Okay, the topic tonight, I was wondering, thinking what topic to choose, then I thought, well today is the Siyum HaRambam. Today, we know that the Rebbe instituted to learn three perakim of Rambam, three chapters of Rambam daily, and it comes out that about once a year, a little bit less than a year, but around once a year we finish the whole Rambam. Today happens to be the day that we finish the Rambam, and therefore I thought that the topic today should be the Rambam. Not that I'm going to make a siyum on the Rambam, that will be a separate, separate celebration when we'll have a Siyum HaRambam, but just to discuss the Rambam. And even though usually the topics are concepts, subjects, and here we're discussing a human being, a specific person, but the truth is that the Rambam not only was a person, which he was, but the Rambam also stands for a certain lifestyle, a certain type of concept, and therefore it's fit to discuss the Rambam. Before we get to discuss a little bit more in detail the Rambam's lifestyle or what the Rambam stands for, it would be proper to go through a little bit the history of the Rambam, some of the historical facts in the Rambam's life. The Rambam was born in the city of Cordova, Spain in the year of, the English year of 1135. According to some opinions it was 1133, according to some opinions 1138, but the accepted opinion is 1135, on Erev Pesach. Erev Pesach, on the 14th day of the month of Nisan. His father, Rabbeinu Maimon was the dayan in the city of Cordova. The Rambam's lineage, the Rambam's yichus, goes back all the way to Rabbeinu HaKadosh, to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, to Rabbi, the one that wrote the Mishnayot. And we know that Rabbeinu HaKadosh, who has different titles, is known as Rabbi, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, Rabbeinu HaKadosh, he was a descendant, direct descendant of David HaMelech. He came from the dynasty of David HaMelech. And the Rambam was a descendant of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. They lived in Cordova, Spain, but when the Muslims conquered the city and they forced the Jews or to convert to Islam or to leave town, or if not they would get killed, so the Rambam's family, his father and the family chose to move. And they left Cordova, and they went to other cities in Spain. And that's how they wandered for a while. But they realized that that's no inyan, cuz they're not going to have any peace there, so they left the country. And they came to Morocco. And they lived in Morocco for 5 years, in Fez, Morocco. That's why in Morocco they have a house up to today they just, they say is the house where the Rambam lived in. But there he also had plenty of problems, and the Rambam and his family, his father and the family left. They planned to go to Eretz Yisrael, and they came actually to Eretz Yisrael, but they saw that it's not a place for them to live, circumstances weren't good. They stayed there for a very short while and they left. They continued to Egypt. They came to Egypt, and in Egypt they found a place where they were able to have freedom of religion and they were able to live the way they wanted to live. The Rambam's father, Rabbeinu Maimon, who was the head of the family, he was the one that supported them all. But a short while after they came to Egypt, he passed away. And the Rambam's brother, younger brother, his name was David, took over to become the provider. He became a merchant, he became a jewelry merchant in Egypt, and there the Jews had the full rights to be merchants and make money like everybody else. And he provided them, the whole family, with their needs. But what happened was after a while on one of his trips to India, there was a storm, and the ship sank, and he drowned. And that made the Rambam feel very bad, and the Rambam didn't have any source of parnasah, for a while he became very sick. Anyway, the end was that the Rambam decided that he is going to become a provider of parnasah. The Rambam did not want to use his knowledge in learning to be a source of his parnasah, of his money. So he chose a profession. While he was younger, he learned all kinds of sciences, and many of it, most of it probably, he took from the Torah, but he was well-versed in all sciences, including the medical profession. And the Rambam became a doctor. And his, he became a famous doctor till finally his fame reached the palace, and he was appointed the private doctor to the Sultan himself. And that's how he made his parnasah. That's how he provided a livelihood for his family. Even though the Rambam was appointed at that time the chief rabbi of Cairo, and at that time Cairo was one of the most leading Jewish communities in the world, and it was a very, very special job, profession, job, a special position, but he didn't want to take any money. So the way he made his living was from being a doctor. Throughout all this time, the Rambam wrote many sefarim, many books. Some of the famous ones are the Peirush Hamishnayot, he wrote a commentary on the Mishnayot. He wrote Sefer Hamitzvot, a sefer that goes through the list of all the 613 mitzvot. He wrote the Moreh Nevuchim, The Guide to the Perplexed. These were written in Arabic. They were translated into Hebrew in the Rambam's lifetime by this person called Ibn Tibbon, but he originally wrote it in Arabic. But then there was another sefer that the Rambam wrote, and that's what he's famous for, and that's known as the Rambam. The Rambam called that Sefer Mishneh Torah. Later on it was also called, and up to this day it's called also the Yad Hachazakah. And this sefer is the sefer of halachot. This is the sefer where he codified all the laws of the Torah. And with this sefer, the Rambam accomplished a great deal, something very, very special, and I'd like to explain what the Rambam did with the Sefer Mishneh Torah, Yad Hachazakah.

Know that the Torah is made up of two parts: Torah Shebikhtav and Torah Sheba'al Peh, the written Torah and the oral Torah. The written Torah is the Chumash, and the oral Torah was recorded in the Mishnayot and the Gemara. The Mishnayot and the Talmud, that contains the whole of the oral Torah. So all the halachot, all the laws of what we are supposed to do are all in the Gemara, in the Mishnayot and the Gemara. We cannot pasken a halacha from the Chumash. There is no way we would know what to do by just learning the Chumash. We open the Chumash, and the Chumash it says do not do any work on Shabbos, we have no idea what that means. What does work mean? You could You could explain what work means: picking up a heavy weight, that's called heavy work. We don't know what work means. It says in Chumash, you shall tie them for a sign on your hand. We don't know what that means. How do you do that? The only way we know how to do the mitzvot, how do we know the halachot, that is from Torah shebaal peh, that is from the oral Torah. And this oral Torah was recorded in the Mishnayot and the Gemara. But the way it's recorded in the Mishnayot and the Gemara, there are a lot of discussions in the Gemara, questions and answers, and questions on top of answers and on top of questions, arguments between different chachamim, between the Tannaim and the Amoraim, that it's very hard to really know exactly what the real bottom line is, what the halacha is. You have to be a terrific, terrific, outstanding scholar in order to learn the Gemara and be able to come out with a halacha to know what to do. Even scholars will not figure out from the Gemara what to do. And that was a great problem. There's another thing in the Gemara. You have to, if it comes to any question in any halacha, you have to be a בקי בש״ס. You have to know the whole Gemara in order to know the halacha, because there are certain halachot that deal with Shabbos which are not mentioned in the Gemara Shabbos. If a person wants to know the halachot of Shabbos by learning מסכת שבת, learning the tractate of Shabbos, he cannot say that he now knows all the halachot of Shabbos, because there are some halachot of Shabbos that are in the Gemara Eruvin, and sometimes a halacha of Shabbat could be found in Masechet Pesachim, in different Gemarot. Certainly the Gemara of Shabbat deals mainly about Shabbat, but it's not made in an organized fashion. The Gemara was not made in an organized fashion the way we assume organized according to subjects. Plus, you have to know everything. You have to know the Gemara Bavli, you have to know the Yerushalmi, you have to know all the other things that are there, the Torat Kohanim, the Tosefta, you have to know everything in order to know all the halachot. So it's impossible for people to know. And that was lacking, so therefore it was very hard to reach the halacha, to know what exactly the halacha is. The first one who started a little bit to try to take out from the Gemara the proper halacha and write it in a form that we should be able to see the halacha before the Rambam was the Rif, Rav Yitzchak Alfasi, who lived in the city of Fez in Morocco, who was the teacher of the teacher of the Rambam. The Rambam's Rabbi was the Ri Migash, and the Ri Migash's Rabbi was the Rif. And what the Rif did, we have it printed in the back of the Gemara. What the Rif did, he took every Gemara and he rewrote the Gemara, which means he rewrote the same wording of the Gemara, but he left out the discussions and the arguments, and he just left the bottom line the way he he understood the halacha should be. So, he was the first one who attempted to do it, but nevertheless, first of all, the the Rif left the לשונות, the wording of the Gemara, and when you have the wording of the Gemara, not always can you understand exactly what it means and exactly what it lead you to, and exactly what the halacha is. Plus, we still have this problem of not knowing all the halachot, because the the Rif went in the order of the Gemara. Whatever the Gemara says on this page, the Rif rewrote it, just skipped all the shakla vetarya, the discussions and the arguments, but he went in order, in the same organized order as the Gemara. And therefore, in order for a person to know the halachot of Shabbat, for instance, you had to know the Shabbat, the Rif on Shabbos, and the Rif in Eruvin, and the Rif in Pesachim, different places, and any other halacha you had to know from different places. So, there was still a problem. Came the Rambam, and what he did, he organized all the halachos in an organized fashion. So, number one what he did was he wrote a sefer with all the halachos, not using the words of the Gemara, using words that are able to be understood by everybody, wrote it in the form of הלכות הלכות, just plain halacha, mentioned no arguments, mention no opinions, just what the halacha is. He wrote it in an organized form that all the laws of Shabbos are in the section called הלכות שבת, all the laws of chametz are in the section called הלכות חמץ ומצה. And what the Rambam did, he took all the halachos that are in the Gemara in Bavli, the regular Gemara, the halachos of Shabbos let's say from Yerushalmi, the halachos of Shabbos from the ברייתות, from different places, and he put it all together and he made it into a form, and he put it into 14 different groups, and each group has different halachos, each halacha has different sections, he made it in a very very organized fashion. And now, when someone wants to find a halacha in הלכות שבת, he will open the Rambam in הלכות שבת, and he will not see any arguments and any opinions, he will see what is the halacha, exactly what the halacha is. The wording is very clear for every person who wants to who just knows Hebrew could understand it. This is what the Rambam did. The lashon of the Rambam, the the wording of the Rambam is so clear that the commentaries refer to the lashon of the Rambam as לשון הזהב, the golden tongue, the golden expressions of the Rambam. While other גדולי ישראל, other even the Rishonim did not have that koach of writing it in such clarity as the Rambam. So, what the Rambam did with this sefer, besides all the other sefarim that he wrote, he wrote something that a person who wants to know all the halachot, and we look into the introduction of the Rambam, he writes like this, that a person is able to go straight from chumash, go into the Rambam, and he will know all the halachot of the Torah. Till his time, a person would have to learn chumash, after chumash he would have to go through the whole Shas, the whole of Shas, in order to know the halachot. So, for a rav to be a rav, to פסקן שאלות, you have to go through the whole Shas. But the Rambam made it so that now you just learn his sefer, that's what he writes, you go straight from the chumash to my sefer and you will know all the halachot. When the Rambam came out with his sefer, it was accepted by Yidden as probably the next best sefer written after the Gemara. That's what the Rambam did to Klal Yisrael, he wrote them a sefer that was accepted as the sefer which comes next best right after the Gemara. The Gemara, which is the Mishnah and the Gemara, was the sefer of Torah shebaal peh, the sefer of the oral Torah that was studied by Klal Yisrael, by all the Yidden, came the Rambam and wrote a sefer that was now accepted as second to it.

But just like all good things, there was an opposition from different people against the Rambam. And besides the opposition against the Rambam concerning his other sefarim, for instance concerning the Moreh Nevuchim, some people did not agree to the philosophy that the Rambam wrote in that sefer, because that's a sefer of philosophy, but even concerning this sefer, they argued, and they mainly three reasons they had why they felt the Rambam shouldn't have done what he did. Number one, they said that this is going to stop people from learning Gemara. A second thing they said that the Rambam did not write any sources. The Rambam just writes halacha after halacha after halacha. No sources for where he took it from. The third thing is that the Rambam doesn't give any reasons to his halachot. The Rambam just writes halachot and doesn't explain why. Concerning the problem of not writing sources, the Rambam himself writes in a letter that he regrets not writing the sources. But he says, \"Trust me that everything I wrote has a source.\" When the Rambam wrote his sefer, he had all of Shas Bavli and Yerushalmi and all the sefarim available that are there in front of him, not only in front of him, but in his head, and everything has a source. Truth is that in later generations people did give out sefarim trying to bring the sources of what the Rambam says. As a matter of fact, the Rebbe asked about 15 years ago the kollel, the Lubavitch Kollel, to give out a sefer and they gave out a sefer, which is called Mareh Mekomot LeSefer HaRambam, sources to every halacha that the Rambam wrote. Concerning the problem of him not writing reasons, well, the Rambam held that you're allowed to learn without knowing the reasons, but there are so many commentaries on the Rambam, and they all give the reasons to all the halachot of the Rambam. There are probably as many commentaries on the Rambam as there are on the Gemara. And concerning the problem of the because of the Rambam people will stop learning Gemara, as the fact was, it just turned around, was the opposite. After the Rambam wrote his sefer, this brought more interest in people learning Gemara, because people saw in the Rambam the depth, even though it's clear halachot, but people who saw what's hidden in the Rambam, this brought them to want to look further and see, where does this come from? Where are the sources? So they looked into the Gemara. But the Rambam became a ספר ממש like the Gemara, which means people, mefarshim, commentaries are medayek, medayek means they're they look exactly to the words of the Rambam, every word of the Rambam counts. If the Rambam wrote an extra letter, you could have pages upon pages in the commentaries to explain why he wrote an extra vav here, when he could have not written a vav. There are many, many halachot learned out from the Rambam, not from what he wrote, from what he didn't write. There are many halachot learned out by the commentaries from the order of the way the Rambam wrote halachot. If he wrote this halachah before this halachah, this means that the Rambam holds a certain halachah in a certain thing, they learn out. There is an interesting thing written in the sefer called Karti U'Fleiti, written by Rav Yehonatan Eibeshitz, and he discusses this idea that in the Rambam, we see the commentaries, and not stam plain small commentaries, commentaries like the Kesef Mishneh, which is the Beit Yosef himself, the Beit Yosef who wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the Beit Yosef, and others similar ones are medayek and they learn out halachot from an extra letter or an expression of the Rambam, the order of the Rambam, and he asks, is it possible that a human being should have all that in mind? Is it possible for a human being, when he wrote these halachot, he should have in mind all these different things that they learn out, that he meant this way and not this way, he learned it in this order? It's impossible. So the Karti U'Fleiti says, \"I believe that the Rambam did not have all this in mind, but the Rambam wrote it with such great kedushah that מן השמים, השם made him write it in such a way that this all is in it.\" What do we need more when we talking about the, talking about the Rambam, what do we need more, bichlal when we look at a sefer and we want to know how great it is, usually you look at the haskamah. Mostly the sefarim are given out have a haskamah. Haskamah means approbation from different great rabbis who are greater than the one that wrote the sefer, and based on what they write in the haskamah or who are the ones that give the haskamah, you could understand how good the sefer is. Well, the Rambam doesn't have a haskamah on his sefer, didn't ask anybody to give him a haskamah, but the Shem Hagedolim, the Chida in the Shem Hagedolim writes an interesting thing. He says it took the Rambam 10 years to write his sefer, and the way he says there is the Rambam locked himself up in a room for 10 years and concentrating on writing the sefer. And this itself is a miracle, to write such a sefer in 10 years. Other people, they could be in 500 years he couldn't do it, but he wrote it in 10 years. Some say it took him 14 years, but it's accepted that it took him 10 years to write a sefer. The day he finished writing the sefer, and he finished the last halachah, he turns around and he sees that his father is standing next to him. His father already wasn't alive. His father came from yener velt, from olam ha-emet, and stood next to him. And there was another man next to his father, and he asked his father, \"Who is this man?\" And his father says, \"This is Moshe Rabbeinu.\" Moshe Rabbeinu came here to see your sefer. He said, \"Moshe Rabbeinu came to see your sefer.\" So he gave him the manuscript, the finished manuscripts, and Moshe Rabbeinu looked through it, and after he finished, Moshe Rabbeinu says to him, \"yishar koach, thank you for this sefer.\" So even though he doesn't have a haskamah on his sefer, but he has a haskamah from none other than Moshe Rabbeinu himself. And the truth is the Rambam did something similar to Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the Torah Shebichtav, wrote the whole Torah Shebichtav, the whole written Torah. Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam, wrote the whole Torah Shebe'al Peh, the whole oral Torah. And he takeh wrote the whole oral Torah, unlike other authors who wrote similar sefarim, sefarim which are codes of Jewish law, like the Shulchan Aruch. What do we need more? The Shulchan Aruch, that's what we pasken like. But the Shulchan Aruch only wrote those הלכות that apply בזמן הזה nowadays. The Shulchan Aruch doesn't have the הלכות of the בית המקדש, doesn't have the הלכות of the sacrifices, doesn't have all those הלכות that don't apply nowadays. The Rambam wrote all the הלכות, all the הלכות of קרבנות, the הלכות of the בית המקדש, הלכות of משיח, all the הלכות that are there in Torah. And he included in his ספר the הלכות from the משניות and from the Gemara, from בבלי, ירושלמי, from the תוספתא, the ספרא, the ספרי, all the ספרים that are there, including the תשובות הגאונים. After the Gemara, there was a תקופה, a period of the great scholars who were called the גאונים, and they also wrote תשובות, responsa on different questions. He included everything that they said into his ספר, in short form obviously. So the Rambam wrote the whole תורה שבעל פה, so this includes the whole oral Torah. This is one of the reasons why the great צדיקים said on the Rambam this famous expression which is written on his מצבה, on the stone over his grave. It says, \"ממשה עד משה לא קם כמשה.\" From Moshe to Moshe, there was nobody like Moshe. From Moshe Rabbeinu to Moshe ben Maimon, which is the Rambam, there was nobody like Moshe. And this is one of the reasons is because he accomplished something similar to Moshe Rabbeinu. Besides the Rambam's influence on world Jewry, the Rambam's influence was the greatest, on world Jewry the Rambam's influence was the greatest. His influence was so great that in certain areas they inserted his name in the Kaddish. They would say, \"בחייכון וביומיכון ובחיי רבינו משה בן מיימון.\" They would say it in the Kaddish. That's the influence and that's the respect that he had from the people around him. Because of different things, besides his being the greatest scholar in his time and he was looked upon as the greatest posek in his time, but he helped Jews in different communities in many different ways. One of the ways was through his letters that he wrote. He wrote many letters and the famous ones are Iggeret Teiman, Iggeret Hashmad. He wrote different letters to different communities helping them in the whole system of the way they were, and for instance in Teiman, in Yemen, they respected him greatly because of the letter that he wrote and that changed their whole outlook on different things and their behavior towards the religion, the other religion that they wanted them to convert, whatever. But the Rambam, he had his influence, I wouldn't say like Moshe Rabbeinu in this way, but it's something that you could use the word ממשה עד משה לא קם כמשה, and the people knew that. The kedushah of the Rambam, the holiness of the Rambam, his madregah is beyond our understanding in what level of kedushah he was. There were Great people who said on the Rambam that had his generation been worthy of Mashiach, he would have been Mashiach. And he was a descendant of David Hamelech, as I said before, so he is from מלכות בית דוד, so he definitely could have been Mashiach. And he would have been Mashiach had that generation been ready for Mashiach, but it wasn't. His kedushah was so great, it says in different ספרים, Chassidut, I don't remember exactly which of the rebbeim said this, that the Rambam, with his שכל אנושי, which means with his human intellect, reached the understanding of עולם הבריאה. You follow? This is something unbelievable. We learn in Chassidut and Kabbalah that there are different spiritual worlds. There is the world called אצילות, which is the highest world, the most godly world. Then you have עולם הבריאה, the next world. Then you have עולם היצירה, all spiritual worlds. Then you have עולם העשיה, and then finally you have the עולם העשיה הגשמי, this physical world. Now, we cannot understand anything that's out of the framework of this physical world, because we have limited physical intellect that we can't understand anything that's beyond. The only knowledge we have in anything that's beyond this physical world is because of the Torah. The Torah tells us, we learn in Kabbalah, we learn in Chassidut different things, and we accept it. It says that this and this goes on in עולם העשיה הרוחני, this and this is what's happening in עולם היצירה, this is what's happening in עולם הבריאה. And עולם הבריאה is a level of, the highest malachim find themselves in this world called עולם הבריאה. So it's only through Torah we could have it. They say on the Rambam that with his שכל אנושי, with his human intellect, he was able to understand the spirituality of this level of עולם הבריאה. Imagine how great that is. There's this, a famous story about the Rambam. We know that one of the things the Rambam writes, which is very controversial, the Rambam writes there is no such thing as שדים, as demons. And a lot of חכמים showed that in the Gemara we learn so much about שדים, how could the Rambam say there's no such thing? And he claimed there isn't, and he writes that in his ספר, he פסקנ'ט like that. He says it's all imaginary things, and there are הלכות concerning the שדים, but it's all imaginary things, it's not really true. The הלכות are concerning the imagination, but not that there are really שדים. And the חכמים in his own town argued with him. So they once said to him, \"There is a ghost house at the end of the city which everyone knew was full of שדים. We'll take you there, we'll show you that it's there. You'll see with your own eyes, there's nothing to discuss. It's not a question whether it's true or not, you'll see it.\" So he said, \"Fine, I'll go.\" When the Rambam came there, there were no שדים. They became נתבטל, they disappeared because of the קדושה of the Rambam. His holiness was so great that when he came there, they weren't there. That's how great the Rambam was. That's why we say ממשה עד משה לא קם כמשה.

One of the things that the Rambam writes in his ספר, besides all the הלכות of הלכות שבת and הלכות פסח and הלכות יום כיפור, all the הלכות that we have on קרבנות, there's one section that the Rambam has which is called הלכות דעות, laws of human behavior, and he talks about a person's diet, what a person should eat and how a person should behave in such manners. And some of the people complained, \"Why would the Rambam insert that into a ספר of הלכות?\" And the answer is that the Rambam stressed this idea that the goal of תורה, Yiddishkeit, is that our human, natural behavior should be absorbed with godliness, with אלוקות. In other words, it's not enough for a person to do mitzvot. When you do a mitzvah, you're doing something godly to begin with. You're putting on tefillin, even though you're using a physical pair of tefillin, but you're doing something godly. If not for godliness, you'd never do it. You got to be crazy to wake up in the morning and take a leather box and strap it around your hand. There's no sensible reason for it. It's to begin with a godly thing. So that's one thing. But then there's another thing: we have to take our natural, physical things that we do, not for any other reason but because our physical needs, that should become holy. And that's what the Rambam did: he put into his ספר the halachot of how to eat. Because when you eat physical food, which is not because it's godly, you eat it because your body needs it, that itself has to be done in a holy way, as the pasuk says, בכל דרכיך דעהו. In all your ways you shall know Him, and כל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים, all your actions should be l'shem shamayim, should be for the sake of Hashem, and this does not mean mitzvot. When it says in all your ways you should know Him, it doesn't mean mitzvot because mitzvot are not your ways. Mitzvot are Hashem's's ways. They're not דרכיך, your ways, they're דרכי השם. When it says כל מעשיך לשם שמים, all your actions should be l'shem shamayim, it doesn't mean mitzvot because mitzvot are not מעשיך, they're not your מעשים, not your deeds, they're מעשי השם. כל מעשיך לשם שמים, all your מעשים should be for the sake of Hashem, means your own, when you eat and when you sleep and when you drink and when you do business. And that's what the Rambam is trying to tell us here, that we have to bring Elokut into the world. And that's how the Rambam himself lived. This was an important point, part of the Rambam, and he lived that way. And this is the way the Rambam himself lived. The Rambam, as I said before, was a doctor, and he occupied a lot of his time with being a doctor. And that's the way he served Hashem. There's a letter from the Rambam's that he writes to the one that translated the ספר, the Sefer HaMitzvot, to Ibn Tibbon. And this Ibn Tibbon wrote to him that he would like to meet the Rambam, because he translated the Rambam's works from Arabic, and the Rambam actually saw it, and the Rambam said it that it was good. There was somebody else who translated other, some of the things of the Rambam and the Rambam was not so happy with it, Alharizi, and the Rambam's's son has a letter saying it's not so exact, not so right, but Ibn Tibbon's's translation the Rambam was happy with. So this Ibn Tibbon writes to the Rambam, \"I'd like to meet you and discuss things with you.\" So the Rambam writes a letter to this Even Tibbon, he says, \"Don't come, I won't see you.\" \"Why not?\" So he says, \"I'll write to you my daily schedule and then tell me if I have time for you.\" And he writes his daily schedule. He says, \"I wake up in the morning, I go to shul and daven, I have a right away a shiur after davenen, then I have to run, I eat something, a khap, like he writes, I just eat something, I have to run to the palace because I have to be there on duty all day. I run to the palace and there I am the doctor for the sultan and the family and the people, I'm busy. Finally, in the afternoon towards the evening, I come home. And guess what? I come home, my house is filled with patients, with people who come to see me, and I want to help them. I hardly,\" he says, \"have time to run and eat something. I treat my patients one after another, which takes a long time, then I run and I eat something, then I have to learn something, and it's already midnight at night, and that's it. The only time I have,\" he says, \"really, really to learn is Shabbos, and I don't want to give that time away, so please don't come because I'm not going to talk to you, I don't have time for you.\" So the Rambam describes that his whole life was involved in being involved in gashmiyus, and this gashmiyus was by him the tool of the way he was mekadesh shem shamayim, the way he brought a kiddush Hashem, and the way he served Hashem. And he served not only the king, he served all the Yidden, because through his position, he helped them in gashmiyus and ruchniyus. He was considered not only the rav of the city and the rav of the community and the whole Galil, the whole area, he was given the title the nagid. The nagid at that time was a person who had, the president of the community was and had connections in the government, and that's what he had. And the Rambam gave away his life and his time all for this. This is why by chasidim the Rambam was very, very special. There was a special, I mean all the גדולי ישראל by all the Yidden, by chasidim and misnagdim, by everybody are holy, and who is more than the Rambam by the whole world, the Rambam, but in the other parts of the world, in the Litvishe part of the world, the Rambam's greatness is his sefer, is the למדות, the scholarship that's there in the sefer. And that's by everybody, by chasidim too. But besides that, the chasidishe rebbes had this special feeling to the Rambam because of what the Rambam stood for. The Rambam stood for this idea of bringing godliness into this physical world. Chasidus, this is a fundamental philosophy in the philosophy of chasidus. Chasidus discusses that the whole purpose of the creation was to bring godliness into this physical world. And that's why in chasidus it says that there is something, from one angle, more, something more special in eating l'shem shamayim and doing business l'shem shamayim even than doing mitzvot. Like I said before, when you do mitzvot, you bring godliness into the physical world, obviously. You take money, you give it tzedakah, you do something holy with a physical object. You put on tefillin, you take a physical object, and you bring holiness into it. But nevertheless, it is to begin with a holy thing, you're doing a mitzvah. But when you're eating, and there is no mitzvah to eat, there's a mitzvah to be healthy, but there's no specific mitzvah that I have to eat this piece of bread. Pesach to eat matzah is a mitzvah. But to eat breakfast every morning, the piece of bread I put in my mouth is no mitzvah. So Chassidus says that when you eat that l'shem Shamayim, then you're really bringing godliness into this world, more even, from one angle, more even than when you put on the tefillin. And this is what the Rambam stood for. And that's probably the reason the Rebbe introduced the learning of Rambam, the Rebbe did, because the Rambam is something holy besides the scholarship, but what what the Rambam stood for. And this is one of the reasons it says that learning Rambam hastens the coming of Mashiach. And this is one of the reasons why the Rambam himself would have been Mashiach, according to those גדולי ישראל that said that, because what is the idea of Mashiach? The idea of Mashiach is, as people, not exactly as people think. People think Mashiach will come and we'll have a good time, everything will be fine, which is true, but that's not really what it is. When Mashiach will come, the pasuk says, ״ונגלה כבוד ה׳״ - the glory of Hashem will be revealed - ״וראו כל בשר יחדו כי פי ה׳ דבר״ - all flesh will see that Hashem spoke. The flesh, the physical flesh, is going to be permeated with the words of Hashem. The gashmiyut will become holy. And this is the purpose of creation. We know that Mashiach is the climax of the creation. The purpose of creation is נתאוה הקדוש ברוך הוא להיות לו דירה בתחתונים. Hashem desired to have a dwelling place in this low world, in this גשמיותדיקע world. Hashem has all these higher spiritual worlds with malachim, angels, and all kinds of things up there. That's not what He wanted. That's all a stepping stone to come down to this world. And this is what He wanted, to make a dwelling place in this world, the gashmiyut of the world should become holy. And that will happen when Mashiach will come. So the Rambam lived that way, and the Rambam in his sefer brings out this point.

From all this it comes out, you see this great importance of the sefer of the Rambam and what the Rambam stands for. And therefore it is very important to learn the Rambam. Besides the fact that when you learn Rambam you learn the whole Torah, because the Rambam includes contains the whole Torah. The מקובלים write that if you learn Rambam, it's a segulah not to have to come down again in gilgul. We know that for certain things a person has to come down again to this world, his neshamah has to come again into what we call, I hate to use this word because it sounds goyish, but reincarnation, but the real way it's by way we know it. So it says it's a segulah, to learn Rambam is a segulah not to have to come down again to this world, because bichlal a neshamah is not happy with it, neshamah would rather not do it, so, but many times it happens, but if you learn Rambam it's a segulah not it shouldn't happen. And as I said before, learning Rambam is a segulah for זריזות הגאולה, for bringing Mashiach. We know that the Rambam's name is hinted in the Torah, the sefarim write that, and it's in connection to geulah, to redemption. In Parashat Bo, when it talks about the redemption from Mitzrayim, Hashem said: I'm doing this - He gave the plagues to the Egyptians - saying, ״למען רבות מופתי בארץ מצרים״, which means in order to multiply My miracles in the land of Mitzrayim. So the four words, ״רבות מופתי בארץ מצרים״, the first letters of these four words makes Rambam. ״רבות״ is the רי״ש, ״מופתי״ is the מ״ם, ״בארץ״ is the בי״ת, ״מצרים״ is the other מ״ם, it's Rambam. And they bring this that this is a hint to the Rambam. And this is a pasuk that deals with Yetziat Mitzrayim, with the redemption. So the Rambam has to do with redemption, not only from Mitzrayim, but the redemption of this galut, which is a continuation of the redemption from Mitzrayim. So learning Rambam is connected to the redemption, besides the fact that in the Rambam we have hidden the The deepest concepts of Kabbalah. And many people don't know that, I would say most people don't know that. As a matter of fact, many people would argue it. There are people who claim that it's not so. There is a whole discussion in different places whether the Rambam actually learned Kabbalah or not. There are some that say that the Rambam did not learn Kabbalah, and they usually talk about the Rambam versus the Ramban, that the Ramban writes a lot of Kabbalah, and the Rambam doesn't, so they write that the Ramban learned Kabbalah, was a mekubal, while the Rambam wasn't. But we have a tradition from the Baal Shem Tov that the Rambam did learn Kabbalah. And there are a lot of sources to certain things that the Rambam writes in the Zohar. Some want to say that the Rambam never saw the Zohar, but if you look, you see a lot of things their source of the Rambam is from the Zohar. Just to give one example, the first halachah of the Rambam, the first, first words of the Rambam are taken, basically, word for word from the Zohar in Parashat Vaera. Just that Rambam is written in Hebrew, the Zohar is written in Aramaic, so there it's in Aramaic and here it's in Hebrew. But if you follow the words, יסוד היסודות ועמוד החכמות is the foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is this first being, and everything that's from heaven and earth and in between all came from this first being, this expression is written in the in the Zohar, Parashat Vaera. And there are other things. But the mekubalim said, not all mekubalim, but from the Baal Shem Tov we know, that the halachot in the Rambam contain the secrets of the Torah, but covered up. The Rambam covered it up for whatever reason he had at that time, not to reveal it. Even the Moreh Nevuchim, the guide to the perplexed, which has philosophy, and certainly some say, \"Well, that's philosophy, that's not really according to the 100% of what Torah says.\" What the Rambam writes in that sefer is based on Kabbalah. There are a lot of things in Moreh Nevuchim that we find in Kabbalah that explain what the Rambam means. They don't refer to the Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim, but we look, we see that this is what the Rambam meant. So basically, the Rambam is, when you learn Rambam, you're learning Kabbalah in a hidden form. And we know that this is also something that has to do with Mashiach, because it says in the Zohar that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said that with this sefer of the Zohar we're going to go out of the galut. So those sefarim which are connected to Kabbalah are sefarim that will lead us out of the galut, and the Rambam is one of them. So based on all this, it is very important and very special to be part of learning the Rambam, understanding what the Rambam is and what it stands for. The only thing is, some might ask that to learn Rambam, being that they're only halachot, there are no discussions, no questions, no answers, it is very dry. While, you learn Gemara, it's geshmak! You understand? It's a question and an answer, there is a lot of depth. Here, you learn dry halachot. Which is true, from that, looking at it from that perspective, it is true. But from another perspective, the fact that this is a sefer only of halachot, it is much deeper than if it's a sefer which deals with discussions, and I'll explain why. When we learn something and we understand it, and we ask questions and answers, we have what we call הבנה והשגה, we have an understanding, we're not dealing with the essence. Understanding is not the essence of the person. That's only one aspect of the person. The רצון, the will, the ability, the will power of a person, that is the essence of the person. And we apply that to Hashem, too. The wisdom of Hashem, which is the Torah, is the wisdom, that's one aspect. The halachot, that's the will of Hashem. The halachot are Hashem wants you to do this, wants you to do that, so it's the will. The will is the essence. And not to go into that subject now, because that's a different subject altogether, but in chasidut we learn, and it's taken from pesukim, that the will of a person is the essence of the person. That's why the word nefesh, which means the life, the soul, also means the will. When it says, אם יש את נפשכם, when Avraham Avinu said to the Bnei Chet when he wanted to buy the Me'arat Hamachpelah, and he wanted them to speak to Efron, he said to them, אם יש את נפשכם, which means if you would want, please speak to Efron. So he didn't say if you have the רצון, which means will, he used the word, if you have your nefesh, because will is the nefesh. So when we're dealing with shakla vetarya discussion of different things in Torah, we have the wisdom of Hashem. But when we deal with strict halacha, which is the will of Hashem, that's not the wisdom, that's the essence of Hashem. That's why the halachot of Torah are called the כתר תורה. The crown of Torah refers to the halachot of Torah, not to the discussions which are part of Torah. We know that when we have discussions and arguments in the Gemara, it's all Torah. And the Gemara says, אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים, these and these are the words of the live God. When you have an argument between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, countless where they argue, one is according to halacha, one not, but they're both the words of God. But which name of Hashem does the Gemara use? אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים. It uses the name Elokim. Now, we know that among the names of Hashem, the two most important ones are Elokim, but the one on top of that is Havayah, י-ק-ו-ק. It says in the Gemara that the word Havayah refers to halacha. Speaks about David HaMelech, and it describes what David HaMelech looked like, then the last description is והוי׳ עמו, that Havayah was with him. And the Gemara says that means that הלכה כמותו בכל מקום, that the halacha was like him. And where do we see the halacha was like David? Because it says the word Havayah was with him. So what do we see here? That when it deals with discussions and arguments, which is part of the Torah, part of the words of Hashem, it's part of the words of Elokim. It uses the name Elokim. But when we talk about the halacha, we use the name Havayah, and the name Havayah is known as to be the שם העצם, the essential name of Hashem. So halachot is more essential than the discussions that we have. Not that we're chas v'shalom trying to show that one part of Torah is more important than the other, or minimizing the importance of learning Gemara, but what I'm trying to do is just bring out the importance of learning halacha. So, on one hand, learning halacha is very dry and it doesn't have that whole pleasure that you have when you have discussions and questions, but on the other hand, the crown of Torah is the halacha, which is the Rambam. The essence of Hashem is more in the halachot of it than what we have in the discussions in the Gemara. And the same is concerning us, that which part of us is more involved? The essence of us, is it in the Gemara, or is in the halacha? It's in the halacha. Because in the Gemara, when we use our שכל to understand, it is only our intellect that's involved in the Torah. But when we learn halacha, there is not much intellect there. It's just dry facts. But that is something that we know we're supposed to do. That is more what we call kabalat ol, accepting facts from Hashem without involvement of our own pleasure or our own selves. So that is our true self-nullification toward Hashem when we have the halacha more than what we have in the Gemara. And this is all in the Rambam, which we have more than we have in other sefarim. But the bottom line, after all this is said and done, is just trying to bring out the greatness not only of the person HaRambam, but of the sefer of Rambam, which is called Mishneh Torah. Why is it called Mishneh Torah? Interesting thing. Mishneh Torah means second to the Torah. Second to the Torah, because, as the Rambam wrote, yes, you can learn Chumash, and second to the Torah, the תורה שבעל פה, is the Rambam. There is the other name, Yad Hachazakah. Why is it called Yad Hachazakah? The word Yad Hachazakah means the strong hand. But the reason it's called Yad Hachazakah, because there are 14 sections to the Rambam, and יד is י״ד, which is 14. So this is the strong 14, so it's the Yad Hachazakah. But that's not the name given by the Rambam. Actually, it's not even clear at what time in history this name started. But the name that the Rambam gave it was Mishneh Torah. So the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam is such a ספר which is קבלה, has the רצון of Hashem, and has the whole Torah. And by doing learning this, we have the the the all the מעלות that we could imagine in having in learning Torah. And especially looking at the person Rambam, who he was and what he accomplished, and what kind of נשמה he had, certainly when we learn Rambam, we connect ourself to the Rambam, this is certainly something very great. And therefore, the bottom line is that every person should start participating in learning Rambam. Yes, questions. Okay. Did the Rambam write anything about his doctorship and remedies? Yes. No, the Rambam wrote books on medicine, too. Yes. And he wrote Yeah, there are books on medicine written by the Rambam, and the Rambam even wrote an oath for doctors to take when they get their license or whatever you call it. Well, nowadays this is the... Yes. Yes. A wife and children, but there's one son that's the famous one. His name was Avraham, and he's known as Rabbeinu Avraham ben HaRambam. And there are different ספרים that he wrote, and a lot of the things that questions that people asked concerning what the Rambam writes, many of them were answered by the Rambam's son, by Rabbeinu Avraham. Well, there are people who their last name is Maimon. I think they are descendants of the Rambam. Yes. Yes. Yeah, well we can't talk about everything. Okay, I'll just mention it, that one of the things that Rambam did was he was the one that categorized the 13 principles of faith, the י״ג עיקרים. He wrote them in the Peirush Hamishnayot, and from there it was taken to the 13 אני מאמינס, but it was the Rambam that did it. He like crystallized these 13 things. It's all taken from the Rambam.