Welcome to a series of classes, a series of lectures on the subject of finding similarity and differences between different opinion in many Talmudic sages in the תלמוד, and showing that how there is a certain thread that thread of thought that goes through many of the different arguments that they have, meaning to say that even though the arguments might be in completely different subjects, different areas of the תלמוד, nevertheless there is one thread of thought that both sides have, because there were many different schools of thought amongst the sages of the משנה and the תלמוד, and in different subjects, but there is a certain thread that goes through them all. And we're going to try to explain some of these arguments and show the thread that goes through them all. The first one is going to be concerning בית הלל and בית שמאי. בית הלל and בית שמאי refers to two schools of thought. One was headed by the great sage known as הלל, the other one was headed by the sage known as שמאי. They were both leaders in their time of the Jews, they both lived in the time of the Holy Temple, the Second Temple, and there were different opinions and different way of thinking that they each one had, and therefore their approach to giving out the different decisions on different halachic, תורה questions were completely different, and therefore we're going to discuss what was the underlying thought that they had when they gave their opinions. Now, I would just like first to explain for a moment, not to take too much time, to explain for a moment the concept of having different opinions in when it comes to Talmudic questions and questions of הלכה, of Jewish law. We know that God gave us the תורה on הר סיני, Mount Sinai, and at that time, after that, משה, משה רבינו, Moses, went up to השם, went up to God, and He taught them, He taught Moses the rest of the תורה, the rest of the of the laws. Now, the way He did it was that many laws actually God told Moses, told משה רבינו, and he transmitted it to the Jews, and that's how it was transmitted from generation to generation. But then He also gave him certain rules how to decide when questions come up that he wasn't told. Everything is based on the Five Books of Moses, which is the Bible, but from those Five Books of Moses we have to derive how to come to decisions when it comes to questions that come up. And God gave Moses many, many rules, we call them in Hebrew כללים, how to decide. Amongst the כללים, amongst the rules that He gave him was the decision that the sages will make in the future generations has to be based on the way they understand it. This was the will of God. In other words, when one of the sages or a group of sages or a school of thought decides one way, it's not based on their own understanding, because then it wouldn't be the word of God. It is based on the rules that was given by God, and He said, \"Take these rules exactly as I gave them, don't make any changes, but the way you are able to understand how to derive the decision based on these rules, that's what you have to do.\" And that is the reason why we find differences of opinion concerning different laws of the Jewish religion, because since they had to make the decision the way they understand it based, again, I'm repeating again because it's very important to note, it's based on the rules given by God, because otherwise people might think, you know, if it's based on human logic, then any person who considered himself a rabbi could come up and make a new decision that's not fit to what we know in our tradition. It has to be based on the rules given by God to Moses, which many, many of them we don't know now, therefore we cannot make any decisions now. All we could do is base our decisions on the decisions that the sages of those days made. They knew all the rules, but they had to make the decision based on their understanding. And therefore, if one of the sages understood the rules based on the rules, he understood that it applies in a certain way, and he came up to one decision, God says, \"Yes, this is what I wanted to do.\" But then if another sage or another school came up with another understanding of what the decision should be based on these rules, that is also the word of God. That is basically the meaning of what the תלמוד says actually concerning the schools of שמאי and the schools of הלל, which are known, as I said before, בית הלל and בית שמאי, that אלו ואלו דברי אלוקים חיים, that means they're both the words of the living God. And the question that people usually ask, how could two opposite opinions be both the words of God? The answer is because God gave them the rules and he said, based on your understanding, and I want it to be based on your understanding, take the rules that I gave and come to a decision, and that's what I want. So each one that came to the decision according to his understanding, following the rules, that is the word of God. But then the question comes up, so what do you do? If they're two opposite opinions, then what do you do? So God gave rules in that too, exactly what to do. Both are the words of God, but what to do and how to behave, there is a rule, and many rules, how to behave, what to do. For instance, just to use the simplest and the most elementary rule is אחרי רבים להטות, that you have to follow the majority. And therefore, when there was difference of opinion between two sides, both are true because both are based on the rules given by God. Both are the words of God because they are based on his rules, and each one did what God wants him, to take the rules and apply it the way he understands it. But then what actually to do is again a rule what God said, which is, in this case I mentioned, majority rules, or other rules that there are that we have. And therefore we have the different opinions. One of the major groups of people, or schools of thought, that we have differences of opinion is, as I said, בית הלל and בית שמאי. And this is what we're going to do in the future classes. We're going to discuss many of the different opinions concerning different subjects altogether, where we have differences of opinion between בית הלל and בית שמאי, and that I will show how they all are based on the same line of thought, the same way of thinking. Even though, in many of them, we find other reasons that the תלמוד will tell us why בית שמאי is of one opinion, בית הלל is of another opinion, but still, the reason why בית שמאי or בית הלל would follow that opinion of learning the verse in the Bible a certain way is all based, after all, on the way he understood they and their mind work to understand what God wants. And therefore, sometimes we will find that this explanation that I will be giving soon is the whole basis of the argument. Sometimes it's not the whole basis, but it definitely is part of it, and it plays a very important role in why each one decided the way they did. There are different rabbis, great rabbis, great sages of our time, or not so long ago, that explain this line of thought, this thread of thought that I will be explaining. Just to mention, there was a great a great scholar, his name was רב יוסף ענגיל. He wrote many many books on Talmudic discussion, Talmudic thought, and on הלכה, which is decisions of Jewish law. And one of them is called בית האוצר, and there he discusses a little bit the ideas that I'm going to discuss. Then there was another great scholar, his name was הרב, Rabbi יוסף שלמה זווין, or שלמה יוסף זווין, and he wrote a ספר called לאור ההלכה, a book called לאור ההלכה, and there he also has a lot, he discusses this idea of what is the basis of the arguments between בית הלל and בית שמאי. And then we had the Rebbe, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, who in many many of his talks discussed this idea of בית שמאי and בית הלל, and brought out many arguments, many differences of opinion between these two schools of thought, and he explained it based on this way of thinking, the way בית שמאי thought and the way בית הלל thought. Now, the main point that we're going to bring out here is that when certain things, when there's an obligation, let's say, to do a certain thing, or the certain things happen, as I will explain in detail later, there are two ways to look at it. A lot of the things have two stages, which in Hebrew we would call the stage of בכח and the stage of בפועל. The stage of בכח means potential. Something is in a potential stage. It's already a beginning of what's going to happen later on, but it's still just in a level of potential. Then you have when it actually comes into actuality. When it comes into actuality, that's when you actually have it. And the question is, which of the two is the more important one that we should base our decisions, halachic decisions, Jewish law decisions, based on which way of thinking. And the way that we I will explain is, again, it's based on what these great scholars wrote, is that the approach of the school of שמאי was that we have to look at everything in its potential form. And when it comes to a question of what the הלכה will be, what the law will be, we have to base it on the way it's in the potential form. And בית הלל were of the opinion that we have to base it on the way it's in the actuality, in the actual form, the way it comes down to the bottom line. It sounds, so far, a little bit vague, but when I will give the examples, it'll be much clearer. But this is the general point. Again, I will repeat it again, the general point is that we have two ways to look at things: we can look at it from the level, from the stage of בכח, which is potential, and the stage of בפועל, which is actuality. And to be honest, they both make sense. I could see both ways. בכח, after all, is the beginning of everything. Whatever comes out later, בפועל, whatever comes out into actuality, all started from the level of בכח, all started from its potential form. If we wouldn't have that potential form, you'd never reach anywhere, you'd never get to the בפועל. And again, I'm not going to repeat these words again in English. I just want you to keep in mind, to remember these two words, בכח and בפועל. בכח means potential, בפועל means actuality, and I will be using these Hebrew words when I continue this lesson. So, I could understand בכח. I could understand that we should say, after all, this is the potential form, this is the first stage, this is the beginning, this is, let's say, the foundation, and therefore, based on this, we have to come to a decision. On the other hand, I could understand the other view also, because after all, what do we have from the potential? The potential is only a potential. The main thing is when it comes out into actuality. So, when we have to judge things and we question whether it should be according to the potential form or the actual form, so then I would, this side of the idea, this side says that it should be according to the actual form. So, we have these two points of view: one is that we look at everything according to בכח, potential, and one is when we look at everything according to בפועל. And this is the basis of many, many arguments between the two schools of thought, the school of בית הלל, the school of בית שמאי. And what I'm going to try to do this class and the next few classes is to bring different examples of different subjects in Jewish law. And the interesting part of it is that they could be different subjects altogether. See, usually we think that when we have one way of thinking, which is the basis of different subjects, it's all within the same framework, so to speak, and therefore, it could be that the same idea fits to many cases. But I'm going to show that there could be different subjects altogether. And nevertheless, the reasoning for their decisions are all based on the same idea of whether we follow the בכח or we follow the בפועל. The first one I'm going to start, I'm not going to go in the order of the way it's written in the תלמוד. I'm going to go just to something that's more common, something that people will understand more. And the first one I'm going to mention is one that every, about a certain holiday that everyone knows, and that is חנוכה. And this is in the תלמוד, tractate שבת. And here I will be taking the גמרא. And whenever we refer to the תלמוד, we usually refer to it by the page because all the editions of the תלמוד are exactly the same, and it's made specially that way, so you should be able to refer to it and people will know what you're talking about. So, we're talking here about the tractate שבת, which is the tractate that talks about the laws of שבת, but it's interesting that in this tractate of שבת the תלמוד also discusses the laws of the holiday of חנוכה. And the תלמוד here talks about how we light the חנוכה candles. Now, we know that חנוכה is eight days. We all know that. The reason why חנוכה is eight days is all based on the miracle of the jug, the jar of oil. And I'll just tell it in short, even though everyone knows this. It's always good to review that when there was the war between the חשמונאים against the Greeks, they were מטמא, they made impure the Holy Temple. Everything else that was in there became impure, and when the חשמונאים became victorious and they came into the Temple, they restored it. One of the things you have to do in the Holy Temple is to light the מנורה, the candelabra that was there. There are many different things that the כהנים, the priests, would do in the temple daily, and one of the things they would do is light the מנורה. The מנורה was lit with שמן זית, olive oil. And it had to be טהור olive oil, pure olive oil. When I say here pure, we're not talking about pure like you see on the labels of the jars, \"This is pure olive oil.\" There, pure means there is no other ingredient mixed into it. We're not talking about that kind of purity. We're talking about spiritual purity. And what I'm mention now will be important for other subjects that will come up later, too. There is a concept in Jewish law which doesn't really, really apply now for many reasons which I will not get into now, maybe some other time in other classes we'll get into, that these laws of טומאה וטהרה, of purity and impurity, don't apply. But what it really means is there is a certain thing that's called טמא, that if a person or something touches certain things which the תורה, the Bible, says is impure, it makes it impure, it makes it טמא. Now, you can't see it. You look at the object, it looks exactly the same. It's not like physical dirt that you could see, \"This is dirty.\" It's a different type of dirt, so to speak. It's a spiritual impurity. Like, just to give an example to get a little understanding, if someone touches a dead body, you become impure. And there are certain ways the Bible, the תורה, says that you become pure. Certain things you got to do. One of them is you got to go to the מקוה. But that's not important to our discussion here, but I was just trying to bring out there is a concept of טומאה וטהרה. Certain things are טמא, impure, and if this doesn't happen to it, then it's pure. One of the laws is that when you light the מנורה in the בית המקדש, which means you're going to perform the מצוה, the commandment of lighting the lights that they had to light every day, and as I said before, they had to use olive oil, the oil had to be pure, which we would refer to in Hebrew, had to be טהור. You were not able to light with שמן זית, which means olive oil, which is טמא, which is impure. What the Greeks did when they went into the temple, they made all the oil טמא, they made it all impure. And again, the spiritual impurity, which made it that we're not allowed to use it. So, when they entered the temple and they were going to renew the sacrifices and all the other services that they did in the temple, they were going to light this מנורה, but they couldn't find oil that would be usable for this מצוה, for this commandment of lighting the מנורה, because it was all טמא. So, they found one little jug of oil that was טהור, and there were proof, it was sealed with the seal of the High Priest, and they figured out, they saw that this was not touched by the Greeks, and therefore, it remained טהור. But the problem was that this would only last for one day. The jar of oil had enough oil to last for one day, to fulfill the commandment for one day. This was a מצוה, a commandment that you have to do every day. In order to get new oil that would be טהור, they'd have to wait eight days. In other words, till after eight days, till the ninth day, they weren't able to get new oil. So, it seemed as if they were only going to be able to fulfill this commandment one day. A miracle happened and this oil lasted for eight days. And this is why we have the holiday of חנוכה for eight days. And to commemorate this miracle and commemorate everything else concerning חנוכה, as we all know, the great rabbis of that generation made this holiday of חנוכה, that we have to celebrate it for eight days by lighting a מנורה, lighting candles for eight days. Now, the law is that originally you could light every day one candle, and by doing that, you would fulfill the minimum of this מצוה, of this commandment that was set up by these great rabbis. Nevertheless, it says the right way to do it is not to have just one candle every day. So, how much do we do? Now, if you ask somebody nowadays, they'll say, \"What's your question? Which child doesn't know that the first day you light one, second day you light two, then you light three, four, five, six, seven, eight? Everyone knows that.\" But it's not so simple. We'll look into the תלמוד. The תלמוד says this: בית שמאי אומרים, בית שמאי say, the school of בית שמאי said, this is how you're supposed to do it: יום ראשון מדליק שמנה. The first day, light eight candles. מכאן ואילך, from then and on, all the next, all the other days, פוחת והולך. You go down. Meaning, the second day you light seven, the third day you light six, and then five, four, three, two, and the eighth day you light one. ובית הלל אומרים, בית הלל say, the school of הלל said, יום ראשון מדליק אחת, the first day you light one. מכאן ואילך, from now on, מוסיף והולך, you have to add, which means the first day you light one, then two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. And this is exactly what we do, because I didn't mention before, which probably I should have, that when it comes to the arguments between בית שמאי and בית הלל, in most instances, most, not all, most instances, the הלכה, the law, what actually to do is like בית הלל, like the school of הלל. And that is for one of the reasons for that is because they were majority over the school of שמאי. And as I said before, one of the rules given by God how to come to a not just a decision in understanding, but a decision of what actually to do, is אחרי רבים להטות, to follow the majority. But anyway, this is what we do. But what we see here is we have a מחלוקת, which is another Hebrew word for argument, between בית שמאי and בית הלל. בית שמאי says you start off with the most, with eight, and then you continue and you go down from the eight it's eight, seven, etcetera, till you get to one. And בית הלל, the school of הלל, said that we have to do it the way we do it. We start with one and go up. And the תלמוד goes on to explain what is the reasoning. And the גמרא says, the תלמוד says like this: One of the reasons, טעמא דבית שמאי, the reason for בית שמאי's opinion, and again, בית שמאי's opinion that we start with the maximum and we go down, is כנגד ימים הנכנסים. It's for the day כנגד means in parallel, it's towards, because of the days that are coming, which means the first day of חנוכה, you still have eight days coming, so you light eight eight candles. The second day, you have only seven days coming, because one passed already, so you light seven. And that's how we go on till the last day there is only one day, so we light one. The טעמא דבית הלל, the reason for the opinion of בית הלל that we start with one and we go up, כנגד ימים היוצאים. That's because of the days that passed, that went out already. The first day, you have one day, so you light one. The second day, you already have two days now, so you light two light two. The third day, you have three, so you light three, and by the time you get to the eighth day, you have eight, so you light eight candles. This is the way the תלמוד brings the argument of בית שמאי and בית הלל, and the reasoning behind their argument. If we think a little bit about it, we will see how that underlying thought that we speaking about before of בכח and בפועל is basically the reason for their differences of opinion. Because when חנוכה starts, the first day בכח, potential you have eight days, because you know, the second day will be a second, the third. So now you only have one day, but this is the beginning of חנוכה, which is the potential of all the days of חנוכה, which is the בכח, as we said before, of all the days of חנוכה. So that's eight days the first day is the potential of all eight. On the other hand, בפועל, in actuality, the first day is only one. The second day, we already have two. And this is the underlying thought behind their opinions. בית שמאי follows the way of thinking that we always have to follow the בכח. And therefore, בית שמאי says when we start חנוכה and we have בכח, potential of eight days, you have to light eight days. The second day, when there is only potential of seven days, we have to light seven candles. And that's how we go on. While בית הלל says no, the first day, we always follow the בפועל, to actuality. So the first day, we actually have one day, so we have to light one candle. The second day, where we already have two days בפועל, so we light two candles. So here we see how this is an argument in a הלכה, in a law, concerning the מצוה of חנוכה, that's based on the way they look at things, whether they look בכח or בפועל. There's another point we can make concerning this argument of חנוכה. Not only concerning the days. Let's look at it. Let's look at the oil. The reason we have eight days of חנוכה, as I said before, is because they found this jug that only was supposed to last for one day, a miracle happened, it lasted for eight days. What happened here was since when they started using this oil, it started then and it had the power, let's call it, of lasting for eight days. Actually, the first day was only one day, but because this God made this miracle, so this oil became so special that this oil had the power, the ability, the potential of lasting for eight days. The second day, now it only had the potential, the ability of lasting for seven days. On the other hand, in actuality, the first day it only lasted for one day, it was only one day. The second day now we have it for two days, and then three days, etc., etc., up to eight days. So this is also the reason why בית שמאי and בית הלל argue. בית שמאי says that we follow the בכח, and therefore they say, since this holiday is based on the miracle of the lighting of the מנורה of the oil, so therefore, since I follow, the school of שמאי says we follow the בכח, and the oil that was lit on the first day, that was used on the first day, had the בכח, had the potential of eight days, and we're lighting the מנורה nowadays as a commemoration of what happened then, so the first day, we have to light eight candles, because if the בכח is the most important part, the first day there is בכח of the oil lasting for eight days. The second day where it only has the בכח of lasting for seven days, so we light seven, and that's how we go on. The last day there was only בכח of that one day, so we light one. While בית הלל is of the opinion that we follow the בפועל, and therefore they say since the first day the בפועל, the actuality of the oil lasted only for one day, that day was only one day, so we follow the בפועל, so therefore, we only light we only light one. While the second day, already the oil showed its actual power for two days, so we light two candles. And by the time we got to the eighth day, the oil showed already in actuality its power for eight days, so that's why it lasts we we light it for eight days. So here we see one example of the argument between בית שמאי and בית הלל that's based on these two opinions whether we follow the בכח or the בפועל. Now we will try to go to another example in a different subject, like I said, that we find the arguments in different subjects altogether, but nevertheless the underlying thought is, as I said before, the בכח and the בפועל. And this is going to be something from the tractate ראש השנה. ראש השנה means, as we all know, the new year, the beginning of the year. And there is a special tractate in the תלמוד called מסכת, which means tractate, ראש השנה. The משנה, which by the way it's probably important to explain what the משנה is, the משנה is a compilation of different laws and rules and different things that were said by the great sages known as the תנאים. There were different periods in Jewish history. There was a period of the people, the great leaders were called, let's say, the נביאים, the prophets. And then there was a time when the great sages were called the תנאים. And after that period, the next period, the great sages were called the אמוראים. All the different sayings and decisions of the תנאים were all put into the משנה, and that became the משניות. The great sage רב יהודה הנשיא was the one that compiled it. There is also another thing called ברייתות, which also contain the opinions of the great sages called the תנאים. And then we have the תלמוד, which is the explanation and interpretation of the משנה, and that was written by the אמוראים. That contains the different opinions and different rulings and things like that of the sages called the אמוראים. So here we have a משנה in the beginning of the tractate of ראש השנה. And the משנה says, there are different ראשי שנים. We know of one ראש השנה. We know of the new year. And when is the new year, ראש השנה, which is the first day of the Hebrew month called תשרי. That's ראש השנה. We all know what we do on ראש השנה, we blow the שופר. Everyone knows that on ראש השנה, people are judged. That's why ראש השנה is such a special day, because the תלמוד tells us, and we all Jews know that this is the truth, that on ראש השנה in heaven, we are judged what is going to happen for the whole year. So this is the ראש השנה that we all know about. But the משנה tells us, ארבעה ראשי שנים הם. There are also others, four ראש השנה So we're not going to go into them all, that concerning certain laws there are other days which are considered ראש השנה. What's going to be important for us is one of them, and that is ראש השנה לאילן, ראש השנה for the tree. What does it mean ראש השנה for the tree? We know ראש השנה for human beings, how do trees celebrate? Well, this means that there are certain things that we have to do when it comes to the crop that grows in the fields. And just in short, a person owns a field and things grow, whether it's grain or vegetables or fruit of the tree, you have to take off a certain part that was given to the כהנים, to the priests. A certain part was given to the לויים, to the Levites, which is מעשר שני, and then there are which is מעשר ראשון, and then there's a certain part called מעשר שני, which everyone would take up to Jerusalem, to ירושלים, and certain laws about it, which is not important for our discussion here, but the point is that there are certain things, certain parts that we have to take off, which like tithing, certain what it's called מעשר, a tenth, different things have to take off. There is a rule, there is a law in Jewish law, by the way this mostly was at the time of the בית המקדש, nowadays we also do it only in Israel, and even there in Israel it's only more like we take off a little bit, we don't give it really to the כהנים, to the לויים for whatever reasons, and again, like I said, this is not part of our subject, we will not discuss that now. But the idea is that there are certain things that have to be taken off. The rule is that you cannot mix the things that grow one year with the other year. You have to take all the fruit that grew in this one year and you take off from that the תרומה, the מעשר, all the different things that I mentioned before. And then the next year separately. You cannot mix the two together and take off from both. You got to have them separately. What is called a year? We have to know what is this year that we're talking about that we have to separate? When does the year begin, when does the year end? To know that the fruit that grew in this year in the period starting at one point, finishing at that point, another point, is one year and we have to put that separately, and then the other one separately. So here, it's not the ראש השנה that we know, it's not the first day of תשרי like I mentioned before, which is the known ראש השנה, but here we have an argument between בית שמאי and בית הלל. באחד בשבט ראש השנה לאילן כדברי בית שמאי. The opinion of בית שמאי is that באחד בשבט... אחד בשבט means the first day of the Hebrew month of שבט. As I said, תשרי is the first month of the year and that's ראש השנה, our regular ראש השנה, so we have תשרי, חשון, כסלו, טבת, שבט, it's the fifth month of the year starting from תשרי. So בית שמאי holds that the ראש השנה for the tree, which means the beginning of the new year for the tree, which means that from then on we have to separate the fruit and keep it on a separate account and not mix it with the ones from before, is from the first day of שבט. בית הלל אומרים, בית הלל say בחמישה עשר בו, they say the 15th of שבט. And again, you might know that we nowadays also celebrate ראש השנה for the trees on the 15th day of שבט, because like I said before, the הלכה, the bottom line, the way we have to behave is according to בית הלל, in most cases, in this case, too. So we consider ראש השנה לאילן or לאילנות, the ראש השנה for the tree or for the trees, on the 15th day of שבט. But the argument is there: בית שמאי says it's the first day of שבט, בית הלל says it's the 15th day of שבט. As I will explain, we will see that this is also connected to their way of thinking whether we go after בכח or בפועל. Now, one would think, what does this have to do with בכח and בפועל? Where do we see בכח and בפועל here? So I'll explain it. It says in the ירושלמי... Now the ירושלמי was also תלמוד, that's called the Jerusalem Talmud. Our תלמוד that we usually refer to and we learn is called תלמוד בבלי, it's the Babylonian Talmud. But before that, about 100 years before the תלמוד בבלי, our תלמוד, was written, there was another תלמוד written, תלמוד ירושלמי. Many things are the same there, many things are different, meaning more additional things are written in תלמוד ירושלמי. Many times we find explanations to things that we have in תלמוד בבלי through learning תלמוד ירושלמי. When we look in the Jerusalem Talmud, we find things that we don't find here, and that helps us understand what we learn here. So in the תלמוד ירושלמי, it explains that how do we judge generally which day of the year would be considered the ראש השנה, the first day of the year for the fruit of the trees? Because that's what we're talking about here. Which day begins the year for the fruit of the trees concerning these laws of not mixing the two years when we take off the תרומה and the מעשר? So there it says like this, the day that we understand the trees start getting their nourishment from the new waters, let's say, the new water that's that's brought into the into the river or into the underground or whatever it is, based on the new cycle of water, that's the day when we count as a as a new year. And the ירושלמי says that the argument between בית שמאי and בית הלל is: בית שמאי says that they understand that the beginning of the new water coming in which gives the nourishment to the trees is the first day of שבט. בית הלל says we understand is the 15th day of שבט. What's it based on? So again, based on what it says in this ירושלמי, it says like this, and these are halachic terms, halachic ideas, תורה ideas, which I'm not familiar with agriculture, so I don't know how the gardeners and the farmers will say and what they will say and how they will agree with this, but we're talking from the Bible, תלמוד, Jewish viewpoint of the way they knew it, and if they said it that way, it's true in the way they understood it, which is definitely true, and when maybe someone will say differently because they look at it from a different point of view, but the תלמוד definitely is true, and it says that it takes four months, four months from when the water is judged. Again, I mentioned before our ראש השנה, and we all know that everything and everybody is judged on ראש השנה. That's why people go to שול on ראש השנה, even people don't go to שול the whole year round, ראש השנה, wow, what's ראש השנה? We're judged in heaven! The heavenly court judges us! Everything is judged. The water is also judged. And the תלמוד ירושלמי tells us it takes four months from when the water is judged till the water starts actually working and coming into the trees. It takes four months. When is the water judged? So it's interesting, as I said, everybody's judged and everything is judged on ראש השנה, on the first day of תשרי, which is the regular ראש השנה. Nevertheless, the גמרא, the תלמוד, our תלמוד, basically, תלמוד בבלי, we call it our תלמוד, it means תלמוד בבלי, says in ראש השנה, page ט\"ז, which is the 16th page, because we go by the pages, that's the reference, and that's the way we remember it, it says that the גמרא tells us, the תלמוד tells us, that בחג נידונים על המים. סוכות, the holiday of סוכות, the holiday of סוכות is the time when the water is judged. Now this seems to be a contradiction. We said before that everything is judged on the first day of תשרי, which is the regular ראש השנה, including the water. And here the תלמוד says that the water is judged on the holiday of סוכות, which is the 15th day of תשרי, 15 days later. And the answer is, it's not a contradiction. There is בכח and בפועל. The water specifically בפועל, actual, in actuality, is judged on סוכות. But it's all a continuation of what happens on ראש השנה. Since ראש השנה everything is judged, including the water, but that's only in a potential form, and there are certain things that have other dates when this potential form comes out into actuality. And one of them is the water, that's what the תלמוד tells us. So it comes out that the water is judged potentially on ראש השנה, which is the first day of the month of תשרי. In actuality, more בפועל, it judged on סוכות, which is the 15th day of תשרי. As I said before, the תלמוד tells us it takes four months from when it's judged till it actually comes out into the trees. And this is the argument between בית שמאי, בית הלל. As strange as it might sound, how this argument of when ראש השנה is of the tree, how it's connected to בכח and בפועל, but here we see it. בית שמאי says everything we judge by the כח. And since בכח, potential, it's judged on ראש השנה, so we have to look at it four months from ראש השנה, four months from the first day of תשרי, of the Hebrew month of תשרי. If you go four months, first day of תשרי to the first day of חשון, to the first day of כסלו, to the first day of טבת, and then the first day of שבט. So that's בית שמאי's opinion that we have, the ראש השנה for the tree is the first day of שבט. בית הלל say no, we look at everything in the actual form, we look at everything in the form of בפועל. And since בפועל the water is judged on the 15th day of תשרי, so we have to look at it four months from then. Four months from the 15th day of תשרי, from סוכות, is the 15th day of שבט. And that's why they say the ראש השנה for the trees is the 15th day of שבט. So here we have two examples of different subjects altogether, have nothing to do with each other. One is about חנוכה and the יום טוב of lighting the candles, here we're talking about the ראש השנה for the trees, how you separate the years of the trees, but both follow the same way of thinking, which is that בית שמאי follows the בכח and בית הלל follows the בפועל. And then we will continue in the next lessons and bring other examples to follow along the same line.