Good evening, gentlemen. It's Monday night, which gives us a chance to study Chovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart), and we're in a great chapter. We're in Shaar HaBechina (Gate of Examination), and we're in Perek Aleph (Chapter One). Until now, we read the introduction, so we'll start. We do have some book. I'll read it and explain it: Amar HaMechaber (the author said). Mechaber is the author, the Ben Bahar.
We've been discussing this. We should know by now what Bechina (examination) is, but he's going to officially explain it. You have to study the creation and see the wisdom of the Creator in the creation. There's wisdom in everything. Kadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He) is unlimited in wisdom, and He put His signature on every single item. You just have to close your eyes, spin your fingers, and wherever your finger lands, you'll see the hand of God.
Interestingly enough, it's a mitzvah (commandment) to do that. So the next time your wife asks you to go to the zoo on a Sunday, you go. I mean, you should go anyway, but now you go and look at the wonderful creatures, and you start to analyze and see wonderful things. Just as an example, one of the amazing animals I looked at today is the elephant. I don't know if they still have elephants in the circus. I think they stopped because of the animal rights activists; they won again. But I saw some amazing things about the animal. Again, you see that only God can create such a machine.
I call it a machine because it has the power of a crane. In India, for example, they use elephants to build. If you see the video, you see them lifting logs and planks with their trunks and putting them in place as if they were a forklift. There's no difference. But the chiddush (insight) I saw here is a few things: the fact that they eat up to a thousand pounds of food a day. Some of our members can do that, but imagine that—the media maze—and 50 gallons of water. The amazing thing about that is, look at the ample supply of food that I could lose, but who put into the world the ability to supply all this?
The other thing I saw is what they say about its trunk. Of course, that's the key of the key: the animal's trunk. I mean, if you're on Fifth Avenue, the tusks are the most important part of the animal. But I'm talking not about the clip joints. I'm talking about people who appreciate the creation, not the poachers. The trunk is so sensitive. It has a hundred and fifty thousand muscles just in the trunk, and it's so sensitive that, at the end of it, it's able to grab one leaf off a tree to eat. At the same time, it's so strong that it can wrap around a trunk and uproot it.
It has such sensitivity that an elephant could take a peanut and crack the shell so carefully that the nut is still there without breaking the peanut. At the same time, it can take a lion and lift it with its tusks and trunk, and throw it hundreds of feet. The elephant weighs about 6 tons, which is about 12,000 pounds.
One thing I also saw: since it needs water, Kadosh Baruch Hu gave it such a sense of smell that the elephant is able to smell water. I don't know how you smell water, but I guess it can smell the moisture, the vapor—I don't know what—from two miles away. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to live, because it needs that water.
The animal itself does not have sweat glands, or has very few sweat glands. So how does it keep cool? Sweat glands keep a person cool, like last week, because when you sweat, the moisture goes onto the body and then cools it off. But Kadosh Baruch Hu made the animal with big ears, and whenever it gets overheated, it's like a jet: it starts to flap its ears, and it has automatic air conditioning.
The big mystery about the animal is, number one, they're great swimmers. I didn't know the animal could swim. An elephant can swim for 10 hours straight, nonstop, across a river. But the mystery people talk about is, when they die, where are they? There are no elephant cemeteries around, because they're humongous. They don't know what happens to them. But they did notice that, out of all the animals, it has feelings. They noticed that whenever an elephant sees the carcass of another elephant, it cries. It goes up to the makom (place); it's a shkaba, it does whatever it has to do, and then it goes on. So Hashem obviously put in some sort of sensitivity. You look at the Adam, and it doesn't look like it has any sensitivity, but obviously all that big—exactly—it does have some kochot (powers).
Again, amazingly enough, it sleeps standing up. When an elephant is born, it's 200 pounds. They travel in packs of up to 200. They travel together. The old man of the pack leads it. When he says to go, everybody follows him. When he says to stop, they all stop. But the chiddush is, as you said, they're sensitive. When a baby elephant is born, the leader will never leave until the young one is old enough to catch up and walk. So they do have some sort of brain to understand these things, although the baby elephant walks the same day it's born. Two hours later, it's already walking, but they protect it for a couple of months, whatever it is, until it's able to follow.
Again, you see that this is a mitzvah. They live an average lifespan of 60 years. The tusk itself is really like a tooth. It's a tooth that comes outside. They use it for digging for water, and also for poaching other animals and for self-defense. The books also say that it makes them attractive to the opposite gender. Most of us don't get excited when we see the tusks of an elephant, but then again, you're not an elephant. During elephant season, they get excited about this sort of thing. Again, it's such a chokhmah (wisdom) for such a big animal, but Hashem provides all its needs in the places where it finds itself.
Again, the Chovot HaLevavot writes that when you see the animals—not necessarily animals; he means any part of the creation—you have to analyze as much as your brain can contemplate. Don't refrain from doing this. I'm not a zoologist. Don't say that it's well worth your time. He says you're not going to get to the end of it. Reading a small paragraph about an elephant, you're not going to see its genius.
For example, I'll tell you what I saw today that I thought was amazing. I have an article here about a hippopotamus. The hippopotamus is the biggest of all the animals. I don't know what it weighs. It weighs—it's even bigger than an elephant. And it swims.
I have to go back for a second. As I'm reading here now, it says the elephant grows six sets of teeth over the course of its life. The teeth grow in the back, and it uses the main four teeth in the front. As these wear out, the other teeth move to the front, like a boob excuse, and then he grows, and it happens six times in his life.
But the chiddush of the hippopotamus is that he swims in the water. He's a big swimmer, and Hashem put the hippopotamus's eyes on top so he could keep them outside the water, even though he could stay five minutes under the water without any problems. Many, many years ago, scientists noticed that hippopotamuses sweat blood. That's what they thought: there was red, red juice coming out of the hippopotamus, and they didn't know what it was. Now they're finally figuring out what these red, red items are. Look at the article I found: “Hippos, that's the shit they want.” Hippopotamuses secrete a reddish, oily fluid sometimes called blood sweat from special glands in their skin. But the fluid is not sweat, and it's not blood. Unlike sweat, which some mammals secrete onto the skin, where it evaporates and cools the body, this fluid functions as a skin moisturizer, water repellent, antibiotic, and sunscreen.
That means the skin of the hippopotamus is very sensitive to the Sun. So if you want to be the guy who puts sunscreen on the back of the hippopotamus every single day, that's trouble. But Hashem did an amazing thing: the body secretes its own sunscreen. Imagine you're sitting where you guys go in Aruba for vacation, sitting on the beach, and all of a sudden your body starts putting out Hawaiian Tropic. It starts coming out of your body. You put on SP50, SP80, SP100—it all comes out. Not only that, but it's also an antibiotic, which means it's a Purell. The Purell comes out of the guy's glands, and it's a repellent against bugs, and it's a moisturizer. We call this four-in-one. They don't create such a thing. Go to the pharmacy and tell them, “I want one item that does all these four things.” No, they don't have it.
The hippopotamus produces it, and they don't know what it is. The scientists took the item and put it under a microscope, and they don't know what it is. But the skin of the hippopotamus never gets burnt, although it's very, very sensitive. It's always soft, and the bugs don't go near it.
Recently, a company—to show you how—yes, NBC News. This is actually from 2009, so it's an old piece: “Hippo sweat, the next big thing in sunscreen. Hippos can stand in a hot Sun all day without getting a sunburn, and now researchers know why.” That's 2009. They're studying the papyrus for three and a half thousand years, and the Hamor is studying the hippopotamus. What did the Hamor say? They're sweating blood. What's the benefit of that? Little did they know. Borei Olam (Creator of the world), I'm saying, if you only knew the wisdom in the stuff that's coming out, it would take you a thousand years just to figure out what the compound is.
It says, “Hippo sweat contains microscopic structures that scatter light, protecting the hefty mammal from burns, according to the study. In the future, scientists hope to create a product inspired by hippo sweat that may be slathered on our bodies before long. This stuff could be an advertiser's dream. It would be nice to also try and replicate the antiseptic and insect-repellent characteristics of the sweat to obtain a four-in-one product: sunscreen, sunblock, antiseptic, insect repellent, just so long as it doesn't smell like a hippo.”
My point is to show you that these are the scientists, and they have the stuff, but they still don't know what it is. And let's say they figure out what it is. How in the world does a body produce it? And why does that animal specifically produce it, while other animals don't? It happens to be that that animal needs all these four items, otherwise it'll burn to death.
So what happens with the miracle of evolution? The sunscreen happened, has about two percent—what is the flood? So you start to see the just about him or not. That means when you buy sunscreen, you're buying a copy. It's really a copy. It's a knockoff of something that was in the creation. And what our life's product is much more advanced than the product that we're buying. The product that we're buying is limited, and it functions, whereas the natural one in the animal is unlimited. It comes out of the body without the importance of thinking, without it, you know, but, I think, naturally, whatever it needs. So that is a wonderful thing as well.
I looked at another chiddush of another animal that I think is worth noticing here. It also says it's 6,000 pounds, a hippopotamus, semi-aquatic. It mows the grass at night. The hippopotamus lives in the water during the day; at night it comes onto the ground. It eats the grass, 90 pounds a night. They say that if you see the way it eats, it's like mowing the lawn. It goes across the lawn and eats it. When it goes in the water, its ears and nose close automatically, so the water doesn't go in and kill it. Its teeth are 39 inches long, including the roots. 39 inches long is almost three feet.
Oh, what do you got? Oh, look at this. I don't believe it. “Hippo sweat, all-natural mineral sunscreen.” So they figured out—there's a company, Echo Friendly Relief, vegan, 20-24, I said, but it was nothing, it was nothing. Hippo Sweat. They're on it; they try to market it, but they won't figure it out. It took them a thousand years to figure out it wasn't blood. Believe that? Hippo Sweat.
The next item I looked at—that's why I got to come to this gathering. We're learning about the creation of God. I tell you, every week we have to sit down and take two or three items and find chiddushim about them. Not only do we have something to talk about, meaning it's a good conversation, but this is the Basher Monad.
The chiddush I didn't know is about the giraffe. Now, you know the giraffe is an incredible creature, with the longest neck and all that stuff. But the chiddush of the giraffe is the following. It's kosher; it's from the Tesco. The Tesco. They know what a story that the easiest out of the slaughter, the neck is easy, that the problem with the size—and they don't have the answer for this. They don't understand the giraffe's heart. The heart of the giraffe is not like the heart of any other animal, because it needs to pump blood to the brain, which is six feet away from the heart.
Now, gravity says things go down. So you have to have a pump here that's so strong that it can pump—not just a human being, okay, so what is it, a close foot—but six feet against gravity. The scientists noticed that it comes—who? An amazement. The heart of a regular animal pumps, let's say, 75 beats a minute, whereas the giraffe's is a hundred and fifty a minute. So it's a different rhythm. It's a different rhythm. Could that be a coincidence, that the heart running with a different rhythm happens to land exactly right? If that rhythm were in a different animal, it would kill him. You're too fast. He did my head; it would explode for sure. Much too fast.
The next thing they can't believe is: why don't giraffes faint? Have you ever seen a giraffe faint? You never saw a giraffe faint. You go to a Great Adventure, you go on a safari. Well, they're all drugged up. You don't see them doing anything. You see them standing in the, you know, sacram. But in the real, real jungle, why? Nathan's got it. You read books on it? What books are you reading? Unbelievable. So Nathan is right. He's right on the tonight.
The problem is that when the giraffe has to drink, he has to bend his head down. So now the blood is going down to his brain, and when the giraffe drinks, he's vulnerable to attack, because his legs have to spread out so his neck can go down. Once his legs are spread, it's hard for him to recover his position and run. So the lions usually catch the giraffe when he's bending down to drink. That's why whenever they drink, they take a sip, come up and look, and go back down. That movement would create an imbalance in a normal person, with the blood shooting up from the brain and then down. They should lose their equilibrium and faint. All of a sudden, they noticed that inside the giraffe's neck there are certain systems that block the amount of blood from going up and down. So it keeps the exact amount of blood at all times, and the animal's pressure doesn't rise, no matter how many times he goes up and down. That big movement would cause another animal to be damaged.
So it's another example of Yishtabach Shemo, the creation. He says here as well—this is, what, 44. You see, gentlemen, I'm doing my homework. I'm doing my homework. I was just at a wedding, so I'm sitting and reading this here. There's a big rabbi sitting next to me. “What do you think about the rest of it? Look in the zoo.” So he talks about this here. No, that's what he says about that. He talks about—there was one more. Oh, the camel. Now let's read the camel together.
He says the camel goes many, many days without drinking water. So when the camel gets to a water source, it's able to drink a lot of water at a time, up to 30% of its body weight. It drinks water, and then, of course, the body holds it. It can go 17 days straight without drinking again. So the question the scientists are trying to understand is, how does that happen?
During the day, a camel's body temperature reaches 40 degrees Celsius. What's that, 40 Celsius, 110-something, like 140? 104. Okay, so it's hot during the day. Based on what they say, the chiddush of the camel is—everybody had dinner; I didn't have dinner yet, but it's okay, I read it already before.
The camel doesn't urinate like a regular animal. Very, very rarely does it make sharia tzav. As a result, it holds all the water, all the normal waste of a regular animal. The camel's body is different. With all that waste, which would normally be expelled from the body, the body somehow processes it and uses it for good reasons, because God knew that the camel would be in places where it needs to store water. If it had the same system of expelling waste, it would dehydrate very, very, very quickly. So he writes, not only that, in Africa, in South-West Africa—this is about 46. This is a different type of animal that's going—
So we learned this week in Tehillim (Psalms) about another animal. I haven't seen this report in the science books, but the Midrash (rabbinic teaching) brings it down. The Midrash says that there's an Ayalah—a I guess a gazelle—and that when it is pregnant and about to give birth, the baby can't come out because the womb of the gazelle is very, very narrow. It can't fit, and they don't have all that other stuff in the gazelle hospital. So how are you going to get the gazelle's womb to be fully dilated? That's the problem.
So Borei Olam, in His infinite wisdom, sends a certain snake or insect at the moment the baby is supposed to come out. It comes and bites the gazelle at that spot, and as a result, the womb opens and the baby comes out. That is a—listen, we pay doctors, and they don't always make the delivery. You pay a doula, and she says, “I got stuck in traffic. I'm sorry, I missed the delivery.” You paid for it here. This snake has to come exactly on time. If it bites a month early, the baby—she miscarried. It's too late, and it can't come out; it's stillborn. As the baby's coming out, what, Olam sends the—So that's another stunning miracle.
A person who really goes out into the wild and starts seeing these things would say one thing: the creation is filled with the wisdom of God. Nobody, even the great ones who study this all day, can figure out the genius of every species. Now he's going to explain to us that it's your obligation to do this. You shouldn't say, “Does this count?” Some of my members always ask, “Does this count as Torah? What we're doing here?” Well, what are we going to tell you? Not only does it count as Torah, but it's a mitzvah to study this—not to study it without connecting it to God.
I would say that if they had taught me biology in school like this, I would have been interested. I would have got 100 on every test. But they taught it as a godless biology. They taught it from a scientific point of view, giving science so much credit, and now when you start to read it, you see that they're also in the dark about many of these features.
The Chovot HaLevavot writes that everybody, according to his intellect, can study it on his own level and gain some wisdom. It's like the Torah: a four-year-old can study the parasha in second grade or kindergarten nursery, and he comes home with his parasha sheets and understands the Torah on a four-year-old level. Then you have the Gadol HaDor (great one of the generation), who's 98 years old, and comes home from the kollel (advanced Torah study hall) after studying the parasha. The same words, and he understands them on his level. Anything God creates can be studied on many, many, many, many levels—infinite levels. And I guess Borei Olam, La'atid Lavo (the future to come) will reveal all these genius systems that He created in all the animals.
We're only revealing a little. We had a guy here in the shul once who worked at Hadassah. He was the head of pediatric neurology. Neurology is the brain, and pediatric means children's. He said in his talk that he's been studying the brain for 30 years. That's all he studies, the brain. He said that after 30 years, with all the science and all the technology, maybe they're beginning to understand 2%. And this guy's a big guy. 2%. What are we giving all this money for? 2%. He said that's it, and even the 2%—I'm exaggerating—that we understand of the brain, this complex item. And guess what? It's infinite. Even if they tell us, “Listen, we got to 100%,” it's impossible, because if God is infinite, anything He's going to create has infinite levels of layers of chokhmah. Even if you revealed one layer fully, there's another layer underneath it that you don't understand, how it works.
So this is something that amazes me always: everybody really should be, you know, God, but like we said last week, you get so used to doing it, and it becomes like if I could be shot as you have to go and I'm not going to show, I'm going to go ahead. So I think that would be very, very good. You get used to it; it becomes a job. You see doctors in the hospital become callous to death. Any job—it could be the garbage man, who doesn't smell the garbage. You could put them everything else knows, you know, not like nothing that, you know, you know, the spell. Any job person, as you get used to it. So I guess the biologist in front of dot all day long, if the guy were cognizant of what he was doing, he should be dancing every single day from the different revelations that he's exposed to, that most people are not exposed to.
Anyway, most of them will come along and say, “Yeah, that's the miracle of selection. What's the miracle of selection? Listen, you're right, the hippopotamus has this amazing sunscreen that comes out of its body, but for the first hundred million years, you know, they died out; they died from sunburn. Over time, you know, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, and the survival of the fittest. Over time, the body had to acclimate. The body figured it out. Over time, the body had to adapt.”
And you say what I used to say: that's as nonsensical as saying that the animal adapts. If you go to the Empire State and start throwing horses off the Empire State, about a million times, a horse will grow wings and fly away. Nobody believes that's going to happen. I was doing that, and then the proof against that is: okay, they adapt. How come, since the theory, we haven't seen one animal adapt? Why did it stop? Which means they've been animals for hundreds of millions of years already, before the theory, and are in the process of adapting. So how come we haven't seen any yet? No adaptations stopped once the theory came. So there's no proof. They could say, “Look, you see this animal of it, it grew a third hand for the mouse.” Nothing happened like that. And why would we have to come onto that? Why can't we say that Kadosh Baruch Hu created the creation in its completion, in its final form? He didn't have to create a mistake and then have the mistake fix itself until we get to the final product. He created everything with Sudatam, with Qummatam, as they are. It wasn't trial and error. That's if you believe in God. But if you believe in godlessness, then you have to start making up stories that, over the course of millions of years, it got to the perfect.
Now even if you say that—let's say you say that—you have scientists studying all day long, trying to copy the sweat of the hippopotamus. Geniuses, and they can't. But the original happened by itself. It's crazy. These geniuses are sitting all day long, and they can't figure it out. They're smart people, and this item—nobody did it. That happened by itself. So I could—I could—you subscribe to that?
One rabbi said it best. One rabbi gave me a quick answer for the guy who doesn't believe this is the creation of God. Give me that. The guy doesn't have a half hour or an hour to hear philosophy and stuff. “I got to catch the bus at the bus stop, and the train's coming. I got until the F-train pulls into the station. That's all I have to convince him.” How do you convince him? He says, “Very simple: throw him in front of the train.” I can't convince him anyway.
He said it like this: “Tell the guy everything in this world is a product of somebody's brain. We call it a brainchild. Take this cup. I don't know when the cup was invented, but some smart guy came up with the idea that you can make a cup in this shape, hold the product, and if you make it out of paper, the liquid won't cause the paper to fold. It's a brainchild of something. This microphone's a brainchild.”
Now, these are simple structures. Go to a spaceship or a 747. These are people who sat and figured out how to get 20,000 pounds and oversized luggage to float in the air—to float. You don't float; things don't float. You take a penny, throw it in the air, and it lands and comes down. You take a jet with a few engines, and it flies in the air without a problem. It goes 500 miles an hour, it turns, it goes like a bird—a flying bird made of metal. Well, good thing it's a chokhmah.
They sat for years to figure it out. All the doctors sit and figure out medicines for different diseases, and millions of dollars are spent. Everything you see in this world has a brain behind it, and inventions are happening every single day. New technologies are being created every single day, especially now with computers and all that. So the rabbi said this is such a sharp proof: everything is the product of a brain. So he said, “Who's the brain that made the brain? Let's start with the brain. If everything's a product of a brain, shouldn't there have to be a brain that invented the brain?” And what did I say? “Nah, funny you said that. No, the brain just happened by itself. But everything after the brain, you need a brain for it. The brain itself, you don't need anybody for it.” You have to push the guy in front of the F-train. That's the thing I put in front of the F-train. Ludicrous. How can you say that everything needs a brain to create something, but the brain itself created itself through a bunch of mistakes in the laboratory? This fell on that, the formaldehyde landed on the carbon dioxide, which landed on the other item, on the syrup, whatever; they mixed it together. Look at that, you have a brain. The guy says we're studying it for a thousand years, and we don't understand a percent of it, and that this happened by chance. It can't be.”
So the premise of Shaar HaBechina is that the world is God. Then he said it is your obligation, as best you can. You're not going to get to the infinite layers of it. So he says, “Shekol davar ve-davar kibel et tzurato ve-et techunotav kefi tzorekh ha'olam” (Every single item received its image and its shape and its properties, according to the need of the world). He says it like this: when you take the light of the sun and put a glass in it, it refracts, and you get all the different colors of the sun. The same thing happens when water falls on flowers: depending on which flower it lands on, the water takes the color of the flower. The red rose looks red or pink, or whatever the color is.
What he means to say is this: it's all the wisdom of God. It's just that the wisdom of God refracts in millions of different creatures. But it's not that there are millions of, Chas veshalom (God forbid), creators. There's one creator, like the sun is one, but it can produce seven colors. The water is one, but it manifests itself in different ways based on where it lands. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu is one, but His greatness refracted when it came down, and all His wisdom is seen in all the different items. Each item is different from the next and has qualities different from the others. Like we said, the giraffe's inside is different from the camel's inside. Each one has opposing systems working for what it needs.
Now he explains in the next part, but I thought we'd stop here so we can start the next perek next week. Why did God have to create so many different systems? He says that the way you see the greatness of a creator is that he's not bound by one system. Certain people are limited; they have one style, that's their style. If they're good, they can have two styles, but that's it. If God had created only a few systems, then you'd say, “Borei Olam, he's under different controls.” But once he creates so many different ones, and each item is not only different but the opposite, and every item is created with something different that's not in the other item, that shows the limitlessness of God. That's why there are so many items. God could have made every creature basically the same system. He could have created every animal and every human basically with the same system, and it would be very easy. You'd just have to study one system, and you'd know everything. But then the skeptic would come along and say, “Hey, you see, he only knows one system.” Like they all said, you know, God is good, but he said that he can't destroy the world with water. So they thought God was limited to certain things, but they didn't realize that Kadosh Baruch Hu said, “Yeah, I cannot destroy the whole world with water, but I could.” My point is that people always try to limit the scope of God.
Also, if everybody were created in the same order, somebody would come along and say, “Yeah, I guess Borei Olam, for whatever reason, is under that control. Somebody's forcing him, kivyakhol (as it were), to do it that way.” So Borei Olam said, “I'm going to show you my wisdom in so many different ways, in an infinite amount of ways, because every way is a different way, and therefore nobody can say, ‘Well, that's God's way, that's God's way.’ Look at how many did the opposite, to show you that he's not forced. This was done by his will.”
The pasuk (verse) he brings, where we have to do this, addresses the question, “Are we obligated to do this or not?” Naaneh (we will answer) to bring a proof. He says, first of all, it's rational that you have to do this. I have a proof from the written Torah, and I have a proof from the oral Torah. Whatever the proofs are, I'm not interested tonight. But the point is, he's going to—when you leave here, Yaron gets excited. He talked about the other class. He said that for a week or so now, he's going to talk about the sweat of the hippopotamus. So what happened? What did the rabbi talk about? He talked about the giraffes that don't faint, the whiskers. That's what he talked about. So he was talking about the giraffe that doesn't faint, the blood going up to his head against gravity. Do me a favor: why don't you go study? What are you wasting your time on? “What do they serve on dog food also at the class?”
So he's telling you that you have an obligation to do this. I'm not saying we should sit all night long and do this, but for 45 minutes a week, in order to... Now, what does this do for you? I'll tell you what this does for you. Now you're going to go proud of it. Now when you say, “God, I love you. This is the God. You're my God. I'm proud of this. You're my God. You chose me. This is the God I have, that you created such an amazing work,” it brings you closer to the Boreh (Creator). It gives you a deeper kavanah (intention) when you start to... And we're just dabbling, as you know. So that would take us to the end of Perek Aleph. Next week we'll start Perek Bet (Chapter Two). I'll go through the proofs, because that's the Shem (Name). Then we'll go through some more of the wonders of Hashem. Baruch Ha'olam. Amen. I don't know if that's the right word, but I don't know if that's the right word.