means empathy. All right, ladies, welcome. We’re learning the famous Mishnah, the longest Mishnah, and it’s taking us a long time as well. It’s the sixth Perek (chapter), and it’s the sixth Mishnah, six-six. This Mishnah is talking about the acquisitions that are necessary in order to acquire the Torah. It’s not enough to study Torah. Studying is just one of the 48. There are 47 other prerequisites that a person must master in order to make a complete acquisition in the study of Torah, which reminds us that Torah is much more than just learning. Torah is also working on character and personality, and working on behavior and conduct. You know, it’s not enough just to be a genius. Being a genius is not even one of the 48. How do you like that? It’s important that a person has the proper middot, the proper traits, in order that the Torah will be able to reside within him.
I’m not keeping track of where we’re up to, but I think last week we talked about Noseh be'ol im chavero. We talked about that for a long time. I just want to revisit that for one more moment and say one more thing about it. Noseh be'ol im chavero, we learned last week: Empathy means that you have to feel the other person’s situation. You have to feel their pain or feel their joy. It’s not enough just to say, “You know, that’s it,” and then go back to your own merry way. You have to actually imagine what that person is going through, and that would cause you to react somehow. If a lady gave birth, then you would imagine: “Wow, who’s feeding their family? There must be people in that house who are hungry because the mother’s not home.” That empathy will cause you to say, “You know what? Let me make dinner for them and drop off dinner.” Sympathy would say, “Wow, those poor kids, they’re probably starving.” That’s it; then you go on your merry way. Empathy says, “Wow, how they must be feeling,” and therefore you do something. I’m not going to review the whole class. Ayin sham (see there); it’s a very important one. It’s a classic.
But the question is, what does empathy have to do with Torah? Why does that make you a better scholar just because you’re Noseh be'ol im chavero? I saw it brought down from Rav Matityahu Salomon. The way he explains it is like this. I don’t know if you girls can appreciate it, but in the Beit Midrash (study hall), that’s where we find ourselves for the majority of the day in the yeshiva. What happens in the yeshiva is that it’s a give and take of opinions. When we study a piece of the Talmud, there are many ways to look at it. The Talmud is multifaceted. You know, there’s Rashi’s way of looking at it, and there’s Tosafot’s way of looking at it, and Maimonides has a way of looking at it. It’s quite amazing that the same words can be read so many different ways, and everybody can have a different way of understanding it. Based on the way you interpret the Gemara, the conclusions are different as well. So the Halakha (Jewish law) can change based on your understanding.
It’s not uncommon that, when we’re in yeshiva, we’ll be studying with our study partner. You can have two rabbis studying the same piece together, and they look at it with diametrically opposed views, even though they’re reading the same piece, the same text. That’s why you can imagine what ends up happening in yeshiva: there’s a lot of screaming and yelling in a good way, because we’re saying, “How could you read it like that?” A lot of times, we can’t see somebody else’s way if they have a different opinion than ours. Usually, a person who has an opinion believes that his opinion is the right opinion, and anybody who has a different opinion is probably wrong. In Torah, you have to control that urge to right away condemn your study partner for being wrong. So therefore, you have to try to put yourself in your friend’s mind and say, “Wait, let me try to look at it from his vantage. Let me give him the benefit for a minute and see how we can look at it another way.” A lot of times, our study partners will remind us and say, “Wait, wait, wait, just give me a minute. Give me a second. Try to look at it from my perspective. We know what you say. You will say it like this, but try to open your brain and come at it from a different angle.” A lot of times when you do that, you’re able to see that there might be two roads to the truth. There’s not only one road that leads to the truth. There could be a few roads that lead to the truth. Exactly, the rabbis say there might be 70 roads that lead to the truth. So therefore, is very important in learning. It’ll give you the ability to see somebody else’s perspective on how to study it.
I will tell you that our rabbis in the Talmud were so refined in their character. Many times—and I know you girls don’t learn too much Gemara, nor am I recommending it—you’ll see the following situation happen in the Talmud. You’ll have two rabbis who are arguing. Let’s say Abaye and Rava. Abaye will say one thing, and Rava will say another, and they’re debating back and forth. Then somebody will ask a question about Rava’s logic: “Rava, how can you say that?” And guess who will come to the defense of Rava’s logic? Abaye, his counterpart. Abaye says, “Please allow me to answer for Rava.” Now hold it: “You’re arguing with him. Why are you answering for him?” Usually, if you’re arguing for somebody, I’m not going to help you. He has a question on him; let him break his head and answer it. If he can’t answer it, that means I’m right. But they were so intellectually honest that they said, “Listen, I can see how he can answer this question. Although I don’t agree with his approach, using that approach, you can answer the question like this.” Although I don’t agree with the approach at all, they had that concept of empathy.
I’ll tell you why it’s so surprising when that happens in the Talmud. Of course, that doesn’t happen in a courtroom. You know, if I’m defending my client and somebody asks a question against my client, and I have a problem, the prosecutor is not going to say, “Well, I think he can answer like this. Let me help him out.” No, it’s not the job of the prosecutor to help the defendant. The prosecutor prosecutes. If you can’t answer it, why should I help you? And I don’t expect that to happen in a courtroom. But in yeshiva, it happens all the time. That means that if one of our colleagues makes an argument and I disagree with it, I will say, “Your logic is not my logic. However, the question he’s asking is not a question on you either. You can say it like this.” He’ll tell me, “Why, I never thought of that! Thank you, Rabbi, for defending me.” I say, “I still argue with you, but his question is not a question.” Is this what we’re doing? Besides being intellectually honest, you must know that in yeshiva, when they’re arguing, it’s really not an argument. It’s actually sparring to get to the truth.
If I take two knives that are dull, how do I sharpen them? I rub them against each other. When you rub two knives against each other, ultimately you sharpen both knives. So in yeshiva, the brains are sharpening each other. Everybody’s trying to get to the truth. So therefore, would be an important trait in order to see the Talmud from another person’s perspective. That’s the postscript from last week’s class. You could add that as an asterisk to your notes from last week. Now let’s go a little further.
The next item that the Mishnah says says: This is the principle that says that you should give your friend the benefit of the doubt. Now let’s just talk about this trait in general. This might be one of the most important of all traits. We learned it earlier, if you remember, at the beginning of the Mishnah, where it says: It’s a concept that gives people the benefit of the doubt. What does it mean? So the Gemara tells a few stories. I’d like to tell you the stories of the Talmud. The Gemara tells one story of a rabbi. Everybody’s over 18 over here. This is a story from the Talmud. The rabbi was with his students. Then all of a sudden, it says they went to lodge that night at the hotel. All of a sudden, they noticed that the rabbi was with his students, and the rabbi had a girl with him.