Lessons in Jewish History - Part 2 - The Development of Halacha

00:01 There is a Zohar in Parshas Behaaloscha. The Zohar says that the Torah has a garment, a body, a soul, and a soul of the soul. The Zohar compares the Torah to a person. It says, “This is the Torah: a person.” So the Zohar connects the Torah with a person: just as a person has a garment, a body, a soul, and a soul of the soul—which is the level of yechidah—so does the Torah. The garment is the stories. The Written Torah is written as a story. The whole Torah is one great story. So the stories of the Torah, what we learn about Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, are all the garment. Halachah is the body. The reasons are the soul, and the secrets, Kabbalah, and deeper allusions are the soul of the soul. All of that together is the Torah. And of course, as with a person, you can’t have a person with one part and not the other. If you have a body without a soul, you don’t have a person. You can’t have clothing without a body either. Each thing needs the others. A complete person is one in whom everything is together, with each part complementing the others. The same is true of the Torah: all its parts are really one Torah, made up of all these things. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Torah through Moshe Rabbeinu at Mount Sinai, the entire Torah was given together. “The Torah was given together with its explanation,” in the Rambam’s words. The giving of the Torah was the revelation of the Ten Commandments, the revelation of Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Behold, I am coming to you.” At the moment the Torah was given, there was no separation. Everything was given together. The Jewish people saw Hakadosh Boruch Hu, saw the Divine Chariot, saw G-dliness tangibly, and at the same time received the Ten Commandments, which include practical halachah: Do not steal, do not murder, do not take Hashem’s name in vain, Shabbos,

02:31 and so on—honor your father and mother. So the entire Torah was given as one Torah. But afterward, during the forty years Moshe spent with the Jewish people in the desert, the whole structure of the Torah took shape. There is the Written Torah and there is the Oral Torah; and within the Oral Torah itself, there is the part dealing with halachah, as we said, as well as the reasons, the inner dimension, and so on. Everything has a history. How did it—how do you say it—how did it develop? What is the history of how all these things developed up to our own day? You could give an entire class on the Written Torah. There is the... and we’ll get to the Mishnah, the Talmud, halachah, Kabbalah, the progression of the Torah’s inner dimension, Chassidus. Every part of the Torah has a whole story of how it came from Moshe Rabbeinu, passed down and unfolded, descended and was revealed, until it reached us. Our class is about halachah, so we’re going to focus on that process: how did the halachic part develop? We’ll use the chart in the siddur as our basis. At the end of all our siddurim, on the last page, there’s a chart. Yes, if you have siddurim, take a look. It’s at the end. The Rebbe himself made this chart. I don’t know if many people know this, but the Rebbe himself made it before his nesius, in the early years after the Rebbe arrived in America and founded Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch. Among the first things the Rebbe worked on were various educational projects, including publications for young people, and this was one of the first things the Rebbe did. It’s simply a very, very interesting, straightforward chart that takes us from the 613 mitzvos given at Mount Sinai. You can see the illustration at the beginning of the chart. That illustration is very precise. By the way, people think it’s just a drawing. There’s a letter from the Rebbe explaining every detail of it. Someone asked the Rebbe why it was drawn that way.

05:01 And the Rebbe explains the details of the illustration in that letter, and why he made it that way. So this was the first time—I’m talking about eighty years ago—that the Rebbe introduced the idea of square Luchos. Until then, everyone made the Luchos rounded. Here the Rebbe made them square. That was a new idea at the time. Today almost everyone makes the Luchos square, but back then it was novel. Who made square Luchos? People didn’t know about that at all. The Rebbe demonstrated that according to the Talmud, according to the Torah, that’s how they actually were: the Luchos were square, not rounded. Later, over the years after the Rebbe’s nesius, particularly in 5742, the Rebbe made a major effort to publicize this and explained it from every angle, and so on. Today it’s accepted almost everywhere, not only among chassidim; even Misnagdim use square Luchos. In any case—what? That’s it, that’s it. We won’t go into that now. Let’s get straight to the subject. The 613 mitzvos were given to the Jewish people. Moshe Rabbeinu received 613 mitzvos. Where are those 613 mitzvos? They’re in the Written Torah. The problem is that the Written Torah was written as a story. If you look for 613 mitzvos, you won’t find them laid out there. The entire Written Torah is a story: “Hashem spoke to Moshe,” “Hashem said to Moshe.” He went, he said, he spoke, this happened—stories. Within the stories are mitzvos. But what is a mitzvah and what isn’t? We don’t know. Entire books have been written about that: what exactly are the 613 mitzvos? So the 613 mitzvos in the Written Torah are the basis for the entire Oral Torah, where all the halachah is found. But in the Written Torah they’re stated extremely briefly, in two words. Sometimes an entire mitzvah appears in just one word. Take shechitah, for example. Nothing about its laws is written in the Torah; it just says, “You shall slaughter.”

07:06 We’re supposed to know all the laws of shechitah from that. “As I have commanded you”—this is one of the proofs that the Oral Torah was given to Moshe Rabbeinu. For many years there were disputes with the Sadducees, the Boethusians, the Karaites, and others who wanted to claim that the Oral Torah wasn’t authentic. One of the strongest proofs is that the Torah says, “You shall slaughter as I have commanded you.” There’s a verse in Parshas Re’eh: “You shall slaughter as I have commanded you.” That’s where we learn shechitah from. But where is “as I have commanded you”? The Torah doesn’t say anything more about all the laws of shechitah. So we see from this that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave them to Moshe orally, and Moshe passed them on. So the Torah contains the 613 mitzvos, and then the Oral Torah explains them. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya that this is like a father and mother. The Written Torah is like the father; the Oral Torah is like the mother. For a child to be born, there is what’s called the father’s drop, the initial point, and then there are the nine months during which the mother develops the fetus into a fully formed child. The Written Torah is called “your father’s instruction,” and the Oral Torah is called “your mother’s Torah.” That’s why everything in the Written Torah is a point: Do not steal, do not murder, do not do any work. We don’t know how or what; we don’t know the details. The Oral Torah comes and explains: “Do not do any work” means the thirty-nine categories of work discussed in Tractate Shabbos. For shechitah there is Tractate Chullin: five things invalidate shechitah, and so on. All the laws are explained to us by the Oral Torah. Now, how did the Oral Torah develop? As its name initially indicates, it was oral—transmitted by word of mouth—because it was simply forbidden to write it down. Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted the Oral Torah to be passed on through the souls of the Jewish people

09:02 Not through books. Hashem wanted it to happen specifically through the Jewish people receiving the Torah from person to person. There is something special about this: the entire Oral Torah has to be passed on specifically through a soul. According to Chassidus, we understand that the soul and the Torah, at their source, are one. That is why souls in particular can reveal the Oral Torah. That was the role of the Sanhedrin. Moshe Rabbeinu took seventy men and formed the Sanhedrin with them. They had to study the Torah’s principles, including halachah leMoshe miSinai. There were also the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded—the Torah’s rules, such as kal vachomer and gezeirah shavah, which we say every day before davening. Moshe Rabbeinu transmitted these principles, and the Sanhedrin had to derive all the halachos from them. Some things they received explicitly from Moshe Rabbeinu; that is called halachah leMoshe miSinai. Other things are learned from verses, from allusions, from the interpretation of verses and the like—gezeirah shavah, binyan av, and so on. This transmission of the Oral Torah continued until the time of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Everyone here who has studied Rambam knows his introduction, where he lists the forty generations from Moshe Rabbeinu to Rav Ashi: the entire chain of transmission of the Oral Torah, from Moshe to Yehoshua, from Yehoshua to the elders, from the elders to the prophets. There were forty generations until the Talmud was written. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi was one of those forty generations, at the end of the era of the Tannaim. I’m skipping ahead because I want to get to halachah. Yes. So Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi lived after the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash. In the Common Era, as they call it, he lived around the year 200. That means about eighteen hundred

11:09 years ago. That was Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s time, and he decided that the Oral Torah had to be written down. So he compiled the Mishnah. Why did he decide that? Because the Beis Hamikdash had been destroyed, there was Roman exile, and the Jewish people had to flee Eretz Yisroel. Most Jews were then in Bavel, Persia, and the countries of the Middle East, as it’s called. And then there was no... The hardships of exile and the decrees of the authorities began. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi saw that the Torah was in danger of being forgotten, so he compiled the six orders of the Mishnah. At the same time, other Tannaim produced beraisos. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Sifrei; there was the Mechilta of Rabbi Yishmael; and Rabbi Oshaya wrote Midrash Rabbah. Various Midrashim were written in that period, interpreting the verses. This is the Oral Torah, the foundation of halachah. We know that the Gemara identifies Rabbi Akiva as the foundation of the Oral Torah. Why Rabbi Akiva? Rabbi Akiva was the teacher of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s teacher. He lived before Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, in the generation immediately after the destruction. Rabbi Akiva lived about two thousand years ago. If we’re speaking of Rabbi Akiva’s time, it was about two thousand years ago. He lived right after the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash. That was when the troubles began, and then there was an epidemic. Everyone knows the story: Rabbi Akiva’s twenty-four thousand students all died. He then traveled to the Galilee in the south, where he found five students, and with those five students he rebuilt the Oral Torah. Rabbi Akiva’s five students were Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua, Rabbi Nechemiah, Rabbi Yosi, and Rabbi Yehuda. I named six. The Gemara itself

13:12 says so, according to some opinions, at any rate. Those were the students; that’s the whole Mishnah. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who was their student, gathered all the halachos and made the six orders of the Mishnah from them. That is really the foundation of halachah. He arranged the six orders of the Mishnah by subject. There are six orders: Zeraim deals with everything connected to the produce of the land. Moed covers everything connected to Shabbos and Yom Tov. Nashim deals with the laws concerning women—kiddushin, marriage, divorce, and so on, family law. Nezikin deals with monetary law. Kodshim deals with sacred matters, and Taharos deals with tumah and taharah. That was Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Afterward, most Jews were in Bavel, while a small number remained in Eretz Yisroel. They began to discuss and analyze the Mishnah to understand it, because the Mishnah was written very concisely. The Mishnah says this, this, this, this—everything is brief. You have to understand it. So the Amoraim sat down and worked to understand the Mishnah in depth and study all its details. That is the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud. In Eretz Yisroel, Rabbi Yochanan and the others worked on the Jerusalem Talmud. Outside Eretz Yisroel, in Bavel, five generations of Amoraim worked together on the Babylonian Talmud. It began with Rav and Shmuel, then came the students of Rav and Shmuel, Rav Yehuda, and afterward Abaye and Rava, Rabbah and Rav Yosef, until Rav Ashi, who was forty generations after Moshe Rabbeinu. Rav Ashi worked for sixty years on writing the Babylonian Talmud. He lived a hundred years after Rabbi Yochanan. In other words, the Babylonian Talmud was written a hundred years after the Jerusalem Talmud. That is

15:09 one reason why the halachah follows the Babylonian Talmud. When the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds disagree, the halachah follows the Babylonian Talmud. It is also because they simply worked on it more and invested more in it: the Amoraim sat and worked on it for sixty years. And because it was written a hundred years later, they had also discussed and analyzed the words of the Jerusalem Talmud, so the halachah follows the later authorities. Also, as it says, precisely because there were more questions and more discussion, they reached a deeper understanding of the halachah. The time of the Babylonian Talmud was about sixteen hundred years ago. In years from Creation, it was around the year four thousand two hundred—four thousand nine hundred from Creation. That was when Rav Ashi wrote the Babylonian Talmud. In Common Era terms, around the year 500, as people date it. At any rate, that was when the Babylonian Talmud was written. Once they finished writing it, it became sacred. As Rambam says, we do not tamper with the Babylonian Talmud. It became the foundational book of the Oral Torah, containing everything connected to halachah. Now the problem is that, as we all know, when you study the Babylonian Talmud and want to know the halachah, it is very difficult. You need to know all of Shas, all the questions, all the arguments and back-and-forth. You get tangled up and do not know what to do in practice. So it was necessary to draw from the entire Babylonian Talmud and all the books that had been written—the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, and so on—to determine the practical halachah. Then came several hundred years of the Geonim, known as the period of the Geonim. The Geonim lived in Bavel, because most of the Jewish people were there at the time. They worked to explain and interpret the Babylonian Talmud, but what was still missing was something organized, something

17:25 So that it would be organized, and ordinary people could draw practical halachic conclusions from it. Then there was a truly remarkable Jew, a holy and righteous man and a great scholar, known as Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi—the Rif. There were others, but the Rif is the most famous. The Rif, Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi of Morocco, was one of the great sages, a Sephardic scholar. He lived before the Rambam, roughly a thousand years ago. Just to give us a sense of the timeline: the Rif lived about a thousand years ago, before the Rambam. The Rambam considered himself a student of the Rif, but you should know that the Rambam never saw the Rif. The Rambam was born after the Rif passed away. Nevertheless, the Rambam calls the Rif his rebbe. Between the Rif and the Rambam was a student of the Rif named Ri Migash, Rabbi Yosef ibn Migash. He was a student of the Rif—not so well known, but the bochurim who study in depth know that there are works of his on the Gemara. Ri Migash was a student of the Rif, and he was the Rambam’s rebbe. So the Rambam considered himself a student of the Rif because he studied under Ri Migash and received Torah from him. Now, the Rif did something wonderful. He took the entire Talmud, removed all the intricate debate, and left only the halachah. All the bochurim who study Gemara know that the Rif appears at the end of the volume. It is laid out in the same format as a page of Gemara, with the Rif in the middle. What the Rif does is present the Gemara’s halachah in the language of the Gemara. He uses the same language as the Talmud, but gives the practical halachic conclusion without all the intricate debate. Sometimes he also brings rulings from the Geonim—not many, but he does bring them. When there is some [unclear]

19:26 [unclear], he writes it down; he brings what the Geonim ruled on various questions that arose over the generations. That was the Rif. As for the Rambam, we all know his history. The Rambam was born in Córdoba, Spain, and later had to flee. He was in Morocco and afterward in Egypt, in Cairo. The Rambam undertook the great work known as the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, the Yad. He did things somewhat differently from the Rif. The difference between them is that the Rif used the Gemara and extracted only the halachic material from it. He kept the Gemara’s wording and its order. So you have to know which part of the Gemara to look in to find the halachah. That isn’t so simple. What did the Rambam do? Something wonderful: he built a work of fourteen sections, independent of the Gemara’s order. He organized it systematically by subject, along the lines of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. There are fourteen books, each devoted to a particular area. Sefer HaMada deals with matters of character. Sefer Ahavah covers matters connected with daily life, such as prayer, tefillin, mezuzah, and so on. Sefer Zemanim covers Shabbos and Yom Tov; then there is Sefer Nashim, and so forth. All the bochurim know these; we won’t go over them. So the Rambam produced a wonderfully organized work covering the entire Torah: all 613 mitzvos, with every detail and fine point, according to the practical halachic conclusion. No intricate debate, no explanations, no sources. As the Rambam writes, a person reads the Written Torah and goes straight from it to the Oral Torah; with the Rambam, he doesn’t have to go through everything in between. The Rambam summarized everything that existed up to his time—the Mishnah, the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, the various discussions, all the books, and so on—and presented it as practical halachah. That is the Rambam. And the Rambam included

21:40 the entire Torah, even laws that are not applicable in practice today. He also wrote laws that concern the era of Moshiach, laws of offerings, laws of the Beis Hamikdash, laws of ritual impurity and purity—all kinds of laws connected with the time of the Geulah. The Rambam included those too. He produced a complete work, the Rambam’s great book. In addition, the Rambam wrote Sefer Hamitzvos, which he made as a list of the mitzvos, giving the basics of each mitzvah briefly. After that came the Rosh. Who was the Rosh? The Rif and the Rambam were Sephardic; they came from the region we mentioned, Spain and Morocco. The Rosh was Ashkenazic. At the same time that Torah was growing and flourishing in the Sephardic lands of the Rambam and the Rif, there were also great Torah scholars in Ashkenaz and France. We all know Rashi and the Tosafos. Tosafos was not one person; there were many great scholars who composed the Tosafos, and they were among the great scholars of Ashkenaz too. Rabbeinu Gershom Meor Hagolah is very well known. He was one of the early great scholars of Ashkenaz. And among the later ones was Maharam of Rothenburg, who lived about eight hundred years ago. He was one of the later scholars—I mean, among the later Baalei Tosafos. He was a leading authority in halachah and among the sages of Ashkenaz. The story is well known: the king imprisoned Maharam of Rothenburg and wanted a large sum of money for his release, but Maharam did not want it paid. He passed away in prison, and his body remained there for thirteen years. It is a very painful story from those difficult times. The Rosh was a student of Maharam of Rothenburg, so he too was an Ashkenazic scholar. He wrote Tosafos HaRosh, a very well-known work that gathers the teachings of the Baalei Tosafos, and he also wrote

24:02 the work by the Rosh found at the end of every volume of Gemara. These are two different works he composed. Tosafos HaRosh is a work of Tosafos. The Rosh composed a version of Tosafos; that is one work, the Tosafos HaRosh you find on the shelf. But the Rosh printed with the Gemara is a work of halachah. What did the Rosh do? He took—he did return to the Gemara, unlike the Rambam, who wrote an independent work. The Rosh drew from the Gemara and, like the Rif, made a summary of the halachah. But he also brought all the halachic approaches of the sages of Ashkenaz. He brought the various approaches and opinions of the rabbis who preceded him, the Baalei Tosafos. So when you study the Rosh in the Gemara, you see him present the halachah from the Gemara, along with all sorts of points relevant to the halachah from Rashi, Tosafos, and the great early authorities. He also cites the Rambam and the Rif. He gathers the teachings of the earlier authorities who preceded him and, on that basis, sums up the halachah. That is the work by the Rosh found in every volume of Gemara. It is a truly wonderful work. Now, what happened with the Rosh is that, because of what happened to his rebbe, he too had to flee. The Rosh fled from France and arrived in Spain. When he arrived, the Rashba was there. The Rashba was the leading figure of that generation. He lived in Barcelona and was, let’s say, the rebbe of that generation. He headed a yeshivah, served as a rabbi, gave halachic guidance, and issued rulings. The Rashba was one of the greatest halachic authorities. Interestingly, he wrote the Responsa of the Rashba on halachah, but most of us know him for his in-depth discussions of the Gemara. The Rosh arrived in Spain, and the Rashba welcomed him with open arms. He arranged for the Rosh to be accepted as

26:19 [unclear], and then he became the rabbi of a large city in Spain. So the Rosh created a kind of connection between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim. On the one hand, the Rosh was Ashkenazi. He brought with him the entire Torah tradition of Ashkenaz and France, the teachings of the Tosafists. But he lived in Spain, so he learned the teachings of the sages of Spain as well. That was where a kind of connection between the two traditions began. And you can see it in his work on the Talmud. He cites Tosafos, the Rambam, the Rif—he brings them all together. The Rosh passed away at the beginning of the millennium. Speaking in Hebrew dates—in our years, the five thousands; we are now in 5782—the Rosh passed away in 5088. That means it will soon be seven hundred years since the Rosh’s passing. So the Rosh lived exactly seven hundred years ago. The Rosh had a son named Rabbi Yaakov. This Rabbi Yaakov was the Baal HaTurim. He wrote the wonderful work called the Tur. Some say that this son of the Rosh remained in Ashkenaz, but apparently that is a mistake; we can see it from what the Rosh himself wrote. Apparently, he traveled with his father and spent several years in Spain, but afterward he returned to Ashkenaz, and that is how he was saved. It was a miracle for him. All the Rosh’s other sons were killed in Spain, may Hashem protect us. Eventually there was a decree there, and the authorities killed the Rosh’s entire family. The Rosh himself had passed away earlier, but his sons were all killed, may Hashem protect us. The only one who remained was the Baal HaTurim, the Tur, because he had returned to Ashkenaz. Later, at least toward the end of his life, he traveled to Eretz Yisroel. What was the story with

28:27 the Baal HaTurim? Listen closely. What the Tur did was remarkable. He took his father’s work—the work of the Rosh, as we said—and used it to build a work of practical halachah. He argued that his father’s work was wonderful, but, as we said, you still had to know the entire Talmud. You had to study the tractates and know where to find a particular halachah—whether it was in Kiddushin, Gittin, or Bava Basra. It was still confusing. So the Tur divided his work into four parts. The Rambam had divided his into fourteen, but those fourteen include the entire Torah: the laws of Moshiach, the laws of offerings, everything. The Tur said: Let’s make a work dealing only with what applies today. Not offerings, not matters of ritual impurity and purity. A work covering the Torah’s laws, but focused on what is practically relevant today: what does a person need to know in practice? He divided that into four parts. Orach Chaim contains all the laws relevant to a person’s daily life, as well as Shabbos and Yom Tov. It includes the laws of getting up in the morning, davening, blessings over food, Yom Tov, and Shabbos. All those laws are in Orach Chaim. Yoreh Deah contains the laws for which one needs to consult a rabbi: laws relating to shechitah, laws relating to niddah, and other questions of what is forbidden and what is permitted. Then Choshen Mishpat contains all the laws of monetary matters. And Even HaEzer contains all the laws relating to marriage, betrothal, divorce, and so on. That is what the Tur did. He made four sections, and in them he wrote all the laws. Now, what do we see in the Tur? Something remarkable. There is a difference between the Tur and the Rambam. First, as we said, the Tur included only what is practically relevant.

30:44 Unlike the Rambam, who also included laws that are not practically relevant. The Rambam covers the entire Torah, all 613 mitzvos. The Tur discusses only the mitzvos practiced during the time of exile. That is one difference. A second difference is that the Rambam does not present other opinions. He gives only his own ruling. In the Rambam, there are not two opinions; there is only one—the Rambam’s practical ruling. That itself was one reason some great Torah scholars opposed the Rambam. Many argued against him, saying that one must not study his work. There was a great controversy over it in his own time, because he did not bring other opinions but simply decided on one ruling himself. Besides that, he did not give references to the sources. The Tur did not do that. The Tur does bring different opinions: some say this, and others say that. Sometimes he decides between them. He also writes about the customs in Spain and in Ashkenaz, and describes what people actually do in practice. So the Tur produced a much more comprehensive work. To this day, the Tur is considered one of the most fundamental works for anyone who needs to know halachah together with all the different opinions. That was the work the Tur wrote. This was around seven hundred years ago, near the end of the era of the Rishonim. The Tur is considered the figure who closed that era; when people speak of the Rishonim, they mean up through the Tur. From then on begins the era of the Acharonim. After the Tur, great Torah scholars came along and began to expand on his work. One of the greatest was the Beis Yosef, who lived about two hundred years after the Tur. Rabbi Yosef Karo was also Sephardic, yes? Incidentally, he was among those expelled from Spain. He was born in Spain, and he lived through the terrible period of the decree expelling the Jews from Spain.

32:50 At the age of five or six, he had to flee his home along with the hundreds of thousands of Jews who did not, G-d forbid, want to change their faith and had to leave Spain. The Beis Yosef was among them. He traveled from place to place; he was in Egypt, and afterward he was in Istanbul—in, what is it called? Turkey. Eventually, toward the end of his life, he went up to Eretz Yisroel. The Beis Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Karo, did something remarkable. What did he do? First, he took the Tur and wrote a work on it. The Tur had written concisely, giving rulings in brief. He brought different opinions, unlike the Rambam, but only stated what was forbidden and what was permitted: this one says this, that one says that. He did not spell out the reasons or the sources—where a ruling comes from, why someone holds that way, why...? Then the Beis Yosef came and wrote his work on the Tur, called the Beis Yosef. For every law the Tur brings, he provides the sources: where it appears in the Talmud, why certain authorities hold as they do, how they arrived at their ruling, and why others disagree. He opened up the entire discussion of halachah in a truly remarkable way. That is the work the Beis Yosef wrote. He also wrote a work on the Rambam, called Kesef Mishneh. That is more of a detailed commentary on the Rambam. The Tur writes that he did not—the Beis Yosef writes that he did not want to write a work like the Beis Yosef on the Rambam, because, as we said, the Rambam gives only one opinion. He specifically wanted to write on the Tur, which brings all the different opinions. So he wrote his work on the Tur. His work on the Rambam is only an explanation of the Rambam and the Rambam’s sources, and he did not manage to finish that work either. There is no Kesef

34:52 A commentary on the entire Rambam. After the Tur—after the Beis Yosef finished writing his great work, the Beis Yosef on the Tur, he went on to write another book: the Shulchan Aruch. Rabbi Yosef Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch too, but he wrote it after the Beis Yosef, as a summary, a kind of résumé. When he wrote the Shulchan Aruch, his aim wasn’t to make it the main work. The Beis Yosef himself wrote it for ordinary people, for young people, for people who couldn’t study the larger work. He wanted the Beis Yosef to be the main book for studying halachah. But what happened wasn’t what he intended. It was דווקא the Shulchan Aruch that became the foundational book, right? What did he do in the Shulchan Aruch? He followed the Tur’s structure: Orach Chaim, Yoreh De’ah, Even Ha’ezer, and Choshen Mishpat—but with practical rulings, the conclusions. By the time of the Beis Yosef, two hundred years had passed since the Tur, and other books had been written by great Torah scholars during that period. I’m not mentioning all the names because we don’t have time; we can’t cover everything. So the Beis Yosef wanted to sum up how to conduct oneself in practice. Now here’s the remarkable part. To issue practical halachic rulings, the Beis Yosef had to decide: How do I rule? Whom do I follow? So he established a rule. He chose three pillars, which he called the “three pillars of halachic ruling”: the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh. He chose these three

37:07 because, as we said, they were the ones who had written the most comprehensive works on halachah. So he decided that they were the most authoritative for deciding halachah. Look at the diagram here; you can see the Alfasi—that’s the Rif—the Rambam, and the Rosh. The Beis Yosef writes that, for him, these three are the pillars for practical halachic rulings. So how do I decide the halachah? I look at the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh. If all three say the same thing, it’s clear. But if they disagree, I follow the majority. Right? If the Rambam and the Rif agree against the Rosh, the halachah follows the Rambam and the Rif. If the Rosh and the Rambam—or the Rif—agree, he follows the majority, and so on. But what happens when there are only two? There are matters the Rif didn’t write about, or the Rosh didn’t write about, and you have one opinion against another. So he selected other great Torah scholars, including the Rashba and the Ramban. He chose another two or three great scholars to fill in when there was a question. But the three foundations on which the Beis Yosef built his halachic rulings were the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh, and on that basis he built the Shulchan Aruch. What’s the problem here, though? Do you understand the problem? The problem is that he gave almost no place to the Ashkenazim. That’s the main issue. The Rambam and the Rif were both thoroughly Sephardi. The Rosh, although he was Ashkenazi, lived among Sephardim and was influenced by them, so he wasn’t entirely Ashkenazi anymore. So people complained: What do you mean? He set aside all the great Ashkenazi scholars? What about the Maharam of Rothenburg? What about Rashi? What about Tosafos? They have opinions too. Don’t they have a say in halachah? Have you suddenly forgotten them? There were very

39:16 strong objections to that, and so the Shulchan Aruch came to be regarded as a final authority primarily for Sephardim. Then came the Rema. The Rema lived in the same period as the Beis Yosef. He lived in Poland. Now, there’s something very interesting about the Rema. He was much younger than the Beis Yosef, but he passed away before the Beis Yosef. The Rema lived relatively few years, while the Beis Yosef lived a long life. So the Rema was born after the Beis Yosef and passed away before him, but they lived in the same period. Another interesting thing is that the Rema began writing a book just like the Beis Yosef’s. They lived in different countries, and there was no internet, so the Rema began writing a book of that kind. There is his work on the Tur, the Darchei Moshe, but at first he began writing it at much greater length. When he saw that the author of the Beis Yosef had already produced a book, he made the Darchei Moshe a supplement to the Beis Yosef. It appears alongside the Tur. After the author, Rabbi Yosef Karo, produced the Shulchan Aruch with its practical halachic rulings, the Rema wrote what you see here. It’s called the Mapah, the glosses in the Shulchan Aruch. The Rema wrote them on the Shulchan Aruch. It’s like a tablecloth on a table: he made a table, so the Rema put a cloth on the table. That’s the Mapah, the work the Rema wrote on the Shulchan Aruch. What did he do? He included all the matters on which Ashkenazim differ from Sephardim, all the practices followed in Ashkenazi lands. Whenever there’s a disagreement between Ashkenazi and Sephardi sages, the Rema writes it in his glosses: “In our countries, the practice is such and such,” or “Others disagree.” That’s

41:23 the Rema. When the Rema says, “Others disagree,” he’s bringing the views of the Ashkenazi sages. And since then—since this happened five hundred years ago—we’ve had what we call today Sephardim and Ashkenazim, with different customs: Ashkenazim practice one way, Sephardim another. We’ll get to the rabbis, but this took shape in that period through practical halachic rulings, with the Rema and the author of the Shulchan Aruch. As we said, the four parts of the Shulchan Aruch became the basis of halachah throughout the Jewish world five hundred years ago. Then great Torah scholars came afterward and began writing commentaries. Whenever a book becomes famous, everyone wants to write a commentary on it. That’s what happened here. Once Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch, together with the Rema’s glosses, became the book studied throughout the Jewish world to know what to do in practice, great Torah scholars and rabbis wrote books about it. Who are the well-known commentators? You have them here at the bottom of the diagram, the ones printed in the Shulchan Aruch. It lists the Magen Avraham and the Taz on Orach Chaim. These were two important rabbis who lived four hundred years ago, in the region of Poland. On Yoreh De’ah there are the Taz and the Shach. They, too, were scholars who lived in Europe, mainly in Poland, which was then a major center of Jewish life. On Even Ha’ezer there are the Chelkas Mechokek and the Beis Shmuel, and on Choshen Mishpat, the Meiras Einayim and the Shach. These were people who lived—what period are we talking about now? Around the years 5400 to 5450, shortly before the Baal Shem Tov. Right? That was when these books were written and the Shulchan Aruch was printed with these commentaries. Various great Torah scholars wrote

43:34 Commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch—that was roughly the period between the Beis Yosef and the Alter Rebbe. And here we come to the Alter Rebbe. What happened with the Alter Rebbe? What was distinctive about the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch? The Alter Rebbe lived about a hundred years after those editions of the Shulchan Aruch were printed—the Shulchan Aruch with the commentaries of the Magen Avraham, the Shach, and the Taz. The Alter Rebbe came about a hundred years after those great Torah scholars. He was a student of the Maggid of Mezritch. The Maggid of Mezritch was a genius in the revealed parts of Torah; as is well known, he had studied under the Pnei Yehoshua. The Maggid of Mezritch said that a book of halachah was needed that would include two things that were missing. First, it should present the laws together with their reasons. Throughout that whole development, the emphasis had been on the rulings, but the reasons had been neglected. According to the Torah, a Jew needs to know not only the mitzvah but also its reason. So what was missing was the presentation of the laws with their reasons. Second, since chassidim followed Kabbalah in many matters, and the wisdom of Kabbalah had begun to spread, there were many practices and customs connected with Kabbalah, the mystical teachings revealed a hundred years earlier by the Arizal, the Maharal of Prague, the holy Shelah, and others. They lived shortly before the Baal Shem Tov, and then the Baal Shem Tov came and made this a path in the service of Hashem for all the Jewish people. So the intention was to produce a Shulchan Aruch that would contain all the laws in the Shulchan Aruch of the Mechaber, but would add their reasons, the conclusions reached after the discussions of all the well-known authorities who wrote after the Shulchan Aruch, and also the practices followed according to Kabbalah. We’ll come to examples of practices

45:46 and customs revealed by the Arizal and the Kabbalists. That was the purpose of the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch. As we know, the Alter Rebbe wrote much more, but a large portion was burned, unfortunately. What we have of the complete Shulchan Aruch he wrote is only a small part—though what we do have is also a great deal. In any case, one of the innovations in the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch is that he presents several opinions, gives their reasons, and rules on the halachah. He also includes matters of customary practice. It is well known that the Alter Rebbe relied heavily on the Magen Avraham. Why? Because the Magen Avraham also followed Kabbalah. That was a strength of his work: he quotes extensively from the Arizal and other Kabbalistic sources. That is why the Alter Rebbe relied on it so much. But it is known that toward the end of his life, the Alter Rebbe said he regretted relying so heavily on the Magen Avraham. Besides the Shulchan Aruch, the Alter Rebbe also wrote a siddur. In the siddur, the Alter Rebbe often rules differently from the Shulchan Aruch. In other words, the Alter Rebbe wrote the Shulchan Aruch when he was young and the siddur when he was older. Many laws written in the siddur do not match the Shulchan Aruch, and we know that when the Shulchan Aruch and the siddur disagree, the halachah follows the siddur. Why? Because the Alter Rebbe wrote the siddur later, and in the siddur he also follows Kabbalah. The general rule is that in the Shulchan Aruch, when halachah and Kabbalah differ, he rules according to halachah. In the siddur, when halachah and Kabbalah differ, he rules according to Kabbalah. So on a number of major halachic questions, the Alter Rebbe rules differently in the siddur than he did in the Shulchan

47:37 Aruch. That is why, for us, it is very important not only to know what the Shulchan Aruch says, but also to check whether the siddur addresses the matter. The siddur does not contain only customs. The Alter Rebbe also wrote laws of blessings over food, washing the hands, and tzitzis in the siddur. There are many laws discussed there at length, with sections and headings, and some laws of Shabbos too. So we know that we always need to check the siddur. Here is one of the most important examples; I don’t know how many bochurim know this. You know, speaking now about Shabbos: in the Shulchan Aruch, the Alter Rebbe rules on the time Shabbos ends according to Rabbeinu Tam, which is later. But in the siddur, the Alter Rebbe changed his ruling and gives the time according to the Geonim, which is earlier. And thank G-d—if we didn’t have the siddur, we would actually always end Shabbos an hour later and have less time afterward. But this is what the Alter Rebbe did: his final halachic ruling in the siddur is that Shabbos ends according to the Geonim, which is earlier. There is a halachic dispute about this; we won’t go into the whole subject now. So that brings us to the Alter Rebbe. I’ll just finish with what happened afterward. After the Alter Rebbe, there were other rulings. But the thing is, there are matters the Alter Rebbe did not write down for us, because his writings were burned or lost, or we simply don’t know. So there are things that chassidim received through tradition. There are several sources. In short, there is a well-known book—one moment. The Tzemach Tzedek, the Alter Rebbe’s grandson, wrote a book in which he records a number of halachic matters he heard from the Alter Rebbe, including his discussions and original insights. Then there is the Alter Rebbe’s brother, Reb Yehuda Leib, whose She’eris Yehuda contains a number of halachic matters he received from his brother.

49:46 After that, there is a book called Shaar Hakollel. Its author was the Rebbe’s grandfather, Reb Avraham David Lavut. There’s someone here named after him. In any case, the Rebbe’s grandfather, Reb Avraham David Lavut, wrote Shaar Hakollel, a work on the siddur, and he did a wonderful job. They say the Rebbe Rashab invested hours, days, and months in it; it was reviewed by the Rebbe Rashab. The book explains the entire wording of the prayers and all the Chabad customs, with their sources, and explains why we do various things the way we do. That is Shaar Hakollel. Some siddurim have it printed at the end. More recently, it has also been published separately as a book in its own right. Our generation was privileged that the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, worked to clarify these matters of halachah even before he assumed the leadership. The Rebbe arrived at a time when many things were not known. There was a great deal of confusion because what existed had not been organized, and there were many things for which no established custom was known. Some chassidim did one thing, a shul did another. Do we do it or not? Do we say it or not? Do we say Selichos or not? Do we do it this way, or, G-d forbid, leave it out? A great deal of uncertainty remained about practices and customs, especially customs followed by our Rebbeim that were not widely known. The Rebbe, the leader of our generation, undertook a tremendous and wonderful effort in this area even before assuming the leadership. The Rebbe drew this information out of the Frierdiker Rebbe. You can see it: the Rebbe would go in to the Frierdiker Rebbe, ask him about practices and customs, and write them down. Later, when the Rebbe published the maamarim—you can see this in the early years of the 5700s—each time he published maamarim, he also published Chabad customs. That is how it began. There was no book of Chabad customs. The Rebbe began to make Chabad customs known, how

51:56 Many customs, all kinds of things, and that developed further later, when the Rebbe became Rebbe. When the Rebbe assumed the leadership, he arranged for the Sefer Haminhagim to be printed. The people who actually worked on the Sefer Haminhagim were the well-known mashpia Rabbi Menachem Zev Greenglass, who was also a kabbalist, and Rabbi Leibel Groner, the Rebbe’s secretary. But the Rebbe himself reviewed and corrected the entire book, the Sefer Haminhagim, and it was published in 5724, I think. That was when the Sefer Haminhagim, the customs of Chabad, came out. It’s a very, very important book for customs. Besides that, the Rebbe wrote many letters over the years to clarify customs. We in our generation have been fortunate that the Rebbe revealed and publicized many things, and thanks to that we know how to do things and what to do. Without it, we wouldn’t know at all how to conduct ourselves in quite a few matters of daily life. So that gives us a bit of a picture of how the whole body of halachah developed, right up to our generation. And that’s it. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us all, as we say every day in davening: “Anyone who studies halachos every day is assured that he is destined for the World to Come, as it says, ‘The ways of the world are His.’ Do not read ‘ways,’ but ‘halachos.’” May we learn halachah, and may we learn it as the Alter Rebbe writes in Hilchos Talmud Torah: with each halachah, we should try to understand its reasoning. That is the best way to know halachah, and then you see how much richness there is in every matter. Sometimes you do something and you don’t even know how many layers of depth it contains. Sometimes there is halachah, Kabbalah—and this is what we do. We learn, and when we begin to learn, we begin to see the tremendous richness in every part of Torah. All the best. Have a good and blessed evening.