Unveiling the Pillars of Jewish Faith - You Won't Believe What the Kuzari Reveals!

Transcript

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Today's a big day.

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We're going to try something different.

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We're going to try something new, always trying to keep things fresh here at the Motivation Congregation, and we're going to do something that we'll dub the Motivation Congregation audiobooks.

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Audiobooks of greatness maybe, books of greatness maybe, but hopefully this will be episode one or feature one of an episode and future episodes where we will select different essays of greatness, well-written points of Torah, great Torah literature that hold foundational principles of Judaism, kind of need-to-know material.

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I'm going to read it inside, maybe pepper it and interject with some comments, but I hope to hold myself back from doing such things.

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But I hope to hold myself back from doing such things, but I feel like it's a pretty straightforward and easy way for us to get the unadulterated and in its perfect, pristine form, all the great content from the great sages that we still have their works to study from.

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And because Pesach is right around the corner and we find ourselves to be in the re-blooming season, the month of Nisan, the fruit trees blossoming, rejuvenation and renewal is in the air as we celebrate that time of year that the Jewish people became a nation, the birth of the Jewish people.

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That happened and continues to be celebrated year after year and commemorated with the holiday of Pesach.

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It feels very apropos that we revisit the great work of the Kuzari.

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The Kuzari which teaches us all about what Yitzchak Mitzrayim is meant, to teach us what we are commemorating and celebrating when we have matzah and morar.

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Now the kuzari.

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For some background, before we begin to open up and read the text, we should know that it's been called the defense of the despised faith.

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The Kuzari is the great work, the magnum opus of the sage, the philosopher, the tzaddik and the kadosh Rabbi, yehuda HaLevi, born in 1075, deceased in 1141, and the Sefer Kuzari was completed in 1140, just before Reb Yudah Halevi's death.

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It is profound, the Kuzari.

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The Kuzari is a comprehensive guide to Jewish thought.

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It's written in a very play-like, unique, philosophical, historical, novel-like way.

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Play-like, unique, philosophical, historical, novel-like way where, in a very engaging layout of a book, the Guzari tells of the king of the Khazars, who has reoccurring dreams of where the creator of the world approves of his intentions.

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He means well, but his deeds, his actions are falling short.

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And to attempt to find the truth after this midlife crisis, the king summons a Greek philosopher, a Christian priest, an Islamic mullah not mullah like money, but mullah like Islamic people and a rabbi.

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The philosopher speaks first, then the representatives of the two daughter religions of Judaism.

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After the Muslim mullah and the Christian have now both said their pieces, the attention turns to the rabbi, in which, not expecting much, the king asks the rabbi to argue his points for the outlook and divinity of Judaism and, quickly and systematically, methodically working his way through arguments and proofs, the rabbi wins over the attention and the heart of the king of the Khazars.

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The Sefer that is divided into five separate essays and the resulting work is called by the Vilna Gon Holy and pure, and the fundamentals of Israel's faith and the Torah are contained within it.

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This is the Sefer Kuzari that we are speaking of Now.

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The first essay, or an outline of the Sefer, is about the role of the Avos, yitzias Mitzrayim.

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That's what we are going to focus on.

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Schar and Onesh, how reward and punishment work, why we are the chosen people.

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Essay two is about divine attributes Hakodesh, baruch Hu, those Yod, gimel Midos.

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About Karbanos, about mitzvos, positive and negative, the Kedusha of Lashon Hakodesh, which is must-read material.

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Maybe we will get there one day.

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Essay three is about the Shabbat and the festivals, making brachos and the relationship between Torah Shebich Sav and Torah Sheba Peh.

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Essay four is about the human being and the relationship that he has to other entities inside of God's world.

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It's about the unity of Hashem and the scientific knowledge that the sages possessed.

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Sa 5 is about proofs for the existence of the neshama, of the soul, determination and hope versus bechira.

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Understanding free will before the Sefer finishes.

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Standing free will before the Sefer finishes, where the rabbi and his beautiful arguments for the divinity of Torah and Judaism has become the champion.

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The rabbi fends off the criticism and he wins his admiration, he wins the king's approval and he is the victor.

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The safer, the kuzari, the defense of the despised faith is where our hope and belief in HaKadosh Baruch Hu begins.

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It's more than a thousand years old.

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Who begins?

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It's more than a thousand years old and it was a rather harder safer to actually break open and understand in modern times because it wasn't structured, so to speak, in the organized fashion that we are used to In modern times.

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We have the table of contents, we have one sort of category leading to the next, and the kuzari takes more of a liberal, spread-out approach.

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But Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna did one of the greatest acts of kindness in recent memory.

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Yechezkel Sararna, the late disciple of the altar of Slavodka and the great Rosh Yeshiva of Slavodka.

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Following the 1929 Hebron massacre he reorganized, rearranged the Kuzari and it was later translated by Rabbi Avram Davis.

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A beautiful translation.

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And with the help of Mitsuda Publications, in 1986, we got ourselves a new, reorganized, reformatted Mitsuda Kuzari book.

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It gives us the beliefs, thoughts and fundamental principles of what it means to be a Jew.

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Without further ado, let us begin.

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Fundamentals of Hakuzari.

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Hakuzari, translated by Rabbi Avram Davis, from the arrangement of Hagon.

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Rabbi Hezkel Sarno, zechreinu Levrecha, the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press, new York 1979.

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With approbations from Rabbi Yitzchak Huttner and this edition dedicated by Mr and Mrs Leonard A Kastenbaum, after a publisher's preface, acknowledgement, an introduction, a background from Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's life and the life of Hagon Rebicheskel Sarna.

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A historical background and one perspective given.

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We begin with Shaar Rishon of the Kuzari.

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The highest level of faith is faith which is clear, without philosophical speculation.

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The faith of the Jewish people is based on eyewitness testimony and requires neither proof nor demonstration.

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In his opening remarks to Pharaoh, moshe told him the God of the Hebrews sent me to you, referring to the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob.

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Moshe used this description of God because the patriarchs were well known to the nations of the world.

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They acknowledged that the divine spirit clung to the patriarchs, that they were guided by God and that he performed miracles for them.

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Moshe did not say to Pharaoh the God of heaven and earth sent me, or my creator and your creator sent me, for Pharaoh would have denied the divine creation.

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God also revealed himself to the Jewish people at Sinai in the same manner, saying I am Hashem, your God, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt.

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He did not introduce himself by saying I am Hashem, your God, who created the world and ourselves.

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God's taking them out of Egypt was an indisputable fact.

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The divine revelation at Sinai was also an indisputable truth, which they personally witnessed and experienced.

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Consequently, the unbroken tradition of the oral law was as valid to them as something they had seen with their own eyes.

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Our sages explained the phrase and he took him outside of Bereshith 15 at 5, to mean that God told Avram to abandon astrology and all other speculative sciences.

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Only through the prophets and the Torah, which are my appointed intermediaries to mankind, can you obtain true faith in me.

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I once actually heard this explained this is me just interjecting here that this is really the thesis, the step one for Emunah, and how Judaism and our beliefs differ from the rest of the world, as the Kuru Zahari will continue to explain.

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We don't need or care very much for the cosmos, the stars or the proofs of existence.

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From Briasa Olam we saw daddy, we have the tradition.

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Our parents stood there at Harsinai, 600,000 males above the ages of 20.

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600,000 males above the ages of 20.

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And so, while Aristotle and Plato used philosophy which is unreliable, as we will soon see, judaism is built on eyewitness testimony by a group of individuals.

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The Greeks first acquired knowledge from the Persians, whom they conquered.

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The Persians had acquired it from the Chaldeans.

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It was only then that the famous Greek philosophers rose to prominence, but once Rome dominated Greece, they produced no philosopher of any consequence.

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Aristotle's philosophy is unreliable because he had no reliable tradition and neglected to investigate the chronology and history of those who lived before him.

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He had to trust his own intelligence and his own speculations.

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There exists an accurate, authentic record of time since the creation of the world until now, which is a matter of total agreement among the Jews.

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There is no difference of opinion or reckoning between the Jews of India or those of Ethiopia in this respect, the chronology of creation can be certified from the lives of the eminent godly men of the early generations, recorded and transmitted to us by Moshe.

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The chronology since Moshe is also a matter of recorded history.

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These facts remove all suspicion that the record of time since creation was an invention or misinterpretation, because it is impossible even for a small number of people to formulate such a plan without disagreement and ultimate disclosure of their understanding.

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It would also have been impossible for them to refute anyone who challenged the authenticity of their plan.

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Abraham himself lived during the generation in which the separation of languages occurred.

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He and his relatives retained the language of his forefather, avar, and for that reason he was called Ivri.

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400 years later, moshe appeared.

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The world was fully acquainted with astrology and physics.

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When he appeared before Paro and spoke in the name of God, the sages of Egypt, and even the Jewish sages, were skeptical about the authenticity of his divine mission, because they were not convinced that God spoke to man until they themselves heard him declare the 10 commandments at Sinai.

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The rest of the people were also not fully convinced.

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Their lack of faith in Moshe did not stem from ignorance, but rather from their wisdom.

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They wanted to be certain that he was not deceiving them with magic, astrological calculations or similar fraud that would not stand up to close examination.

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Who can imagine, then, that these people would accept as fact, if it were not true, that the language spoken for 500 years before them was the exclusive language of Aver, that the world would split up in the time of his son, peleg, and that each nation could be traced directly to Shem Chom and Yefes?

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Is it conceivable that anyone today would induce an entire people to accept his false statements concerning the origin, history and language of well-known nations dating back only a mere 400 years?

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This is not possible.

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How could they, since we possess books and the handwriting of their authors, written 500 years ago?

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600,000 male Jews between the ages of 20 and 60 lived as slaves in Egypt.

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These Jews were deeply conscious that they were descendants of the 12 sons of Jacob.

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Not one of them separated himself or escaped to another country, nor did any stranger enter their ranks.

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They yearned for the fulfillment of the promise which had been made to their ancestors, avraham, yitzchak and Yaakov, that the land of Canaan would be their inheritance, yitzchak and Yaakov, that the land of Canaan would be their inheritance.

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Their hope was not diminished, even though Canaan was then ruled by seven mighty, prosperous nations.

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While they were in the depths of misery in Egypt, in bondage to Paro, who ordered that their children to be killed to prevent their numbers from increasing, despite the Jewish position of weakness, god sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh, who was then the world's mightiest ruler, and granted them the power to effect changes in nature.

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Power was unable to evade them or to harm them.

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Paro was powerless to protect his country from the ten plagues which struck the Egyptians and affected their streams, land, air, flora and fauna, their bodies and even their souls.

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At one moment, at midnight, the most precious and beloved members of their family, all of the firstborn Egyptian males, perished.

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There was no home in which there was no death, except for the homes of the Jews.

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All these plagues were preceded by admonitions and warnings, and they came at the exact moment Moses told Pharaoh to expect them to come.

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The plagues also came to a halt at the exact moment that Moshe promised Pharaoh they would cease.

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This was to convince everyone that the plagues were ordained by God, who does what he wants when he wants.

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They were not supernatural phenomena, nor were they results of stellar activity or mere coincidence.

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The Jews marched out of Egypt at the command of God on the same night, and at the exact moment that death struck the Egyptian firstborn.

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They reached the Sea of Reeds, to which they were guided by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire.

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At their head were their revered leaders, moses and Aaron, who were both over 80 years old.

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At this point, the Jews had only a few mitzvos commandments, which they were inherited by way of Adam to Noah see the Rambam and Hilchot Malachim for more.

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These laws were never nullified, but were added to at Sinai when Pharaoh pursued them.

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They were not skilled in the ways of warfare and needed no arms.

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God divided the sea through which they then passed.

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Pyro and his army, however, were drowned in the sea and their corpses carried toward the Jews so that they could see them with their own eyes.

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It is a well-known episode.

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This is certainly a revelation of divine power, and the commandments associated with it must therefore be accepted.

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There can be no doubt about these events, nor can it be suspected that they were the results of witchcraft, trickery or fantasy.

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If the division of the waters of the Sea of Reeds and the crossing of the sea were imagined, did they also imagine their deliverance from bondage in Egypt, the death of their oppressors, the capture of their treasure and the fact that they kept their wealth.

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Only the stubbornness of heresy could cause one to deny the historicity of these events.

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Afterwards, when they came to the desert, a place in which nothing grew, god provided them daily with food, manna, the heavenly bread, except for on the Shabbos.

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You gotta love it.

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It's so epic and so fundamental.

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Our faith comes not by way of philosophy or wisdom, but rather by straightforward witnessing.

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Seeing of our Father HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

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We were saved.

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It is Anoche Hashem Elokecha.

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I am Hashem, your God, asher Ho Tzei Sicha Mi'eret Mitzrayim that took you out.

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You're mine, I saved you, and the rest is history.

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The Kuzari is so essential to our Emunah and I hope that you'll take the time to continue to read through the Sefer Kuzari to understand that much more about your Jewish faith, and I look forward to speaking with you all again in episode two of the Motivation Congregation audiobooks.

Unveiling the Pillars of Jewish Faith - You Won't Believe What the Kuzari Reveals!

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