kabbalist

And of course, this isn't something that...

That's Mekubal, not in these days, but the Messiah talks about ice baths and all these different afflictions that a person could bring to his body to atone, which is the derekh, the custom, the practice of chassidim, pious, real pious tzaddikim, chassidim.

When a person, quote-unquote, he gives up, he sacrifices, in a sense, his own body.

That can be with fasting, it could be with afflictions, but that is the mindset of a tzaddik, that they want to afflict, they want to mitigate as much as possible any sort of punishment in the next world, and they'd rather take it down here.

So clearly you have to get a grant and find some people to test it out.

Daff al-Haddaf on our Gemara quotes Rav Shlomo Eliezer Al-Pandri, who is a Mekubal from Tzfat, and I brought it for you in Beis.

He says, The Shlomo Eliezer Al-Pandri said regarding wine, Quoting our Gemara, He says it's the mind of Zikanim who are good with it.

That's what Agamara said.

There's a lot of it around, unfortunately, and one has to be very careful.

I believe it was a family member of mine told me he was by Rebbe Chaim when someone was asking him about a specific Mekubal, what does the Rav think about him? So he goes, and that was it.

Yeah, someone once went to the stapler, he had been to a palm reader and they told him they saw in his palm all sorts of things and then he began to see things himself in his own palm and the stapler was very upset and told him it's all nonsense, he was offered to think about it and take no notice of it whatsoever.

Really? Someone was telling me last week, because I was discussing this with a few friends that were going to be doing it.

Could you do that? The Gemara says no, because the Mishnah just said, it doesn't say you could get rid of her, or not get remarried.

The Gemara says, Even though a person has many, many children, And now he says, I'm retired now, I want to close shop and go to Tzfat and become a Mekubal and leave me alone.

I don't want to be married anymore.

You're not allowed to remain without a wife.

He was the official scribe of the Kloiz Obrody.

And this manuscript is a rendition of the Pri Eitz Chaim of Chaim Vital, the second portion of it, uh, which is, uh, which was edited by Meir Poppers, you know, an important 17th century Mekubal, a Kabbalist, and it's unknown from any other source.

This manuscript just went hand through hand through different owners.

It ended up, uh, in somebody's hand who was not aware of its significance.

As I mentioned at the outset, this machloket of Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish has, is relevant to a halakhic issue as to the certain aspects of tumah and taharah in Eretz Yisrael.

So I have to say that it is gratifying to find somebody of slightly greater stature than myself who makes this very point, and someone that you would not cons- you would not accuse of being too liberal, and that is the Ben Ish Chai, the great Mekubal, in his Ben Yehoyada to that very passage in the Gemara.

To read his language, he says, "Nira li besiyat haDeshma," it seems to me, "kol hanach kushiot shemakshim min ma'amar haNizkar." All the questions asked from the teaching of Rabbi Bar Bar Chanah about the size of the Re'em, "hu kipulpula ba'alma mishamyag lo tov v'yadir." It's just, um, a pilpul.

It's just discussion for the sake of discussion.

But Kabbalah existed then.

If Haigan was a Mekubal, and, uh, then the, uh, the, the son of the Rav, the Rabbi Yitzchak Ginow was a Mekubal, and so forth.

This is before the Zayor, right? Choysid nista beyameihem.

It was concealed in their days.

And a few hundred people had, had created a community in Tzfat.

He was a Mekubal before there were Mekubalim in Tzfat.

And, uh, and that's where the Radvaz goes, and he learns under this Rav Saragossa.

We don't really know much about what he learned, but we do know that his, um, that his genius sort of started to take hold or, or, or to, to become a little more well-known because he makes his way ultimately to- As David pointed out, he actually goes to Fez, Morocco on his way, but he goes to, uh, ultimately to Cairo.

You told him something, they told him about, "This guy down the street, he's copying you.

He's dressing up like a Mekubal, and people are going to him for blessings.

They give him money." [laughs] Didn't have-- he didn't upset him in the least.

"What? He's gonna take, he's gonna take my job away?" [laughs] He's not gonna take anything away from me.