הבונים החופשיים, האילומינטי וכתות

00:00 Speaker 1 This is our Igeres year, and this is a letter that I totally would've skipped over. Absolutely would've skipped over. It's very short, and it doesn't have a lot of context behind it. And, uh, what saved me in this particular case, pro tip for people looking for the most awesome things in Igeres, there's an index in the back of Igeres and a maftiah in the front of every volume. The maftiah in the front doesn't always tell you the coolest stuff, but the index in the back sometimes indexes strange terms. So I saw this word that I didn't know, as a, as an entry in the index and a letter dedicated to it. So I had to, I had to think for a second, and then I think I looked it up in the end. I think I gave up. Offhand, is not a, is not a word that-- It means the free builders. But then I realized it's talking about the Freemasons, and somebody wrote to the Rebbe asking if they could join one of these ancient secret societies and, like, become a member of the Freemasons. So I thought that was awesome. That's the letter that we're looking at today. It is on page one hundred and fifty-nine. It's on the screen in front of you, and it is letter from-

00:54 Speaker 2 Can you tell, can you tell me what a Freemason group is?

00:58 Speaker 1 Oh, sure. Yeah. That, that's necessary background. So they're, they're like one of the oldest secret societies. Um, I don't know much about them because they are by definition a secret society. But one of the things about them, at least on paper, is that they are monotheistic and allow any monotheistic person to join regardless of religion. They officially have nothing to do with religion, but they have all sorts of strange practices. They wear funky clothes, uh, when they meet. Otherwise, they're supposed to be sort of, I think, uh, undercover when they're in public, although people talk about it all the time. My, my wife's grandfather had a masonry ring. I believe he was a Mason. They say that all the great world leaders were Freemasons, and a lot of them still are. So it's supposed to be a secret society that anybody can join, where you can work up, uh, move up the ranks, kind of a men's club, a lodge. I don't think they allow women. Uh, maybe they have a separate one just for women, but the normal Freemasons are guys. And, uh, they've also been caught up in a ton of conspiracy theories. People always loop them in with the Illuminati and all of these other groups. They're, um... So yeah, ancient secret society that you can still join, or maybe you can't join, as we're going to discuss today. But, uh, some people call them the Masons. They're known as the Freemasons. They've been known throughout, uh, they, they've been around for

02:02 Speaker 1 a thousand years, maybe longer. Very old group with a whole bunch of rituals and rites, and I literally don't know anything about them besides what it says on Wikipedia, because again, secret society. Um, I'm sorry for the rotten introduction. Is that good enough?

02:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:17 Speaker 1 Okay, great. So, uh, the first thing that the Rebbe answers in this letter is he says, "Nachen hu." And as far as I know, we have no context what the Nachen hu was. Something that this guy wrote to the Rebbe was correct and good. Let's look on to number two. Second comment the Rebbe wrote on this person's letter, and this is the one, of course, that we are interested in. Many of the things that they do and in many of their sects-

02:42 Speaker 2 What's the Nachen-- What's the Nachen hu? What is the Nachen hu?

02:45 Speaker 1 We don't know. We don't know. It's-- The Rebbe's responding to three points in a letter, and we don't have the letter. So-

02:50 Speaker 2 But he's not saying that, that, that joining this group is Nachen hu.

02:52 Speaker 1 No, no, no, he's not saying that it's okay to join. 'Cause as you'll see in the second note, it said, glad you asked, three separate points. So whatever he said prior in the letter was Nachen hu. This two, number two here, and then we have a footnote on number two, which is where things are helpful. Oh, never mind. It does say. I'm wrong. It says Nachen hu is This guy wants to open a business outside of Eretz Yisrael. The Rebbe says, "Good idea." Okay, great. Now, as for the second note, the note down here is that what he was asking was about the the Mason, the Masonim. So this guy was asking about joining the Masons. So he asked the Rebbe two questions. One is whether he should open a business outside of Eretz Yisrael, and the second one is whether he should join the Freemasons. So as to the second question, in many of their groups and many of their, uh, sects, they have things that are completely the opposite of Das Yisrael, of our religion. and because they operate in complete secrecy, it's difficult to figure out whether they're okay or not. So certainly, some of their ideologies and some of the things that they do seem to be against-- seem to be straight up against Yiddishkeit. And if you're gonna tell me that you're sure they're not, how do you know? It's all secret. So it's difficult to figure out in the first place whether this would be okay.

04:04 Speaker 2 Also, I think are centers or chapters.

04:08 Speaker 1 I think, I think it's-

04:08 Speaker 2 They have separate chapters.

04:09 Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's like group, like the places that they meet, right? So what's a good word for that? Chapters? I like chapters, yeah. So some of their chapters take part, take part in things that are opposite of Das Yisrael, and since they're secret, we don't know which ones are good and which ones are not, or if any of them are good. And the Rebbe says, why, why enter into this entire confusion? you should just do the right thing without having anything to do with them at all. So the Rebbe's advice is let's have nothing to do with Freemasons whatsoever. A lot of the times what they do is against our religion completely, and we can't figure out exactly what they do, so it's . And in the final note down here, I'm gonna mention you and your couple. They should live long. I'm gonna mention them at the aisle. Okay, so of course, what we're focusing on today is not the first or the last, but the middle note here. The middle note here is that the Rebbe's position on Mason-- on Freemasons seems to be that we shouldn't join them. We might have guessed that. The Rebbe says not to join them. He doesn't just say that it's a bad idea. He says that you have-- should have nothing to do with them at all. have nothing to do at all with them. And his reasoning, it looks like there's kind of two reasons here. One is the Rebbe seems pretty sure that

05:18 Speaker 1 what they do is and in addition to that adds the dimension that nobody can really disprove that because they're secretive, so we can't be sure that they're not. Um, I expected when I looked into this on the Halakhic side that I would find multiple on Freemasons. They're, they're, they're the most famous secret society, and many, many Jews have been members of them. They say Yitzhak Rabin was a Freemason. I mean, most US presidents, uh, quite-- Uh, when I started looking online, turns out quite a few rabbis were Freemasons. I mean, it-- this is-- We've-- Conspiracy theories have tied the Jews to the Freemasons many times. Quite a few blood libels included the Freemasons and the Jews as one, as one group. It's just they could only kill us 'cause the Freemasons are secret. But, uh, we, we've had a with them, so I figured there'd be more in the literature. There is, there is not much. Um, the most compelling thing that I found anywhere is that lived right after the Vilna Gaon. He's a big deal in the Litvish world. He's a big deal in the whole world. He wrote a whole commentary on Pirkei Avot and a bunch of other seferim Um, his, his work is, is well-regarded. The Radal does mention them in his commentary, Pikadei Elazar. And, uh, again, one of the issues with looking for this is that there's a thousand ways to spell this throughout history. You know, modern Hebrew spells this as habonim hachovshim, but, uh, they got

06:27 Speaker 1 called all sorts of different things as you'll see in a, in a second. I don't have-- I'm not gonna put them on the screen, I'm just gonna read it to you 'cause I have it in tiny form. He says, kayin mishpat. So he's writing-- Pikadei Elazar's writing about the Darah flagga, that there was a group of people that tried to build a migdal all the way to the sky. It, uh, it didn't work out very well for them. They all got dispersed. He says, kayin mishpat klha-hehem bedarkeyhem. So too will be the judg-judgment of all people who follow in their ways, all of the followers of the, of the generation that built the tower. Kiga'en kas habonim hachovshim. For example, the Freemasons, the cult of the Freemasons. Ashery statfu midas, midasehem, mafhilim lehegez bach, bach dusam yachad beachava. They have, uh, they've messed up their, they've, uh, they've messed up their, their, uh, religions, and they've done confusing things in order to join in brotherhood. And their idea of brotherhood, veseifam baleprik as el malchus mealam. Eventually, they're going to perech et malchus shamayim, they're gonna throw off the yoke of heaven, be'enshem kedarah flagga, and they're going to therefore have the same punishment as the Darah flagga, which also initially joined in a form of brotherhood as a joint kind of society, and then decided to throw off the yoke of heaven and got punished. So their punishment is going to one day be the same as the Darah flagga. Lihiot achrehem cherav ish

07:34 Speaker 1 bedeho. Eventually, one man's going to hold a sword to his friend, lashchits et lha-lashchits, in order to destroy each other. Beatzas Hashem ha'mamlekh malachim yitzakum. And the advice of God, who is the one who-- the king who makes kings, it will stand forever. Lihiot malkhutah be'arets kemalkhutah belekia. And the kingship on land will be like the kingship in heaven. So he says that the Darah flagga essentially did the same thing as the Freemasons. They joined in brotherhood at the idea of building something together. The word mason literally means a stone worker, so it fits nicely. And he uses them as specifically an example of people who will enjoy or suffer from the same punishment as the Darah flagga. This is a Radal. There is a Likutei Halakhot of Reb Naftali Bretslav. You don't expect to find this in an iggresh year. But he mentions them almost by name. Almost everybody who comments on him is convinced this is who he's talking about. Listen, and you'll decide for yourself. He writes, Ki kol bonei hamigdal hayu kefirim bemunah. He's writing about people who wrote-- they w-- built the, uh, the, the Tower of Babel. Says all the people who built that tower, they were kefirim bemunah, bemunah, bemunah sidush olam. They were all kefirim, the idea that God constantly recreates the world. They rejected that. Shem sham hayu kol tawasahem. And this is why they made all of their mistakes. And then he writes in parentheses, Asher gam atah. Even nowadays, kol ha-kefirim hagedolim nikraim al

08:44 Speaker 1 shemam. It's they've made such a big mistake that all of the great kefirim, all of the great deniers of the faith, are to this day called after the name of the people who built the migdal. They are called peymem. They are called peymem, kayedua. And, uh, the understanding of many is that he means the Freemasons, that they're called the Freemasons, and that would actually make sense because the Freemasons are, again, people who-- the, the, the name of the society is The People Who Build Towers. So he's saying that, uh, th-the fact that the original kefirim were masons is, uh, is, uh, is so-- affects futures, affects the future events so much that even nowadays, we call kefirim Freemasons. Um, unclear that that's what his abbreviation means, but, uh, the commentaries on his book say that that's what he means. So possibly a, possibly an idea there too. I, I looked around for random Rabbonim in Eretz Israel answering shailas and shuvahs. There's a Rav, uh, whose name is Rav Yosef Weitzen. He is the Rav of the Yeshivat Piskot-- Piskat. I don't think it's Piskot, right? Do you know Piskot? It's a yeshiva, I guess. He's also a Ram Yeshivas Beis El. He says he-- and somebody wrote to him asking if they could join the Freemasons, and he has an interesting take on this. He says that says, chochma goyim taman, Torah b'goyim al taman. That if you're gonna tell me that the goyim have wisdom, great. If you're gonna tell me the goyim

09:53 Speaker 1 have Torah, that's not so great. You shouldn't believe that. This is a group of people who have sort of a moral society built around their intellectual society. So he thinks it's awesome to join because it's an inyun of Torah b'goyim al taman, which is just an, an interesting take. I could find literally nothing else in, in, in Halakha. Um, there is one other source that I put in the group for everybody to look at, at their leisure. Apparently, according to one of the forums of Eitz HaChochma, there's something in there that might be interesting. The most interesting thing I found, however, which I've been saving for s-- last/second to last, is there's a Chida that does discuss the Freemasons and a, and a wild story. I'm gonna read it to you. So the Chida, you might-- Do you guys know about the Chida? I mean, do you know about what he did? He was just the coolest guy in Jewish history. He was a Shad-- Okay, so he was a Shadar. He was sent from Eretz Israel in order to travel every Jewish community in the entire world and raise money for Hebron. And at the time, that was an incredibly dangerous journey. You needed to be physically very strong. You needed to be a statesman. You needed to be a politician. You needed to be able to speak every language, and you needed to be an incredible Rav because if when you came, you weren't knowledgeable, they wouldn't deal with you. So he met

10:53 Speaker 1 every gugel of his generation, spoke all of their languages, traveled overseas. He fought with the Briti-- He fought, he fought with the, uh, the Russian Navy. He, uh, he was attacked by knights at one point. He just-- And he writes it all in his diary. He had the most exciting life, the Chida. And of course, the, the, the, the goen of his generation, so just probably the coolest rabbi ever to live. In his diary from an entry dated in seventeen seventy-four, he writes the following. One night, he was in Tunis, layla achar achar chatzos. One night, it was after midnight, kayshalacht lhamita, I'd already gone to bed. Vayavo loin paroch nadnak mishbatim, and I put the curtain closed as was my custom. This is while he's in Tunis. Veraisi, I saw veneadam echad nichnas etzli, a person entered my room, venishamanti, and I got very confused. Vamer li, and he said to me, Ani Moshe ben HaKayed. I am Moshe, the son of the Kayed, which is, I guess, an Arab name. Omer la, omer. He said... Sorry, Omer, lech avi. I think it's omer li. I think I have a typo here. Okay, sheez bakam kas ligrizim. This is some word in Arabic. Sheh mekas ha-Frank Mason. He goes, "There's-- My father has told me there are people here who are members of the Freemasons," and the word is spelled Frank Mason. Um, it made me wonder if maybe he means the Francas, not the Masons, but in footnotes that are on the Chida

12:06 Speaker 1 in each of these books, they say that he means the actual Masons, and one of them even shows how linguistically that's what they would have called Freemasons there. So he's been told that there is a group of Freemasons in this town in Tunis, and his father sent him to ask a shaila to the Chida in the middle of the night. Here's the shaila, "Im mota lehergam?" Are we allowed to murder them? So Ayin comes to the Chida asking a shaila, "Am I allowed to kill the Jewish Freemasons that are living in the town in Tunis?" V'zeh besaid gadol. He said, "But keep this a secret. It's a big secret that I might be killing." Taashu li atah. He says, "Answer me right now." You know, it's 1:00 in the morning. Wake the Chida up. Am I allowed to kill the Jewish Freemasons? Kishah shemaai amadas me'ra'id. Um, I heard this, I stood up, and I got-- started shaking, says the Chida. I stood up, and I started shaking. V'mart lei, and I said to him, "Dinim nefashos ateh sh'el meni v'ani sheich av ha'amita?" Which, by the way, is the quote of the day. You're asking me dinim nefashos, and I'm in bed? So he says, "Erev ba'agida, get out of here. Uh, lech tamri l'avich, and I want you to go and tell your father shebavde asur lehergan." It's definitely asur to kill them. Afei d'usha, even as a temporary ruling, you're not allowed to kill the Jewish Freemasons. Ki li ada anu shumes

13:11 Speaker 1 av davar. We don't know of anything actually asur that they do. Heim ha'amim she'ene neged ha'asmei shebYisrael. Their claim is that what they do is not against our religion. V'zeh yehmay kemediya. In my opinion, what are the Freemasons? A joke. Says it's a comedy. Says the Freemasons are kemediya. It's not-- There's nothing to be taken too seriously, but also nothing to... He goes, look, vei'amar she... Veheim, and I added. Shebavde ani meideish al ha'kemediya asur kol sheken zeh. Said, I'm not somebody who disagrees with you. I think comedy is asur. He goes, I think leisure time is horrible, and I think people who are doing funny things that make no sense, I think that's asur, says the Chida. Af al. Ma tzal kedaitach yesh le'raiv ve'mahad hariga chas v'shalom. But you think you can kill people just for doing something stupid? So says the Chida, Freemasonry is stupid, but you certainly can't kill people for it. This is definitely the, uh, the, the, the most spot on source that I could find for anything. He then writes as a footnote, uh, not a footnote, sort of a sub-note after his diary entry. Viadati, says, I later on found out. Ki acharitzi yas me'atonis. After I left Tunisia, his alah behem umasin un malchus, that they, that th-these, these Jews, they tattled on the, uh, on the Freemasons. They sent them over to the local government. Kemiduma, shehuku vefsidu mamon. And I'm told that they, uh, that they, that they beat them and that they took

14:20 Speaker 1 their money, but that they didn't kill anybody. Okay. Um, as far as the Rebbe goes, and as far as Tzaddik goes and our take, there's no Chabad post in that I could find to address anything like this. But the Chida's approach to Freemasonry reminded me a lot of the Rebbe's approach to yoga. So I wanna talk about that for a second because the Rebbe seems to dismiss yoga on similar terms to the way that the Chida attacks Freemasonry, not the same way that the Rebbe goes after Freemasonry. The Rebbe is opposed to Freemasons because he says they might be hepchadas Yisrael, and that he thinks it's a serious problem once you have nothing to do with them. But the Chida's take is that this is a waste of time, it's a comedy, and a Jew shouldn't be engaged in silly things. And the Rebbe has a very similar approach in some of his yoga letters, that it's just not appropriate for-- to see a Jew doing something that's not pure Torah and mitzvahs. In the Nissim Mendel collections, there's a letter written to someone in South Africa. It's written in English in original, so I don't have to translate it. It's in English. It was written on Tishrei, Sivan 5739. I'll drop it in the chat afterwards. Gonna read you a passage from it in English. Says here, "In as much as the Torah and mitzvot were given to all of the Jews, each one individually to all times and all places, these are our

15:28 Speaker 1 lives and the length of our days." That's a quote, "Ki yam hayim uvrech imenu." It's clear that every moment of a Jew's life should be consecrated to Torah and mitzvahs. The Rebbe expects us to spend every moment on Torah and mitzvahs. Hence, it is both surprising and painful, these two words are important, surprising and painful to see a Jew spending precious time in search of greener pastures elsewhere, even if his intentions are good, for as above, the important thing is the actual deed. Needless to say, this includes yoga and similar cults, even if it's not connected to anything pertaining to Avodah Zarah. If there is such a cult that is completely free from Avodah Zarah, and in this, only a competent Torah authority who is permeated with Halakhah is qualified to rule. The Rebbe says, yoga, I'm not sure there is a form of yoga or these cults that doesn't have Avodah Zarah in them. But even if they existed, a competent posek would have to rule that it's not Avodah Zarah, and even then, it is surprising and painful to see a Jew spending precious time in search of greener pastures. This is very much like the Chida's argument is that I don't actually know if there's anything wrong with them, but I expect Jews to be doing Torah and mitzvahs, not, not, not, not, not, you know, playing secret society with the Freemasons. The Rebbe says, concluding this letter, "I'm not seeking opportunities to admonish anyone, but since you men-mentioned certain oriental cults,

16:33 Speaker 1 it's my duty to call to your attention the fact that every spare moment that a Jew can use to deepen his knowledge of Torah, he dissipates, and he dissipates it on other things. It's deplorable enough not to mention cults that in their overwhelming majority are certainly connected with Avodah Zarah in one way or the other." Once again, the Rebbe is saying that even if these things are not shayaach to Avodah Zarah, it is, it is, uh, what's his, what's his language? Deplorable. It is deplorable to find a Jew spending their time in other clubs. Even if there are exceptions, one must make doubly sure through an expert Torah authority, as mentioned above. The Rebbe is saying two things in this letter, and he keeps on saying two things in this letter. First of all, if you wanna join a secret society involved in an oriental practice, yoga or something similar, you first of all have to make sure that it's mutar, that it's not involving an Avodah Zarah and that a Rav can answer. But whether a person should be engaging in these things rather than studying Torah and doing mitzvahs is a, is a much deeper question. In many other letters, the Rebbe is okay with these things once they've been sanitized and a Rav is posking on them for people who are sick and need help being healed, people who are in therapy of some kind to use meditation and Eastern techniques once we-- once a Rav has determined that they're not shayaach

17:30 Speaker 1 to Avodah Zarah. But, uh, for-- as, as a hobby, for Jews to be engaged in a hobby cult, the Rebbe is very disturbed by this, that a, that a person would, as a hobby, join the Freemasons or as a hobby, do yoga. This is something the Rebbe goes, "I don't understand what Jews are doing looking for greener pastures. We have plenty in Torah and mitzvahs." Which again, is not really the Rebbe's approach to Freemasons in this letter, but sounds a lot like the Chida's approach. Okay, that's it for me.

17:57 Speaker 2 Um, my, my only question is I, I don't know yoga and I've never done yoga, but I know a lot of people who do. A lot of Jewish people do yoga. Would you say that the concept of yoga today is permeated in some manner with Avodah Zarah? I don't know what their process is. I thought it's just people stretching themselves on a mat.

18:12 Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really, it's really expanded. So there are some forms that still do. There are some forms that still... First of all, a lot of the postures.

18:17 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

18:17 Speaker 1 Most of the postures that are done in yoga are ancient postures that are meant to be part of idolatrous rites.

18:22 Speaker 2 Oh.

18:22 Speaker 1 So a lot of these... This was a way that they used to worship. Now, the, the kosher ones have been sanitized. You might know that Moishe Rubin's mother has been teaching yoga for, like, 50 years, and she spoke to the Rebbe about it.

18:31 Speaker 2 Wow.

18:31 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe, the Rebbe allowed her to do it. Not only that, uh, I was told by-- Moishe Rubin told me that somebody came to the Rebbe and, uh, asked the Rebbe about yoga. The Rebbe said no, and then he said he's doing it with Moishe Rubin's mother, and the Rebbe circled her name as like a yes, with, with her it's okay. So clearly these things can be sanitized, and in a lot of letters from the Rebbe, he suggests as a form of therapy that they can be helpful for sick people. But I, I think-- I've never seen any letter where the Rebbe has not come down hard on healthy people who wanna do yoga, um, even once it's sanitized from any of its Avodah Zarah. The Stam yoga-

19:01 Speaker 2 I agree

19:01 Speaker 1 ... like people who park in Central Park and doing yoga, yeah, I think they really could have real Avodah Zarah in it when it's not been sanitized, fixed up by a Rav, done by somebody we can trust.

19:10 Speaker 2 Right. I guess, and I guess also the other part of it is obviously the health, the health need comes in. If somebody has a doctor's instruction that they need to do yoga for whatever mental or physical health that they need to do their stretches, I mean, obviously that would, that would, that would take into account. Um, the Freemason stuff is, is super interesting. Um, the-- it's a, it's a secret society. It's interesting that it could even be chapter related. We need to say that even though the Rebbe says Bechalal, like, why are you even getting into this in the first place? Like, what do you need this for? Which is very similar to the Chida in terms of the silliness of it all as to w-what do you need this for? It's silly, and you're not supposed to be spending your time on this anyways. Um, you know, but, but I guess that there are some Freemason societies. Uh, does this go like-- is this similar to, like, rotary clubs? Or they're not like Freemasons, but they also have these traditions, right? They have these rotary clubs where people get together, business people, whatever. And I know why, I'll tell you why, because my, my, my father-in-law, um, was part of, I believe it was a rotary club. It was one of these kinds of clubs in, in Long Beach, Long Island. And by his levaya, all these guys came, and they were wearing these interesting outfits and hats and, like, pins with flowers and

20:12 Speaker 2 stuff like that. Maybe it was a Freemasons, I don't know. But he, he, um... And then they came to us, and they said they all, in Rotary Club tradition, they have a tradition that when somebody passes away, they all walk up to the casket, and they put a red rose on the casket or a red carnation or whatever it is that they, that they, that they, that they, um, that they follow. So... Oh, I see you're Googling it. So, um, what's it called again? So, so we told him that he can't. We told him that they can't do it. They said, "But it's our tradition." Now, I didn't wanna dishonor my father-in-law if this was something that was important to them, but I didn't wanna make these people feel bad, but I didn't wanna go through this thing. So what we did was we, we put a-- we had the, the, the funeral home put a table next to the, the urn, and we-- they were able to walk up and put the red rose on the, on the, on the table next to the urn so they can keep their symbolic traditions and at the same time not disrupt the, the, the process of, of, of, of, of, of a Orthodox levaya. It's just interesting how Ara into the story of these types of, like, clubs and people, but I wonder if the Rotary Clubs and Freemasons are similar or whatever.

21:14 Speaker 1 It'd be worth looking into. I just, I just did a quick search now while you were talking, and nothing, like, jumped off the page like, "Here's a full essay on the Halacha of Rotary Clubs." I am aware of a Maharik that a lot of people quote in other contexts but could be applied here, where, uh, somebody wrote to the Maharik. He was a... I think he was a doctor. I'm not sure what he was. Somebody wrote to the Maharik, he had a profession, and he wanted to be a member of the guild of that profession, and that guild had sort of a secret society attached to it where they all had to wear a certain cloak with certain symbols on it. And the Maharik asked him, "Well, why, why do you wanna wear the cloak?" And he goes, "So I get, you know, so I get clients." He goes, "Fine, put on the cloak." So, uh, the Maharik allowed him to wear a cloak if he was a member of the society for its professional connections. Um, yeah.

21:53 Speaker 2 I was just thinking Rotary Clubs are primarily business-related and business connections. I have to actually ask my wife if it was a Rotary Club or if it was the Masons. I think it was a Rotary Club of some sort, but I have to find out.

22:02 Speaker 1 I have a handful of Masons in my family. It's a surprise I'm not more important. You know, usually all these Freemasons are, like, leaders of the free world, you know? So.

22:10 Speaker 2 That's why you're talking from a bunker. This is your, uh, Freemason bunker.

22:12 Speaker 1 My bunker, yes. My Freemason bunker. A-after, after this year's done, do a quick Google, Ruvi, of all the, uh, all the world leaders who are Freemasons. Your, your mind's gonna be blown. It's like-

22:23 Speaker 2 I have a lot of, I have a lot of questions on this whole-

22:25 Speaker 1 Yeah, go ahead, Ruvi.

22:27 Speaker 2 So first of all, the one point that, that you shouldn't be wasting time, is that specifically to yoga or are they wasting time like any other waste-- Like, a part of a baseball league is also wasting time. What the-

22:39 Speaker 1 Yeah.

22:39 Speaker 2 What, what-

22:41 Speaker 1 The Rebbe's letter on yoga and also, of course, the Chida's letter, there's, there's this general idea that we should be invested solely in Torah and mitzvahs. Now, of course, there's a, there's an idea of h-- of, of calming down, you know, relaxing between learning Torah and doing mitzvahs so that you can refresh. There's an idea of physical fitness. So I think, and this is a, this is a guess that is close to being a certainty, that what the Rebbe, what the Chida, and what these other groups are talking about is more when you become a member of a society that's not the Jewish society. So there's a million clubs-

23:08 Speaker 2 Uh-huh. So it's a club. It's a-- Basically, it's a club that you're being part of.

23:11 Speaker 1 So I think, I think that there's-- I think there is an issue with us, with us joining clubs that aren't Jewish clubs. We're not engaging in activities that are not Jewish activities. Um, it's part of the-- A lot of this that's coming up in the other Shaalos and Shuvahs is this problem of the brotherhood between these clubs. We saw that back in the, um, in who? In the Radal. We saw that in the Likutei Halakhot. That there seems to be a problem of creating these brotherhoods that are outside the Jewish brotherhood and, uh, and feeling beholden to them in a certain way.

23:39 Speaker 2 Uh-huh. Okay. And also, I, I think yoga falls into a very large context, like you said, like the, like Moishe Rubin's mother, she does yoga for however many years. But, yeah, this-- That's like saying sports is goyish, you're not allowed to play it, so you're not allowed... It's a v- It's a very broad statement.

23:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, it's quite broad. Uh, yoga's a little different in that yoga originated as an, as an idolatrous practice and then has become, over the years, divorced from its idolatry. I think yoga is-

24:05 Speaker 2 So what's the difference with that and meditation?

24:09 Speaker 1 What? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.

24:11 Speaker 2 Where would meditation fall under that category?

24:12 Speaker 1 The Rebbe has many letters on meditation, and he talks the same way. He wants them see... The Rebbe's shitt on meditation, on Eastern practices in general, is he wants them sanitized by a Rav meira heilah and implemented by people who are Shamir Torah and mitzvahs, and even then, only for people who are sick or need them, not for normal, healthy people.