וישב תשפ״ג

00:00 A good Levoch, and welcome to this here tonight, Motta Shabbos Parshas Vayeshev. I want to dedicate this, uh, close to the Schlucho, Mrs. Henya, Mrs. Henya Federman, she have a Refuah Shleima B'korach. Today, the-- this past, uh, Chavim Elkislev was the yurt site of my mother's father, Rav Ramshai Shapira. And just briefly, I wanted to address something which was in one of the websites, Chabad websites. It was just this past week, there was a write-up about-- The title was The Last Yut Askislev, A Bachasid Trapped in Leningrad. This was in nineteen forty-one, I believe. And there was-- he passed away, Chavim Elkislev, which was just a few moments, a few days before, uh, was this Yut Askislev. And Rav Muler Mochkin describes this, how he visited-- he went with a couple of other people, and they had this farbrengen, and the Zeide was very, very weak because he had been starving. And how one of the things that she describes when it came to seeing the Alter Rebbe's nigun, that he asked-- the Zeide asked them to help him sit up. And he found this very, very inspiring, uh, Yut Askislev, which he would relate again and again. He told the Rebbe, and the Rebbe told him to repeat it every Yut Askislev. Anyway, this was, this was on, uh, in some detail on the-- this website. And the part of the description there is how he had been starving. It was, it was in the blockade, in the siege of Leningrad. There was very,

01:44 very little food, and kosher food was even more difficult. So Rav Muler Mochkin apparently had brought some not kosher food and Pashat V'Pikuach Nefesh, and how he refused to eat anything treif. So then Rav Muler and another Hasid. Now, he writes, Muler Berezin is actually Rav Perec Berezin, whom I met years ago. He is Mrs. Chaim's father, and pleaded with him at least to allow his children to eat, but he dismissed the very notion. So this website has also option for comments. So someone commented whether this was justified, this, this attitude of, of refusing to have treif in, uh, even to, uh, for Pikuach Nefesh. So we're sitting here, Baruch Hashem, as I told the, uh, my students this past week. In all my life, I've never starved. I've never, never been hungry. You know, a bit hungry, but never been in a state of starving. We don't understand what it is. At any rate, there was a te-- that's-- this is their mindset. And what does remind me is the story with the Alter Rebbe, where the Alter Rebbe is sitting in prison, and he refused to eat anything. And the governor of the prison thought that he was fearful of the verdict and of the, the court case, and therefore he's refusing to eat with a, as a, a method to end his life. And so they tried to force-feed him, and the Alter Rebbe resolutely did not allow them to. And there was a whole commotion. Meanwhile, the minister who was in

03:26 charge of the whole interrogation, he comes by and he hears a whole commotion. He asks what's going on. They told him that they're refusing to eat, et cetera. So the minister says, "For such a person, it's not, not, uh, befitting to f-force-feed. I want to speak to, to speak to him." And so they told the-- So he went in to speak to the Alter Rebbe. He asked him, "Why aren't you eating? It could be- Hold on. You only leave it. Never had this one. It could be that the, the verdict will be in your favor. And besides that, if you c-could bring your own death, so you're going to-- you'll forfeit your portion in Olam Haba. So the Alter Rebbe says, "There's no kosher food, and I'm, I'm not going to eat treif, even if I forfeit my f-portion to-- in Olam Haba." So you see this, uh, this attitude which Hasidim had, and there is, there is basis for this. A Ha- a person who is known as a Hasid Godol can take that view. Well, you can ask about with the children, but their, their view that I'm not going to compromise even. Good. So then I, I told them about the farbrengen today in shul, how Rav Mendel Fuzilfas, when he was in the Gulag, so Rav Mesher Katzenelenbogen would send him, would send him food just as a little bit of a supplement to his, to his situation. And so Rav Mendel sent him-- Rav Mesher sends him butter. So Rav

04:51 Mendel from the Gulag, he sends back, "Don't send me butter, it's chalav akum." And, uh, so Rav Mesher-- He says, "Send me oil." So Rav Mesher got hold of a, a d- home, like a-- for, for, for the-- in their own h- in their own house, like a canning machine to make your own cans of oil. And he sent cans. Later, when Rav Mendel came out of the Gulag, Rav Mesher met him and he asked him, "You know, what was-- You know, bu-butter, after all, is not such a..." It says, "You don't have to be mechon, but a person eats butter which isn't Chalav Yisrael." And Rav Mendel said that he had made a resolution that he's not going to compromise at all. All right. Kapon him. Just a little bit of inspiration. Baruch Hashem, we don't have these problems. But just to be ins- take inspiration from the resoluteness of Hasidim not to, to lower standards, et cetera. Let's go on to the first, uh, of our questions today. So I have here a question from someone who's traveling long distance. He's traveling to Australia and is stopping off en route. And this is during Hanukkah. And he's asking, can he light menorah in the airport where he stops off, I don't know, Singapore or whatever, Kuala Lumpur, whatever it may be. Will he be able to light the menorah over there? So now, here, what you have in front of you is the, the, uh, Piskei Teshuvas. And what we're seeing here is

06:30 two schools of thought. There is the Tzitz Eliezer, Rav Waldenberg, who is of the opinion that the house-- having a house and having the menorah at your house is not crucial for the mitzvah. As far as he's concerned, if you're out even camping in the open air, sleeping under, under the, under the sky, you can still be fulfilling the mitzvah of Ner Chanukah. As you can see, there's, there's-- Although it says, "Ner Ish Orayso," it doesn't mean, according to the Rav Waldenberg, that you need to have a house to fulfill the mitzvah. The fact that we've talked about in the Gemara a person who doesn't have a house and sees a menorah and says the beracha Sha-as Oneh-sim laboaseinu, that's not because he doesn't have a mitzvah to light the menorah because he doesn't have a house. It's just that he doesn't have the resources to be able to make a menorah wherever he-- wherever his circumstances. But not that it's crucial to the house. However, the, the, the Rabbi, many Poskim disagree with this, and they see the house as being essential to the mitzvah of Hadlakas Neiros of Chanukah. Particularly comes to mind the Maharsham. It's quoted here, Rav Janner, who was in Galicia, one of the most prominent Poskim in his time, who takes the view that you're traveling on a, a-- on the trains. He says, "Your carriage," if you remember the olden days, they used to have-- in the train, you'd have cabins. You could have a cabin, a private

08:00 cabin. So he says that that's your house for tonight. Whilst you're traveling, that's your house. So he's-- they are taking the view that the house is essential. Having it at your house is essential to Ner Chanukah. I just picked up today, yesterday, the-- there's this weekly, um, the weekly Fabregen, published by Mirkes HaNash. And at the back, there is a weekly column by the Rav Chaim Hill Raskin, who happens to be my cousin's son. Um, he writes very nicely. At any rate, he's got this whole article this week about menorah when traveling, and he brings up a surah that if you're traveling through the night, you have a chiyuv to stop off, rent a room in a hotel, that you should have a chiyuv, a bayis. He, he doesn't necessarily conclude that way. He says inside your car. So that is also can be your bayis. If you rely on the Bejan Rov, you can say the hou-- the car is, is, is a ba- is a bayis. You could light in the car, obviously, in a safe way. But, um, what about in the air- in the airport? Now, if I was stuck in an airport... Uh, so one, one other thing is that the Rav Fisher, who's quoted here, the Even Yesro Rav Fisher, he writes, "If you're traveling with the ten people together, even though there's no house, they can light, no different to lighting in a shul." I don't see that behal-- about whether you need to have ten people to

09:26 light in a shul. There's a whole discussion. It's not so clear that you have to have ten people. That in, in Shulchan- in the Shacharit Shul brings from, I think, Rabbi Akiv Emden, on Friday afternoon, let's say, and people are coming to shul and you don't have a minyan and you want to light the menorah in shul before Shabbos, obviously. So there is room to light that menorah without ten people, and I guess still to make a beracha. So it's not so essential. But meanwhile, coming back to if I would be, let's say, somewhere in Kuala Lumpur in an airport for a couple of hours between flights, to pull out a menorah somewhere in the middle of the, uh, you know, by all the check-in desks, et cetera, I don't think it will last more than about thirty seconds. I would more likely go to some lounge, departure lounge, where there's no flights going from there, and usually you can fi-find a quiet corner. But then I won't have the heter of, of, um, um, of saying that I'm doing it a public menorah. It's not public because it's-- I'm finding a, a quiet place. As someone's writing, "I find it difficult to imagine to get permission to light, uh, fires in an airport." That is, that is absolutely true. And that's why I would look for a very quiet place and, um, where hopefully it won't, won't set up any, um, smoke alarms, et cetera. Now, so le-let's just look at-- I wanna just

10:47 share with you one- Yeah, I know what you mean. Someone is- No, no, no. The rabbi actually did find time. Someone is not muted. So, I know it's- Someone is not muted. The thing is that, um, yeah, a lot, a lot of times, uh, it's not accurate and- There you go. Okay. So here we have a story of-- I know it's a second story for tonight, but... Oh, there's a third. It's most of Shabbos, make them Sagahamaster. So, uh, this is a story of the Rebbe Marash and a Hasid called Reb Psachya from Kherson. And it was once a Simchat Torah, and the Rebbe was farbrengen, and Reb Psachya had taken a bit of mashke, and he said, "People say the Rebbe doesn't do any mosim. I'm gonna tell him my fits, with-- my personal thing. I was-- In summer, I was by the Rebbe, uh, uh, in Yechidis. And before I left, the Rebbe said to me, "You are a, a lumber merchant, and sometimes you have to travel for several days. When, when comes Chanukah, don't forget, take with you large candles." And takya, when it was-- came, came Chanukah, I had to be somewhere in some forest. And I remember the Rebbe's advice, so I took with me large candles. And when I came into the forest, I was, I was, uh, attacked by, I guess by murderers, by thieves, robbers, and they took away my money, and they wanted to kill me. I pleaded with them that they should let me

12:15 le- live and I'll le- leave, I'll leave them the money, but they said, "No, but if you-- they will release you, then you're gonna report us to the police, and we'll, we'll get into trouble, and therefore they're gonna have to kill me." I pleaded with them in vain. So I saw, I, um, I, I saw that my end has come, so I asked them, "Let me daven Ma'ariv and to light Hanukkah licht before my passing because now is Hanukkah, and we need to light candles." So that they graciously, quote unquote, "allowed me to do so." As I'm lighting the candles, then the poets, the local squire passed by. He saw a light in the middle of the forest, and he veered off the main road to see what's going on. He had his revolver with him, and he saw what was going on. He arrested them, and I was saved. So, uh, so the Rab Tsakhi says, "Isn't this a moefes?" To which the Rebbe says, "Zo gan dig." Okay. Me- meanwhile, what we're seeing here, um, that they, in this story, I don't know whether you can base a halacha on a story, but we're seeing here that he was lighting candles, uh, out in the forest, not, not-- nowhere, and the Rebbe had given him these cand- told him to take the candles. Obviously, the Rebbe foresaw this even-eventuality. So there is a shtikl Chassidishe maise to relight on, to, to rely on. Um, rely on, um, um, on lighting in a... even

13:43 though it's not your, your home, and you'll be yotzer the mitzvah. Right. Someone's pointing out that lighting an airport will, can be followed with lighting the brocha in a cell. I highly doubt it. But all right, let's move on. This is the-- that was the first Hanukkah question. We'll have another Hanukkah question towards the end, but one, another question for Hanukkah now. And that is someone who's leaving house to the airport, can they light menorah before they go to the airport? And they're not gonna be there. So let's g- go through this carefully. Let's say you go to someone's house for Shabbos. It's Motzaei Shabbos, and let's say you went to Manchester for Shabbos, and on Motzaei Shabbos, you're gonna drive back to London. It's a two, three hour, three, three-hour drive or more. So you have the option to light in Manchester where, by your host or you're gonna wait till you get back to London. So if it's a long j-- If it's a short journey, best wait till you get home. But if it's a long journey, so then you can light at your residence where you were. At the moment when you're lighting, it's still your residence, so you can light there. So if you're gonna light at the time when it's... If you're lighting, it's, it's already the zman of Shabi-- of, of hadlakat neris. You light and then go to the airport, that's okay. Now, I'm, I'm switching from one story to the other, yeah? There's driving... If, if

15:14 you're lighting and it's already the zman, that's not a problem. Question is, which the, what, I know, the one who asked me this, this past week, he's living in New York and is coming to England for a couple of days, and he wants to light and then get, go to, straight to the airport, and he'll be through the night, no chance to light menorah. So he can leave the, he can leave the, he can light after Plag Hamincha, which is an hour, uh, approximately before sunset in winter, and then he goes to the airport. Now, so I said, "But when, i-i... Are you traveling with your wife or your wife is staying home?" Says his wife was staying home, and then that's, that is more glad. But what-- Here's a, here's an interesting dilemma. You can light menorah from plag, but you're not on mekayem the mitzvah until, until the sunset. So if it's your own home, I think, then you can light after plag and go to the airport, that's okay. If you are, let's say, staying in a hotel and you're gonna light, uh, let's say if the hotel have got accommodation for you to light, but you're gonna go to the hotel, light after plag, and then go straight to the airport. When it comes to the time of the mitzvah, it's not your house even. So, so then... And you're not, you're not there, even if you... Tzniyus, um, you know, we discussed before, but you have to be, somehow, the

16:36 neris have to be associated with you. So again, if you're traveling, if you want to light after plag, if it's your own house, I think you could light the menorah and leave the flames burning with enough fuel to last into nacht. I think that would be legitimate. But if you were leaving a place and it's not gonna be your house when the time comes, so then you wouldn't be allowed to light after plag, but you could light after shkiya because at that time you're doing the mitzva, you're mekayem the mitzvah, then that would be, I think, legitimate. It's a bit subtle, but okay. Let's go on. So here, um, uh, I was very touched with this story. A teacher in a school somewhere, um, in London, and he calls me up, he says, "I have a problem." There's-- In his, in his class, every boy has his own shtender. You know, these fancy shtenders. So each boy has their own shtender, and there was a boy who had a very fancy shtender, and it was hanging from something, and the teacher, he says, "I knocked it over by mistake," and then it got damaged. He got, like, the lip which holds the sefer from slipping down, it broke off or something. And so he's, he's asking, "Do I have to pay for the damage to the child's property?" And he himself says, there's, there's a famous thing that, uh, Gemara says, "She'cheir she'davek katan p'gi osek ro'o." If you damage, you cause damage to a

18:01 child, you are liable. If they cause you damage, they aren't liable. So, um, on, on, certainly at, uh, Mashkafa Rashainu, at first glance, he is liable to pay. He then, uh, then what would happen if the child is mochel? Says, "No, Rebbe, don't worry about it." So then- Even that I find problematic because a child has got the ability to be koiner. He doesn't have the ability to be makneh, to give away. That's why we have the whole, um, gesheft with the esrog for Al Bamim on, on Sukkot. First day is to give it to a child. The child can't give it back. And so to... That the child should waive... I took it-- I couldn't find this exclusively in Poskim, but lchaim, a, a child is not, uh, qualified to be able to waive a debt. You, you'd cause damage, you owe him. And so, so I, I, I didn't see a way out. It doesn't... The, the... Well, just one, just one clarification. If you damage something, it doesn't mean you have to replace a new item instead. It means you should repair it and even... Or if it's a, it's a second-hand item, it's a used item, it's not the same value as the brand-new item. So, there is room for, for some kind of compromise to, to compensate for the damage. Um, so I think that he, he, he does have a duty, but, um, not necessarily. Well, if he can repair it, that's obviously the best, um, option. And if

19:34 not, to, uh... He, he, he should be repair-- He should pay for the, the damage. Let's move on. And I felt... I, I told it to the teacher. I envy the chi- the child who has such a conscientious teacher, because they will have tremendous, um, respect for a teacher who's so sincere. Let's move on to our next question, and this is about mezuzah. Now, here you can see there are-- there's a doorway here, and I presume that the wall on both sides of this doorway is, is going further in on both sides. The problem is that the top is... There's a re-- There's a drop on the outside. On the inside, the ceiling is flush. So d-does that count as a lintel or not? That's really our question today. Let's, let's take something, a, a, a variation of this. Does a... Looking at the screen, does a corner where two walls meet... This is a very common challenge, and I m- I must confess, I, in my mind, I'd been going along with the rule that Sof Kosel is a-- considered a door-doorpost. And therefore, I'd been considering such a corner, like an L shape. The outside of the, uh, the corner of the L is considered a, a door, a doorpost. It looks like I made a mistake, and so we're gonna read this carefully. What is exactly Sof Kosel when it is counted as a wall, when it's not counted... Sorry, as a door, as a doorpost or not. So, what you have

21:15 on the screen is from the, uh, Sefer Chovos HaLevavot from Rabbeinu Yonah. And so he says like this. If you have a doorway which does not have any protruding doorposts, it's the end of the walls. They are the doorposts. So he says, if the walls are encroaching upon the space of the doorway, they're joining mezuzahs. Then they are considered doorf-door-doorposts. Which we're not gonna deal with. But if the walls do not enclo-enc- enclose, do not encroach upon the, uh, the doorway, then put up a mezuzah without a berakhah. So, let's look at the screen. We've got diagram gimel and diagram he. Diagram gimel. So, we have here a door... That is-- This is like the door, the doorway which we see now on our, on the screen. That you've got the end of the wall on either side. It's an ongoing, it's, uh, an ongoing wall. And I don't have proper... We'll have to describe it. I'm trying to describe it for the people who will be listening without seeing the screen. So it's... So the, the, the, there is a, there's a wall on either side. It's extending, and you're, you've got here now a gap in that wall. So then we're gonna say the Sof Kosel, that end of the wall on either side of this doorframe, is considered a doorpost, and is Chayav B'mezuzah. The diagram he is where you've got the end of... These two walls are ending. It's like a U shape, um, upside down, uh, U shape or a

23:14 ches if you want. And there's... The end of the wall on either side of the, of a gap, but there's no... They're not encroaching on the space under-underneath the ches. So here, he's saying that that is not so poshut to make up a mezuzah. Then we have the . If you have a large room, and then there is like a niche of the large room. And so he's saying that in this situation, where we've got a large wider room, and off that there is a, a recess, a niche which has lchaim two corners on either side, where you could call this, uh, a doorway. He says, "No, this is patur." So what I'm, what I'm seeing is contrary to what I was under the impression, that such an L-shaped corner would be considered Sof Kosel and Chayav B'mezuzah. So now I'm seeing that Sof Kosel is what we're seeing in diagram gimel, where there is an ongoing wall, and that is stopping by the doorway. That's considered Sof Kosel. But a corner seems to be that that does not count as a doorframe. Okay. So now let's come back to our question, where we've got the either side, we assume there is a Sof Kosel. The top here, where the air conditioner is on top, where... So from the inside of this passage, there is no drop in the ceiling. From the outside, there is. So in my mind, that's like a corner where the L shape, the, uh, the corner of the L. And

24:58 according to this view that that's not called Sof Kosel, then it's not a Chayav B'mezuzah. And I'm just reading from, as you know, my favorite Sefer on, on mezuzahs. One of them is Sechel Tov. Masconady has a whole long discussion about this. If you have a gap, a, a, a... Which is, goes all the way to the ceiling. If it comes to the im beisa barosh tik, em tzar tikra. Mid- if there's a middle of a ceiling, there's no drop at all, then you wouldn't have to put up a mezuzah. Uh, if there's a wall above the doorway, even though it's not protruding, then it's considered a mashkef. Now, what I'm-- I believe this does not describe what we're seeing on the street. Had there been the ceiling on either side higher than the doorway, so then there's a, a drop of the wall. There's just a wall above the doorway. It's, let's say, five inches wide, and either side on top of it there is space, then that drop in the wall would be considered a lintel and definitely would be called a tzoas apasach. But the way it is now, that on the interior it is flush, uh, then I still think that, according to this mahal, that it doesn't need to have a mezuzah. I still am not confident, David Silsey, I put up a mezuzah. In any case, I'm, I'm a bit surprised about what he writes over here. In any case, when there's no door, just a doorway, we would

26:25 put up a mezuzah without a bracha because of Shitas Harambam. That's, who holds that when there's a doorway without a door, then it's not chayav b'mezuzah. That's the way he learns the Gemara in Menachos. And so, in any case, although that's not brought in, not so clear in Poskim that they're to be chayush Shitas Harambam in this. But lepoel we are chayush that we wouldn't put up-- we would put up a mezuzah therefore, but without a bracha. Just, um, the whole business of soif koisel is like, uh, was a little bit of a surprise to me. Um, I've been on the impression otherwise. Let's move on. So now someone asked me an unrelated question to, uh, Hanukkah necessarily, and that is on, in the Tavuos of Yehudah Chosid, it's written, it's written that, um, one should not wax your shoes on the da- on the day of travel. So he's asking, does that mean also when I've arrived at my destination? I travel to a chasunah, and I get to my destination, and my shoes are all full of dust. Can I polish my shoes? I, I told him by mere bepashtes that it only means before travel. But it does not mean once you're finished your journey. Although I could not find a source for the my pashtes, but that, that was my, um, my feeling about it. Bechalal, in these inyonim which are inyonim ruchnim, which we rach ro, that kind of thing with the general, uh, advice is that if it's something,

28:06 uh, a bit different to the precedent which is described, one can be makeel. What I want to just share with you, Behemshat Yehudah Ziskisler, there is a commentary on the Tavuos of Yehudah Chosid called Shivim Temorim. And he writes, I've forgotten who the author is, but he writes here that his father told him that he heard from someone in the name of the Alter Rebbe, the Ba'al HaShulchan Aruch, Va'atanya, who said about this, which is written Tavuos of Yehudah Chosid, that you shouldn't wax your shoes on the day of travel. If we would explain the, uh, the, uh, the reason for this, it would require a large, a large volume, like the size of the Shulchan. The Shulchan is, uh, all right, uh, several hundred pages. It would require seven-- several hundred pages to explain why the, uh, why the Yehudah Chosid said n-not to polish your shoes on the day of travel. Some say that this is only when you're traveling on foot. If you're traveling in a, in a vehicle, then th-this doesn't apply. I see someone, um, has written here a question that my shredder was broken by someone. He fixed it much better than before. Is this ribbis? Now, I, I guess you don't read the Hamadiya because in the Hamadiya, just, uh, I think it's last week, there was, uh, they have usually, uh, in their magazine, they have questions about halakha. And so Rabbi Dayan was asked this, a similar question, and the answer is that it's a, it's

29:40 not a problem of ribbis. The reason being that you are allowed to actually charge rent. If someone wants to borrow your shredder and you say, "No, I want to, uh, hire it out," you are allowed to charge rent. So there's no problem. There's no, there's no, there's, there's... In Hebrew, there's a word, shalom, when you borrow an object which you give back, and halavor is when you borrow money or something which you're going to replace. So if I borrow from you a bottle of milk and I come back three days later with the same bottle of milk, you won't be impressed. I didn't borrow, um, I want to-- you want me to replace it. That's called halavor. And if I give you more milk than you gave me, that's gonna be a question of ribbis. But if I borrow your shredder and I give back the shredder plus £5, that's not a problem of ribbis because you're allowed to charge rent for, uh, for loaning an object. Let's move on. Perhaps this was a precursor to the next question about ribbis. Now, perhaps I'm, I'm, I'm corrected. The, the person wanted to write shtender rather than sh-shredder. The halakha remains the same. Right. So here I got a question of a young man in, in New York. He wanted to have some advice about heter iska, about borrowing money for setting up a business. And then he started asking me a few questions, and I said, "You know what? It sounds like you need a,

31:13 a whole shiur on Hilchos, uh, Heter Iska." So the, the, the story is like this. We're not allowed to, uh, charge extra for a loan. We know that. If I lend you £100 and you give me £101 back, that's a Isur of Ribbis. And if I set... If we set out, if we agreed from the outset, that's called Ribbis K'sutza. Uh, we've agreed that you're going to give X amount of, uh, bonus for the loan. That's gonna be Isur Mina Torah. By the way, this is, uh, I was in Eretz Yisrael by this, um, Halacha seminar and there it's, uh, you know, if you, if you, uh, for your, your utilities. In your utilities, they say if you default on payment, so you're gonna have to pay Ribbis. So really, in, uh, in, in England, et cetera, in Chutz La'aretz, it's not a problem. Uh, but in Eretz Yisrael, to commit yourself, even to commit yourself to pay Ribbis is also Assur. So when people rent a phone or they, they do other things and they commit themselves if they default on payment, they're gonna pay Ribbis, they are actually entering into very serious problems. But that's, uh, another discussion. But meanwhile, here he's setting up a business and someone is lending him, let's say, $10,000, and he wants to be able to get some return on this. So there is this Heter Iska, and this is... You can see there's a reference to the Maharam. This is not referring to the Maharam Mirotenburg, as

32:51 I thought. It's, uh, to someone called Reb Menachem who lived around 400 years ago. I forgot. I can look up exactly the name. I've forgotten. Uh, some- somewhere in Europe. Uh, he instituted this, this system. Now, so he's asking what exactly is, is the various details about this, uh, Heter Iska. First of all, what does it mean when it says that he is entitled to 1% of the profit? And what does it mean about that both parties have to accept profits and losses? And he wanted to understand about the Shur, et cetera. Now, so it was more than I was prepared to put down in a, uh, in a email. But I'm pleased I have this opportunity to discuss it. We'll give it five minutes, let's say, and to understand this. What is the Het- How does a Heter Iska work? So I go over... I, I, I, uh... Let's say I've got some money sitting in an account, and I go over to someone. You know, "You're a Chevre man. Here's £5,000. You'll use this £5,000 for business. You'll trade with it, and the profits will have eq- We'll share the profits equally." Sounds, uh, fine. So the... Why, why, why are you giving 50% of the profits to your money manager? Well, let's call him that. Yeah. The manager, the manager of the funds. Why are you giving him 50%? So the, the structure which Chazal give to this is what's called Mechzo Milvah Mechzo Pikadon. I'm giving you £10,000. 5,000 of that

34:31 is a loan. 5,000 is my money, and you are looking after it. For the 5,000 which is a loan to you, so whatever profits you accrue will be yours. The 5,000 which are mine, whatever profits will accrue will be mine. So that's how, how the, the business, this agreement, business agreement is, is, is working. Why are we dividing the profits equally? Because half of it is-- belongs to the lender, the investor, and half of it is a loan to the manager, and that's why it's a loan to him, so therefore he's entitled to the, the, the return on that. The problem with that is Reuven and Shimon. Reuven is lending, is giving, investing, giving Shimon £10,000. And he's saying, "Shimon, £5,000 is mine. £5,000 is a loan." Wait a second. Why is Shimon spending hours on managing Reuven's £5,000? The £5,000 which is a loan, he wants to make money. He's, he, he, he's, he's working with it. But why is he looking after Sh- after Reuven's other, other £5,000? The one which is, uh, just on, on trust. The, the answer is very simple. In order to get the l- the loan of the 5,000 for himself, he's committing himself to look after the other 5,000. Ah. So then when Reuven gets back... So now listen carefully. When Reuven gets back, back the £5,000 of the loan, he's also gotten a service of Shimon managing the other £5,000 which generated a profit. So Reuven's getting back his money, which is the fi- £5,000 loan,

36:25 plus the, the, the service of Shimon, who managed his money to, to, to generate money on the other 5,000. That's a problem of Ribbis because Shimon is giving back 5,000. He's repaying a 5,000 loan, plus he's providing management services for the other 5,000. Um, that's, that's... So in order, in order to resolve that problem, what we have is that the margin of Shimon's profit will be slightly larger than the loan. In other words, his... Let's, let's go, come back to it. We've got 5,000 is a loan, 5,000 is, is a deposit, is, is, uh, for, for interest. The 5,000 loan, whatever happens- Shimon is gonna have to pay back that five thousand pounds. The five thousand pounds which is on trust, he'll try to manage it. If something happens, if the disaster strikes, Chass v'Shalom, he'll be, um, acquitted. He, he did whatever he could. So that, that's the difference between the loan and the, and the management half. The arrangement Chazal say is let the manager have a little bit more profit than liability. So let's say his profit is gonna be fifty-one percent and his liability is fifty percent. So his, he is getting a one percent profit, and that is his, his, uh, remuneration for managing the deposit side. So that's what the Cheshbon of the one percent is. If it remains fifty-fifty all the way, liability and profit, then we'd have a problem that the management is his, his servicing. The management would be ribbis for the loan half. That's number

38:28 one. Second question is asking, what is it about the, um, about, um, um, accept profits and losses? So the answer is very simple, that if it's an investment, then there is a risk or there's a possibility of the investment going, making a lot of money, and there's a risk that it will... There'll be a loss. And if you call it an investment, so then the investor has to take also a... He has to also be, uh, take the risk. Of course, that's not very popular. So this is the way the Maraam makes, makes a newer, an Etakon. So again, Reuven wants to lend the money to Shimon. He wants... We'll call it an investment, but if I call it investment, I, I have to take risks. I don't want to take those risks. So then what we say is the following. That for Shimon to acquit himself from repaying, he would have to take an oath. And if the understanding of between Reuven and Shimon, he thinks that Shimon is very unlikely to want to take an oath, and he'll be ready to pay rather than swear, that is enough of a disincentive to Shimon of claiming it. Everything went to pear-shaped, and it went... He'll, he-- Um, because you have to swear, and you won't want to swear, then therefore he'll pay. That's, that's the where the oath comes in. All of this sounds a little bit still, "Why should I let myself in? Um, if I'm Reuven, why should I let myself in

40:14 to... You know, I don't want to have this headache." And therefore, this, this is the third aspect. What sh-- What, what, what Maraam int-introduces, what you can do is the following. Instead of Reuven having to know, did Shimon invest the money well? Did he manage it the right... Did he s-sell, buy at the right time, et cetera? Did he, did he manage the risks well or not? You know what? I, I want to sleep quietly at night. If you will give me... You make, make it, you make it t-twenty thousand pounds with the ten thousand pounds. Make more, I don't care. I-- If you give me X amount bonus, that will be my dividend. If you will make it a hundred percent profit, I'm happy with a five percent profit. I don't care. Just give me a five percent profit, and I'm giving you ten thousand pounds. What's fi- five percent of ten thousand pounds? Help me quickly. Okay, never mind. Uh, you can type it if you want. So give me five percent, and then that will be instead of me breathing down your neck to know how much y- profit you make, you get or how much loss you make. I'm not interested. Give me five percent of it. That is, uh, that is the third point of giving a set amount. One last point, and that is... Well, this is why it came my way from, from New York, is because I'd written in, in the Sivim Chelek Alef, um, about the

41:46 Alter Rebbe's approach. Call from unavailable. That the Alter Rebbe has an approach in, in Uhichuz Ribbis and that other Hater Iska work that the longer you keep the, the... Call it, uh, investment. The longer you keep, you're gonna have to keep on topping up per annum. And the Alter Rebbe has something to the fact that if it's a per annum increase, a per annum bonus, it's too similar to regular interest. And therefore, the Alter Rebbe's approach is that you, you agree how long the loan is, the loan stroke investment is for, and you work out what the, is going to be the return on it, the, this five percent, whatever, whatever the agreement is. And you make a set sum. Whether the person's gonna have it for two years or five years, you've made that commitment. The person... If you, if you, if you pay it up early and the person is mevater, it, it drops the... It doesn't matter. That's okay. But look, instead of saying that each year it's going to, uh, a, a further, uh, amount will of, of, um, dividends stroke interest will accrue, the Alter Rebbe seems to take a view of it should be a one-off bonus agreed from the outset. Although it can be paid in installments, that's not a problem, but it shouldn't accrue because of the lapse of time. So I hope that's a little bit clearer. We'll go on to our next question. So here we have someone who, uh, has a in-house chef, so

43:40 probably a restaurant or something, and the chef l- likes to make crackers, like toast crackers, similar to Melba toast, and he's baking bread, then slicing it, and then toasting it. Are those slices of toast, are they ‹hamotzi› or ‹mezonos›? So here is one of the specialists for him on Berakhos on food. He's called Shaar HaBerakhah. He writes the following. Tznimim. Part of the skill of finding stuff is just to know how to translate into Hebrew. Tznimim is, uh, toast. Tznimim asui milekem. If you take regular bread and make toast out of it, the berakhah's hamotzi. Amna, second line. Isas... If, if it's a dough which is baked for the purpose of making it into toast for a snack, then if there's a kind of... No, not the larger toast. I'm talking about little ones like, uh... Which aren't the kind of stuff which you have as a snack rather than for a meal, then those are mezonos. So in the notes, he does bring various poskim who aren't so happy about that, and they say, "Once it's become bread, it's become hamotzi. So then how does it then change when you made it into toast? When you s- when you sliced it. Once it's baked as a bread, it's hamotzi, and then you slice it into little pieces, and then you toast it. If, if you remember, we had a whole discussion about this about a year ago, about the croutons. That went on for... It's a long saga about croutons, and we... It was

45:12 a few weeks. Um, so take regular bread, make it into croutons, it's, it's hamotzi. But again, the same thing. If you made it lechatchila, you made the bread for the purpose of making it into croutons, then there is room to say that that is, that is m- mezonos. I just want to share with you, I discussed this last night. We... I do my rehearsal in shi- in shul. To explain a little bit, why should toast, why should these toast crackers be mezonos? If it's just bread and, uh... Sorry, flour and water, why does it become mezonos? So we've got this term, pas haba bekisnin, and one of the... It's one of the three terms in Gemara, uh, Berakhos, which are mezonos. So what... Pas haba bekisnin. There are three explanations. One says pas haba bekisnin means it's a flavored bread. It's made with fruit juice, et cetera, and people just have a little bit, ni- kisnin, a bit of nibbling. There's another opinion which says it's a loshon of a pouch. It's like a strudel, which is kind of st- chock-full of sweet stuff, and that's why it's mezonos, even though the actual pastry is flour and water. And then there's the third opinion, and that is the opinion of Rav Hai Gaon, and this is from the Alter Rebbe of Chabad. That pas... I'm gonna read this. Pas haba bekisnin is a bread which is kneaded with, just with water. It's not even flavored. It's not filled. But it's made into dry cakes, and

46:43 they are, uh, nibbled just for a, as a nibble, not to be satisfied. And he calls the word kichelach. In... This is Alter Rebbe. In the, um, Mechaber, Rav Yosef Karo, he calls it karachin, the Arabic term for, for crackers of sorts. And this is the basis why the Sephardim say mezonos on regular machine matzahs. They will say mezonos throughout the year, and only on, on Pesach, they suddenly get an upgrade to become hamotzi. Now, but it, this is the basis. This is Rav Hai Gaon. Now, in, in the Sivim, Reb Shlita's volume, uh, volume base, I have an article there explaining why the Alter Rebbe does not bring this opinion in the siddur. Basically, that since by Ashkenazim, these crackers, as being described here, are a proper lechem on Pesach, it seems incongruous that on Pesach they are hamotzi, and then we eat whole day, all year, they're not hamotzi. So that's the Ashkenazi view, that we do make hamotzi on matzah throughout the year. So the Alter Rebbe doesn't bring this, but it doesn't mean... You know, it's, it's it's still Rav Hai Gaon. It's still Halakha. And so if it's clearly a cracker or something like breadsticks or something, even if they're just made with, uh, pretzels. I think we discussed this before. If it's clearly a kind of flour and water dough, but it's only used for a snack, then we have basis to say it's mezonos. So that's the basis why these, these crackers should be mezonos. The only question

48:22 was that it went through a phase of being proper bread. Does that make a difference? So I just want to share with you one more thought about this. Here, again, let's, let's, let's ex- explain the question. I have a process. At the end of the process, it's gonna be a cracker. In the middle of the process, it's gonna be proper bread. At that time, in the middle of the process, it became hamotzi. So then how does it drop from hamotzi back to mezonos again? So here we have, when I was in yeshiva in Brunoy, Rebbe, uh, Yosef Goldberg, he shared with us this shtickel from the Alter Rebbe's Sefer HaMidah. Uh, we were learning Kesubos, and they got this idea of shnei shvilim. You've got two paths. One is taame, one is ta'ar. And one, a person went through one of these two paths, and he comes along, "Am I ta'ar or not?" And we say, "You're ta'ar." And then another person went to the other path. He comes along, and he asks, he asks the rabbi, and he says, "You're ta'ar." I... One went in A, one went in B, and one of them is for sure taame. But when they come separately, you're allowed to give each one the benefit of the doubt. So here we have a very interesting thing, that, that Halakha is subjective. Psak Halakhah is subjective rather than objective. For sure, one of these two people went over a grave, and yet we're telling them both that you're ta'ar.

49:38 And he... The Alter Rebbe says such a loshon. When no one is asking, no one's seeking, we don't... It doesn't... It's not of no interest. The Torah was given to Yidden. The Torah wasn't given to stones and, and, and wood. So basically, this is Alter Rebbe's loshon, that a Halakha is only paskened when there is a question. I want to borrow this idea that when the bread is in a phase before it's been sliced into small, more pieces and made into toast, you say, "Oh, it became hamotzi." No one asked the shailah, so it didn't become hamotzi. And therefore, you ask, "Well, hold on. Where did hamotzi go away?"It didn't become hamotzi because it was part of a process, and the intention was it should become into croutons or into t- to, uh, these thin crackers. And so, at any rate, we've got here, as I, I showed you before, there are poskim who do allow these crackers to be counted mezonos, and so yes on milismach. Okay, let's move on. Okay. So someone asked this question, it's actually from the Esros Noshim, and they're asking, "Sometimes people lose their tefillin. Wouldn't it be a good idea that you'd have your name and, your name and your, uh, telephone number, cellphone, somewhere on your tefillin, and in this way if it gets lost, people know how to, how to return it?" So of course we don't do that, and the simple reason is that there are, there is writing on the tefillin. That's the

51:09 shin on the two sides, the two shin on the, on the shel rosh. And so there is prescribed, if that's the right word, isn't it? Um, writing on the tefillin, and we shouldn't be adding to that. Now, I don't know if someone's listening now or someone is list- will listen later on the recording. I remember about 40 years ago seeing a note hanging on the wall in the back of 770, and it had a reference, a l- an answer of the Rebbe in relation to this question about writing on the tefillin. And I remember that there was a reference to a Sefer called Malacheh Shomayim. The Malacheh Shomayim is a, a Sefer written by Vosberger Rov about 150 years ago perhaps, perhaps more, and he has his, he's got a text and commentary. So the, the main text is called Chochmah, and the commentary on the side is called Binah. And I remember the Rebbe's... There was a reference to Binah and Chochmah and I, I was intrigued at the time, going back 40 years ago, and I went to the Kollel and borrowed the Sefer, looked it up, and I understood a little bit more what was going on. I subsequently took a needle and carved out on the back of my shel Rabbeinu Tam's, I etched out a Reish Tov, because that's what that Sefer said. And then, uh, so when I came, was back in London, I took my tefillin once to Rabbi Samson, the sofer here on Portland Avenue, and he

52:47 was surprised that I had this writing on the tefillin. And I told him, "There's, there's a Sefer, Malacheh Shomayim, it talks about it." And he was amazed of the Rebbe's bekius of some not so well-known S- Sefer and sofer, and the Rebbe had a reference to it. But meanwhile, let's discuss this. And so here we have two sources. One is the Alter Isrel, which is, uh, on the margin of the Shulchan Aruch, which says you should not do any symbols on the body of the tefillin to distinguish between Rashi's or Rabbeinu Tam's. Uh, I think this is Rabbi Shlomo Luria, the one who wrote the Alter Isrel. And so therefore I suspect that the second source on the left of the screen is Re- Re- Menachem Azaryah Mefarshim, who was a contemporary of the Ari zol. He was a Mekubal as well as a halachist. We got, we have from, uh, various forum. We have a Sefer Memoris, but then we have Charles Schultz, Rabbi Mefarshim. And so he writes, "I've told the Chaverim not to make markings on the body of the tefillin to s- to differentiate between Rashi's and Rabbeinu Tam's. I've seen that some have advised to etch at the bottom of the teturah, or the bet- or the bridge around the tefillin, to have a shin to indicate Rashi and a tov to indicate Rabbeinu Tam's, and I objected to that. I protested. Find other ways of solving that problem." And even I saw that some even object to writing on

54:11 the retzuos, on the straps of the tefillin. So these are earlier sources. Now, now this, the top right, is from the Malacheh Shomayim. So he writes, "Do not put Rashi's and Rabbeinu Tam's in the same, in same, um, pouch. Have separate pouches." Uh, then he says, "You should write Rabbeinu Tam's on the pouch. They should be able to know that these are Rabbeinu Tam's and not wear them instead of Rashi." He says further, "I think it is advisable to etch out on the mavartah," the, the tunnel at the back of the tefillin, "to etch out on the tunnel of the Rabbeinu Tam's the two letters of Reish Tov, and do it in script, not in block writing." And then he says that he refers to the Rameh, Rameh Mefarshim, and he says, he refers to this which we just read, and he says, "I don't find his words convincing." So back to the, the bottom line is we don't do writing of the tefillin, and even what I did is, uh, quite unusual. But, uh, we do have a source for that. And the m- main thing I'm bringing out there is if someone can dig up from 40 years ago that, that, uh, notice, um, I would be, uh, intrigued and be happy to share it with everyone. Rav Aryeh is pointing out that, uh, nowadays they use for Sifrei Torah, they use ultraviolet, uh, ink. Uh, sorry, um, invisible ink, which is only re- recognizable with ultraviolet. Okay, that's another whole discussion.

55:47 A bit of feedback. Last week we had a discussion about writing names, and sh- using Chaya, let's say, or Tuvia with a stroke, and someone asked during the, uh, during the, uh, Shiur, what about on a pidyon? And- The, so someone shared with me that, a couple of people actually, sent me that we have a couple of pidyonas of which the Rebbe wrote. This is from the back of the Sefer Oytzem in Haggi Chabad. You also have in the, uh, the Rebbe's biography in, in, uh, that's not right. I thought it's gone out of my mind, the name of the Sefer, three volumes there. Um, anyway, what we see, two things. One is that the Rebbe does not write Beis He, which was discussed last week. He does not write Beis He in all the pidyonas. And he has his, his, his, uh, brother's name, Yisroel Ariel Abe. So Ariel is written, uh, with an apostrophe, but Yisroel is written in full. Dalia, Zozie Zang is not, is also written with an apostrophe rather than the, the full name. So he does, he does shorten when there's a Yud Ke. He does use the regular way of writing, whereas, uh, in, in the pidyon. And so what I said last week is when you're writing a kasuba, a kasuba is very different. Don't, don't forget, usually a pidyon is then ripped up and left at the oil, whereas a kasuba is something which can last Leon Min Rabim. So there may be a difference. In

57:17 any case, a kasuba is a, a document for, which should be enforceable. I mentioned this, I think, last week. The word star is looking like the word shoyter, which means a policeman, which is enforceable. And therefore, there should be no ambiguities in a, in a star, which is a document. Right. Someone's asking, can't you see the difference between Rashi's Rabbeinu Tam's with the, where there's the little hairs coming out? Uh, with Rabbeinu Tam's, it comes out in the middle. And Rashi's, it comes out between the second and the se- from the last to the last. And the answer is that's good for the Shel Rosh, and that doesn't help you with the Sheliad. So if you've got your, if two Sheliads are mixed up, you're gonna have to, uh, you, you won't, there's nothing you can do to, unless you take it to a sofer and, uh, ask him to open it up and see if it's Rashi's Rabbeinu Tam's. There, just one other piece of feedback, and that is last week, we were speaking about the locksmith. And he had done a repair job in the church, the door, and it said that he's allowed to keep the money. And so there was a discussion about him going into the church. And I mentioned there how it says in the Mishnah, he can participate in the building until it comes to the dome over the actual, uh, i- idol. And so, uh, and I, and I asked the question then, then about, well, what

58:34 about him going into the job in the first place? Which at first, I'd said, I wouldn't advise him to do the job. And they ar- And that's true because the Gemara is before the building is built, then he can be part, he can be participate in the building. But once the building is built, it's already a church. So to go into any part of it, he wouldn't be allowed to go in. So to, if he'd asked the question whether he's allowed to go and fix the door, the answer would be no. On the other hand, once he's done it, he's allowed to keep the, the, uh, he's allowed to keep the money. I w- I received a shout out tonight, and I'm gonna come back to the previous slide in a moment. We're running out of time. And that was s- in, in one of our listeners in the Far East, uh, said they had a discussion this afternoon of where, where, about putting the menorah on a table in the doorway. If a table is, uh, a regular table, so that's about 10 tefachim up, is that okay? And so the host had, had shown he's got this table. He's put it in the doorway. He's gonna put his menorah there. And the guest asked him, "But doesn't it say in the Sefer HaMinhagim that we put the menorah somewhere between, somewhere low, uh, we put it on a chair, not on a table. So how important is it that it should be on

59:45 a, on a chair rather than on a table?" So if you give me another two minutes, we'll discuss this. And one is that actually, you look, and this at the top is the lotion of the Alter Rebbe's siddur. And he says, "HaMinhag haNochan to stick the neris or to hang them, hang the menorah in the doorway." And the point which he's saying is the menorah should be in the doorway rather than in front on either side of the, of the wall. It should be actually in the doorway, as you can see on the diagram, which is from the new Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. Uh, in those times, it looks like they would actually have a hook and hang the menorah in the doorway. You know, the older fashioned menorahs with a, with a back, they were, they were also suited to be able to hang them on a hook in a doorway. And yet, in the later minhags, instead of hanging them in a doorway and having to have a s- a nail knocked into the doorframe, instead to put a, a kisei, to put a chair. But that is deliberately a chair rather than a table. And this is what you have from Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. Mitzvah lehanichom, l'ma'alo mi-shlosha tefachim min ha'akarka. It's preferable that the menorah should be more than three tefachim off the ground, but it should be less than 10 tefachim off the ground. The reason for that is, and he says, "If you did put it higher, you're yotzer." The

1:01:01 reason for that is that it shouldn't give the impression that you have the menorah in order to give light into the room. And so if it's higher up, it's, well, if you want to have light for the room, you put it up higher up. So that's why we do try to keep the menorah within 10 tefachim. If it di- if it goes higher, then you get far along. But that's, that's the reason for actually putting it on a chair rather than on a table. Just to go back to the previous slide, next Motzei Shabbos is Nittel Nacht, I believe. And if that's the case, I'm going to take a, uh, a break for that Motzei Shabbos and do some, uh, sewing buttons or doing some DIY or something, which has been piling up. The Rebbe once spoke about the fellow keeping a whole, um, all these, all these buttons from a whole year, which have fallen off. He kept them for Nittel Nacht to sew them on. Someone's asking here, "But C.N. Hackner told me in the name of Rabbi Samson to have the Rabbeinu Tam slightly smaller than the Rashi." Yes, there is such an opinion, which is mentioned in Poskim. Okay, I wish you all a, a guten, a guten, uh, Motzei Shabbos and a freilechen Chanukah and a freilechen Tamid. Kol Tuv.