The Great Sources with Rabbi Shnayor Burton: Daily Summaries Delivered

Understanding Truth or Receiving Torah: The Root of the Dispute between Rambam and the Kabbalists

S7, E20, The Guide of the Perplexed, the Closing Chapters, 04: Know, My Son — The Parable of the Parable's Interpretation Shnayor Burton Shnayor Burton 306 subscribers Analytics Edit video

1:00 The parable of the sultan and its two interpretations4:00 The alternative path to God that does not involve studying philosophy nor human perfection8:00 Rambam gives the interpretation of the parable and then declares that it is not a true interpretation10:30 Parables have interpretations that are not completely true12:30 Shlomo went from parable to parable, and likewise the Rambam14:45 The power of a parable lies in its appeal to the imagination and the body, which stands in tension with the interpretation of the parable18:00 The first interpretation of the parable is actually a parable for the deeper interpretation of the parable21:00 Can the first track lead to prophecy? Would it be called prophecy only equivocally with true prophecy achieved through the second track?24:00 The student requires a parable to motivate him, and he must take the path through the first interpretation, which is itself a parable27:30 Study of Torah is a lived parable, and only after appreciating its study for its own sake can a person appreciate it as a parable for something else30:30 Why Aristotle did not become a prophet31:00 The answer to the greatest contradiction between Mishneh Torah and the Guide, regarding the importance of studying halacha: its study is a living parable34:30 The key to resolving the contradiction within the Rambam himself is understanding parables

S7, E19, The Guide of the Perplexed, the Closing Chapters, 03: Two Roads to the Inner Court of the King

0:00 The parable of the sultan in his palace9:30 The interpretation of the parable: the Torah track to reach knowledge of God12:45 The second meaning of the parable: the scientific track to reach knowledge of God20:25 The second meaning stands in tension with and contradicts the first27:00 Rambam wanted his student to learn things in their proper order31:00 How a person could reach certainty about divine matters without studying the propaedeutic sciences35:45 Some noble souls have God-given illumination attained not through a course of education but as a gift42:30 As a student of Rambam, R' Yosef needed a course of education 48:45 The meaning of the sultan is never interpreted; in III:52, the king is interpreted to mean the intellect54:15 God dwells in Reason, which is His Shechinah58:30 Rambam does not interpret the meaning of the sultan, since there is no parable for God1:01:01 "HaKadosh Baruch Hu" as a parable for the acquired intellect or the active intellect1:04:00 The Treatise of the Pool and the final chapters of the Guide; reason as king and conduit to God

S7, E18, The Guide of the Perplexed, the Closing Chapters, 02: The Birth of a Nation Under Divine Providence

00:45 The turn and the tension in III:51, and its parallel in III:54, about whether the service of God involves turning away from this world or engaging with it4:15 A new reason for all of the mitzvahs that runs counter to the reasons given earlier in the Guide16:15 The contradiction in III:54: Is the true perfection of man intellectual or practical?28:00 Why does Rambam think we cannot be like Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov and Moshe?40:30 Only the founders of the nation can be engaged with this world while remaining purely objective and focused on Hashem 54:30 The history of the Jewish Nation as the embodiment of Hashem's traits of Kindness, Justice and Righteousness, which are the hallmarks of Divine Providence57:00 The perfection of man as individual is knowledge; the perfection of man as a member of the Jewish Nation is engagement in lived Kindness, Justice and Righteousness1:01:00 "The unity of God in the world" – Kindness, Justice and Righteousness reflect God's unity in the dimension of the material world 1:05:00 Kindness, Justice and Righteousness for the collective correspond to intelligence for the individual

S7, E17, The Guide of the Perplexed, the Closing Chapters, 01: The Perfect Life and the Perfect Death

Should Judaism Go Universal?

0:00 Has the time arrived for Judaism to cultivate a stance of ideological expansion?5:00 The divine decree of separation between Israel and the nations8:00 Is the role of Israel to teach other nations or to stand as a model?13:15 Why da'as Hashem includes all the nations17:30 Ideas that are privately held are not fully held19:50 To teach da'as Hashem requires not claiming the status of a teacher of da'as Hashem26:00 AI and globalized da'as31:00 Keeping Torah internal preserves its integrity40:45 If Israel would produce prophets, would the other nations come to study from them?43:00 Should Torah sages be challenged to justify how their study is relevant to the nations?48:45 Torah scholars in Israel should orient themselves toward the other nations; Torah scholars living among the nations should orient themselves toward Israel

How Shlomo Read the Torah: Good, Evil, and the Heart of the Entire Tanach

Guest shiur delivered at Kollel Bein Hamikraos in Yerushalayim

The Door Moshe Closed: Nobody Can Be Moshe, Everyone Has to Listen to Him

Torah is a transmission from someone who went where no one else could go and came back to tell us not to.Moshe entered the source of all being and returned with a single mitzvah: stay outside. Everything else is commentary.