Sanhedrin 90a: Chazer of Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l (Perek Chelek 01)

אִם יִרְצֶה הַשֵּׁם

כ״ז תִּשְׁרֵי תשפ״ז

Tape: Perek Chelek 01 - 90a. Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l. Printed mishnah is Sanhedrin 90a; the tape runs the mishnah, the midah keneged midah opening, the first minayin proofs, and cuts as Gevia ben Pesisa walks in before Alexander (printed Gemara has that story on 91a).

Plain classroom English. Terms of art in italics with the Gemara spelling.

Where the mishnah stands

Kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek la-olam ha-ba. Every Jew has a share in the world to come. Rav Miller zt"l: this is a national gift. The Avos (Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov) earned olam ha-ba for the descendants. Whatever good came or will come is in the merit of the Avos. It is not a lock. The precious holdings are hard to get like gold and easy to lose like glass.

The verse the mishnah hangs on is Yeshayahu 60:21: ve-amech kulam tzaddikim le-olam yirshu aretz netzer mata'ai ma'aseh yadai le-hitpa'er.

• Le-olam yirshu aretz cannot mean this land. Nothing here is forever. It means the land of the living that does not end.
• Netzer mata'ai: the Avos are the planting. The branches come off that tree, so the branches are also not cut off by time.
• Ma'aseh yadai le-hitpa'er: Hashem is glorified by Yisrael. Their job in this world is to say His praise. Yeshayahu 43:21: am zu yatzarti li tehilasi yesaperu.

Tzaddikim here is not a report card. In the seed there is every form of righteousness, put there by the Avos. The job is min ha-koach el ha-po'el: bring it out by acts, thoughts, and words. Yeshayahu 45:25: ba-Hashem yitzdeku ve-yithalelu kol zera Yisrael. Water on the seed in the right place brings out what the progenitors put in. A Jew can press those qualities down, or warp the seed so it does not produce. Those are the ones who lose the chelek.

Who the mishnah cuts off

Ve-elu ein lahem chelek la-olam ha-ba:

1. Ha-omer ein techiyas ha-mesim min ha-Torah. Even if he grants that the dead will live, if he says it is nowhere in the Torah, he has no share. He need not name the verse. The chachamim themselves split on which verse. A Jew must hold that it is in the Torah somewhere.
2. Ein Torah min ha-shamayim. Not the whole Torah only. Even one part he says was not given by Hashem at Sinai.
3. Apikoros. The Gemara will define it. Tape parks the definition.
4. The one who reads sefarim ha-chitzonim (outside books). Tape parks the list.
5. The one who whispers over a wound the verse kol ha-machalah asher samti be-Mitzrayim lo asim alecha ki ani Hashem rofecha. Why this costs the chelek: tape parks it for the Gemara.
6. Ha-hogeh et ha-shem be-osiyosav (Abba Shaul): he pronounces the Name as it is written.

Then persons, not classes. Sheloshah melachim ve-arba'ah hedyotos. Of those spoken of in Tanakh: three kings and four ordinary men (not kings). Plenty of others later are not listed.

Kings: Yerovam, Achav, Menashe. The chidush is that each had a real good side. Yerovam ben Nevat began as a Torah sage and, Rav Miller zt"l says, to his last day would not eat what was not kosher and would not break Shabbos, except the reforms he set up. Achav's kitchen stayed kosher (the Gemara in Chullin). Menashe was a baal teshuvah for the second half of his reign. Still, the first Tanna: no chelek.

Hedyotos: Bilam, Doeg, Achitofel, Geichazi. Same pattern. Bilam worked his way up among the nations in Aram, would not go unless commanded, stayed loyal in speech to the end, and was expected to be better, so the slip cost everything. Doeg was avira ha-ro'im asher le-Shaul, a great disciple, not a sheep-tender; jealousy and the wish for glory toppled him. Achitofel's counsel was weighed like a man inquiring of the Urim ve-Tumim. Geichazi was the standing disciple of Elisha. Some chachamim later defend some of these. Tape flags that as consolation still ahead.

Menashe: the only split inside the list

Divrei HaYamim. Menashe corrupted Yehudah worse than any king, taken in chains to Ashur, put in a metal box over a fire, called his idols, then called the God of his youth. Hashem was entreated. The king sent him home and he rebuilt. He proclaimed a return. He did not undo what he had done. The sentence of churban stayed.

• First Tanna: no chelek, because the harm stayed.
• R Yehuda: Menashe yesh lo chelek la-olam ha-ba, from va-yispalel elav va-ye'ater lo va-yishma techinaso va-yeshivehu Yerushalayim le-malchuso. Return to the kingdom means Hashem accepted him.
• Chachamim to R Yehuda: le-malchuso heshivo, ve-lo le-chayei ha-olam ha-ba heshivo. This world only.

Shakla ve-tarya

Why is Bilam in a list of Yisrael? He is in Tanakh, and he was great. The mishnah is not a census of every soul. It is the named cases.

All this, just because he said techiyas is not in the Torah, he loses techiyas? Hu kafar be-techiyas ha-mesim, lefi-kach lo yihyeh lo chelek be-techiyas ha-mesim. She-kol middotav shel HaKadosh Baruch Hu midah keneged midah.

Did "he denied" mean he spoke, or he only thought? The officer was punished after he spoke in public, at the gate. Rav Miller zt"l leaves it: speech sends a harm out against the emunah; thought alone may not cost the chelek. He will not decide it.

The mishnah said olam ha-ba. The Gemara answers with techiyas ha-mesim. Are they the same loss? Techiyas is one piece of olam ha-ba, not the whole. The world of neshamos is already there: Adam ha-Rishon entered it at death. Rav Miller zt"l leaves it: does kefirah in techiyas cost only techiyas, or the chelek in the afterlife that already exists?

Where is midah keneged midah hinted? Shmuel bar Nachmani in the name of R Yonasan, from the officer in the siege of Shomron (II Melachim 7). Elisha: tomorrow a se'ah of fine flour for a shekel, two se'ah of barley for a shekel, be-sha'ar Shomron. The shalish the king leaned on: will Hashem make windows in heaven? Elisha: you will see it with your eyes and you will not eat from it. Next day the siege broke, the camp was full of grain, the rush at the gate trampled him. He saw. He did not eat. The place of the ridicule is the place of the death.

Maybe Elisha's curse did it, not midah keneged midah? Kilelas chacham, afilu al tenai, ba'ah. A sage's curse lands even in error, because Hashem honors the man who stands for His Torah. If so, the gate is extra. Let the verse say they trampled him and he died. Why ba-sha'ar? Al iskei de-sha'ar: because of what he did in the gateway. The detail is the proof.

Minayin le-techiyas ha-mesim min ha-Torah? First proposal: u-nesatem mimenu es terumas Hashem le-Aharon ha-Kohen (Bemidbar 18:28). Aharon died before they entered the land. Terumah was not given in the wilderness or in Moav. The verse must still come true, so Aharon will live and take terumah.

Beis R Shmuel rejects the proof. Le-Aharon means ke-Aharon: a kohen who is a chaver, not the man Aharon. Ma Aharon chaver, af banav chaveirim. Give terumah only to one who holds the study of Torah.

Why not to an am ha-aretz? R Shmuel bar Nachmani in the name of R Yonasan, from Chizkiyahu: the portions were given le-ma'an yechzeku be-toras Hashem. One who holds the Torah gets them. One who does not, does not. Giving terumah to an am ha-aretz is like setting a sheep before a lion: safek dores ve-ochel, safek eino dores: safek ochlah be-taharah, safek ochlah be-tum'ah. Abaye: you cause his death, u-mesu bo ki yechaleluhu. Beis R Yannai: you also load him with avon ashmah (ve-his'iu osam avon ashmah). The terumah verse can be read as a rule about who may receive it. Whether this verse is the techiyas verse stays open; another verse may be the one.

Second proposal, from the yeshiva of R Shmuel? Tape: ve-gam hakimoti es berisi itam latet lahem es eretz Kena'an (Shemos 6:4). Lahem, not lachem. To them (Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov), who were already dead. The land is still to be given to them, so they return and walk it.

Minim ask Rabban Gamliel: from where that Hashem revives the dead? From the Torah, the Neviim, or the Kesuvim? They accepted none of his first proofs. From the Torah: hincha shochev im avosecha ve-kam (Devarim 31:16; the tape says Parshas Yisro; the verse is in Vayelech). National tradition reads ve-kam on Moshe: you will lie with your fathers and you will get up. Plain reading: ve-kam ha-am ha-zeh ve-zanah. They have no such tradition. Not a proof for them. From the Neviim: Yeshayahu 26:19, yichyu meisecha neveilasi yekumun hakitzu ve-ranenu shochnei afar ki tal oros talecha va-aretz refa'im tapil. Open. They limit it to the dead Yechezkel raised in the vision. From the Kesuvim: Shir HaShirim 7:10, ve-chikech ke-yein ha-tov ... dovev sifsei yeshenim. They say: only the lips move.

Rav Miller zt"l on the dew, before the lip-answer: the dew that revives is the dew of Torah. No contact with Torah, even a virtuous life, can still have olam ha-ba, and has no techiyas. Techiyas is for one who learned or who supported one who learned. Parked for later in the Gemara.

What is "lips moving in the grave"? R Yochanan in the name of R Shimon ben Yochai: anyone in whose name a halachah is said in this world, his lips move in the grave. Not flesh moving. The neshamah has the satisfaction of still teaching. The minim took a saying they had heard and read it onto the verse as if it blocked techiyas.

The proof Rav Miller zt"l says they did take: Hashem swore to the fathers latet lahem. Not "to you." The fathers died before the land was given. Techiyas ha-mesim min ha-Torah. Who is convinced by a quoted verse? Not ordinary gentiles. Rav Miller zt"l: minim here are early Christians. They hold the Written Torah because they need it for their own claims, and they will not take the words of the sages. An open verse in Yeshayahu and the Avos-verse are already enough for us; this ve-kam line is the one the nation had always pointed at.

Why quote a verse about straying, if the Torah is full of forecasts? A promise that Avraham will be a great nation is no proof that Hashem knows a free choice. He can make history come out as He said. The question the Ramban asks on yedi'ah and bechirah: if nobody is forced to be a tzaddik or a rasha, how can the verse say beforehand that this people will stray? This verse is the one that answers. Hashem foresees what they will choose. He does not push the choice.

R Yehoshua ben Chananya: I falsified the books of the minim. They said ein techiyas ha-mesim min ha-Torah, as if the Hebrew scriptures had no afterlife until their teacher came. He answers from Bemidbar 15:31: hikaret tikaret ha-nefesh ha-hi avonah bah. Hikaret: cut off in this world, dies young. Avonah bah: the sin is still on it. On it where? In olam ha-ba. This shows the soul goes on. It is not yet a proof of the body rising. Rav Miller zt"l flags the slip in words: here techiyas ha-mesim is being used for the afterlife of the soul. Sometimes the word means only the later rising, when the neshamah is put back into a body. Olam ha-ba of souls has been there from the start.

Why not learn both worlds from the doubled verb? R Papa (tape: Rav Papa): let hikaret be this world and tikaret the next. The minim answer: dibrah Torah ki-lshon bnei adam. Men double a word for force. No extra teaching. That proof does not land on them.

R Akiva: hikaret this world, tikaret the next. The idolater (or, on another reading, the curser) is cut off in both. R Yishmael: hikaret tikaret is human speech, no extra world. Es Hashem hu megadef ve-nichretah already cuts him off in this world. If hikaret tikaret were two worlds, ve-nichretah would be a third. Megadef here, for R Yishmael, is idolatry; others say cursing. Machlokes elsewhere too. Both still have avonah bah unused. Avonah bah: only while the sin is still on him. Teshuva before death can pull him back from losing olam ha-ba. It does not wipe the slate. Yissurim still atone. He can be left in this world and still be zocheh to olam ha-ba.

Kleopatra the queen to R Meir: I know the dead will live: yatzitzu me-ir ke-esev ha-aretz (Tehillim 72:16). When they stand, naked or in their clothes? Kal va-chomer from wheat. The kernel is buried naked and comes up in many garments. Tzaddikim are buried clothed. All the more so they rise clothed. Rav Miller zt"l on why she asks: at techiyas the body is not this body. The neshamah comes back with its real light, as at the creation of Adam, when the angels mistook him for something to sing to. Clothing for shame may not be needed. Clothing still is needed. Adam and Chavah made chagorot of fig leaves, enough to cover. Hashem made kosnos or and clothed them. Covering shame can still leave a man looking like an animal. Clothes advertise that man is the creature who wears them: royalty, tzelem Elokim. That job remains after techiyas.

Caesar to Rabban Gamliel: you say the dead live; they have become dust; can dust live? His daughter: leave him, I will answer. Two potters in our city. One forms from water, one from clay. Which is more to be praised? The one who forms from water. If the Creator forms a living body from semen and from the liquids that feed the fetus, then from clay (the dust, which already holds the stuff of flesh) all the more so. Rav Miller zt"l's frame: Damascus alone had ten thousand gentile women living as Jews; the empire was decaying; Christianity offered a cheaper Judaism and pulled those gerim off. R Yehoshua ben Chananya is the named champion of those disputes. The daughter-story is told on Rabban Gamliel.

Beis R Yishmael: kal va-chomer from glass. Glass is shaped by human breath; if it breaks, it can be fused or melted and made again. Flesh is shaped by the breath of Hashem. All the more so He puts that breath back into the clay.

A min to R Ami? (tape: a sectarian): you say the dead live, and they are dust. Parable. A king tells his servants to build a palace where there is no water and no dirt. They build it. It falls. He says rebuild it where there is water and dirt. They say they cannot. He is angry: you built it from nothing; now the materials are here. First body was mostly water and what comes from the air. The materials are still in the world. Second making is the easier one.

If you do not believe, go to the plain and see the achbar. Rav Miller zt"l: not a rat; a low insect that cocoons. Open it mid-pupation and it is gruel, half flesh and half liquid dirt; next day it is all flesh, organs finished. The butterfly is given so we learn the picture. Not a proof. The proof is the tradition. The worm on the mountain: one day a single tola'at, after rain the mountain is covered. Metamorphosis need not be slow.

An Epicurean to Gevia ben Pesisa: woe to you, wicked ones, who say the dead live. If the living die, will the dead live? Gevia: woe to you, who say the dead will not live. Those who were not, came to life; those who were, all the more so. The Greek: you call me wicked? I will get up and kick your hunch straight. Gevia: if you can, you are a master physician, and take a large fee. Rav Miller zt"l: the story was retold as a parable. The hunch is the people. Force will not straighten the doctrine. The Greeks went to the dust. The line is still said three times a day: mechayeh ha-mesim.

Gevia: a plain man in the days of Alexander and Shimon ha-Tzaddik, early second Beis, known for a hunch and for boldness, and for standing in front when gentiles brought a claim.

Megillas Taanis, the first official writing after Tanakh, Aramaic, days the people marked a rescue. The twenty-fourth of Nisan: netilu di-musana min Yehuda'ei. Bnei Afrika (Rav Miller zt"l: the Girgashi, who left when Yehoshua said leavers would not be touched) came back before Alexander and claimed Eretz Kena'an. Their document: the Jews' own book, eretz Kena'an li-gvuloteha, and Canaan is our father. Gevia to the chachamim: give me leave to argue. If they beat me, say you beat the lowest of us. If I beat them, say the Torah beat you. They gave leave. He went and argued. Tape cuts.

Table: techiyas verses

Table: karet words

Table: clothes at the rising

Terms

• Chelek la-olam ha-ba (a share in the world to come): the national holding from the Avos. Already true for the soul at death. Not the same word as the later rising.
• Techiyas ha-mesim (revival of the dead): the body raised in time to come. The mishnah's denier is the one who says it is not in the Torah.
• Torah min ha-shamayim (Torah from heaven): given by Hashem. Denied even in part, the chelek goes.
• Apikoros: parked. Gemara will define.
• Sefarim ha-chitzonim (outside books): parked.
• Lochesh al ha-makah (whispers on a wound): the healing verse used as a charm. Why it costs the chelek is parked.
• Hogeh et ha-shem be-osiyosav (pronounces the Name by its letters): says it as written.
• Hedyot (ordinary person): here, not a king. Bilam, Doeg, Achitofel, Geichazi.
• Midah keneged midah (measure for measure): the loss matches the denial. Hinted from the officer at the gate.
• Chaver / am ha-aretz: one who holds Torah study, vs one who does not. Beis R Shmuel reads Aharon as the type of the chaver.
• Minim: Rav Miller zt"l, early Christians who accept the Written Torah and not the sages.
• Remes (a hint): the national reading of ve-kam on Moshe. Not the plain syntax.
• Kal va-chomer (from the lighter to the heavier): wheat; glass; palace; "those who were not, lived."
• Karet: cut off. Doubled in Bemidbar 15:31. Split between this world and the next, or emptied as human speech.
• Megillas Taanis: scroll of the marked days, first official writing after Tanakh, in Aramaic.

Sevara

The share is inherited and still losable. The seed has the righteousness; it still has to be brought out. Denying that the Torah teaches the rising is answered by losing the rising, but only if that is how Hashem deals, and the officer at the gate is the sample: the place of the speech is the place of the death, so it is not merely that a sage cursed him. A verse that cannot be fulfilled on the dead Aharon, or on the dead Avos, is being asked to do work either as a law about recipients or as a forecast that they stand again. The minim will take a verse and will not take a remes. The one remes that answers a real question is the forecast of a free straying: Hashem knows the choice without forcing it. Avonah bah keeps the knife of karet off the man who did teshuva, and does not cancel yissurim. Clothes at the rising are for rank, not for shame, which is why the wheat kal va-chomer still holds after you grant that the raised body shines.

Hermeneutics the tape actually uses

⚘ Kal va-chomer. R Meir to Kleopatra, from the wheat kernel. Beis R Yishmael, from glass shaped by breath. The palace parable: built from nothing, so surely from materials that are already here. Gevia: those who did not exist came to life, so those who did, all the more so.

No gezeirah shavah, hekkesh, binyan av, or kelal u-ferat is invoked on this tape. The doubled hikaret tikaret is argued as an extra word against dibrah Torah ki-lshon bnei adam, not under one of those names.

Open kashya

The tape cuts as Gevia goes in to argue. The Girgashi hold up eretz Kena'an li-gvuloteha and say Canaan is their father. What document does he answer with, and does that verse belong to the nation that left or to the promise that outlives them?

Still open from the middle of the tape: if a man only thinks ein techiyas ha-mesim min ha-Torah and never says it, does the chelek go? And if it goes, is the loss only techiyas, or also the olam ha-ba of the soul that already is?