After Yitzhak Avinu changes the name, it’s always called Be'er Sheva. So clearly there’s a difference between Shava and Sheva. That’s just an incidental point about the name of the city. But it doesn’t explain all the energy being expended, or why the Torah tells us what he did. Why do I care so much about the wells?
The Ramban tells us one of his famous principles, a bit of a shita (approach) that he can’t say enough times: “Maaseh Avot Siman Labanim” (The deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children). He’s going to tell us: listen, you have to learn the stories of the Avot (forefathers) on two levels. You have to learn them in the microcosm and then in the macrocosm. The micro is what happened to them, what they did. But you have to know that their lives and episodes would plant a seed that would eventually germinate into Jewish history. Their personal lives become our public lives. It’s almost as if everything they did created a dominant gene, and the dominant gene eventually came out somewhere in the DNA of Klal Yisrael (the Jewish people). Whenever you study Maaseh Avot, you always have to say, “Okay, this is what happened,” and then try to draw a line: when did it come out in the children? When did the DNA show the episode in its macro version?
He says this story of the well is no different. So don’t think for a minute that Yitzhak Avinu worked for the sewer department or the water department, the water board. Yitzhak Avinu was involved in very deep things. It has nothing to do with wells, although that’s what it seems on the surface. These were tremendous yesodot (foundations) that would be among the greatest things to happen in Klal Yisrael.
The Ramban says there are three wells, at least, that Yitzhak Avinu was involved in. The first well represents the first Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple). Oho, oho, the first Beit HaMikdash. In the Torah it’s referred to as Be'er Mayim Chayim, a well of living water. Jerusalem is a city where the Jewish people would come for spiritual life. The heartbeat of Jerusalem is the Temple. When Yitzhak Avinu was digging the first well, it had all the Kavanot (intentions) of the first Beit HaMikdash in it, and he reaches Be'er Mayim Chayim. The Temple is built.
But anybody who knows what the Gemara says in Yoma, on page 9, knows that something happened in the times of the first Beit HaMikdash that would eventually cause its destruction. There was a fight. History now: Shlomo HaMelech is king, and he builds the first Beit HaMikdash. He has a child called Rechavam. At that point there is one kingdom, Malchut Beit David. After that, the kingdom splits. The leadership of Klal Yisrael splits into Malchut Beit David and the Malchei Yisrael, and now there are factions, two sides. You have the kings of Israel on one side, there’s friction between them, and now there’s a divide in Klal Yisrael.
The Gemara says that the divide, at least in the times of the first Beit HaMikdash, was limited to the higher echelons, the leaders of the people. They were involved in the struggle over the split of the kings, and eventually, because of that struggle, the Temple was destroyed. Yitzhak Avinu predicts that—or the Torah predicts it—after he reaches Be'er Mayim Chayim, the Torah immediately says, “Vayehiy rav,” who fights in this first well? “Ro'ei Gerar im ro'ei Yitzhak” (The herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen). The shepherds are the leaders, the ones who lead the people. In the first Beit HaMikdash, the machloket (dispute) is between the shepherds and Yitzhak Avinu. He says, “We’re going to call it Esek.” Esek is a dispute that you understand. You understand why they’re fighting. You understand it’s about power. You understand what each side is saying. It’s not good to have a dispute, but you understand it. Esek means a give and take, but at least you understand it.
So he says, nonetheless, it was destroyed. “Vayachperu be'er acheret” (They dug another well). We’ll continue the Ramban’s thought. Be'er acheret would then be the second Beit HaMikdash. Yitzhak Avinu is now laying the foundations of Bayit Sheni (Second Temple). In Bayit Sheni, the same Gemara on daf tet says that the machloket that was on the higher tier had trickled down to the people. It’s always like that. The machloket starts with the rabbis and then moves to the students, and once it moves to the students, it becomes a full-blown war. You know, Hillel and Shammai only argue three times in the Mishnah. You can count their arguments on your fingers. I mean, that was with the rabbis. Hillel and Shammai, everybody thinks, “Oh, Hillel and Shammai only argue three times.” Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel argue on every page. That’s what happens. The rabbis have a little dispute, but the students take it to a different level.
That’s what happened here in the Beit HaMikdash. Initially it was the shepherds of Gerar and the shepherds of Yitzhak, but in the second Temple, it says, “Vayarivu.” Now it has nothing to do with shepherds. Everybody was fighting: “Vayarivu.” Yitzhak sees that this is a different argument, and he calls it Sitnah (hostility). Sitnah is an argument that’s inexplicable. It’s just what we would call baseless hatred, which is the cause of the second destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. So the sinat chinam (baseless hatred) is already in this episode of Maaseh Avot.
If I may add, the Chida says this: the second Beit HaMikdash would be destroyed by the Romans, by Titus. They are the grandchildren of Esav. Every nation has a guardian angel. The guardian angel of Esav in Rome is the Satan himself, the Malach HaMavet (Angel of Death). Satan himself is the angel of Esav, Samech-Mem (Samael), as they call him.
The Pasuk says, “Vayikra shemah Sitnah” (He called its name Sitnah), says the Chida. The first three letters of Sitnah are Satan, because the Satan himself would send his diplomats on earth to come along and destroy the Beit HaMikdash. The Pasuk then says, “Vayikra shemah Sitnah.” He moves a little away. “Vayikra shemah Sitnah.” He builds another; he digs another well. Good news. That refers to the third. The third will be a time of peace. He’s going to call it—he calls it Expansion. He says, “Look, now there’s going to be a time of expansion.” Exactly what the Gemara says: when Mashiach (Messiah) comes, they build the third Temple. All the exiles are going to come to Israel. How is the land going to fit everybody? The Gemara says Israel is like an elastic band. It stretches, like the skin of a deer: you put it on the deer and it’s able to stretch and fit it; you take it off the deer and it constricts. So the Pasuk says that when we build the third Temple, the land is going to start to expand. God is going to expand the land, and we’ll multiply.
Therefore, this is a tremendous insight. Read it as if he’s digging wells. The Ramban says, “Put that to the side. You’re not digging wells; he’s building Batei Mikdash.” That means that if Shlomo is able to build the first Beit HaMikdash, it’s only because Yitzhak Avinu was doing something in that well. I don’t know the Kavanot, the intent, or all the different tefillot (prayers) he made, but that was the DNA of Bayit Rishon (First Temple). The DNA of Bayit Sheni is in the second well, and the DNA of the third Beit HaMikdash is in the third well. The good news is that if anybody was skeptical about the third Beit HaMikdash, you don’t have to be skeptical anymore. Whatever he said about the first two wells happened, to the T. Therefore, he was right about the first two Beit HaMikdash, so you can rest assured that the third Beit HaMikdash is going to be right as well.
Some observations of my own, if I may. In the first well, it says “Vayachperu.” That’s plural. I said it made sense. The first Beit HaMikdash was built by Shlomo. I think he had 60,000 workers building the Beit HaMikdash, so it’s “Vayachperu.” The second Be'er says “Vayachperu” again. That’s plural. The second Beit HaMikdash was built by Herod, and he had thousands of workers. The third well, the Pasuk says “Vayachpor.” Vayachpor is singular. We know the tradition that the third Beit HaMikdash isn’t going to have too much intervention in it. It’s going to come down already prefabricated. It’s going to be built by God in heaven, like we say in the tefillah, “Just show us the building.” The building is going to be made by God. Furthermore, in the third well, it’s the only time Yitzhak Avinu mentions God’s name. It’s there that he says it, because the third Beit HaMikdash is going to be built by God Himself. So it’s all there.
Those are just some quick observations. I also made a point that the Ramban doesn’t mention, but we can obviously ask: that answers three of the wells. Hakam, what about the seven? There were seven wells, but once the Ramban puts us on this mahalach, we understand it very well. If I’m not mistaken, Hatam Sofer says—Hatam Sofer counts that there were seven temples. Some of them served as the Temple in the Beit HaMikdash, and some were transient, some were tabernacles. Seven of them. You have the Ohel Moed in the desert, which eventually would become the same Ohel Moed in Gilgal when the Jewish people came into Eretz Yisrael. So that’s one. You also have Shiloh, where Hannah prays for Shmuel. You have Nov, which is Ir HaKohanim (City of the Priests). You have Giv'on, where the Mishkan was as well. And then you have Bayit Rishon, Bayit Sheni, and the third Beit HaMikdash. So the seven wells represent all seven locations where the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) would rest.
If that’s the case, it also answers my original question: why would he name the city after the seven wells? Because that is the most significant part of the city. It’s not incidental. He’s not naming it after seven water tanks. He’s naming it after seven places where the Shekhinah would rest over the course of Jewish history. That’s something to name the city after, to the extent that he changes the name from Be'er Shava and upgrades it to Be'er Sheva, to commemorate or remind us of the seven mekomot hakedoshim (holy places) where the Shekhinah would rest over the course of history. That’s the Ramban.
It got me excited, because now we know something is deep. But until you see it, you’re not convinced. Now you know there’s something here. HaKadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He) is amazing, as I always tell you. When it comes to this shiur (lesson), it’s because of the siyata d'shmaya, the divine assistance in this shiur. I see it on a weekly basis. The way the shiur works is, usually on Sunday I scan the parasha and zone in on the topic I’m going to pick. That takes a day in itself: What are you going to talk about this week? Boom. So on Sunday I already said I’m talking about the wells. All right, Monday the Ramban comes to me, which is easy to find. You have to be a genius to find the Ramban. That’s the main piece on the Be'er. Then you start to look there, and you find the Chida, the Hatam Sofer. You pick up a little tidbit along the way, but you’re waiting for the petek (note) to come from heaven and land on your desk. You know the shiur is Thursday night, so it has to land before Thursday night.
This morning in the shiur, some of our members who were in the synagogue—one of our Friday members came to the synagogue and said, “I know you’re about to give a shiur. I’d like to present you with a new book.” He presented me with the book called Divrei Shlomo, written by the early Bobover Rebbe, Shlomo Halberstam, Av Beit Din Kodesh Bobov. The book just came out, the Kodesh Man Hizvan, it’s not Tafshin Ein Chet, so the ink is still wet on the book. He said, “I know you like that dynasty and their ideas, so I figured I’d come and deliver you the book.” I said, “Okay.” Now I know it already. I said, “This is from God. I don’t know what’s in the book, but if the guy’s coming to deliver it to me on Thursday, he’s got to talk about the wells in the book. He’s got to talk about the wells, because this is the petek.” The petek that came a little late this week—late this week—but nonetheless it came. So I had to scramble immediately to put this in order and look right away. As he’s standing in front of me, I said, “Where’s the book? Oh, but it doesn’t have a lot.” He said, “What are you looking for? It’s a new book. You don’t know where?” I know what I’m looking for. He must be talking about the wells.
Sure enough, here’s the piece. He gave this talk. They even give you the history of when he gave the talk, including an unclear event or date. So that was for this slave. Okay, gave it a—so that was for this—Then comes an unclear description of the gift and birthday, ending with “who’s 88.” This 88th birthday, this was the present the Rebbe gave the congregation. Usually it should be the opposite: the congregation should get the Rebbe a present, but he gave them this gift. So I’ll do the same thing. I didn’t get any presents from the congregation either. My birthday was last week, as you know, so no problem. No, I don’t hold it against anybody, but I’ll deliver this present as well. It’s okay, it’s okay. There’s always next year.
The Pasuk starts, and he’s so bothered: What is this? It’s Be'er Mayim Chayim. Listen, they found water. What is this Mayim Chayim? Today they have the seltzer they make over there, these guys. They call it Be'er Mayim Chayim. That’s the plagiarism. They’re taking it from the Pasuk. And that’s not Be'er Mayim Chayim. Trust me, that’s not Be'er Mayim Chayim. But what is Mayim Chayim? It’s a strange terminology. Living water! Water is living? Yeah, I guess if you’re a biologist, your tummy, there's organisms in the water, the protons, the neutrons, electrons, molecular activity. There’s a science class over here? If that’s the case, everything is living. The tissue box is living too. The steak is also basar chayim. What is this Be'er Mayim Chayim?
He’s bothered. He says, “Ki chol be'er hu be'er Mayim Chayim?” Every be'er is Mayim Chayim. I guess water is a life-sustaining item. All of a sudden, this well is the Be'er Mayim Chayim? He then says that to understand this, he found Tikkunei HaZohar. Tikkunei HaZohar says this well they fought over—the argument here was about the oral tradition. That’s the Zohar HaKadosh. When the Zohar HaKadosh sees these words, they’re buzzwords. Mayim always refers to Torah, and Chayim is clearly a Torah terminology. So when the Zohar HaKadosh sees water that is life-sustaining, it says that it is synonymous with one of the Torahs we have. Namely, the Zohar HaKadosh believes that the synonym of Torah Sheba'al Peh (Oral Torah) is Be'er Mayim Chayim. Therefore, Yitzhak Avinu was involved in something to do with Torah Sheba'al Peh, which, incidentally, is the Gemara, the Talmud, the Zohar, the Midrash, Torah Sheba'al Peh. There are two Torahs, as you know. We have Torah Shebichtav (Written Torah), that’s in the ark over here, and then you have Torah Sheba'al Peh, which you’ll find upstairs in the library, about 10,000 books. Torah Sheba'al Peh serves as the interpretation of the Torah Sheba'al Peh.
As all of you know, the Torah Shebichtav was given as an encrypted book. It’s a sealed book. It’s written in Morse code. It has no interpretations. It’s written in shorthand. Torah Sheba'al Peh is the oral tradition that explains what every Pasuk means. If you see a secretary taking shorthand, you see her writing one word here, one word there, two words there, and an amateur reader can’t understand what’s being said. But she knows every word has a whole story to it. When she writes it out in longhand, that one page of random words turns into 18 pages of notes.
The Torah was written in shorthand as well. The interpretation of that shorthand was given to Moshe Rabbeinu as an oral tradition. It was oral. It wasn’t written down. So when Moshe Rabbeinu taught the Torah to the Jewish people and says, “Moshe kibel Torah miSinai” (Moses received the Torah from Sinai), he transmitted it. He didn’t have to transmit the written law. That’s a book. Here’s the book. You don’t have to transmit that; read the book. What he transmitted was his tradition about what the book means. That tradition has been handed down from father to son, and from rabbi to student, to the present day. That’s what we do here on Thursday nights. We’re continuing to pass down that tradition, that oral tradition.
A lot of it has been written down, but a lot of it has not. A lot of it is just, what did your father do? What did your grandfather do? What was the—That’s how the Torah works. So the Zohar HaKadosh refers to that section of Torah, the Be'er Mayim Chayim, and for whatever reason Yitzhak Avinu was involved when he was digging that well. He was establishing Torah Sheba'al Peh. A thousand years later, at Sinai, we would receive Torah Sheba'al Peh. But the Maaseh Avot of Har Sinai is this Be'er. When he’s digging the Be'er, oh, and there’s Masechet Berachot, and Shabbat, and Eruvin, and the Rashi, and Tosafot, and the Rif, and the Rambam, oh, everything’s in this—the Zohar, the Midrash, all these digging out, and all the Mayim Chayim. This is Yitzhak Avinu involved in creating the tradition through this Be'er.
The great rabbi, the—and nobody is more suited to do this than Yitzhak Avinu. Why does Avraham Avinu get involved? He dug wells, he didn’t hit—he didn’t hit. Yitzhak Avinu hits. Yaakov, Yaakov is the one of Torah. Yaakov is yoshev ohalim (dwelling in tents). It’s true, but nobody is more suited to hit water than Yitzhak Avinu. Why? It’s an old question everybody always asks. I’m asked this question every year. “Rabbi, in your opinion, Akedat Yitzhak, who’s better in the Akedah?” They both passed. Avraham gets an A+, Yitzhak Avinu gets an A+. They pass with flying colors. It wasn’t easy for Avraham to put a knife to his beloved son, and it wasn’t easy for the beloved son to have himself bound on the Mizbeach (altar), willing to give his life. They both willingly did it; they both get an A plus. So they always ask me, “Who’s better?” I’ll tell you what Hatam Sofer says. Hatam Sofer says, “Yitzhak, you’ve got to give him an A plus plus.” Why? He says, “Abraham heard it from God. You know, God, I told Abraham.” So he heard it. That’s Torah Shebichtav. Whereas Yitzhak only knows about the Akedah from a tradition. He heard it from his father. His father comes along and says, “This is the mesorah (tradition) I received from God.” That’s called Torah Sheba'al Peh.
Now, if I’m Yitzhak, I say to my father, “Dad, I have no doubt that you’ve got the traditions. God definitely spoke to you. But I think He meant Yishmael instead of Yitzhak. He got the wrong name.” It’s hard to imagine. God is going to tell you to go—and then you start to question yourself. You say, “What kind of tradition is that?” And the Yetzer (inclination) starts to work on you. You know, my father’s 137 years old. The mind plays games at 137. You start to forget what you ate for breakfast. You start to see things that don’t exist. So maybe my father’s hallucinating a little. “You know, take me and—where’s the korban? I’m the korban?” I would have politely said, “Excuse me, Dad, I’m going to be right back. I have to go to the restroom,” and run for my life.
Yitzhak Avinu, on the other hand, it’s all a tradition. This is the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) I have. “I heard a prophecy. This is the way we understood it. This is the way I got it. I’m giving it over to you, my son.” What does Yitzhak say? “Amen.” So Yitzhak Avinu is the perfect model. He’s the paradigm. What does it mean to accept a tradition, to accept the mesorah? You earned the job. You passed the test. They give him the shovel. You earned it. It’s not stam (just). So he goes and starts to dig. This is something for which he gets the reward: his loyalty to that. Nobody can give the tradition and show loyalty to it like Yitzhak Avinu.
Now the Rebbe says something really amazing about Torah Sheba'al Peh. I was arguing about this, if you saw this week in the shul. One of the rabbis from Israel came. You know, they would just come and collect money, but they come and argue as well. He came and argued, of course after he collected all the money. He was arguing: Is Torah Sheba'al Peh chesed (kindness), or is it din (judgment)? How do you look at Torah Sheba'al Peh? So I told him what I said: “You’re wrong.” No problem. I called up the bank and cancelled the check. But the point is, Torah Sheba'al Peh, the Mekubalim, all right, is all chesed. Tremendous chesed comes down when you learn Torah Sheba'al Peh. Torah Sheba'al Peh is Gemara, the Talmud, and all that.
One of the things the Ben Ish Chai brings down about Torah Sheba'al Peh: he says there are 13 middot (attributes) of rachamim (mercy). These are the 13 attributes of mercy. In the Siddur, in Shacharit, before Baruch She'amar, on the pages we skip, it says the name of Rabbi Yishmael. Rabbi Yishmael says that to study Torah, meaning Gemara, Talmud, you need to know 13 principles. Remember when you were young and they taught you the geometric theorems? There were 10 or 11 geometric theorems. If you know these theorems, you can solve any geometric problem. You know, they taught you the transitive property: A equals B, B equals C, so A must equal C. That was one of them, and they disproved a few of them since we learned them. But every education or field has its postulates, as we call them. Talmud has its postulates. There are 13 principles, and if you know these principles, you can extract knowledge from the Talmud.
The Mekubalim say that any time one studies the Talmud, he’s basically using the 13 middot, and those 13 middot activate the 13 middot of rachamim. So any time you’re using one of the principles—which is probably every day when you learn Talmud, because on every page of Gemara you need to use the rules—you’re taking another tool out of the toolbox to extract what you’re learning. Every time you take out a tool, there’s another box next to you, a middah of mercy that corresponds to it, so it brings out tremendous rachamim.
Of course, we know the four ministering angels: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel. The Mekubalim say Gemara, rashei teivot (initial letters): Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel. When a person studies the Talmud, he brings the angels down. But it goes even further. He says that when God brought the Torah down, it says He brought it down, “Mimino esh dat lamo” (From His right hand came a fiery law for them). On His right hand. The right hand always represents mercy. The Torah came down in a fire, “Mimino esh.” And what does it say He brought down in this fire? “Dat lamo.” Dat is the law to them. He brought the law down to them, “Dat lamo.” The Mekubalim say that “Dat” has the same letters as the word Talmud, in His right hand, in a fiery way. The Talmud was brought down. So clearly those who study it and learn it activate a tremendous amount of chasadim.
The Rebbe actually quotes a Pasuk in Tehillim 119. David HaMelech says in Pasuk peh-chet, 88—maybe he said that because it was his birthday anyway—“Kechasdecha chayeni, ve'eshmerah edut picha” (Give me life according to Your kindness, and I will keep the testimony of Your mouth). David is telling God to give him life in His mercy and says he will keep the ordinances of His mouth. He explains David HaMelech as saying, “Why am I getting merit, mercy? Because I’m going to keep the edut. Which edut? Edut picha, Torah Sheba'al Peh.” Torah Sheba'al Peh brings tremendous rachamim down to the world.
Therefore, he says, the Zohar knows what to call it: Mayim Chayim. In the Zohar, Mayim always represents chesed. Mayim Chayim is the water of life. Those who attach themselves to this study are attaching themselves to life itself. I’ll put it this way: the Torah is a book that’s lifeless. What gives the neshama (soul) to the Torah Shebichtav? Torah Sheba'al Peh. Just like a human being is a physical body, you need a soul inside the body to give it life. The Torah on its own has no interpretation. We don’t know what it means, so the book doesn’t have a use for us. Torah Sheba'al Peh comes along and is the soul of the book, giving the book life. Now we understand what it’s all about. There’s no—we couldn’t understand one without the gloss of the Torah Sheba'al Peh.
Hence, the Zohar HaKadosh says, if that’s the case, it explains why on Rosh Hashanah we make such a big deal of the Akedat Yitzhak. You know, it’s all we do: take the shofar (ram’s horn) and the Akedat Yitzhak. It’s very simple, because Yitzhak Avinu manifested Torah Sheba'al Peh during the Akedah, and Torah Sheba'al Peh is mercy. On Rosh Hashanah, God sits on the Kisei Din (throne of judgment). There’s no better way to sweeten the middot. After all, on Rosh Hashanah we don’t say the 13 attributes, but we remind God of the Akedah of Yitzhak. That activates the zechut of Torah Sheba'al Peh, and as a result God rises from the Kisei Din and sets up the Kisei Rachamim (throne of mercy). So Torah Sheba'al Peh is critical not only to our daily life but also to the judgment of Rosh Hashanah.
If that’s the case, we see something quite incredible in Jewish history. The Goyim knew this. They intuitively knew the value of Torah Sheba'al Peh. Don’t ask me how they knew it or where they learned it from. But a lot of times the chachamim (sages) tell you, you have to learn our religion from our enemies, because sometimes they know its value more than we do. Haman was a big anti-Semite, but he knew the religion, he knew everything. He could give a good argument for why you have to destroy the Jews. He could explain all the halachot (Jewish laws). Achashverosh, why we’re wrong? Ba'ariz al-Kol said, Haman, you know, a Kabbalist l'da'ah.
The Goyim know that without the Talmud, the Klal Yisrael is doomed. We know it. Just look at Jewish factions that left the Talmud. We have them: the Beitusei (Boethusians), the Kara'im (Karaites), the Tzedokim (Sadducees), the Conservatives, the Reforms. What do they all have in common? Two things. Number one, they left Torah Sheba'al Peh. They abandoned the rabbinical interpretation—or, I should say, they abandoned the tradition that was handed down—and said, “We’re going to give the Torah Shebichtav our own interpretation.” That’s one thing they have in common. The second thing they have in common is that, as a result of leaving Be'er Mayim Chayim, there are no more Tzedokim today, no more Kara'im more or less today, and no more Beitusei today. Conservative and Reform are also a dying breed.
Rabbi Wein said at the shul the other day, when he reminded us of a story from when he was in Miami Beach. The guy across the street was the rabbi of the Reform Temple, and he says they had a relationship. He says, “You know, it’s not easy being a rabbi for Jews. Jews are, it’s a difficult custom.” Everybody’s a boss; everybody’s tough stuff. He says he had a hidden relationship with the guy across the street. The Reform rabbi said to his friend, “Leon, I’m jealous of you.” He said, “You’re jealous of me? Why are you jealous of me?” The rabbi said, “Listen, I have to go to work every day, and I have a shul full of Jews. Not easy.” He said, “At least you go to your temple. They all go yim over there.” And that’s the truth. You see what happens once you’ve left Torah Sheba'al Peh. That’s it. You let the cat out of the bag; there’s nothing left. It’s all assimilation. Who knows who’s sitting in the temples? Go do a pedigree on those people sitting in the pews. You see a lot of them. I’m not in the binay, I'm in the kids that I do out there. They’re not our brethren.
I’m not talking tonight about what we did to abandon Torah Sheba'al Peh. I started to look at some history, at what the Talmud has gone through at the hands of the Goyim. You think the Jews were persecuted? The only thing persecuted more than the Jew was the Talmud. I looked at some of the history and made some copies of it here very quickly. In June, the year 1242, in Paris, 24 wagonloads of books totaling thousands of volumes of the Talmud were handed to the executioner for public burning. That’s the famous episode that happened on Friday, Parashat Chukat, in the year 1224 in Paris. They made a big fire. What was the fire? The burning books. What books did they burn? They burnt the Talmud. And who was behind it? Pope Gregory, the church. They were the biggest: “You’ve got to get rid of this.” So you say, “Okay, that was a one-time event, an aberration in Jewish history.” But it wasn’t. Subsequently, the burning of the Talmud was repeatedly urged by the popes, and in France, Louis IX ordered further confiscations in 1247 and 1248. A further burning was ordered in Toulouse in 1319 by the inquisitor. Condemnations of the Talmud were issued by Pope Innocent VI, Alexander VII or Alexander IV. On September 9th, 1553, on Rosh Hashanah, a huge pyre of Hebrew books seized from Jewish homes was set up in Campo di Fiori in Rome.
Subsequently, the Inquisition ordered all rulers, bishops, and inquisitors throughout Italy to take similar action. The orders were obeyed in the papal states, particularly in Bologna, Ferrara, Urbina, Florence, and Venice. The events in Italy were described by the contemporary chronicler Joseph HaKohen in Emek HaBacha and by a number of other writers who managed to escape with their own books. He relates that in Venice alone, over 1,000 complete copies of the Talmud and 500 copies of the code of Isaac Alfasi, the Rif—what did they want from this book? What did they want from the Rif? You know the Rif from the back of the Gemara. For this, the Goyim made a fire? You’re going to burn the Rif? Burning books? Since when does a book become the enemy? You go to war against the library? We’ve heard of such things before. You go to war against people.
The history goes on to say that the last act of faith of the Talmud took place in Poland, in the city of Kamenetz, in 1757. Nearly 1,000 copies of the Talmud were thrown into a pit at Kamenetz and burnt by the hangman. This is the story, Rabotai. Somehow the Klal Yisrael—the Goyim understood intuitively that this is the life of—if you could get rid of the book, the Jew would disappear automatically. That’s the Mayim Chayim. They somehow knew that if they could pull Klal Yisrael away from the book and get rid of it, they could destroy us.
There were times in Europe when you could not find a whole set of Shas (Talmud set). It was very rare to find a Shas. Somebody had a Shas in his house—oh, this was considered a big thing. It was a rare commodity, let alone having shiurim and studying it and learning it. You couldn’t find the books. Forget about having a shiur on it; you couldn’t get a copy of the book. And that was the plan of the Goyim: take away their water and they’ll die of spiritual dehydration.
To show you the impact it made: in 1224, after they burnt the 24 wagonloads of books in Paris, which was a terrible tragedy, there was a great rabbi called Maharam of Rothenburg. We went to the grave of Maharam of Rothenburg. He’s buried in Germany, correct? Right outside of Rashi’s shul. Exactly. Maharam of Rothenburg was one of the great Rishonim (early authorities). Maharam of Rothenburg is the rabbi of the Rosh. You go to his kever (grave) and you shake—that’s what type of—he’s dead, you shake his kever.
Maharam of Rothenburg learned in Paris. He was there when they burnt the books. It affected him so much that he wrote a lamentation. It’s a lamentation said by a lot of the Ashkenazim (Ashkenazi Jews) on Tisha B'Av. He writes a lamentation about the burning of the Talmud, based on another lamentation written by Yehuda HaLevi, in the same form that laments the destruction of the Temple. That means Maharam of Rothenburg saw this act as nothing less than Churban HaBayit (destruction of the Temple), and therefore he writes a kinah (lamentation) as if the Temple had been destroyed.
I made a copy of it just so you can hear what the great chachamim thought it meant when they saw a piece of the Talmud being burnt. You have to know how they reacted. It wasn’t just, “Book burns, I’ll kill this one, kapara.” The kinah begins, “Sha'ali serufah ba'esh” (Ask, O one burned in the fire). He’s talking to the Talmud that’s burnt in the fire. He says, “Serufah ba'esh,” you that are burnt in the fire, “Sha'ali, ask l'shalom avaylayich” (about the welfare of your mourners). Why don’t you ask about us, who are suffering? Why don’t you ask about our welfare, those who are mourning because of you? “Hamit'avim shechon,” those who are desiring to rest. We want to be in your courtyard, in the Beit Knesset (synagogue), in the Beit Midrash (study hall), but we cannot because you don’t exist anymore. We have no reason to go to the Beit Knesset or the Beit Midrash. There are no books. Those who have their heads in the ground in mourning, those who feel great ache and pain over the burning of your pages, walk in darkness, and there is no light. We’re broken and crying.
Then the rabbi can’t believe it. He says, “How is it possible that the Torah was given with a fire? The Torah was given in fire. How could a Torah given by a divine fire be consumed by a human fire?” The rabbis can’t believe it. How could this book, which is divine—they looked at the Talmud as something given by God—how could the fire consume it? How weren’t the enemies burned by this? How were they able to overtake the Talmud? He can’t believe it. They were able to take this book, given by fire from God, and burn it, and nothing happened to them.
He goes on to say, “Is that why You gave it in such a way? Did You give it in fire to hint to us that this would be the fate of the book? Is that why You gave it in fire? Were You giving us a sign, God, that this book would be subject to fire, that in the end the book would be burnt? Is the reason You chose Sinai, such a humble mountain, that the book given on this mountain would also be downtrodden and humiliated? ‘Sinai ha'al kent b'kha bahar Elohim.’ Is that why You chose Sinai? ‘U'ma'as b'gidolim.’ You didn’t choose the high mountains because the book would be humiliated.” He goes on and on. It’s tremendous—we can go through it. He concludes that everybody should put on sackcloth because “it is fire and has broken that are written inside.” Then he’s talking to the Talmud. He says, “God should console you.” They looked at this as a living, living book, and God should one day lift you from your lowliness. Then he says that, God willing, one day we will come out of our darkness.
They took this as—I was once at a dinner for Agudat Yisrael many years ago. I was a kid. They were honoring my grandfather. All the Gedolim (great sages) were there: Moshe Feinstein, Yaakov Kamenetsky, all the tzaddikim were sitting at the dais, and all the dignitaries were there as well. The senator was Patrick Moynihan. He gave a speech—I mean, he was drunk—but he gave a speech nonetheless. At the end of the night, I made my way up to the pulpit to kiss the Gedolim’s hands. At the time, Rav Moshe Sherer was the president, the head of the—and I was with my grandfather, being introduced to everybody, and I was privy to an interesting conversation. Rav Moshe Sherer was talking to one of the members there about the Holocaust. He said, “You know, there’s something about the Holocaust that people are not aware of.” He opened his wallet and took out a paper. I’ll never forget it. He said, “This is a letter that Hitler told his henchmen to write to the governors of Poland.” He was reading it. It was written in German. It was dated, you know, whatever the date is, 1940 something. “To the governors of the Polish, do not issue exit visas to the Talmudists of Poland to emigrate to the United States, because if those Talmudists make it to the United States, the Jewish people will regenerate.”
Hitler’s war was against the Talmud. What did he know about Talmudists? What did he know about all this stuff? He understood that’s the lifeline, that’s the Mayim Chayim. He said, “Make sure these guys—” And he was right, because some of those Talmudists made it to the new country, and he was right. Torah ended up flourishing from those old men, those young that came with the tabur under their arm. Klal Yisrael was able to live again.
Look what the Pasuk tells us. The Pasuk gives us a window into Jewish history. You know why he calls it a Nahal? Because Nahal in Kabbalah is a name of God that represents mercy. Nahal is rashei teivot, “Notzer chesed la'alafim” (preserving kindness for thousands), as the Arizal said. So when they got to the well, they got to the Nahal. This is the mercy. This is the—this is the—he hid the Torah, the tradition. And what does the Pasuk say? The Torah is telling us there are going to be fights over this tradition. The fights will come from without, and they’ll come from within, against the book. As we see, as if they’re together, they’re going to fight together against the book. And we’ve seen it. They’re going to say, “The water belongs to us.” Nobody challenges the Bible. Major religions accept the Bible as a starting point, but they come along and say, “Give us back the Mayim. We’re not interested in your Mayim Chayim. We’ll reinterpret it, we’ll put a New Testament to it, we’ll put a new interpretation, we’ll change all of it.” Of course, the chachamim say that any time Klal Yisrael left the study of the Talmud, it was the beginning of the end. The Goyim knew it. That’s why any time they made a fire, the first thing they threw in was the Jew, and the second thing they threw in was the book. They couldn’t throw the Jew in, so they threw his book. It’s the same thing.
This is the Maaseh Avot. If you want to know where the Maaseh Avot of that fire in Paris, that fire in Toulouse, the fire in Venice, the fire in Kamenetz—and the fires in Spain—came from, this is from here.
It’s interesting to know that the tzaddikim point out that the word Be'er is written in the Torah 48 times, and the Mishnah says there are 48 kinyanim (acquisitions) in order to acquire Torah Sheba'al Peh. The Be'er represented Torah Sheba'al Peh, all its acquisitions, and all its abilities to connect to the tradition.
Yitzhak Avinu didn’t stop, so he went again. What did the Jews do after these fires? They went to the printing press, printed more Talmuds, and printed more books. They went further. They didn’t give up. They knew that if you have no food, you have to go find food; you have to find spiritual nourishment. They went and printed more books.
What did they do after they printed more books? About a hundred years later, they break it again. But then the Torah is coming to tell us something we’re witnessing in our time: “Vayatek misham vayachpor be'er acheret, velo ravu aleha, vayikra shemah Rechovot, vayomer ki atah hirchiv Adonai lanu ufarinu ba'aretz” (He moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; he named it Rechovot and said, now the Lord has made room for us and we shall be fruitful in the land). Another well of, to Russia Malta the Lord of Allah. And they didn’t fight.
Since we’ve come to America, the Talmud has had a renaissance period. The Torah has been printed. It’s been printed not only in the original Aramaic but also in so many different languages. Could you believe it? They printed it in French. Could you imagine how angry the French are? They were burning it when it was in Aramaic, and now they took their grand language and used it to interpret the Talmud. They’re turning in their graves from this. They translated it into English. They translated it—now somebody’s doing it in Spanish. There’s no excuse today. You can study the Talmud in any language, and they took away the difficulty of it, meaning they elucidated it. So now you can read it. Yitzhak Avinu said the day is going to come—the day of expansion of the Talmud. The Torah is going to be expanded, and the Torah is going to be accessible. You’re going to go online, listen to tapes, and listen to videos, watch videos. Torah Sheba'al Peh is going to be very accessible.
So when you had, five or six years ago, a hundred thousand Talmudists come to MetLife Stadium to celebrate the Siyum HaShas, that’s this. That’s the Maaseh Avot Siman Labanim. That night, and nights like that, happen here because of Yitzhak Avinu, giving us the ability to keep going after they burn the Talmud. If he hadn’t dug another well, finished, we’d have been over. But his persistence gives Klal Yisrael persistence, and all of a sudden, boom, there’s a breakthrough. The Talmud starts to see tremendous expansion like we’ve never seen before. Who doesn’t learn Gemara today? Every single guy has a Gemara under his arm. Everybody’s studying some sort of Gemara in a class somewhere. So much so that even the ladies now want to study Gemara. It’s got too—maybe too much expansion, but nonetheless it’s expanding, and that was a prediction.
The Gemara predicted it. I mean, the—the—the Navi (prophet) predicted it. The Navi said, “Tziyon bemishpat tipadeh, veshaveha bitzdaka” (Zion shall be redeemed through justice, and her returning ones through righteousness). Zion will be redeemed in Mishpat and justice, its captives with righteousness. Rav Chaim Sonnenfeld, alav hashalom (peace be upon him), said, “Tziyon bemishpat tipadeh” numerically equals the words Talmud Yerushalmi; “veshaveha bitzdaka” numerically equals Talmud Bavli. He says the Geulah (redemption) will come when these two Talmudim start to become publicized.
There’s no generation since Matan Torah (giving of the Torah) in which there’s been a promotion of Talmud like there is in our time. I’m certain of that. They didn’t have the books; forget about learning it. They didn’t have the raw material, the hardware, let alone a rabbi to teach them, let alone the explanations. Today, Baruch Hashem, we have everything. So we’re really living in a great time. We cannot take it for granted. Sometimes it comes easily, so you take it for granted. Our ancestors in heaven are looking down. You don’t know how lucky you are. Go take a book, open it. We didn’t have books. Our books were ashes. You have all these books and you still don’t read them, don’t open them and learn. God has put you in a generation, at a time in history when it’s open. That dark history is behind us. We’re now living in the third well. The third well is Rechovot (expansions).
What do we learn from here? The story of the wells is very significant. But now I understand the connection between the Ramban and the Zohar. The Ramban said the well represents the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, and the Zohar HaKadosh says the well represented the fight they’re going to have against the Talmud. Maharam of Rothenburg said it’s the same thing. In one Pasuk, it’s talking about the Beit HaMikdash and the Talmud. In his great song, that kinah, Maharam of Rothenburg says, “What I see in this fire in Paris, I see the fire of the destruction of Yerushalayim.” It’s the same thing. The life of Klal Yisrael was snuffed out in Jerusalem, and it was snuffed out in Paris that night, as well as in the other places.
Again, the lesson to us is what we started the shiur with tonight: the Torah is not a storybook. The Torah is not a storybook. Somebody might come and say, “Ah, the wells, Exxon Mobil. What’s the wells?” And then you start to see how much was invested in these wells. The Ramban is right again when he says, “Let’s connect ourselves to the tradition.” We have to hold on to the tradition. Anybody who veers from tradition puts himself under the judgments, under the dinim (judgments). They try to take us away from it. That’s the biggest indication that we should hold on to it with dear life. If they try to take it away from us, that’s an indication that it must be expensive, that it must be something of value. And then, Be'ezrat Hashem, the Pasuk Yitzhak Avinu said will be fulfilled for us: “Vayomer ki atah hirchiv Adonai lanu ufarinu ba'aretz” (He said, now the Lord has made room for us and we shall be fruitful in the land). That’s called Piryah v'rivyah baTorah. Amen, ken yehi ratzon (may it be so).