[Non-speech audio] How does a person prevent himself from sinking into this abyss? Through Torah. The Torah says, \"והיו הדברים האלה אשר אנכי מצוך היום על לבבך ושננתם לבניך ודברת בם בשבתך בביתך ובלכתך בדרך ובשכבך ובקומך.\" ודברת בם, speaks words of Torah. In this week's פרשה, פרשת עקב, the Torah tells us, \"ושמתם את דברי אלה על לבבכם ועל נפשכם.\" And it explains what this means. \"ולמדתם אותם את בניכם לדבר בם בשבתך בביתך ובלכתך בדרך ובשכבך ובקומך.\" לדבר בם. ושמתם את דברי אלה על לבבכם, place these words upon your heart. The Gemara in Kiddushin learns from here, don't read it ושמתם, read it ושם תם, an elixir, a complete cure. The Torah says, \"בראתי יצר הרע, בראתי לו תורה תבלין.\" I created the yetzer hara, and I created the Torah as an antidote. If you engage in Torah, you won't be handed over into its hands. The Torah is the only antidote to the yetzer hara, the only cure. You want to save yourself, you want to save your children? Immerse yourself in Torah. Immerse them in Torah. When a person is surrounded by Torah, when a child breathes the air of Torah, when his heart and mind are filled with Torah, the street has no pull on him. The תאוות and the nonsenses of this world have no power over him. But what does it mean to be immersed in Torah? It doesn't just mean to learn Torah for an hour a day, or to send your child to a good yeshiva. It means ודברת בם בשבתך בביתך ובלכתך בדרך ובשכבך ובקומך. It means that the Torah is your life. When you sit at home, when you walk on the street, when you go to sleep, and when you wake up, you're thinking about Torah. You're talking about Torah. You're living Torah. There's a famous story told about the Chafetz Chaim. A father once came to the Chafetz Chaim with his young son, and he asked the Chafetz Chaim for a berachah that his son should grow up to be a talmid chacham. The Chafetz Chaim looked at the father and said, \"Do you want your son to be a talmid chacham? Then you have to be a talmid chacham.\" The father said, \"Rabbi, but I'm just a simple businessman. I don't have the time to learn all day. How can I be a talmid chacham?\" The Chafetz Chaim answered him, \"When you come home from work, what do you talk about? Do you talk about the deals you made, the money you earned, the problems you had in the market? Or do you take out a sefer and sit down to learn, and talk to your children about what you're learning? If your child sees that your head is in business, that your heart is in the material world, then even if you send him to the best yeshiva, he will learn from you that what really matters in life is gashmiyut, is money, is this world. But if he sees that despite your busy schedule, despite your exhaustion, your true joy is when you sit down with a Gemara, when you talk in learning with your friends, when you speak words of Torah at the Shabbos table, then he will understand that Torah is the ultimate value in life. He will want to be a talmid chacham.\" This is the message of \"ושמתם את דברי אלה על לבבכם ועל נפשכם.\" The Torah has to be on our hearts and on our souls. It cannot remain something external, something superficial. It has to penetrate into the very depth of our being. And when it does, it protects us. It guards us from all the negative influences around us. The pasuk says, \"בהתהלכך תנחה אותך, בשכבך תשמור עליך, והקיצות היא תשיחך.\" When you walk, it will lead you. When you lie down, it will watch over you. And when you wake up, it will talk with you. The Torah becomes our constant companion, our guide, our protector. Today, we are facing challenges that no generation before us ever faced. The nisyonot are so great, the tumah is so pervasive. It's so easy to get lost, so easy to be swept away by the current. How can we protect ourselves? How can we protect our children, our families? There is only one way: to strengthen our connection to Torah. To make Torah the center of our lives. To fill our homes with the sounds of Torah, with the warmth of Torah, with the love of Torah. When a home is full of Torah, there's no room for the street to enter. When a heart is full of Torah, there's no room for the yetzer hara to take hold. May HaKadosh Baruch Hu give all of us the strength to cling to the Torah, to make it our life, and through the merit of the Torah, may we be protected from all harm, and may we see our children and grandchildren walking in the path of Torah and mitzvot, until the coming of משיח צדקנו במהרה בימינו אמן. [Non-speech audio]

very last moment of life, he was writing a Sefer Torah, he was learning. Okay, fine, that's what, that's what it says. But here, then it says like this, I have it written down, but then he brings from the Shach, the Shach in Choshen Mishpat סימן ר״ז סעיף קטן מ״ח, he says like this: משה רבינו כתב י״ב ספרי תורה for the י״ב שבטים. That's what the Shach says. Now, what, what about the thirteenth? So it says, Rash Ashkenazi, there's another sefer, the Rash Ashkenazi explains, the thirteenth he made for שבט לוי! Which also makes twelve. In other words, שבט לוי is one and there were eleven other שבטים, because Menashe and Efraim are two half שבטים. So all together it's twelve. So according to him, they're only twelve, there were twelve all together, which fits with what the Shach says! But that contradicts the Pesikta! The Pesikta says, what? כתב י״ג ספרי תורה. And how did he know how to write thirteen in one day? He was sitting, and the kolmos was writing by itself. And he wrote י״ב for the י״ב שבטים, and one for שבט לוי. That's thirteen! משה רבינו was from שבט לוי, so where did the thirteenth come from? What?

So therefore, according to the Rema, a blind person could also make the beracha. And then the Rema adds, וכן נוהגין, and that's our minhag. Now the Mechaber actually does not hold this way, and therefore the Sefardim, even though there's a machloket between the Ba'al Knesset HaGedolah and the Ben Ish Chai and others, the Mechaber and the minhag among Sefardim is generally that a blind person does not make this beracha, unless he can hear it from someone else who makes it for him, like we'll see soon, or with a שומע כעונה. But according to Ashkenazim, וכן נוהגין, we do make it. Now there is a fascinating question that's brought down in Rav Wosner in the Shevet HaLevi, and many other Acharonim, what happens to a person who is currently blind, but he wasn't born blind, he was blinded, or he underwent a cataract surgery and now he's temporarily blind, or a child is born with closed eyes and he has to have an operation to open his eyes, does he make the beracha or not? Now the basic question over here is a person says, what's your hava amina to make the beracha? So first of all, according to the Rema, that the reason why a person makes the beracha is because he enjoys the world around him that sees, then even a temporarily blind person should be able to make it. But what about the Mechaber? The Mechaber holds that you cannot make the beracha if you are blind. So is a person who's blind for one day or two days considered blind or not? So the Rema, based on the Gemara in Megillah, brings down that there was a blind person, there was a ma'aseh with Rabbi Yosi who saw a blind person who was carrying a torch, and he said, why are you carrying a torch? So he said, look, as long as I have a torch, other people can see me and help me out, and help me avoid obstacles and pitfalls. And therefore, the blind person says, look, as long as I have a torch, other people are helping me, so I can see, I'm benefiting from their vision. So according to the Rema, that's why even a person who's blind, totally blind, permanently blind, could make the beracha. But according to the Mechaber, no. And so the Mechaber would hold that even if somebody is temporarily blind, and now he goes and has an operation, he could not make the beracha. But the question is, what about when he regains his sight? Does he make the beracha, פוקח עורים, when he regains his sight? So the Knesset HaGedolah holds, and Rav Wosner holds that he should not make it, because we say ספק ברכות להקל, we don't know, maybe we hold like the Rema that it's on the general sight, and once a day you've already had whatever it is, and then you don't make it again. Whereas others hold that maybe you could make the bracha. So Rav Wosner says that you should not make the bracha, and instead, listen to somebody else make the bracha, or make the ברכה בלי שם ומלכות, without שם ומלכות. That's the suggestion of the Shevet Halevi over here. But if a person is just temporarily blind because he has a cataract surgery, etc., then according to the Rema he can make the bracha, and according to the Mechaber he can't, until he sees again, and even when he sees again, there's a big ספק if he could make it, and therefore it's always better to be yotzei with somebody else's bracha.

Between Rav Huna and Rav Nachman. Rather, where does the machloket between Rav Huna and Rav Nachman lie? By a מלוה על פה. So over there, since it's a מלוה על פה, according to Rav Nachman we say that a person wouldn't borrow and go ahead and pay on the same day, but according to Rav Huna he could pay on the same day, or the other way around: according to Rav Nachman you could pay on the same day, and according to Rav Huna you can't pay on the same day. But by a מלוה בשטר everyone agrees that he doesn't pay on the same day. So now the Gemara's going to ask, it's going to turn the question upside down. If you hold like the second teirutz, that the machloket between Rav Huna and Rav Nachman is by a מלוה על פה, and both of them hold like Reish Lakish, that by a מלוה בשטר עדים החתומים על השטר נעשה כמי שנחקרה עדותן בבית דין and therefore you wouldn't be able to pay on the same day, so then why does the Mishnah say over here, why does the Mishnah say that if a person produces a שטר against somebody else, and he claims, \"I paid it,\" that he's not נאמן unless he brings עדים? The Mishnah is talking about a case where he paid on the same day, and you're telling me that by a מלוה בשטר, nobody, according to everyone you can't pay on the same day. So why does the Mishnah have to say that he's not נאמן because it's a מלוה בשטר? Even if it was a מלוה על פה, according to Rav Huna, he wouldn't be נאמן! Because according to Rav Huna, nobody pays on the same day. That's what the Gemara's going to ask now. Let's see it inside: אי הכי, if you say like this, רישא דקתני מצא שטר חוב, אם יש בו אחריות נכסים לא יחזיר, שבית דין נפרעין מהן. The beginning of the Mishnah, which says that if you find a שטר חוב, if it has אחריות נכסים, you shouldn't return it because the בית דין will collect from it. ואוקימנא, and we established the משנה, כשחייב מודה, ובשטר שאין בו אחריות נכסים, and the Mishnah is talking about a case where the חייב admits that he borrowed the money, and it's a שטר that has no אחריות נכסים, which means that he cannot collect from properties that were sold. דחיישינן לפירעון, and the reason why you can't return it is because we suspect that maybe he paid it. לימא, let's say, תיהוי תיובתא דרב הונא, that this is a question on Rav Huna! דאמר רב הונא: חזקה אין אדם פורע תוך זמנו. So over here, the Gemara is asking a question on Rav Huna. Because Rav Huna says that תוך זמנו he's not נאמן to say that he paid. Why is he not נאמן? Because we have a חזקה, אין אדם פורע תוך זמנו. A person doesn't pay תוך זמנו. If a person doesn't pay תוך זמנו, then if the שטר fell תוך זמנו, why are we חושש that it was paid? He couldn't have paid it! Because אין אדם פורע תוך זמנו! You're not allowed to return the שטר to the מלוה, because we suspect that maybe the לוה paid it. But if the שטר fell תוך זמנו, then how could the לוה claim that he paid it? A person does not pay תוך זמנו! So it must be that Rav Huna is wrong, and that a person could pay תוך זמנו! That's the kushya of the Gemara on Rav Huna. אמר לך רב הונא, Rav Huna could tell you: שאני הכא דאמרינן ליה, שטרך בידי מאי בעי. It's different over here, because over here we say, \"What is your שטר doing in my hand?\" And if you really paid, why didn't you take the שטר back? So since the לוה says that he paid it, we're choshesh that maybe he paid it.