0683 - R' Yoel Kahn 33 - The Rebbe's Question Was a Different and Deeper One

00:01 Rabbi Yael once told me that he wrote to the Rebbe a letter, a shaili in Halakhah, but he gave some kind of inyan of refuah, something he didn't tell me what it was about. But he wrote the Rebbe that it was an inyan in Halakhah. And the Rebbe answered him whatever the Rebbe answered him in poshut in Halakhah, in nigle. And he wrote back to the Rebbe a kasha on what the Rebbe wrote, a simple kasha. And the Rebbe answered him, "You're right. Your kasha is a good kasha." And the Rebbe basically changed, so to speak. And he tells me that the kasha he wrote was so simple, he couldn't believe that the Rebbe didn't think of that kasha. He had to ask the Rebbe, and the Rebbe had to agree to it. So he wrote that to the Rebbe. What's the pshat that the Rebbe didn't think of the kasha? So the Rebbe wrote him a long letter, a long setel, I guess, where the Rebbe is mazbir that be'emes, the kasha that you asked is no kasha whatsoever. And the Rebbe asked to answer it very simply. But on that answer that's very simple, there's another kasha, and the Rebbe went on back and forth and back and forth till finally it ends up that the kasha that Rabbi Yael asked is really a good kasha. But l'poel mamash, it ends up with the same kasha that he asked, but it's not the same. He asked it poshut simply. And the Rebbe explained

01:18 how after that simple kasha, you could answer, and you could go on deeper and deeper and deeper. And the end, after all the depth, you come back to that kasha. So it showed that not the pshat that the Rebbe didn't think of the kasha. The Rebbe thought of it right away, but had an answer to it. But later on, the Rebbe agreed that the kasha is a kasha because it went much deeper. And from that, I understood poshut the way we learn Gemara, that you have Gemara as a kasha and a teretz, or sometimes whichever is things like that. And you have ultimate pshat mask. Well, a teretz is a teretz, another good teretz, and you have all kinds of kashas, and you answer it back. And so of course, so of what happens is you come to the end that the teretz the Gemara gives is a good teretz, but not the way it seems simply. Haket. But what the Gemara did, what Ravina, Rav Ashi did when they made the... Finished the Gemara, they wrote the Gemara, they wrote the kasha and the teretz, and in between, there is so much discussion because otherwise sometimes the Gemara says a kasha. Still, what's gonna kasha? There's no kasha. We could answer very simple. Elu v'elu, and that we could go on. And this is basically what ultimate pshat did, Tosefta and the Rishonim and the Acharonim, that they're going back to all these discussions that took place when they wrote the Gemara, that we

02:29 have a kasha and a teretz, but between that is so much, and the teretz or the end with the maskona, the Gemara is not the way it seems very poshut. But I understood it very good from this letter that he said that the Rebbe wrote, that the Rebbe explained that the kasha, if you look at the end line, the Rebbe was masking to his kasha. His kasha is the kasha that bothers the Rebbe also, and you're right. But really it's not. It just looks the same, but there is so much depth behind it. But this was a letter that the Rebbe wrote him. I once told over the story, but I didn't mention that it was Rabbi Yael himself who wrote the letter, but now I'm saying that it was Rabbi Yael. That's what he told me. He wrote that letter to the Rebbe, and this is the answer that he got.