Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We have different commandments that we received from God.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And a lot of these commandments are now a part of culture and part of the laws of any civilized society. So we are very used to them.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Others seem to be very strange and very weird. Like there are laws that have to.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Do with spiritual purity. People in our world today have a.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Very hard time understanding what this is. We understand what physical purity is, what's spiritual purity, how could something be spiritually pure even if it's physically impure, and vice versa.
So the Torah is telling us that really there are three types of laws.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: That God has given to us.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: The first type of law is called mishpatim, which literally means rules.
These are the rational, the logical laws that are in the Torah. For example, the prohibition of murder and prohibition of theft. If the Torah would not be given to us, probably we would be able to figure out on our own that murdering your neighbor is not such a good thing.
These are very rational things and the Torah itself actually tells us that Torah did not need to tell it to us to know that they are given. We would be able to create similar laws on our own. That's the first one, mishpatim. The second type are called eidut. Eidut are the laws that are not necessarily the things that we would be able to come up with on our own, but they are the laws that we can appreciate and understand once they are given.
What would be the example of a Dut Shabbos? A day off? Before the Jews there was no such a thing as a day off in the world.
Why would you not work one day out of seven? First of all, the whole concept of seven day cycle is not something which is rational.
A month is a natural cycle which depends on the moon. A year is a natural cycle that depends on the sun. These are natural cycles which doesn't take much to figure out. You just observe the nature of. On the other hand, we have a cycle of seven days which is called a week, which is completely not found in nature. You will never see any connection of seven day cycle to anything which we observe around us in the world.
I'll put it differently. If you are stuck in a desert.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: And you don't know if it's summer or winter, you'll be able to figure.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Out by just looking what's going on. If you are stuck in desert and.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: You don't know if it's a morning.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Or it's night or it's evening, you'll be able to figure it out just.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: By looking at the Sun.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: If you are stuck in a desert and you don't know what day of the week it is, you will have.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: No way of figuring it out, because.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Nature does not tell you anything about a week.
So the concept of a week was invented by us Jews. But we didn't come up with it.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Just because we are so bright and smart.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: We had it because God gave it to us.
From us. The entire world, or what we call the civilized world, has adapted this idea over we.
If you want to take it even one step further, where does the idea of resting one of these seven days come from? Why is it that one of the seven days you are not working? The Torah is telling us that God rested on the seventh day, and that's why you should not work. You should rest on the seventh day. Since the beginning of Jewish religion, we were not working on the seventh day.
But besides, for us, the idea of not working one day out of seven seemed bizarre.
Because you want to eat, because you need to earn your living, right? So you eat seven days a week. So why is it that you work only six days a week? If you don't work, you don't eat.
So why is it that suddenly we are not working one of the seven days? This idea seemed to be strange, but once people saw it, they said, hey.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Maybe it makes sense.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Other nations took it from us.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Why?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Because they saw the value of it. So Shabbos is an example of the laws which are called Eidut, which means we wouldn't be able to figure it out on our own.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: But once the Torah is giving these laws to us, we look at them.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: And we see, wow, they actually make sense. And we appreciate them and we accept them. We see the value of these ideas. So this is the second category.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: The third category of the Torah laws of mitzvot is called chukim. And this is the category of laws that we cannot understand at all.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: In other words, Shabbos we can appreciate.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: After it is given to us. But, for example, the laws of purity, spiritual purity, there's no way for us to figure it out. There's no way for us to even appreciate it.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Logically, they make no sense.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: We have these laws that don't make any sense, and we are fulfilling them.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Just because God said so.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Because we recognize that God is smarter than us, that we are limited and God is not limited. That's why God has an understanding that we will never be able to grasp. And that's why we are ready to listen to him even though we don't understand exactly why he is telling us to do that.
As somebody famous said, I do not need a God that I can understand because if I will understand them I will be Him.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: So if there is a God who is higher than me then for sure he has a level of wisdom which.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Is beyond what I can comprehend.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: So for sure he has things to tell me that I will not be able to rationalize. So that's why it is inevitable that he is going to end up giving me laws which I cannot understand.
And that's the third category. The so you have mishpatim the laws that we can understand rationally we have eidut the law that we can appreciate rationally after they are given to us. And then there are laws which are called chukim. We cannot appreciate them rationally because we cannot understand them but we can rationally appreciate the fact that they exist. And if there is a God who is higher than us then he will be inevitably giving us these laws.
