Anyway, the topic tonight, as we all know, is an introduction to the Talmud. What I'm going to do is not to give you instructions how to study the Talmud, which needs instructions, I can tell you that, because for that, we wouldn't have enough one class, you have to have many classes, and main thing is you have to have a lot of practice, and then you get used to the style of the Talmud and you're able to study Talmud, so that's not going to be the subject. I'm just going to try to explain what the Talmud is. Now, it is commonly known that the Talmud is the Torah Shebaal Peh, that is the oral Torah. We know that when Hashem gave the Jews the Torah, on Shavuot, when He came down to Har Sinai, to Mount Sinai, He said the עשרת הדברות, He said the Ten Commandments, and then He dictated to Moshe Rabbeinu the Torah Shebichtav, the written Torah, which are known as the Chumash, the חמישה חומשי תורה, the five books of Moses as it is known. That is the Torah Shebichtav, that's the written Torah, meaning that these words were actually dictated by Hashem to Moshe Rabbeinu. So these are words that were said by Hashem to Moshe Rabbeinu. Then, in addition to the Torah Shebichtav, the written Torah, Hashem also gave Moshe Rabbeinu to give over, to transmit to the Yidden, Torah Shebaal Peh, the oral Torah. In the Torah Shebichtav, in the written Torah, we have all the mitzvot. We have all תרי״ג mitzvot, we have all 613 mitzvot. But the way they are written in the Torah Shebichtav, we still would not know how to perform the mitzvot. So therefore, Hashem gave Moshe Rabbeinu orally an explanation of what the Torah means when it tells you to do specific mitzvot, which is one of the logical explanations why we must say that there is a Torah Shebaal Peh, that there is an oral Torah. There are some people who claim that we believe in Torah Shebichtav, we believe in the written Torah, in the חמישה חומשי תורה, in the Chumash, but we do not believe that there was such a thing as Torah Shebaal Peh. We don't believe in Torah Shebaal Peh, in the written, in the oral Torah. And there were actually groups throughout history who only believed in Torah Shebichtav, but not in Torah Shebaal Peh. First, they were the צדוקים, followers of a person called צדוק, that wasn't the time of the Gemara yet, then you had the Karaites, the Karaites, and other types of people that believed only in תורה שבכתב, in the written Torah, not in תורה שבעל פה. But the fact is that logically we must say that there was a תורה שבעל פה written, given, that Hashem gave us orally the explanation of what He wrote in the written Torah, because if He wouldn't give the explanation, then it's almost meaningless. תורה שבכתב, the written Torah, is almost meaningless. For instance, the Torah says, \"Do not do any work on Shabbos,\" \"לא תעשה כל מלאכה,\" do not do any work. Now, what does that mean? We have no idea what that means. That could have all kinds of interpretations, we don't really know what that means. So, we must say, it's only logical to say, we can't prove it this way, but at least it's logical to say, that when Hashem gave us the mitzvot in the תורה שבכתב, in the written Torah, He also explained what He meant, and orally He explained that when He said, \"Don't do melachah, don't do work on Shabbos,\" He meant a certain specific type of work, which, as we know, means any type of creative work. And He said to learn it out from the way the Mishkan was built. Whatever was considered a type of melachah, a work in the Mishkan, that is what I meant on Shabbos, etc., etc., whichever way. But there must have been an explanation to what He meant when He said, \"Do not do any work on Shabbos.\" Or take, for instance, the mitzvah of tefillin. All it says in the Torah is, \"וקשרתם לאות על ידך והיו לטוטפות בין עיניך.\" \"You shall tie it for a sign on your hands and let it be for טוטפות,\" which means frontlets, \"between your eyes.\" What should you do? What should you put on? What should you tie? So, from the תורה שבכתב itself, we wouldn't know. It says, \"Tie a sign on your hand.\" Maybe we should take a potato and put it on our hand and that's what it means, or it could mean something else. Everyone could interpret in his own way. way. So obviously, if Hashem wanted us to do a specific mitzvah, makes no sense that He wouldn't tell us how to do it. So since in Chumash He didn't tell us how to do it, it only makes sense that He told Moshe Rabbeinu orally to transmit to the Yidden how to do it. So this is what תורה שבעל פה is. We do find in the תורה שבכתב, in the written Torah, hints to תורה שבעל פה, that there is a תורה שבעל פה. The Rambam says, when the pasuk says התורה והמצוה, השם says, \"I gave you the Torah and the mitzvah.\" So the word Torah means תורה שבכתב, the written Torah, and the word mitzvah means תורה שבעל פה, the oral Torah. That's what the Rambam says in the introduction to his Sefer Rambam. Rashi in Chumash says on the פסוק תורותי, \"my תורות, plural.\" We know we have only one Torah. How is there תורות, plural? So Rashi says, because there are two parts to the Torah: there is תורה שבכתב and תורה שבעל פה, there is the written Torah, and then there is the oral Torah. And one of the proofs to תורה שבעל פה is that we have a major major halachah in Torah which encompasses so much, such a big part of the Torah, and in the תורה שבכתב, in the written Torah, we have very little about it. We have basically one line. And that could be the most, almost the most fundamental mitzvah of the whole Torah. Now, how could it be, and I will tell, say in a moment what it is, but how could it be that such a fundamental part of Torah was not said and it wasn't given over? It must be that it was said by Hashem. And that is the mitzvah of kiddush hachodesh, the mitzvah of establishing the Jewish calendar. All we have about it in the Chumash is Hashem spoke to Moshe and Aharon saying, החודש הזה לכם ראש חדשים ראשון הוא לכם לחדשי השנה. This month shall be ראש חודש, and it should be the first of all the months of the year, and that's all it says. And it is so complicated to figure out how do you know what the first month is, how do you know what the first day of the month is, how do you establish the month? It's a very It's very complicated issue. And it's almost the basis of half of the Torah, because many many mitzvot depend on this mitzvah. We're not allowed to eat chametz on Pesach. When is Pesach? Pesach is the 15th day of the month of Nisan. How do you know when the first day of the month of Nisan is in order to know when the 15th month, which will bring in turn the עבירה of eating chametz and the mitzvah of eating matzah and all the things that come along with Pesach. Rosh Hashanah, you have to blow shofar. When? On the first day of the month of Tishrei. Yom Kippur! Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. Yom Kippur depends on the mitzvah of קידוש החודש, when they establish Rosh Chodesh so you know when the first day is so you know when the 10th is. Sukkos, eating in a sukkah, and the etrog, and the lulav, Shavuos, all the yamim tovim and so many other things that come along because of that are all dependent on this one mitzvah of קידוש החודש. And the mitzvah of קידוש החודש is written in the Torah in one line. Obviously, there must be some oral explanation to it. And then we have one very clear pasuk. When the pasuk speaks about shechitah, about the mitzvah of shechting, of slaughtering an animal properly, Hashem says in the Chumash, in the Torah shebichtav, He says, וזבחת, you shall שחט, כאשר צויתך, as I commanded you. Where did He command us how to shechit? If we look into the whole Chumash, we don't find anywhere of how to shechit. And here in the Chumash He says, you shall שחט כאשר צויתך, as I commanded, as I told you. This itself tells us that Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu things which are not written in the Torah, because the Torah doesn't say how to shechit, and He says, \"as I told you.\" So this is another hint in the Torah shebichtav that there was a Torah shebaal peh. But we don't need all these proofs. We know it was handed down to us from generation to generation. We know that in addition to the Torah shebichtav, in addition to the written Torah, the Chumash, Hashem orally told Moshe Rabbeinu the interpretations of all the mitzvot and everything that's written in the Torah. And this is what the Talmud is. The Talmud is made up The Talmud is Torah Shebaal Peh. This is the oral Torah, made up of two parts: the Mishnah, which are the Mishnayot, and then after the Mishnayot comes the Gemara, and together we call it the Talmud. Which means that the oral Torah that was given to Moshe Rabbeinu, and then handed down to the Jews at that time, which handed it down to the next generation and next generation, was all oral. It was not written.

When it came to the time of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, Rabbi, he was known as Rabbi or Rabbeinu HaKadosh or Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, he realized that if we don't do something soon, this will be forgotten. Till then, they remembered everything. All the laws, and I'll explain exactly what they knew, that we'll get to that in a to that in a moment, but all the laws, all the things that they had to know, they all were able to remember. But as the generations continued, and the level of the minds of the people started getting weaker and weaker, so Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi saw that we cannot leave it just to memory, even to the memory of hundreds of thousands of people, but if we leave it just to the memory, then who knows what will happen, it'll get forgotten. But he had a problem. There is a law, an interesting law, that דברים שבעל פה אי אתה רשאי לכותבן, that the oral Torah is not allowed to be written. There is a double law. One part of the law is דברים שבכתב אי אתה רשאי לאומרן על פה, the things which are written you cannot say orally, which we cannot just say by heart, pieces of Chumash. You're only allowed to say that part that is famous, Pesukim that people know anyway, that you're allowed, but Pesukim which are not famous, you are not allowed to say it orally. And the same is that the Halachot of Torah Shebaal Peh, the oral תורה, אי אתה רשאי לכותבן, you're not allowed to write it down. So Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi was faced with a problem, but he got his answer. There is a Pasuk that says עת לעשות לה' הפרו תורתך, that when it can comes to a time to do for the sake of ה', you could destroy a law in Torah. And he had handed down that this referred to this: that when the time will come that the leader of generation will see that the laws are starting to get forgotten, he should go against that law, that original law that you're not allowed to write down the oral Torah, and he should write it down. So based on this Pasuk, and he had gotten this interpretation from before, again עת לעשות לה', when it comes time to do for the sake of ה', הפרו תורתך, you could go against a law in Torah. Now we can't use that. Unfortunately, some people use it, I know the Conservative, maybe they use it, we could go against a law because it's to help out people to keep more Mitzvot, you're not allowed to do that. But he knew from tradition that this is the interpretation of that Pasuk, which means that if the time will ever come that you're afraid that Torah will be forgotten, the Torah Shebaal Peh, you are able to write it down. So he wrote down the Mishnayot, which means he wrote down all the laws that ה' that had that were then part of Torah Shebaal Peh, he wrote it down. But he wrote it down in a very, very short form, the קיצור, and that was the Mishnayot. Now, there is an argument. Some say that he actually wrote it down, he was the first to write it down, some say that it was written piece pieces and pieces, and he just put it together. But it makes no difference, because at that time, in the time of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, we call that period the חתימת המשנה. It was the time when the Mishnah was finished, and it was signed it was written, finished, and sealed. And from that time on, the Mishnah became was not became, it was always, but that was known as the תורה שבעל פה. That includes all the הלכות of תורה שבעל פה are all included in the Mishnayot. But after that, when people started studying the Mishnayot, they realized that in the Mishnayot there is so much depth, there is so much, that they needed now interpretations of the Mishnayot itself. So the חכמים of the other generation sat down, and they interpreted what the Mishnayot means, and that is the Gemara. So first we had Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who concluded, who finished the Mishnayot, and this contains all the statements of the different חכמים with different הלכות that were said till his time, which includes all the statements of the rabbis who were referred to as the תנאים, the rabbis of the Mishnah are called the תנאים, and all the Jews got together, I mean all the חכמים, and decided, based on the rules that they were given before, as I will explain soon, that whatever it says in the Mishnah, that is law. And we have to follow the Mishnah. No one could argue on what it says in the Mishnah. Then they started interpreting, came the period later, and these were the חכמים known as the אמוראים, and these אמוראים interpreted the Mishnayot and started learning what it says in the Mishnah and explaining, and added new things that are included in the Mishnayot, but are not clear, and that came out to the Gemara. And together, the Mishnayot and the Gemara is called the Talmud. Now we have two Talmudim. First, there were חכמים in Eretz Yisrael who interpreted the Mishnayot and they wrote it down. That was written by Rabbi Yochanan, and that's called Talmud Yerushalmi. So the Mishnayot is the same, but the interpretations of the Gemara on the Mishnayot is the way it was interpreted in Yerushalmi, in Yerushalayim in Eretz Yisrael, Talmud Yerushalmi. But then there were many, many more חכמים, more than Eretz Yisrael at that time, and even greater Chachamim who lived in Bavel, who lived in Babylonia. And they also interpret, and a lot of things are the same and certain things are different, and that is called Talmud Bavli. And that came to an end in the time of Ravina and Rav Ashi. So between the beginning of the Mishnayot and the end of the Gemara in Talmud Bavli is a good few hundred years. And that's what we have written as a Torah Shebe'al Peh. Then, after that was finished, it was known and accepted that whatever it says in the Talmud Bavli cannot be argued with, and that's law. And then there came people who interpreted what the Talmud Bavli says, because as the generations continue, we get weaker and weaker, and we don't really know what it says there. So what happens is there are Mefarshim, there are commentaries. Commentaries starting all the way from the beginning of the period right after the Amoraim, which were known as the רבנן סבוראי. Then after them came the תקופה, the period known as the period of the Geonim. And then came the period of the Rishonim. And those are commentaries which we have in the Gemara. And the way the Gemara is printed, you have the Mishnah, and after the Mishnah, you have the Gemara. And around, I even brought one to show, around, in the middle is the Mishnah and the Gemara, around you have on one side you have a commentary Rashi, who actually interprets the Gemara in the simple interpretation. Then on the other side, you have Tosafot, which is a a combination of interpretations and questions and answers on the Gemara with discussions written by the Rishonim, by the people who were in the period called the Rishonim. And then you have others here, and then you have other Rishonim in the back. And you have upon that hundreds of Sefarim written by the Rishonim to interpret what it says there. And then you have later a period later by the Acharonim, who interpret what it says there, and there are hundreds upon hundreds and thousands of Sefarim to interpret the words of the interpreters who interpret the words of the of the Gemara and the words of the Mishnayot, etc., etc. This is basically what the build up of the Gemara is. Now again, the Mishnayot is made up of the Halachot that was were Torah Shebe'al Peh that Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi wrote down. But when we look in the Mishnayot, we see arguments. One Tanna, one rabbi says one way, the other rabbi says another way. And then many times there's a Halacha given, many times not. And it says names. The name is Rabbi Yosi says this, Rabbi Meir says this, Rabbi Akiva says this, Rabbi Shimon says this. And we have different discussions, but very little discussion. Mostly it's halachah or arguments: one person says this, one person says that. In the Talmud, the Talmud goes in and discusses what is the reasoning behind the opinion of this rabbi? Because he learned the pasuk this way. What's the opinion of this rabbi? He learned it this way. And then we have a kashya, a question: How could he say this when it's like this? And then we answer back, and we go back and forth, and there's discussion, shakla vetarya, a discussion to finally come to a conclusion. And then we go again, back for and and deeper, and we go to other things, we bring in other things. That's what the Gemara is on top of the Mishnah.

Now, the question that's asked right away and it comes up, if the Mishnah and the Gemara is the Torah Shebaal Peh, is the oral Torah, then how could you have arguments? The oral Torah means that Moshe Rabbeinu heard from Hashem orally that this and this is the meaning, the interpretation of this and this pasuk. And that was handed down from generation to generation. And when they decided to write it down, what should they have done? They should have written down the halachah: this and this is the halachah, and this and this question, this and this is the halachah, this and this, all the halachot that Moshe Rabbeinu heard from Hashem orally. That's what we would imagine would be Torah Shebaal Peh. That's the oral Torah. Because The written Torah is the chumash, and then Hashem interpreted the chumash to Moshe Rabbeinu with all the different interpretations and the different halachot and different ways of explaining the different mitzvot, and that should be written. Now, what is this business of having discussions and questions and answers, and then proving proof and disproof? Is this all that was said by Hashem? Did Hashem say orally, you know that Rabbi Yosi holds like this, and Rabbi Shimon holds like this? I doubt if Hashem said that to Moshe Rabbeinu, he told him what to do with it, we would imagine, and it should have been written down. So what is this idea of having arguments, having discussions, having questions and answers? This is not what we would imagine Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu. And certainly, he didn't tell him names. He didn't tell him, well, Rabbi Meir holds like this. Rabbi Meir was born 2,000 years later, after Matan Torah, after Hashem gave the Torah. So what is this that this Mishnah and the Gemara is Torah Shebaal Peh? So what we have to really explain here is, how did Torah Shebaal Peh work? What did Hashem tell Moshe Rabbeinu when he taught him the Torah? Now, when Moshe Rabbeinu went up to שמים, he went up after Shavuos, after he came down with the לוחות, not with the לוחות, came down and Hashem spoke the עשרת הדברות, Ten Commandments. The next day, Moshe Rabbeinu went up to שמים, and he stayed there for 40 days and 40 nights. And what did he stay there for? To learn the Torah. So Hashem dictated the Torah shebichtav, he also taught him Torah shebaal peh. Orally, he taught him whatever the Torah shebichtav means. Now, the question that is asked is, what is this חשבון of 40 days and 40 nights? Now, when we look into all the different interpretations and different things that we have, 40 days and 40 nights are not enough to learn all the whole Torah that we have, the hundreds and thousands of books that we know, they all came they're all Torah shebaal peh, it's impossible that Hashem should teach Moshe Rabbeinu these all these ספרים. As good as a student Moshe Rabbeinu was and as good as a teacher Hashem is, but it's impossible. If we will say that it was a miracle, Hashem just made him grasp so much, then why did we need 40 days and 40 nights? Hashem could in one second do this, and everything will fall into his head. Since we say that it did take time, 40 days and 40 nights, obviously Moshe Rabbeinu sat and learned. He heard, and it wasn't a miracle, he heard and understood. And we find actually in different places where it says how Hashem spoke to him and gave him time to think about it, gave him time to review, like a normal human being has to learn. So how did it work? What did Hashem tell him then? And then there's another question. We know the famous statement that כל מה שתלמיד ותיק עתיד לחדש ניתן למשה מסיני. Whatever a student, meaning a talmid chacham, who's a righteous talmid chacham, any new interpretation and idea he will come up concerning the Torah, we should know it really was already given to Moshe Rabbeinu on Har Sinai. What does that mean? If we're saying that this student comes up with a new idea, so obviously it's something new, it wasn't transmitted from before. And that's why we say עתיד לחדש, it's a new thought. Then how do we say it was given to Moshe Rabbeinu? So it wasn't given to Moshe Rabbeinu, it's a new thought that he comes up. So if it wasn't given to Moshe Rabbeinu, then it's not really part of Torah. And we say no, it's all part of Torah. Anybody who comes up with a good thought, a right thought in Torah, it was already given to Moshe Rabbeinu. But if it was given to Moshe Rabbeinu, it should have been handed down, and it shouldn't have been something new that he decided today. How does this work? So the answer is, when Moshe Rabbeinu went up to Har Sinai, what Hashem did, and listen carefully, this is very important to know, what Hashem did, Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu the rules. He said, here is the chumash. These are the words I'm dictating. And now, I'm giving you rules and regulations how to study the chumash, how to come out with the interpretations of what each pasuk means. We have, what we know, 13 rules. Every morning in davenen we say, רבי ישמעאל אומר שלש עשרה מדות שהתורה נדרשת. There are 13 rules, but these are very 13 general rules. There are hundreds and thousands of different rules that Hashem gave Moshe Rabbeinu, that when we have all these rules, we are able to interpret the pesukim properly. So Hashem did not tell Moshe Rabbeinu every single halacha exactly how to do it. Some he did. There are certain halachot that the Gemara tells us, this halacha, how do we know? Halacha l'Moshe miSinai. Sinai, Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu, this and this is what you're supposed to do. Just to give an example, the fact that the straps of the tefillin have to be black. Halacha l'Moshe miSinai, Hashem said to Moshe Rabbeinu, tell the Jews I want the straps to be black. That's an example, many other halachot. But most of the halachot he didn't even tell him exactly what to do. He told him, here are the rules: this rule and this rule and this rule and this rule, and with your mind take these rules and come up with a decision, but don't mix in anything else but these rules. But you have to use your own brains to figure out with these rules what the decision is. And whatever your decision will be, Hashem said that's what I want you to do. Which means one of the rules Hashem gave is that תורה לא בשמים היא, the Torah is not in heaven, Hashem gave it down, and Hashem said you have to use your brains. That's part of the rules that Hashem gave us, that you have to use your brain taking these different rules and coming up with an answer. The moment you go out of the framework of these rules, that's not Torah. That's stupidity. And that's why anybody nowadays from those, you know, other movements who claim to be part of Judaism and they claim, well, we will decide interpret different, that's what they say: who interpreted that this is what the mitzvah is? The rabbis. We're also rabbis, we'll interpret it to do it differently. The rabbis of the Gemara that interpreted, they interpreted according to the rules given by Hashem. But the moment you decide on your own without taking the rules given by Hashem, then it's your own thing, it's not Hashem, it's not Hashem's Torah. Which is the reason why there's a possibility of arguments. When there a question comes up and that question was not actually told by Hashem to Moshe Rabbeinu what to do, but Hashem said, take this rule and this rule, all the rules, and work it out and come up with a decision. And you have to use your brains, that's part of the rules, to come up with a decision. And the chachamim will sit down and use this calculation with these rules and nothing else, and according to their understanding the halacha should be that this and this is kasher. There could be other chachamim which will use the same rules because they have it, but their understanding of it is different, and they come up with a decision that it's not kasher. So, which of the two is right? They're both right! They're both what Hashem wants, because Hashem said, this is what I want you to do. Now, we cannot behave in both ways, you can't eat kosher and treifah, so there is a rule in that, too! Hashem gave a rule what you should do when it comes to actual doing. Which way should you behave? One of the rules is majority rules, whatever it is. So, again, so we have many things here. We have number one, certain things Hashem said clearly: this and this is what I want you to do, that's part of Torah Shebaal Peh. Then Hashem said there are certain things Hashem said, I'm not he didn't say what to do, but he gave us all the rules, and as the time comes to this question comes up, you will have to use these rules to figure it out. And that's what used to happen throughout all the generations: whenever a question came up, the Sanhedrin would get together, the court, based on the rules that was given to them, and they would figure out the halacha based on the כללים that Hashem gave. And that's Torah Shebaal Peh. That's even though those words were not given, but that's Torah Shebaal Peh, as long as it fits with the rules. Which, by the way, answers the question that I asked before: If it was something new that somebody came up with, how do you say it was given to משה מסיני? Because if he made it made up this interpretation based on the rules, so really it's included in the rules given. Just to use as an example: If someone will teach a student and tell him, you know, I want to teach you a way of thinking: You should know that when you add one and one, it equals two, you double it. And when you add two and two, it should equal four because you double it. And when you add three and three, it makes six, you double it. And he's giving him the direction of thinking. Then this guy, the student goes later on and he thinks to himself, so what about four and four? Well, four and four equals eight. So let me ask you: Is this something that was told to him by his teacher, or is this something that he made up himself? Whichever answer you'll give will be right. He didn't make it up because it was all what his teacher said, but technically did his teacher say the words four and four equals eight? No, but it's not something new. It is, no, and it's not. And the same thing with all the halachot that came out as a result of these כללים, it's all given by Hashem, and it was given to Moshe Rabbeinu, even though Hashem did not actually say these words. And therefore there's a possibility of an argument, and the argument itself is Torah Shebaal Peh! So you have Torah Shebaal Peh the rules that were given, then those things that were never said but given rules, you have the the halachot that were given, the rules, then you have certain halachot that were given, what were forgotten. It says clearly that in the week, the month of mourning of Moshe Rabbeinu many, many halachot were forgotten. So, Hashem told us that too. Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu what shall they do if a halacha is forgotten. So, he said use the rules, and do this and do that, and you will come up and whatever your decision is, that's what's going to be. So then you can have an argument, and they're both true. And when it comes to do actual doing, you will do one way again based on the rules. And this is exactly what the Mishnayot is. In the Mishnayot we have arguments between the Chachamim. And we asked before, how do we call this Torah Shebaal Peh? This is the oral Torah. If you have arguments of people, Hashem didn't say the holds like this and holds like that. Hashem gave the כללים, and the Chachamim of the Mishnayot, these Tannaim, knew all the rules. They knew the hundreds and hundreds of rules that was handed down orally, and they figured out with these rules what the halacha is and what Hashem wants. And there were arguments, and then when the argument said they're both right, because each one did according to the rules, and nevertheless, there is a halacha what to do, and that's all written down. But it's all written down in short form. Came the Chachamim of the Gemara, and now when they finished the Mishnayot, the Chachamim of that generation got together and said now after this is finished, no one could argue on any decision that's made in the Mishnah. This is again part of the rules that Hashem gave. Hashem said that if the Chachamim get together at one time and decide that from now on whatever was decided till now cannot be changed, then that's the way it stays. And therefore, when the Chachamim got together and said that whatever is written in the Mishnayos, that's the halacha, so no one could change it. And therefore, from that point on, whatever is written in the Mishnayos, that became halacha and that cannot be changed. And from then on, what the Chachamim were studying is to understand the Mishnayos. The Mishnayos was written very short, and the Chachamim get together and decide what the Mishnayos meant. That's the way they studied Torah shebe'al peh then. It is still considered studying Torah shebe'al peh, because the Mishnayos is made up of all the halachos that came based on the rules of Torah shebe'al peh. So now when they study what the Mishnayos means, based on the rules that they knew, this itself means that they are studying Torah shebe'al peh. And that's what the Chachamim did when they wrote the Gemara. The Gemara is the commentary, the understanding, the explanation of what it says in the Mishnayos. And in the Gemara you have Talmud Bavli and Talmud Yerushalmi. First was written Talmud Yerushalmi, that's earlier, that's a Talmud a Gemara which explains the Mishnayos. The Mishnayos is the same in both, in Talmud Yerushalmi and Talmud Bavli. It's always the same Mishnayos. But in Talmud Yerushalmi they explain it one way. Talmud Bavli, many things are the same, many things are different. That was written later. Talmud Yerushalmi was written by the Chachamim who lived in Eretz Yisrael. Talmud Bavli was written by the Chachamim who lived in Bavel. But it's all to explain the pshat in the Mishnayos. And they the Chachamim of the Gemara, which are known as the Amoraim the חכמים of the Mishnayot are called the Tannaim, the חכמים of the Gemara are called Amoraim, they also knew the rules of how to study. So they also learned out certain halachot from the פסוקים based on the rules. But those halachot that were already written in the Mishnayot, they had to accept, because that's the rule that you have to accept at that time. After they finished with the Mishnayot and they accepted it, which is called חתימת המשניות, everything is accepted and that's the rule that you have to follow that. So, they study to understand the Mishnayot and at the same time, if there were things that were not written in the Mishnayot, they used the rules to understand that and that's how they wrote the Gemara.

But we have to understand that the Gemara contains much more than we think it contains. The Gemara is very short. What do we have? We have a certain amount of מסכתות of Shas. If you look at a Gemara, you'll see there's very little to it. Every Gemara more than a half or a big part of it are the commentaries in the back. On each page, on one side you have Rashi, on one side you have Tosafot and different commentaries. You just have the Gemara in the middle, that's very little. If you just put it together, there is very little. And we should know that this is a compilation of studying for so many years. We have to understand that it's not like now that when a yeshiva we have has 60, 70, 100 talmidim, it's a fine yeshiva. You have 200, you're a big yeshiva. 300, 500, a big yeshiva. In those times, the yeshivot had thousands and tens of thousands of talmidim. Similar to, להבדיל, the colleges now that have talmidim yeshivot of 25,000 talmidim. We know that Rabbi Akiva had 24,000 talmidim, and we don't even make a fuss over it. The only fuss that we make is the fact that they all died in the same period between Pesach and Shavuot. But the fact that he had 25,000 talmidim, that was a common thing at that time. And there were many yeshivot like that, and this in a span of hundreds of years. And each one of these talmidim, in the time of the Mishnayot they were Tannaim, the talmidim that were in the yeshivot later in the time of the Gemara were Amoraim, great scholars, great tzadikim, great minds. And you can imagine hundreds of years of discussion, questions and answers, and back and forth that were asked and answered, and all the things that came out of it. And nevertheless, the Gemara is so small, because they just put the essence of all the discussions, they put the essence in it. But all that's written there contains everything that they discussed. In other words, discussions of hundreds of years of about a million great scholars and sages is all put together in that one little Shas, in one, the Gemara. So when we learn it, when we ask, when we learn a kashya in the Gemara, we have to know that the kashya is not just the way it is there. When that kashya was asked, there was an answer given, and a question on top of that, and a question on top of that, and all kinds of discussions back and forth, and then eventually it ended up with this question. So the Gemara only wrote the question. And the same thing when the answer is given, when the answer was given they discussed it and ideas were given about it, and at the end it turned out that this was the answer, so that was written. So really, when you have a few lines in Gemara, whether it's a question or an answer, really this contains hundreds and hundreds of hours, thousands of hours of discussions of the greatest minds. And when we learn it, that's what we do, we have to understand what's behind it. And this is really what the commentaries did. The commentaries, the meforshim, try to explain the Gemara's questions and the Gemara's answers and the Gemara's decisions by asking questions on it and coming back. What they're really doing is bringing back all those discussions that were there. So when we have these hundreds and thousands of commentaries on the Gemara, all this is included in the Gemara because this was all part of the discussions that they had. So when we learn Gemara, we are learning all these discussions that were there in all this, behind this all, but it's not there in a way that we could see, so we learn and try to understand it. But we have to remember, all this is Torah shebe'al peh, because all the discussions that they had and all the questions and all the answers all were based on the rules given by Hashem. And therefore, since they're based on the rules, we are studying the Torah the way it is with the rules, and therefore this is the word of Hashem, because when Hashem, as we said before, when He gave the Torah, He gave the rules to Moshe Rabbeinu and said, \"Study it according to the rules.\" So when you study it, and you have a question based on the rule and an answer, and back and forth, and you come to a decision, you are really studying the wisdom of Hashem, the Torah shebe'al peh that Hashem gave. And this is what the Gemara is. I just want to bring an example to this whole idea. The example is, like someone told me that he once wrote a question to the Rebbe, a question in halachah. And the Rebbe answered. And when he read the answer, there was something he didn't understand, he felt that there was something not clear, and there was something not right. So he asked the Rebbe that, \"What you wrote doesn't seem to be right for this and this reason.\" And the Rebbe answered him, \"Yes, you are right that this is wrong. What I wrote was wrong.\" When he got the answer, it bothered him. The question that he had on the Rebbe's answer was a very simple question. So he wrote to the Rebbe, \"I don't understand. The Rebbe's mind is a thousand times greater than mine, the Rebbe couldn't think of this question? So how did the Rebbe write what he wrote?\" And the Rebbe answered him that, \"The question that you asked me, I have an answer on. But on that I have another question.\" And he went on and on and on. And at the end, after the whole discussion of a full page that he wrote, the end result was that, \"Your question comes back.\" So really the Rebbe wrote to him the question, but this question contained everything else that is there, even though the Rebbe didn't write it. Because the question that he asked, as I said before, had an answer, and an answer upon an answer going back and forth and continue, finally it came back. And the same is with the Gemara. When we learn the Gemara, we're learning the bottom line, which seems to be a very simple question, but that question is not just the way it seems. There is so much to it that at the end it turns into this question, and when we learn, we have to go back and understand what's behind it, and that's what the meforshim do. And all this, as I said before, is learning Torah shebe'al peh. But then there is another thing that we have. Sometimes in the Gemara, when it asks questions and wants to know a certain halachah, it's not only like we said before that when we don't know what the halachah is, we have to use the rules and figure out based on the rules given by Hashem, and that's Torah Shebaal Peh. But sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes we know the answer, but what we're trying to figure out, how is it hinted in the pasuk. Sometimes we know what the din is, but we don't see how the pasuk fits to that din, and there's discussions, full of discussions in the Gemara to see how this fits to the pasuk. For instance, the pasuk says: ולקחתם לכם ביום הראשון פרי עץ הדר. You should take on the first day of Yom Tov, which is Sukkos, a פרי עץ הדר, a fruit of a tree which is nice. Now, we know that means an etrog. And the Gemara asks, \"How do you know it means an etrog? Maybe it means a different fruit?\" And the Gemara answers back and forth till finally it comes to the decision it means an etrog. So the Rambam asks the question, the one that asked, \"How do you know it means an etrog?\", what did he think, it's not an etrog? What did he himself do the year before? What did he take? He didn't take an etrog? What did his father do? What did they do all the years before? So he knew it was an etrog, because all that's what they took all the years from Matan Torah on Sukkos, they took an etrog. So the Rambam says, it doesn't mean that the Gemara doesn't know it's an etrog. The Gemara knows it's an etrog. The Gemara just wanted to know, how does it fit to... the word פרי עץ הדר. פרי עץ הדר means a nice fruit. And the Gemara goes on to discuss how at the end it comes to the point that we see how the word פרי עץ הדר indicates an etrog. So that's another part of what we have in the Gemara. But this is also, also part of Torah Shebaal Peh, because Hashem wanted us to understand the halacha the way it fits the pasuk. He gave us the rules how to figure it out, even if we know exactly what it means, but to figure out how it fits the pasuk. When we study that, according to the rules, we are studying the words of Hashem. And then there's another thing. One of the rules Hashem gave is that the chachamim throughout the generations, when they see that certain halachot of the Torah are becoming weaker in the eyes of people, they have to make fences, סייגים. And there are certain rules when and how they could do it. And many halachot were made by the chachamim. So a lot of the things that we study in the Gemara are about דינים דרבנן, things that the Rabbanan made. A lot of mitzvot, for instance the whole Masechet Megillah talks about Purim, which are halachot that the Rabbanan made. And that is still Torah shebaal peh. And some might ask: How could this be Torah shebaal peh? Torah shebaal peh means the oral Torah given by Hashem. Hashem did not tell Moshe Rabbeinu that the Yidden should have Purim and read the Megillah. So how could all the discussions we have in the, in the Gemara Megillah about how to read the Megillah is part of Torah shebaal peh? And the same is with Chanukah, the same is with all other halachot. Many, hundreds of הלכות דרבנן which are, which we study about in the Gemara. The answer is, being that Hashem gave a rule that the chachamim should make these rules, these laws, and He gave rules when and how. So when we discuss these הלכות דרבנן, we are discussing Torah shebaal peh, because Hashem gave the rules, and we're discussing based on the rules, so we are discussing Torah shebaal peh. And this is another aspect of what the Gemara is all about: studying the different rules, different halachot that came based on the rules, even though they're הלכות דרבנן. And now I want to finish off just with another point here.

The Gemara was written in a specific style, if we were able to use חס ושלום, רחמנא, the word style, lehavdil, it's not a style, but that's, in our terms, it's like a style. And you can't just take the Gemara and read it. It's hard to learn Gemara, not only because it's hard to understand it. You could understand a concept if someone will explain it to you, but the style, the way it's written, you have to know where to stop, what's a question, what's an answer, where to stop, how to learn, certain rules of how to learn. And you can't just sit down and read the Gemara. That's why one of the stages before you start learning Gemara yourself, they call it you have to learn how to make elaynen. Elaynen is a Yiddish word, it comes from the word alein. Alein means all by yourself. Like this year in class, you learn from a teacher. A teacher teaches you the Gemara. But what you really have to do is learn how to learn the Gemara yourself. That means you have to learn the style of what's a question, which words are used, which expressions are used, and you have to figure it out. And many things could be taught, and many things could only come through training. So when we learn Gemara, we have to, first thing is to get used to the style of the Gemara. There are now a lot of ספרים written in other languages, in English, in other languages, and also in Hebrew itself, to help a person who doesn't have a teacher, or wants to study Gemara himself, how to learn Gemara. But basically it's all a training that when you open the Gemara, you should be able to learn it yourself. But the bottom line of everything that we were talking about till now is that when we learn Gemara, it is the Torah sheba'al peh, because this is all learning what Hashem wanted, because He gave us the rules, and based on these rules we discuss, and Hashem wants us to discuss, that's what Torah is. We have the mitzvot, the mitzvot are what you have to do. And then you have Torah is the חכמה, the wisdom of Hashem, and the wisdom of Hashem are all these discussions, and that's what Gemara is. So when we start learning Talmud, which includes the Mishnayot and the Talmud, the Gemara, we learn the wisdom of Hashem, which is all included in Torah sheba'al peh.