 Many of you might know that there is a very popular and well-known small book in the Talmud. It's referred to as Pirke Avot. Literally, chapters of the fathers, sometimes it's called ethics of the fathers, but it's a wonderful six-chapter book that has maxims and aphorisms and sayings and teachings and the wisdom of our sages. And the sixth chapter in the sixth teaching of the chapter has a section that's called 48 Ways to Acquire Torah. But the Torah is acquired in 48 Ways. Number 22 of the 48 Ways is called Emunat Chachamim. Emunat Chachamim is the word for sages, for wise ones, for scholars. And the word Emunat is the construct form of Emuna. It's Emuna Shal. Emuna literally is faith. So you could say Emunat Chachamim means faith in the sages. Now what does that mean to say that we're supposed to have faith in the sages? It sounds a little bit strange. So let's go for a moment to the book of Breishit Genesis, the book of Genesis chapter 15, where in the beginning of the chapter, in the beginning of Genesis chapter 15, God promises Abram, this is before his name was changed to Abraham. So God promises Abram that he will be greatly rewarded. That's what God says to Abram. Your reward will be very great. And Abraham is a little bit cynical. And Abraham says, look, what can you possibly give me? What is the point of you giving me anything, God, when I don't have any children who will be able to carry on after me, meaning you're going to give me a billion dollars, but then it's going to go to who knows who's going to get it. What is the point of any blessing you're going to give me? So God then promises Abraham that he will have a child. That's the first promise. He says to Abraham, you will have, Abraham is told that he will have a child. But then God goes further and says, and ultimately you will have a vast number of descendants. You'll have a vast number of descendants. And then the Torah tells us that Abraham believed in God, the amin ba'ashem, Abraham believed in God, and God considered this faith as an expression of Abraham's righteousness. Now what does the Torah mean when it tells us at this point that Abraham believed in God? That's a very strange thing for us to hear at this point because this is Genesis chapter 15 and God has been speaking to Abraham since the beginning of Genesis chapter 12. So obviously it's sort of a little bit weird to hear now after chapters and chapters that God's been speaking to Abraham, all of a sudden the Torah wakes up and tells us and Abraham believed in God. Of course he believed in God. So it doesn't really mean that. It's not speaking about believing in God. What the Torah is telling us is not that God existed as far as Abraham was concerned. It's not a statement of Abraham believing in the existence of God. What it's telling us here is that after God promised him that he would have a child and that he would have a tremendous number of descendants, the Torah tells us that Abraham believed God. Not that he believed in God, he believed God. He believed the promise that God made to him. He trusted in God. He was willing to rely on God. That's what the Torah is telling us here. That God makes these promises to Abraham and the Torah tells us that Abraham trusted God. He was willing to rely on the promise of God. And this is what is meant when it teaches us in Perkayavot, in Ethics of the Fathers, that we're to have emunat kachamim. Not believing that the sages exist. But what it means is we need to trust in the sages and to rely upon them. Now this idea is taught very clearly. The idea of trusting and relying on the sages, it's taught very clearly in the Torah itself. So if you go to the book of Deuteronomy, Devarim chapter 17, verses 8 to 11, we're told the following. The Torah here discusses what is to be done in a situation where there's doubt and uncertainty about the Torah. For example, what if there's a new situation that arises that was never taught in the Torah? So God gives us plenty of instructions in the Torah. But 3,300 years ago, they didn't know about microwave ovens. They didn't know about artificial insemination. What do you do when, as we progress in history and scientifically, we are facing situations that the Torah never discusses? What do we do in a new situation? Or what if the law is not clear in a particular situation? For example, did so-and-so commit murder or not? Is so-and-so guilty of murder and maybe it's not 100% clear? Maybe it's not so clear. Or maybe there is something that a court is not able to determine simply. For example, is something ritually pure or ritually impure? Let's say there's a question that arises about some object. During the time of the temple, for example, where the laws of ritual purity and impurity were in effect. And it wasn't clear, is a particular object pure or not pure? So what do we do in these situations? Now, what the Torah could have said was, pray to God. Very simple answer. You don't know what to do. God could say, pray to me and I'll reveal unto you what you're supposed to do. God could have said that. But the Torah does not say this. Rather what the Torah says here in Devarim in Deuteronomy chapter 17 is the following. God says you must approach the Levitical priests and the court at that time. Meaning you'll go to the court that's at the time when you're living. And they will declare to you a legal decision. You must do, God says, as they tell you, following their every decision. You must keep the Torah as they interpret it for you and you shall follow the laws that they legislate for you. God says, do not stray to the right or to the left from the word that they declare to you. So this idea of relying and trusting on the rulings of the sages is not something that the Talmud makes up. It's something that is rooted in the very Torah itself. Now people are often bothered by this idea. Because they say, look, human beings can be fallible. Human beings can make mistakes. But of course, God was fully aware of this. God told us they were supposed to follow the rulings of the sages. It wasn't as if God forgot that they're human beings who could be wrong. God is fully aware that he is empowering and he is giving the authority to human beings, not to divine creatures. And yet nonetheless, this is the system that God chose. God wanted human beings to participate in the understanding and the unfolding of the Torah. Rather than the alternative system which would be like a parent who always does their child's homework because they want their child to get all the answers correct. God could have given us that kind of a system where he always flies in the last minute to save the day and give us the answers. That's not the system God chose. God says, I'm giving you the Torah and your wisest people will be responsible for interpreting it and understanding it in situations of doubt. Now what's curious is that in describing to us to what extent we have to rely on the rulings of the sages, the Torah uses the expression, do not deviate from what they teach to the right or to the left. That's what the Torah uses as an expression for how far we're supposed to trust them. Now according to Rashi and according to the rabbinic commentaries, what this means is that we have to listen to what the sages teach even if they tell us that the right is the left or the left is the right. Now why did the Torah not give another example for this? Why didn't the Torah say, and you have to follow the teachings of the sages even if they tell you that night is day and day is night? Why did they express this idea in terms of left and right, right and left? So I saw an interesting approach to this question that was shared by Rabbi Joseph Chaim Lanzer. And he notes the following. He says that when a sage provides someone with a legal ruling or with some other kind of personal advice, it can seem strange to the inquirer, meaning you ask a question of a great sage and they give you an answer and you might feel that it's a little bit weird and strange and I don't understand it. And the reason that we don't necessarily understand the rulings of the sages is because the person asking the question has vested interests. We call it in Hebrew negiot. We have, we touched the situation. We're very close to the situation. So we have vested interests and personal involvement that make it very difficult for us to see the whole truth. Meaning the fact that we're so close to our own situation often obscures the truth from ourselves. So the Torah uses the expression of right and left because when you stand in front of a sage, your right side is their left side and their left side is your right side. And what the Torah is saying here is that it's true. You call your right side right because you're looking at it from your perspective. From your perspective, this is your right. However, the sage is observing from a different perspective. His perspective, the sage's perspective is more objective. It's less subjective. Their perspective is the perspective of truth because it's not affected by personal interests, by personal involvement. And so from his pure perspective, it's not the right, it's the left. And that's exactly what the Torah teaches us using this, couching it in this phrase. You have to follow them whether they tell you the right is the left or the left is the right, because to us it's going to seem sometimes so counterintuitive. How could I follow something that seems so wrong? But the truth is that when I see it as the right, that's my perspective. The sage sees it from their perspective and from their perspective, this is not my right, this is my left.