 Often, when I go to do research on the Internet, it's frustrating to no end to find that sometimes almost all of the resources on a Jewish topic come from a Christian perspective. So a while ago, I was trying to look up the idea of pardase, the four levels of biblical interpretation, almost all the first 30 articles, the first 30 entries were almost all from Christian sources. Last spring, I was trying to find a YouTube presentation of a Passover Seder. People were asking me, they didn't know what's Passover like, what's a Seder like, so I thought I'd be able to find a nice Jewish presentation of what the Passover Seder is like. Not one. They were all Christian Passover Saders, and when I did a little bit of poking around on what is Midrash, what is Agada, I found the same thing, that a tremendous number of the resources were not from a Jewish perspective. And so with that introduction, I'm hoping tonight to share just a very, very basic introduction to the idea, the concept, the topic of Midrash and Agada. I'll try to explain what they are, how they're understood, and give a few examples, and then launch you on your careers of being Midrash students. So let's begin at the beginning. We all know that the foundation of Judaism, the basic source material of Judaism is found in the Torah. Strictly speaking, Torah applies to the five books of Moses. The word Torah basically means instruction or guidance. Most of the word Torah means, it means instruction or guidance. I want to suggest that one way of looking at the Torah, and if you want to use your visual imagination, try to play along with me, I want to suggest that if you open up a Chumash, the five books of Moses, what emerges basically in terms of the instructions and the guidance what you get from the five books of Moses is the picture of a big house. It's a big house with 613 rooms. That's basically what you get when you open up the five books of Moses. And what you really know basically is the name of each room. You'll know that there's a room called Shabbat, you'll know there's a room called the dietary laws, there's another that's called the room of circumcision, there's one called the room of Passover, one is a room that's called divorce, one is called the prohibition of idolatry, another room is called the prohibition of slander, another room is the requirement to give charity, and so on. There are 613 rooms in this house and you'll know that from reading the five books of Moses, but you won't really know much about any of these rooms, so you'll know that there are 613 rooms, you'll know basically the names of these rooms, but if you're looking for a lot more, you're not going to find it in the five books of Moses. So in terms of the model of this house, what you're often not going to get are the dimensions of the room, how big is the room. You're not going to get a picture of how many windows the room has, how many electrical outlets it has, is there internet connection, are there closets, is there carpeting, if there is what color is the carpeting, what kind of electrical lights are there in the room, how many are there, how about the windows, are there window shades, are there blinds, the ceiling, is it painted, what color, meaning you have in a room, you look around you, there are so many things that you couldn't attend to, so many details of a room, that's not really described in the five books of Moses. These details are contained in the oral Torah, we call the Torah Shabal Peh, that was revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai, and during his 40 years in the desert, and these details, all the kinds of things that you would need to know in order to practice any of these laws, whereas the topic comes up in the written Torah, the essential details to know actually what to do are contained in the oral Torah. And those are found today in the Talmud, these laws and their details are basically what we call Judaism, what we speak about as the halachah, the way, our path, this relationship between the written Torah and the oral Torah has been described by our sages as a mountain that's suspended by a hair, a mountain suspended by a thread. The thread might be that one or two verses in the text of the five books of Moses, but suspended from that little tiny hair, that thread is an entire mountain of laws that are only found in the oral Torah. Today, we would describe the written Torah, the five books of Moses, really as the tip of the iceberg, and you don't really see the iceberg so easily, but that's where we find the body of Torah law in the written and oral Torahs. Now, unfortunately, many people have mistakenly assumed that this body of law is all there is to Judaism, striking how many people over the course of Jewish history have assumed that the Talmud and the Bible and the laws basically exhaust all there is about Judaism and all Judaism really has to teach. To a great extent, Christianity had that stereotype of Judaism. They tended to look at Judaism as a dry and lifeless religion of rules and laws, and that's about it. A little later on, you had one of the world's most famous philosophers, Boruch Spinoza, who as well grossly misunderstood the contents of the Torah, and especially rabbinic teaching. He wrote the following. Spinoza says the Pharisees in their ignorance thought that the observance of the state law and the law of Moses was the sum total of morality, whereas such laws merely had reference to the public welfare and aimed not so much at instructing the Jews as keeping them under constraint. That's how a great mind like Spinoza understood Judaism. A pretty superficial system of law only. The truth is, however, that about 20% of the Talmud contains non-legal material. It's not just a book of law. At least 20% is not legal. And this non-legal material is what we call the agadah, or in Aramaic, the agadah. Those two terms are often used interchangeably. Now in our house model, in the model I shared before, the legal or halachic parts of the Torah and the Talmud describe each room and its layout and its contents. The agadah relates the ambience of each room. That's what the agadah is trying to paint for us. How does it feel to be in that room? What does those things in the room mean? Some describe this as the music or the heart of Judaism. So whereas some people stereotype Judaism as a rigid, stale collection of laws which has no heart, what the agadah provides us is with basically the heart, the feelings, the guts, the soul of Judaism. This has been expressed by our sages as a Torah that is with black fire written on white fire. That's how the sages describe what the Torah really is. It's black fire written on white fire. If you just picture the parchment of a scroll of Torah, the discreet black letters are written on a white background, the white parchment. And the black letters, the discreet black letters are what we might call the letter of the law. But that negative space, that white background of the parchment is what we could call the spirit of the law. And the two cannot be separated. We can speak about the black fire and the white fire as the form of Judaism and the content of Judaism. But they're both part of Judaism. The word agadah itself has two etymological roots, two root words that really help us understand what agadah is. It comes from the Hebrew aleph gimel dalid, agad which means to tie or to bind. And it also is related to the Aramaic root nun gimel dalid which means to flow. So what is the agadah at the end of the day? It's the part of the Torah that draws us to its teachings. The agadah is the part of the Torah that draws us to the teachings of the Torah and binds us to those teachings and to the giver of the Torah itself. Our sages related it in the following way. They wrote, if you want to recognize the one who spoke and the world came into being, if you want to recognize the one who spoke and brought the world into existence, learn the agadah because thereby you will come to know him and cling to his ways. Now what is included in the agadah? What do you find there? It is quite a collection. It's quite vast. Much of the agadah is based upon a digging beneath the surface of the biblical text itself. This surface level is the straightforward and simple, usually literal meaning of the biblical text which is called the pshat or the pshutoshel mikra. But there are other levels of interpretation. There's what we call remez, hints, hints that you get from the text itself. There's another level called drash or drush which means to dig, to search, to investigate where you actually explore the text and try to penetrate even deeper. And then there's the fourth level called soed, the secrets of the text which are the mystical, cabalistic teachings of the Torah. The sages actually teach us that even though we have to always be mindful of the pshutoshel mikra, even though when you're studying the Bible, you have to always have as your foundation the simple surface level of what a text says. You cannot depart from that. Nevertheless, the sages teach us that there is shivim panimla Torah. There are 70 faces to the Torah and there are actually infinite levels that can be revealed in plumbing the depths of the text. So the kaleidoscope of topics and issues that are covered in the midrash and the agadah is very, very rich, incredibly rich. For example, one of the things that the midrash and the agadah engage in is trying to fill in details that are not covered in the biblical stories themselves. When anyone with just a little bit of curiosity reads the Bible, they're going to have a lot of questions and the Bible does not spell everything out. For example, when you read the story of Cain and Abel, it says they were out in the field and Cain spoke to his brother Abel and then he killed him. Well the pregnant question there is, what did he say to his brother? It says he said something to him, you dirty rat. He said something, but what did he say? The Torah didn't have to tell us that Cain spoke to his brother and killed him, it just could have said and Cain and Abel were in the field and Cain killed Abel. So something was exchanged there, there was an exchange of words. All was said and the midrash fills in a number of possibilities. The midrash suggests that they thought that between the two of them they would divide the world, I'll take the movable objects, you'll take the stationary objects, they're going into a big fight over who's going to get what and Cain kills Abel. Another opinion says they were fighting over in whose part of the world will the Holy Temple be built. Another approach says they were arguing about women, who's going to marry who? And commentaries suggest that what you see here is that in the course of human history these are often the three things that people went to war over. Over economics, over religion, over sex. But this is not dealt with in the text of the Bible itself. When Abraham was told by God to take your only son and bring him up to Har HaMaria as an offering, it's a very, very short passage in the Bible, about twenty verses for this incredible, incredible story. And it says that they spent three days going up to Mount Moriah. And that's all we're told. They walked for three days. And reading this story is going to be very, very curious. What do they talk about during those three days? What was going through Abraham's mind as he was going on this incredibly bizarre mission to kill the son that God promised him would be the inheritor of his nation? Well the Midrash spends a lot of time sharing with us what went on. The Midrash speaks about Satan, Satan coming to Abraham and engaging him in tremendous arguments, brilliant arguments, and Abraham resisting all these arguments. And finally the Satan gets so frustrated he turns himself into a river and blocks Abraham from going any further. And Abraham crosses the river until he's up to his nostrils and says to God, what do you want from me? You wanted me to do this and now I can't go. And at that the Satan disappears. What's going on there? Is it describing possibly Abraham's internal state or rabbis teach us that Satan is really our Yetzahara, our evil inclination? It's hard to imagine that Abraham just went on this mission without any kind of doubts or reservations or questions. And maybe the Midrash is sharing with us how difficult it was. It shows this by just telling us it was like having to cross a river almost drowning himself. That's how difficult this must have been. What was it like for our ancestors to cross the Red Sea? The splitting of the Red Sea is described as the most incredible miracle that ever took place practically speaking. What was it like? And the Midrash provides incredibly rich details. There wasn't just one lane that split open, there were 12 lanes and there were fruits that were growing on the sides and they could see each other. I mean, they have pages of very, very rich descriptions of hundreds of thousands of miracles that took place at the splitting of the Red Sea. The Midrash discusses topics that are not really treated in great depth by the Torah itself. For example, what will the unfolding of the messianic process be like? What will the messianic age be like? The Bible itself provides very scant details. The Midrash and the Agadah discuss what is the angelic realm like and the metaphysical realms of this world. What are heaven and hell like? You don't have much about that in the Bible at all. What about dreams? How do we understand the phenomenon of dreaming? What are dreams? The Bible talks about dreams, but how should we understand them? Are they nonsense? Are they a form of prophecy? Do they have any meaning? This is described in great detail by our sages. How about understanding life after death? Our soul, divine providence, so many topics that are basic to Jewish philosophy and Jewish theology, that is where they're developed in the Midrashim and Agadot. The Midrash and Agadah focus on lessons and inspiration that we can learn from the lives of the Talmudic sages themselves. You find many, many stories in the Midrash and Agadah about our sages, not as biographies so much, but because we can learn incredibly important lessons from their stories. Tremendous focus on the teachings of ethics and proper living in the Midrash. The Midrash sometimes engages in discussions of the Ta'ameha Mitzvot, the reasons behind the commandments. The Torah basically tells us what to do and what not to do. But why? What's the reasoning behind them? What's the purpose? What should it do for us? These are the kind of topics that are sometimes engaged in in the Midrash and Agadah. There's a tremendous amount of practical advice on worldly matters, everything from business to medicine you'll find in the Midrashim and Agadot and a tremendous number of teaching parables. That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the table of contents of what we find in the Midrash. There are many sources for these teachings. The most primary place is in the Talmud itself and because the Talmud is so huge, it's called the Sea of the Talmud. In the year 1516, Revyakov ibn Chavib called all these Agadic teachings and he put them into a collection called the Enyaakov that was first published in Salanika Greece. But there you have a multi-volume book that just collects only the Agadic teachings of the Talmud. Other sources of the Agadic material Midrashim are the Midrash Raba, the Midrash Tanchuma, which are early collections of Midrashim of the earliest stages, probably first edited between the 5th and 7th centuries. Some may be a little bit later. Then you have a collection called the Yalkuchimoni, edited in the 13th century. You have many other collections of Midrashim. The truth is that sometimes the teachings of the Agadot appear quite strange and are far from simple to understand. Over the course of history, there have been a fluid range of approaches and perspectives on how to understand the Agadot itself. The gonim, we discussed this in our presentation on Jewish history, the gonim were the leading rabbinic sages who taught in the great economies of Babel and Babylon between the 7th and 11th centuries. This is slightly after the compilation, the finishing of the editing of the Babylonian Talmud. They tended to sharply distinguish between the legal and non-legal parts of the Talmud. That was the general approach of the gonim. They found that the halachic teachings and the legal rulings were seen by the gonim as authoritative divine law. That's how the gonim saw the legal parts of the Talmud. But non-legal parts of the Talmud, they saw basically as the personal views of the sages who taught them. This does not mean that gonim did not take the Agadot teachings seriously. They took them very seriously. But if the teachings of the Agadot veered from known scientific or historical knowledge, the gonim felt that they didn't feel bound to uncritically accept these Midrashim and Agadot. If the Agadot veered from the plain meaning and language of the biblical text, they also didn't feel bound to accept the Midrashim and Agadot uncritically. The rulings took a huge turn, however, in the 11th to 14th centuries with the leading teachers in France and Germany, basically Ashkenaz. This was under Rashi and his disciples, the Baalei Atosaphot, the Tosaphists. Rashi and the Tosaphists basically view the Agadot and the Midrashim and the Talmud as authoritative, just as much as the legal halachic parts of the Talmud. Now, what you had here were two groups of people. You have the gonim who did not find themselves bound to the Agadot because they found that these teachings sometimes violated their common sense. And you had the Ashkenazi scholars and sages, Rashi and Atosaphists who, because they saw these teachings as divinely authoritative, found themselves bound to them. But the thing that both of these groups had in common was they viewed the Agadot and Midrashim literally. They understood these teachings on a literal surface level. In the 12th century, Maimonides, the great Sephardic scholar who was very familiar with Aristotelian philosophy, took a very different approach to Agadah than both the gonim and the school of Rashi and Atosaphists. In his commentary to the Mishnah, Maimonides described three different groups of people. The largest group he speaks about, he says, by far the largest group are those who read the Midrashim and Agadot at face value and take them literally. Maimonides felt this was an approach born out of ignorance that only brought dishonor to the Talmudic sages. It sounds like he might be describing the school of Rashi and Atosaphists. The second group, Maimonides writes, also understood the Midrashim and Agadah teachings literally, but because they seemed so strange, this second group of people derided. They derided the Talmudic sages as fools and held them in contempt. Whereas the first group Maimonides writes about took their teachings of the sages literally and revered the sages and didn't question these teachings, just understood them on their surface level. The second group, because they understood the same teachings literally and found them to be so strange sometimes, this second group basically thought that the teachers of the Talmud were fools. Maimonides also regarded this second group of people as fools as well. The third group Maimonides focuses on, he says, is by far, unfortunately, the smallest of the groups. He says that they revered the Talmudic sages as great and assumed that what they teach is true. The third group assumes that the sages of the Talmud were great teachers what they taught is true, but they assume that their teachings, when difficult to appreciate on their literal level, basically have a hidden symbolic allegorical meaning. Believe it or not, it wasn't really until Maimonides that it was suggested that the teachings of the Midrash should be understood allegorically or symbolically. Prior to him, people basically understood them literally. So when the sages spoke of things that sounded impossible or exceedingly bizarre, Maimonides said that they were employing metaphor. And these texts should not be understood literally, but rather poetically. Let's give two examples. The Talmud in Chagiga 12a says that the height of Adam reached from the earth to the heavens. It's pretty tall. Try buying a suit. The height of Adam reached from the earth to the heavens, but after he sinned, God placed his hand on Adam's head and shortened him, cut him down to size. Now someone reading that literally would laugh at it and say how absurd that someone was as tall, you know, going up to the sun and beyond. So in the line of the approach suggested by Maimonides, Rev Chaim of Al-Lujan, who is the great student of the Vilnegon, said that what the Midrash here means is the following. That Adam's intellect was great and clear, and he could understand everything in the universe, even the deepest mysteries in the heavenly realms. But after he sinned, his knowledge was blurred, his great intellect came down a notch, and his spiritual stature was diminished. That's what the Midrash means. And Maimonides himself explained this in his understanding of what happened in the wake of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Maimonides says that before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they were on a higher level than after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That sounds weird, because it sounds like they didn't have knowledge of good and evil, they ate from the tree, and now they have something they didn't have before, the knowledge of good and evil. Maimonides says, don't look at it that way, he says they didn't actually grow and gain from eating from this tree. Maimonides writes in the Guide to the Perplexed that actually they were diminished tremendously after eating from this tree, because he says, before eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, their knowledge of reality was a knowledge that was not of good and evil, it was knowledge of true and false. Adam and Eve saw everything in the world as a function of either being true or false, everything. Now much of what we see in the world, you can measure like in a science class, you can know whether or not 3 plus 3 is 6 is true or 4 plus 4 is 20 is not true. That is the kind of information that you can measure empirically, it's crystal clear. But then there are realms of life that we often don't see so clearly. Take any issue today in morality or ethics, and you will find intelligent, sensitive, well-meaning people who will disagree violently. So get 100 people in the room and talk about same-sex marriage or capital punishment or abortion. There are millions of topics where it's not so clear. People will disagree and often have great reasons for their ideas. Maimonides says that after they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they lost that clarity of seeing everything as a function of true or false. Now everything was good and bad are very subjective. True and false is objective. I think it's good, you think it's bad. We say in Hebrew, when it comes to personal tastes, you don't argue because everyone has their opinion. Maimonides says that was the tragedy and took place after they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They lost the clarity they once had. That's what might be meant by this midrashic teaching that originally Adam was as tall as the heavens and after his sin he was cut down to size. Another example in the scroll of Esther, Megilod Esther, were told that Achashverosh, the king of Persia, wanted Queen Vashti to appear at his royal national banquet in her royal crown. The sages tell us that's all he wanted to wear. Just could have said he wanted Vashti to appear at the royal banquet. But it gives that detail in her royal crown. Of course she'll be wearing a royal crown. So by pointing out that he wanted to appear in her royal crown, the sages say that's what he wanted to wear and that was it. Otherwise she's in her birthday suit. She was not a prissy prude. She probably would have been very happy to go. But the midrash tells us, in tractate Megilod 12b, that the angel Gabriel came and planted a tail on her and she refused to attend the banquet. And then she was subsequently killed for her disobedience. Now does everyone understand this literally that Vashti grew a tail? Some might. Probably children when they read this midrash think that Vashti grew a tail. Why not? It's not impossible. But why go there? And what the sages teach us is that it should not be understood literally. But what might have happened, more likely, is that maybe Vashti put on a few extra pounds before this banquet, which to her would feel like a very unwanted appendage, like having grown a tail. Or maybe she ate some food before the banquet that gave her an allergic reaction and she broke out in a rash. But at the end of the day, she didn't feel she could appear publicly in front of all these people if she wasn't happy with the way she looked. And the rabbis express this in a very, very hyperbolic way that she grew a tail. Clearly what's going on is that in terms of God's plans, he doesn't want Vashti there because he ultimately sees the need to have Esther become the queen. So if it means giving her a rash, so be it. Now my monodies and Ramosha Chaim Lutzato, the Ramchal in the 18th century, insisted that our sages purposely use metaphor and allegory and communicating the deeper theological ideas of the Torah. Why? Why would they use allegory and metaphor and parables in communicating the deepest parts of the Torah because they were afraid that these deepest parts of the Torah could easily be misunderstood by unsophisticated people and they would then be perverted by couching these deep mystical theological ideas in parables and in allegorical teachings. Why students would be able to penetrate the true meaning of the allegory and also why students would be given the keys to understanding these parables and allegories by their teachers who would see that they are worthy students. But what's important to remember is that even ideas that are not terribly mystical or profound are often taught by the rabbis in parables and allegory. Now why? If the motivation for using parables and allegory was so that people that are not worthy or unsophisticated students wouldn't mess up and pervert deep theological ideas, so why teach more mundane ideas, more pedestrian ideas, using parables and allegories? So there are several reasons. Number one, the sages really had many different layers of meaning in their mind when they gave their teachings. The sages didn't only have one lesson in mind. And when you spell out the meaning of an allegory, you basically use language that is less rich and less open to multiple layers of understanding. So by preserving your teaching is in allegory and parable, the reader is able to extract many different lessons, not just the one lesson that's spelled out. More importantly, the sages didn't want to spoon feed all the knowledge to us, but wanted rather that readers expend some effort in uncovering the meaning of the teachings. Sure, the rabbis could have just explained everything overtly. They could have spoon fed everything to us, but they didn't want to give it like that. They wanted us to expend some effort in trying to understand what they were saying. Now this is a very, very understandable concern in our age of Google and Wikipedia culture. The truth is that people who don't work at trying to understand what they're studying will very unlikely appreciate it or even incorporate it into their lives. On a deeper level, on a deeper level there's something else going on. The more subtle a teaching is, the more deeply it penetrates. When teachings come across as subtle teachings, as in direct teachings, they have the ability to penetrate our mind and our souls to a much deeper level. Why is that? Because when ideas are taught to us directly, when we know that someone is trying to preach to us or tell us what to do, our internal defenses go up. I don't need to have that person telling me how to live. I don't need to hear this lesson. So when we're confronted with a teaching or an idea directly, we have an internal defense mechanism which goes right up. They're very, very quickly aroused. Indirect teaching, indirect teaching through parables and symbols don't make any overt demands or accusations against us. They just plant seeds of awareness. This allows for the internalization of the message. Not spelling out the moral or pointing out the point of the teaching allows the reader to figure it out for themselves. And this lack of specificity lets the individual relate to the teaching and construct the lesson in terms that are meaningful to themselves. By the way, for you psychologists in the room, Milton Erickson, in his therapy, often used teaching stories for this very reason because he knew that any individual will construct what is for them the important lesson, the important meaning of the story. What allegory does is to provide a stimulus for introspection. That's the benefit of symbolism in allegory. It provides for the reader, for the listener, a stimulus for introspection and insight which can lead to a real assimilation of the lesson. Maimonides insisted that at times we're not to understand Midrashim literally. He thought that was often foolish. And in addition, Maimonides maintained that at least some of the Midrashim were the views of our sages and not divinely revealed. He said the sages would tie their teachings to the biblical text, but these are not the intended meanings of the biblical text. The next major shift in terms of understanding Midrashim, though, comes with the Maharal, the chief rabbi of Prague during the 16th century. The Maharal tended to view the Midrash as authoritative and as the intended secondary meaning of the biblical text. Let's give an example. There's a verse in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 14, which directs soldiers during a time of war to carry with them a spade or a shovel in addition to their weapons, obviously to use after relieving themselves in the field. Now, the word in Hebrew here for shovel is a yated, which actually means a peg. Wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to be told to carry a peg with them. And the word for weapons in this verse is azenecha, which sounds very much like the Hebrew word aznecha, which means ears, your ears. So based upon this word play, the rabbis in the Talmud, Kassubis 5a, say the following. If you hear someone saying something disgraceful or disgusting, you should plug your fingers into your ears like a peg. So the rabbis teach, and they learn it from this verse, the verse which says that the soldiers should carry with them a peg or a shovel with their weapons. And the rabbis say what it means is that if you hear something that's disgusting, plug your ears with your fingers like a peg. Now, in his guide to the perplexed, Maimonides criticizes those people who took this as a real meaning of the text, rather than as an example of the sages giving a poetic spin to the text in order to teach an important moral lesson. However, the Maharal from Prague insists that this teaching of plugging up your ears with your fingers is not just a fanciful illusion loosely based upon the text. The Maharal insists that it's a message clearly included in the actual text itself, meaning it was an intended meaning of the text. And then there's one more important teaching of the Maharal that I need to share with you in terms of how Midrashim should be understood. Again, beginning with Maimonides, it was widespread to insist that certain Midrashim and Agadot should not be taken literally, but must be viewed allegorically. The Maharal, however, taught that some of these Midrashim should be understood literally. However, he didn't mean literally on a physical level, what he meant was they're describing metaphysical or spiritual reality. Let's look at another example. The Talmud teaches that Moses was 10 cubits tall. Now 10 cubits is approximately 15 feet tall. That's not as big as Adam, but that's also pretty tall. That's in Traktate Brachot 54a. Now most commentaries following in the footsteps of Maimonides would certainly not take this literally, and they would see it as a hyperbole to illustrate how spiritually great Moses was. And it alludes to his role in the 10 plagues, in receiving the 10 commandments, in building a Mishkaim, which was 10 cubits high, but it basically is teaching us not anything about how tall Moses was, but about how great he was spiritually. The Maharal, however, insists that this Midrashic statement about Moses being 10 amot tall, 15 feet tall, is describing a truth in the spiritual realm. Meaning the Maharal says he was 15 feet tall. It's referring to his inner spiritual dimensions, not his outer physical dimensions. The Maharal and the Jewish mystics believed that everything in our physical world, every single thing in our physical world, is rooted in an analog in the spiritual world, which is actually more real than the physical world. If you're familiar with Platonic philosophy, Plato spoke about the world of ideas. And Plato spoke about the fact that you have chairs, many different kind of chairs in the world, but then there's chair, right? The idea of what a chair is. And that idea is called the idea of the Platonic ideal. And the Jewish mystics had a similar idea. For example, we have the earthly Jerusalem, but the mystics speak about a Yerushalayim Shalma'ala, a heavenly Jerusalem. And the physical terrestrial Jerusalem is basically a very pale shadow, a reflection of the ideal on a spiritual realm. So the Maharal taught also, by the way, if you remember the movie, The Matrix, that what basically was going on in The Matrix. Everything in the physical world really had an analog was connected in some way to its real ultimate reality. So the Maharal taught that this spiritual reality should really be fully materialized in the physical world. Listen carefully, the Maharal believed that something that is in spiritual reality should have an exact correspondence in the physical world itself when possible, however, within the laws of nature. But because Moses' physical body has to correspond to his spiritual dimensions, the Maharal believed that Moses would have been exceptionally tall, as a matter of fact, he would say that Moses would have been the tallest person in the world. So not 15 feet tall, be impossible to walk into a room or get into a car. But we know that there are eight footers in the world today, people more than eight feet tall. And Moses would have been the tallest physical being on the planet because he was the greatest spiritually, because he was 15 feet tall spiritually, he had to have an analog that was materially, physically tall as well. However, those who did not take the Midrashim literally, like the Maharal is doing here, would not necessarily require that Moses be very tall physically at all. And that would have been the difference. Now the Agadha is an incredibly rich treasure chest of teachings that pays off great dividends with any effort that you place into trying to search out their meaning. I'm just gonna share a few examples before we close for the evening. In the story in Genesis, the story of Abraham's life, we're told about Abraham's brother, Haran. And the Bible tells us in chapter 11, verse 28 in Genesis, that Haran, who was Abraham's brother, died in the presence of his father, Terach, in the land of his nativity in Ur-Kazdim. Now that's a pretty straightforward, unambiguous statement. But the Hebrew is a little bit unusual in that the expression to die in the presence of his father, the Hebrew is Alpene Terach Aviv. Alpene can mean unaccount of or because of. So because of this textual prompting, the Midrash says the following. The Midrash says that he died because of his father, Terach. Not in the presence of his father, he died because of his father, Terach, meaning he died as the result of something that Terach did. What is the story they tell? So the Midrash tells us that Terach, who was the father of Abraham, manufactured and sold idols for a living. He also worshiped them. And once he left Abraham in charge of the shop, he had to go away. And while Terach was away, Abraham were told broke all the idols, except for the largest one. Nimrod comes back from his trip. He's very, very freaked out. He says to Abraham, what happened? And Abraham tells him, look, someone brought an offering to the idols and they all got into a big fight and the biggest one took a stick and then broke all the smaller ones. And his father berated him and says, what are you talking about? These idols can't do anything. And Abraham says, why do you pray to them? So Terach schleps Abraham to Nimrod, who was the big machar in the idol world back then. He was the chief idolator of the world. So Nimrod says to Abraham, look Abraham, if you don't wanna worship your father's idols, worship fire, fire is really, that's worth worshiping. So Abraham says, but water is able to put out the fire. Why should I worship fire? So Nimrod says, look, worship the water then. And Abraham says, yeah, but the water itself is absorbed by the clouds and the clouds are moved around by the wind. So Nimrod says, so worship the wind. And Abraham says, yeah, but a man is stronger than the wind. A man can withstand the wind, can resist the wind. Anyway, Nimrod gets very frustrated arguing with this precocious young Abraham. So he says, I'm gonna throw you into a furnace of fire. And he challenges Abraham's God to save Abraham, which is what happens. Abraham gets thrown into this furnace of fire and a little bit later he emerges unscathed. Now, while this is going on, Abraham's brother, Charon, is watching the proceedings. Because he was challenged to declare his loyalty. Who do you worship, Charon? So Charon says to himself, I'm gonna see what happens to Abraham. If Abraham comes out okay, I'll say I'm with Abraham. And if Abraham gets burned to a crisp, I'll say I'm with you, Nimrod. So when Abraham comes out of the furnace and they turn to Charon and say, new and who do you believe in? He says, I believe in the God of Abraham. And they throw him into the furnace and we're told that he is perishing. He perishes in the furnace. What's the point of the story? Why do the rabbis tell us this story? Again, there are many different ways of looking at it. One possible angle is to think about why did Abraham go into the furnace? Abraham could have said, I'll worship the wind, I'll worship this fire, I'll worship the sun, I'll worship this water, I'll worship the statues of my father. There's only one reason that Abraham went into that furnace. It's because to him, he believed in all of his heart and soul in the creator of the universe. He believed in God. And that's why Abraham went into the furnace because he really believed in God. Why did Charon go into the furnace? Because Abraham went in. And one of the lessons from this story is that faith has to be real. You know, there are so many people today, we read this all the time. They'll tell you that I'm Jewish because my parents raised me that way. Or I'm Jewish because we don't wanna give Hitler a posthumous victory. Or I'm Jewish because of tradition. What the Midrash is telling us here is we've gotta be Jews because we really believe it. It has to be real to us. Not because it's pragmatic. Not because it's tradition. Not because it's a habit, but because it's real. The Talmud says that after a meal, most of us know that there's a Jewish law that before we eat bread, we're supposed to wash our hands ritually. We take water, we pour it over each hand. But the Talmud says that at the end of a meal, the Talmud says that we should wash our hands at the end of the meal as well. Why? So the Talmud says the reason is that there is salt from Sedom, Sodomite salt that is present at the end of the meal. And if you get it into your eyes, you'll go blind. Now that's the kind of teaching from the Talmud that can provoke chuckles easily. But what are the rabbis getting at here? And again, there are many, many different ways of understanding this Midrash, this teaching. But let me suggest one that I saw in a wonderful book on the prayer book called My Prayer by Nisim Mandel. I think that's how he pronounced his name. And he suggests the following. He says that what is Sodomite salt? So throughout our Talmud, salt is always the flavor of something. Salt always is associated with giving flavor and taste. So he says at the end of a meal, there's this Sodomite salt. What was Sedom? What was the city of Sedom all about? So our sages tell us that there were basically, there was a philosophy in the city of Sedom. Sedom had a philosophy that was shali shali va shalkha shalkha. What's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. That was the philosophy that permeated Sedom. It's also often heard in very right-wing political circles in the world today, which are opposed to any kind of social welfare. They say, look, the Sodomites felt that if you don't have anything, it's your problem. Don't look to us to take care of you. So the philosophy of Sedom was basically one of cruelty. They didn't have any compassion on people that were without food. And they said, what's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. You don't have any tough noogies, I don't care. And there are many stories in the Midrash about how cruel the people of Sedom actually were. Now the rabbis teach us that before a person eats a meal, before you sit down to eat, the Talmud says that you have two hearts. Before a person sits down to eat, they have two hearts. But after they eat, they only have one heart. What does that mean? Very simple. That before you eat, you yourself are hungry. You haven't eaten yet. And since you're hungry, you're able to empathize with someone else that's hungry. So before you eat your meal, you have two hearts. You know how it feels to be hungry. You can empathize with the plight of someone that's hungry. But after you've eaten, you're no longer hungry, you're full. And you only have one heart now because you can't feel the needs of people who are hungry. So the rabbis are teaching us that you know what the great problem is? After a meal, when you've eaten already, there's a great danger of sodomite salt, which can blind you to the needs of the poor. So what the rabbis are suggesting here is that in order to help make us aware of this dynamic, because we often don't think about what's going on in our own inner lives. The rabbis are suggesting, you know what? After the meal, pause for a moment, wash your hands, and think about the fact that you potentially have this sodomite salt on your fingers that can make you blind to the needs of the poor. Share one final teaching. Very, very famous, agotic teaching about an oven that was constructed in particular way. It was called the oven of Akhnai. And Rabbi Eliezer taught that this oven was not susceptible to becoming ritually impure. And the sages said, no, it is susceptible to becoming ritually impure. And they debated. There are a lot of sages and only one Rabbi Eliezer. And guess what? He lost the debate. They outvoted him. And he was very frustrated. You can imagine, he's saying to himself, I know they are the majority, but I'm right. He was very frustrated. He said, I don't care if they're the majority, but I know I'm right. And that shouldn't be just pushed aside because there are more of them. The majority isn't always right. And he was very, very upset. So he said to them, look, I'm gonna prove I'm right. And he said that carob tree over there will prove I'm right. And the carob tree picked itself up and it walked 400 yards. And everybody said, ooh, ah, it's amazing. But they said, you know, but you can't prove anything in Jewish law from a carob tree. So he tried something else. He said, if I'm right, that river is gonna prove that I'm right. And the river changed direction from downstream to going upstream. And everyone, ooh, it's pretty cool, pretty amazing. But sorry, you can't prove anything from the water. And he said, if I'm right, the walls of this house of study will prove that I'm right. And the walls began to cave in and they could have killed everybody. And they said, well, that's a pretty cool trick, but you can't prove anything from the walls of the house of study. And he was finally in his frustration. He said, if I'm right, God will prove that I'm right. And at that moment, they heard a voice coming out of heaven that said, don't you know that Rabbi Eliezer is right. At that point, the main leading sage in the rabbinic group, the sages, got up and paraphrased the passage from the book of Deuteronomy. He said, lo, bosh am I in he. The Torah is no longer in heaven. End of story. He said, because God, you were the one that told us that in the case of doubt, we follow the majority. And that's what we're doing here. And when you think about it, God didn't have to say that. God could have told the Jewish people very easily, look boys and girls, I'm giving you a Torah. If in the future you have any questions, something is not clear, you don't know what to do, pray unto me and I will reveal unto you what thou shall do. That's what God could have said in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 17, where this comes up, God could have said the future doubt clause. In the future, should you have any problems, just send me a memo to heaven, you'll get a text back from me, I'll explain exactly what I want you to do. God could have said that. God didn't. God says in the Torah that in the case of a doubt, a question, you don't know what to do, you consult with the leading sages of your time and whatever they tell you to do, you have to do, whether they tell you to the right or to the left. So Rabbi Yeshua says to God here, God, you told us already what to do in the case where there's a question. You told us to take the majority vote. And therefore we don't listen to any pyrotechnics that come down from heaven. We're not interested in magic tricks, we're interested in doing what you told us to do. Now the story ends by saying that they saw, walking around back then, happened to be Elijah the prophet. They saw Elijah the prophet. And they said to Elijah the prophet, hey Elijah the prophet, what was God doing when we told him to, but out of this? And Elijah said, God was smiling. And he said, nitzchunivani, nitzchunivani, my children have vanquished me, my children have vanquished me. That's one way of looking at it. God is very happy that they decided not to get distracted by the magic tricks and to stick to their guns and the follow what God originally told them. But another way of translating this, the word nitzach in Hebrew means eternity. Nitzchunivani, nitzchunivani, my children have eternalized me, my children have eternalized me. What God is saying is that Judaism, Torah is God's expression in his trust and faith in humanity. In the same way that God created a physical world that's not a complete physical world. You don't go and pick a bread, piece of bread off a tree. God put us in a physical world where God expects us to work the world, to develop the world, to produce medicines and technology. God did not expect us to remain in the stone age. God's mandate and God's marching orders was vechivshuha. Go and make something of this world. Take charge of this world. Use your intelligence that I gave you as a gift and transform the world. And so in the same way that God made a physical world that was not complete because God does not want us to be children who are only spoon fed by daddy. God wants us to exercise our own independence both physically and spiritually. So God could have made the world a world in which any question we have about the Torah, he'll come down and he'll give us the answer. That's much safer, but it's not what God wanted. God wanted a Torah in which human beings would have a role in its unfolding. God trusted in the human ability to interpret the Torah and to work with the Torah. And to make the Torah into something that was much more dynamic than a frozen code that was given 3,000 years ago. So God is thrilled, he's smiling. And he's saying this is what makes the Torah divine and what makes it eternal. Because a book that was written 3,000 years ago will probably have very little relevance to people living far away from where that was given far in the future. But the fact that the Torah itself has built into it, a component which requires that we engage it and we work with it, God is saying that's what allows it to be eternal. I wanna conclude by just sharing with you what I'm hoping will be a journey that you will take to explore this incredibly rich world of Midrash. And thank God today there are incredible resources that you can use to aid you on this journey. I'll just share with you one resource and there are many, if you want me to recommend more, please get in touch with me. But Rabbi Aaron Feldman wrote an incredible book called The Juggler and the King, which explores some of the most challenging and difficult agadot. And he shares with us the explanation given to these agadot by the Vilna Gaon nonetheless, no less than the Gaona Vilna. Absolutely beautiful and breathtaking. And you have today, thank God, in many languages, brilliant expositions, analyses, studies of Midrashim and agadot that, as I was saying before, really provide us with the music of Torah, with the ambiance of Judaism, with the spirit of Judaism. And I think that if we wanna really appreciate what we have as Jews, we have to march with both the halacha, our laws together with the agadah, and God willing with that combination will come to a deeper appreciation of what God always intended for us.