We are living the absolute ridicule. These days, nothing seems to make sense. On October 7th, Hamas carried out one of the most horrific attacks on civilians in Israel. There is no word in the dictionary that could describe the loneliness of these people. Immediately, sympathy for Israel is rampant around the world. But, sure enough, within days, that sympathy turns around. People totally forget about the carnage that took place and now take the side of the poor Palestinians who are being oppressed by Israel. It is missing logic. I’ll prove it to you with the following. You have people from the far left, LGBTQ blah blah, supporters of Palestinian causes. I heard someone say to them, “Why don’t you take a one-way ticket there and see if they like you there?” It would be impossible. This is a place where they don’t tolerate anything. What in the world? You don’t have to be a genius to understand that. It seems to make no sense. Where is the logic?
I would like to introduce to you the deep reason why logic is foregone. We know psychologically that people always take the side of the oppressed. Why is that? The reason is written in Parashat Bereshit. HaKadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, Blessed be He) comes to Adam and says, “Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of Tov and Ra, of good and bad.” I ask you a very basic question that all the Mefarshim, all the commentaries, ask. What is the purpose of the world if we don’t know the distinction between good and bad? Would there be any reward or any punishment if I don’t know the distinction between good and bad? What’s the purpose of living if we don’t know the distinction between good and bad? It makes no sense that God would make a world without the option to know the difference between good and bad. What is the point? I would say, in a sense, almost thank God that Adam decided to eat from that tree. Now we have a choice. When you have a choice, your choice is meaningful because you chose between two things. It seems that we had no choice before that. It makes no sense.
The Rambam (Maimonides), in Moreh Nevuchim, asked the question. He says something incredible. He says, “See, before that, there was something else that they knew.” It was the distinction between Emet and Sheker, between the truth and the lie. And now they introduced Tov and Ra, good and bad. What is the difference? Let me explain. The Rambam says HaKadosh Baruch Hu only cares about what is true. We’ll call it intellectual knowledge: whether it’s true or not true. What’s true and not true? Kale is very good for your body, and pizza is not. But it happens to be that kale does not taste too good and pizza tastes incredible. Well, it depends who bakes it. But generally speaking, pizza tastes good. So good and bad are about emotions, feelings, and tastes, which have nothing to do with Emet and Sheker or with whether something is good or not good for you. Those two categories are very different.
Hashem made a world where we human beings should pick what is the truth versus what is not the truth. And He says to Adam HaRishon, “Do not eat from the tree that is going to confuse your judgment by putting in emotions of taste: something that tastes good versus something that does not taste good.” Tasting good and not tasting good has nothing to do with whether it’s good or not for your body. Emotions that come and play the game of the oppressed or not the oppressed have nothing to do with Sheker and Emet. So prior to eating from that tree, it was the truth and the untruth. After that, it got mixed with another element called emotions. Do I feel bad for this or not? Tov and Ra, the feeling of good or the feeling of bad.
It would have been better if we stayed on Emet and Sheker. But the world is upside down. We forget what is Emet and Sheker and focus more on what we feel is the good and the bad. The good and bad are so blurry that we have difficulty making a clear distinction between right and wrong. But the Rambam says, “Be very careful in life. Always have your brain and your intellect make the decision.” Once the emotion gets into that, you go into the problem where Hashem says to Adam, “The day that you now put in the equation the emotions of you feeling good or feeling bad about something which has nothing to do with truth or not truth, you will die.” People don’t know the difference between what is true and what is feeling good. Hence, the world is upside down. But we know the truth and we will follow it.