Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] There are many laws in Judaism.
[00:00:04] You open the court of Jewish law and you go crazy from all the different laws that the Torah requires.
[00:00:11] And there is a saying in English, the devil is in the details.
[00:00:19] Now, I don't know about the devil.
[00:00:22] I'm not really good friends with him. I never spoke with him. He didn't tell me all these secrets.
[00:00:27] So I don't know about devil. But God is for sure in details. Why? Because those details, every time we see how these details actually have a significant meaning, and they are quite important.
[00:00:40] So now we're going to see how this is. In one pretty obscure case, the temple has services in it. And people who come to services in temple all have to be ritually pure.
[00:00:56] And a part of the services is bound down.
[00:00:59] Now, when we say bow down, it doesn't mean just nodding your head. Actually in the temple, Jews falling all the way to the floor, bowing down to the floor.
[00:01:08] And the rabbis ask a question, if I bow down just for a second, is it considered bowing down?
[00:01:17] Or maybe I need to stay there for a while. And then the answer is yes, you need to stay there for a while. And the specific time which is prescribed, how much time do you need?
[00:01:29] And actually, interestingly enough, where this law really comes is if somebody's spiritually impure.
[00:01:36] He's not allowed to serve in the temple if he bows down as part of a service.
[00:01:43] So let's say somebody became spiritually impure while he was in the temple.
[00:01:48] It's very easy to grasp your. If you have mosquitoes gonna land your hand, you're gonna kill it.
[00:01:53] Mosquito is spiritually impure.
[00:01:55] So you become spiritually impure, and now you are in the temple, you have to exit right away and you can't take part in any services.
[00:02:06] But what if I'm like about to bow down and decide, you know, I'll just bow down a little bit and then I'll go, no, you cannot do it. What if I'm already walking out and I'm bow down as I'm walking out also you cannot do it.
[00:02:18] But the question is, what if you bow down but just for a second, does it count? You know, there's a three second rule or five second rule when you drop something. So maybe there's a three or five second rule. The answer is yes, real bowing down is considered bow down for a specific period of time.
[00:02:37] And otherwise it's not really a bow down, what period of time it is who? Okay, we have a tradition from Moshe Rabbein, from Moses, that there's A verse and bowing down is considered a full bow. If you say this verse, if it's enough time to say this verse, what's this verse? The verse is like this. And Jews saw the glory of God, and Jews saw fire coming down from heavens, and they fell down and bowed down onto the floor and they were praising God. Thank you, God, for your everlasting kindness. That's a phrase. Now, it's a pretty long sentence.
[00:03:17] As you see, it has three parts.
[00:03:19] It has the first part about why Jews were bowing down because they saw the glory of God. There's a middle part that says that they were bowed down. And then the third part, what they were doing while they were bowed down. They were thanking God.
[00:03:34] And believe it or not, the question do we actually need to say all three parts in order to count the timing? And the answer is, depends. There are three different opinions.
[00:03:47] One opinion says you have to say the whole verse, the entire verse.
[00:03:52] The second opinion says, no, no, just the middle part. The middle part speaks about bowing down.
[00:03:57] And then there's a third opinion kind of in the middle says, no, just the second and third part. They bow down and then they were praising God.
[00:04:06] Why?
[00:04:07] Really, these three opinions in Talmud have a deep Kabbalistic meaning. Because speaking about three different types of people, there are people who perceive godliness. They see the glory of God. They see godliness in everything, every event, every object. They see the spiritual force behind it.
[00:04:29] And these people, they see the spiritual force that God is running this world with.
[00:04:34] They are mesmerized by it. They're in awe. And they bow down and they thank God.
[00:04:39] It's like automatic by them. These are like righteous people.
[00:04:43] I'm not on their level.
[00:04:45] Then there's another category of people, the opposite, who just bow down. You know, there's a culture of deference for religion. You know, you say thank God when there's an official ceremony, there's somebody who's saying benediction. Right. Why? That's part of culture, really. Do I mean it? I don't necessarily mean it. Just that's. That's what people do. My cousin invited me for his son's bar mitzvah to synagogue. I come to synagogue. Why not? Because I want to go to synagogue. Because he invited me over. He'll be insulted if I won't come.
[00:05:16] That's the middle category. All they do, they just bow down.
[00:05:19] They're not excited about anything. They're not thanking God. They're just bowing down.
[00:05:24] Hopefully most of people we are talking to are not in this category.
[00:05:29] But then there's a third category.
[00:05:31] The third category is they don't see glory, the greatness of God in everything around them. They don't feel it every day. They don't.
[00:05:42] They just bow down. Why do they bow down? Because that's what a Jew should do. They come to synagogue to recite prayers.
[00:05:49] Why? Because that's what the Jewish law says. I come to synagogue to recite prayers. I learn Torah because Jew has to learn Torah. That's what I do.
[00:05:57] But then when I do that, I evoke in myself my desire to thank God because of something I read. I made sure to find something that's going to touch me. I want to influence myself to start thanking God. And that's the middle category, the third opinion that says you should be bowing down for as long as it takes you to read the middle phrase that you bow down to God and you thank him while you are bowing down. Which means that it is upon us to find how to inspire ourselves and start thanking God because of that.
[00:06:30] And this is the middle category that hopefully majority of people are. And that's why the law is actually ruled according to this third opinion, that this is how long we should be taking to bow down.
[00:06:42] Because most people do exactly that.
[00:06:45] Many people wait for spiritual awakening to come to synagogue, or to start learning Torah, or to start putting on filling or to do a mitzvah.
[00:06:54] So I always tell them, no, no, you come to synagogue and you're going to be judging not but your feelings when you come in, but by your feelings when you come out.
[00:07:04] And that's why we Jews are meant to inspire ourselves in the secular world. Very often people take their emotions for granted. I love this, I hate this. I want this. I don't want this. You know, I was born this way, that I love this, I was born this way, that I hate this. I'm just wired this way. Whatever people say, we say in Judaism, it's true that when we are born, we have certain tendencies, but we are not limited by them. And it's up to us to work on our emotions to develop the love for the things we want to love, the disdain for people we don't want to love, and all of the other emotions that Torah says we need to have, we need to work on it. And that's what this middle opinion is all about. And that's why the ruling is according to that.
