This is actually the first time in my life that I've spoken about the topic of Israel. And one of the things that I found disturbing, actually, was that as I began thinking about this issue and trying to do some research, one of the places I turned aside from my library was this thing called the Internet. And I mentioned this when I was beginning my talk here a few months ago about the Talmud. That if you try doing any kind of research on the Talmud on Google or anywhere else on the Internet, almost all of the articles that come up on the first few pages of your Google search will be about how the Talmud is the most satanic book in the world and it's the most evil book in the world. You don't really find anything truly accurate about the Talmud until you start digging down a bit, drilling down into the Google search. And what I found as well when I was just poking around to see where we can learn about the significance of Israel, what is special about Israel on the Internet, which is today where frankly speaking most people do their learning and their research, almost all of the material that I found was written from either a Christian or Islamic perspective. And it really wasn't so easy to find Jewish material on this topic. That's one of the reasons why tonight's program was difficult for me. And I want to share at the outset tonight another reason why I had difficulties with this topic. One of the greatest personalities in medieval Spanish Jewry was Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. He was born in Toledo, Spain, Toledo, Spain in 1075 and was a practicing physician as well as a successful businessman. He achieved his fame in the Jewish world as a poet fairly early in life. He has over 800 poems that we know about today and there were probably others that were lost. His poems deal with a wide range of subjects. Some are liturgical and we actually still sing them at our Shabbat tables and at other occasions. But his most famous poems are referred to as Shirei Tsiyon, songs about Zion. And they describe Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's incredibly passionate love and appreciation for the land of Israel. He is best known to us for his monumental work of Jewish philosophy known as the Kuzari. He completed the Kuzari at the end of his life after working on it for 20 years and it purports to record a dialogue between the 8th century king of the Khazars which was a people living in southern Russia between the Black and Caspian seas. So there was a dialogue that took place between this king and a rabbi. What happened was the king of the Khazars was seeking the true religion and he invited to his court representatives of Christianity, representatives of Islam and this rabbi, the representative of Judaism. At the end of this process the rabbis arguments appealed most to the king and he and his entire nation ended up converting to Judaism. There are people who think this is just a mythological story but a significant number of scholars and historians actually ascribe some credibility to this account.  In the second part, the second essay of the Kuzari, the king asks the rabbi about the land of Israel and the rabbi launches into a long discussion about how special the land of Israel is, how unique it is and how holy it is. But then the king challenges the rabbi and he questions the rabbi's fidelity to the land of Israel and his sincerity and he asks rhetorically to the rabbi that if Israel is really so important and Jews have yearned for centuries to live in Israel, why is it that the rabbi isn't living there and the rabbi humbly responds to the king, you have shamed me king of Kuzaria and unfortunately the rabbi confesses that this has been a pattern for much of Jewish history. After we were exiled to Babylon after our first temple was destroyed four or five hundred years before the common era, we were in exile in Babylon for seventy years and finally we were permitted to return. The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, the king of Persia allowed the Jews to return to Israel but the prophet the book of Nechemia in our Bible records that only forty two thousand three hundred and sixty Jews returned to Israel. The vast majority remained in exile and the rabbi speaking with the king of the Kuzars acknowledges that this ambivalence between talking the talk about the importance of Israel and walking the walk is embarrassing. Now Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi was chronicling the dialogue that supposedly took place three hundred years earlier. This was not a dialogue between himself and the king of the Kuzars. He's merely chronicling this discussion that took place earlier. However, it's pretty clear that he himself probably felt similarly conflicted. Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi spent almost all of his life living in Spain and from a young age he already expressed his yearnings for Israel in his poetry and in his writings and yet somehow despite all of his strong feelings for Israel and his yearnings to go there he still remained in Spain. His great love for Israel finally moved him to undertake the arduous and dangerous journey to Israel from Spain in what turned out to be the last year of his life. At the age of sixty five in the year eleven forty he and his companions arrived in Alexandria Egypt from Spain. Now it's not clear based upon historical sources whether he ever made it to Israel from Alexandria. He may have died there and been buried there. Some say he might have reached Damascus in Syria but according to a very popular legend Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi did make it to Jerusalem and as he kneeled on the ground to kiss the stones reciting one of his poems, Siyon HaLotishali, Zion will you not inquire which we recite every Tisha Ba'av in our synagogues when we commemorate the destruction of both the first and second temple. An Arab horseman trampled him to death and he was killed there on the spot. Now I have to confess that as I was thinking about this talk and preparing for it I was strongly confronted by my own dissonance about the land of Israel. Truth be told I felt this way for many years and it seems obvious to me that any thoughtful Jew living in the diaspora today needs to seriously contemplate what we are doing here. There is a substantial amount of literature regarding whether or not there is actually a biblical commandment to move to Israel. We are not going to explore that in any great detail tonight. Nachmanides, Rabbi Moshe Benachman wrote a very important commentary to Maimonides' the Ram Bomb, Sefer Hamitzvot, his book of commandments where Maimonides enumerates the 613 biblical commandments. Nachmanides was surprised that the Ram Bomb did not include as a commandment the obligation to go to Israel and settle the land. Nachmanides and many others definitively rule that the obligation to settle the land of Israel was not just a directive to the Israelites coming out of Egypt but that it is obligatory for all time. Some commentaries maintain that even though Maimonides did not classify the obligation of making aliyah, of going to settle the land of Israel as a biblical commandment, he may have considered it to be a rabbinic commandment. Others say it still may have been a biblical commandment but didn't make it into the list of 613 commandments where Moshe Feinstein who was the great Halachic authority of the 20th century seemed to understand that immigrating to Israel is a mitzvah ki-yumit rather than a mitzvah ki-yuvit. I'll explain that in a moment. A mitzvah ki-yuvit means an obligatory commandment and that's what Nachmanides and others seem to rule that we today have a religious obligation to leave the exile and move to Israel. Where Moshe Feinstein seems to understand that going to Israel is not an obligatory commandment but what he refers to as a mitzvah ki-yuvit meaning that you do fulfill a spiritual act if you go but there is no absolute obligation to go. For example, there is no absolute obligation today to eat meat and slaughter the animal according to the biblical laws of slaughter. We have laws in the Bible about how to slaughter an animal but there is no absolute obligation to do that. In the same way we have laws of divorce. There's no obligation to get divorced so that you can fulfill the laws of divorce. If you happen to get divorced the Bible explains how you are to do it and if you fulfill the biblical laws of giving a divorce according to the laws of the Bible you fulfill the biblical commandment. The same with eating meat. If you're going to eat meat and you slaughter the animal properly you have fulfilled the biblical obligation and so Moshe Feinstein seems to say similarly there is no absolute obligation to pick up and move to the land of Israel but if you go there you have fulfilled a very very critical and important religious precept. Regardless of whether or not there is an absolute obligation to pick up and move to Israel we're going to see tonight that our Torah and our rabbinic sources speak about the land of Israel in the highest terms as the optimal place for Jews to live and as an awesomely special place. Some of our sources say that the mitzvah of going to Israel is considered like you fulfilled all the other commandments in the Torah. Similar to for example Shabbat where our sages say if you properly observe Shabbat it's as if you fulfilled all the commandments of the Torah. Our sages teach that it's better to live in the land of Israel in a city of all non-Jews than to live outside of Israel in a city of all Jews. Shlaw teaches that if a woman who's married wants to move to Israel she can basically force her husband to go and if he refuses to go she's able to divorce him and collect the settlement of her marriage contract. Likewise if the husband wants to move to Israel and the wife does not want to move he is able to divorce her and not pay her any money for her katubah. We have many many laws in our literature and our halachic codes which speak very clearly about the preeminence of the land of Israel. At a minimum every Jewish person living in the diaspora should at least be sensitive to think about what we're doing here. There may be many reasons even legitimate reasons why a particular person or family are not able to move to Israel at the present time and it may not be advisable for them to move at the present time. But as Rabbi Yehuda Levi wrote in one of his famous poems, Libi Bemisrach, my heart is in the east and Israel should always be on our horizon. The land of Israel becomes relevant at the very beginning of the Torah itself. Writing around 1,000 years ago in France, Rashi Rabbi Shlomo Bemisrach the preeminent commentary to our Bible questions why the Torah begins with the account of creation. Our Bible begins in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and Rashi wonders if the Torah is a book of religious instruction, the word Torah itself means instruction. So if the Torah is the book of instructions that God gave the Jewish people for how we are to live, why doesn't the Torah begin with the first commandment that God gave the Jewish people, which appears in the book of Exodus chapter 12, the commandment to sanctify the new moon. Rashi suggests that's where the Torah should begin. Who needs to hear about the creation of the world? So Rashi explains in his answer that the reason that the Torah begins with creation is to establish that as the creator of the world God owns the entire world, the entire world belongs to him. And therefore he can determine according to his will who he will apportion various parts of the world too. And therefore since God determined to give the land of Israel to the Jewish people, Rashi says that the creation of the world is what gives God the ability legally so to speak as the owner of the world to promise the land of Israel to the children of Israel. Our story begins in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1 where God says to Abram, go for yourself lech lecha from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. This is the beginning of our national story, the beginning of the Jewish narrative. And it begins with, in the very first verse, God's telling Abraham to go to the promised land. The very first moment of our destiny begins with a directive to go to the land of Israel. And then God says in verse 2 of chapter 12, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. Abraham then travels to the land of Canaan, which was called back then. And in verse 7 of chapter 12 we are told that the Almighty appeared to Abram and said to your offspring, I will give this land. Abraham then ends up going down to Egypt as a famine in Israel, but he returns soon afterward. And God repeats the promise of the land in chapter 13 verses 14 to 17. The Almighty said to Abraham, raise now your eyes and look out from where you are, northward, southward, eastward, and westward.  Arise, walk about the land through its length and breath, for to you I will give it. So from the very beginning of the story of our people, there is an intimate connection between the destiny of our people and the land of Israel. In Genesis chapter 15, God promises Abram that he will have offspring, and that they as well will inherit the land. So in Genesis chapter 15 verse 7, God says, I am Hashem who brought you out of Ur-Kazdim to give you the land to inherit it. Abram is then instructed to take various animals and birds, to cut them in half, to lay them side by side, and this will become the sign of a covenant that God is going to make with him. And in chapter 15 verse 18, it says that on that day Hashem made a covenant with Abram saying to your descendants, have I given this land from the river of Egypt to the Great River? And then two chapters later in Genesis chapter 17, we read that Abram at the age of 99 is given the covenant of circumcision by God to seal this relationship with Abram and his descendants.  Abram's name is then changed to Abraham and his son is born to him and to his wife Sarah. The son is named Isaac and God repeats the promise of the land to Isaac as well. There was a famine in Canaan but God tells Isaac in Genesis chapter 26 verses 2 to 3, do not descend to Egypt. Dwell in this land and I'll be with you and bless you. For to you and your offspring will I give all of these lands and establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. Again as the story proceeds from the very birth of the Jewish people we see God is constantly reiterating the connection of the people to the land. The same promise is then made and given to Isaac's son Jacob in Genesis chapter 35 verses 9 to 12. God appeared to Jacob and blessed him. He says your name will not always be called Jacob but Israel will be your name and the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you and to your offspring after you I will give the land. When the children of Israel are later enslaved in Egypt God says to Moses to redeem them and in Exodus chapter 3 verse 8 God says I will come down to rescue them from the hand of Egypt and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land to a land flowing with milk and honey. Most of the narrative of the rest of the five books of Moses, the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy basically focuses on the journey of the children of Israel from Egypt to the promised land. That is the basic narrative of the five books of Moses. Tragically Moses is not allowed to enter the land at the end of his life. God allowed him to look at the land from the top of Mount Nevo. The five books of Moses ends with God poignantly telling Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 34 verse 4 this is the land that I swore to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob saying I will give it to your descendants. The rest of the Bible starting with the next book of Joshua and the rest of Jewish history after the completion of the Bible is the story of the children of Israel coming into the land settling the land being exiled from the land after the first temples destroyed about 400 BCE returning from exile once again settling the land and then being exiled once again when the Romans destroyed the second temple in the year 70 and ultimately the modern story of our return to the land of Israel in 19th and 20th centuries after almost 2,000 years of exile. I should point out by the way that we were never fully exiled from the land. Throughout our history there are always some Jewish people living in the land of Israel. Now we understand that God chose the land of Israel for his chosen nation but what is so special about this land? We know that when God told Moses that he wouldn't go into the land Moses did not just acquiesce. In Deuteronomy chapter 3 verses 23 and 25 we're told Moses says I beseeched God at that time saying let me pass through and see the good land and according to our sages Moses prayed 515 prayers to be able to go into the land of Israel Rabbi Nathan Shapiro was the chief rabbi of Krakow and he was born in 1591 one of the greatest cabalists in Poland at that time. He wrote a work called Megaleh Amukot revealing of profound matters or the revelation of profound matters and in this book what he does is he explores 252 different arguments used by Moses to explain why he craved to enter into the land of Israel. Obviously this is a very special land. We're not going to go through all 252 arguments tonight but we'll go through some of them. The Talmud the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Sota 14a explores one of the most significant aspects of the land of Israel. Rabbi Simlai expounded why did Moses our teacher desire to enter the land of Israel? What was so important about going into the land of Israel? And the Talmud asks rhetorically did he want to eat of its fruits or be satisfied with its goodness? Was Moses simply interested in some of the physical bounty of the land of Israel? And the Talmud answers surely not but this is what Moses said. Israel was given many mitzvot many commandments that can only be fulfilled in the land of Israel. Moses said I want to enter the land of Israel so that I could be I should be able to fulfill all of those commandments. One of the aspects of Israel that is most significant is that it's only in the land of Israel that we are able to fulfill the entirety of the Torah. For example there are 58 agricultural laws that apply specifically to the land of Israel that don't apply to living outside of Israel. And there are many other laws that apply specifically to the land of Israel the commandment to appoint a king for the Jewish nation all the laws that surround the Jewish army many many other laws we are able to observe only if we're living in the land of Israel. I should point out that according to Nachmanides by the way and several other sources all commandments were given primarily and specifically to be observed in the land of Israel. It's not just that there are specific commandments like the agricultural laws of the sabbatical year or the different tithes that apply to the land of Israel specifically. Nachmanides says that even putting on philin even observing Shabbat were specifically given to the Jewish people so they could observe those commandments in the land of Israel and Nachmanides maintains that outside of Israel it's not a full commandment we're only keeping it outside of Israel as practice so that we won't forget how to do these commandments so we can go back to Israel and ultimately keep them fully. Outside of Israel it's like training wheels or like being in basic training in the army. It's not the real thing outside of Israel. Now this view is not universally accepted but we should realize that this view is an important view and it says something about the dimensions of what makes the land of Israel special. Another issue that's discussed in our literature is the special and intrinsic holiness of the land of Israel a unique holiness that applies specifically to that land. According to the Kuzari or B'yuhudah levi in the Kuzari when Cain was punished by God to wander the earth after he killed his brother Abel and the verse says that Cain went out from before the Lord. B'yuhudah levi says this means that he was banished from the land of Israel and later when the prophet Jonah left the land of Israel the bible describes it as a flight away from God it says in the book of Jonah chapter one verse three and Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from before Hashem and so according to Yudah levi being in Israel is considered to be being before Hashem. In Israel you are living in the presence of God outside of Israel you are not before God. So even though the entire world belongs to God only the land of Israel specifically is referred to as God's land. We see that many times in the bible for example the prophet Joel in chapter four verse two God says Israel is my land. He doesn't describe Monsi or Toronto as my land. To go a little bit deeper according to Kabbalistic teaching the special holiness associated with the land of Israel is connected to the process through which the world itself was created. When anything is created it results in a separation and a distance from its creator for example before the birth of a fetus it is part of its mother it's nourished by the mother it is literally at one with the mother. At birth the infant becomes a separate being from the mother. Similarly when an artisan makes something it becomes an object separate from the imagination of the artist or the craftsman. At first it is an idea that is contained within the imagination of the artist but then the painting or the statue the bust becomes a distinct object separate from its maker. According to the Svasemes who was a brilliant Hasidic master when God created the world the world became separated from God and that's why the bible begins Bereishit Barah Bereishit in the beginning Barah created and the Svasemes points out that the word Barah contains the word Bar. The word Bar means outside. So he reads this phrase Bereishit Barah as in the beginning something became outside or separate from God. The Kabbalists explain that the physical world is too fragile to contain God's essence. It would be like plugging a vacuum cleaner directly into a nuclear power plant. Don't try that at home. So the Kabbalists explain that to enable God to be present or manifest in our world his holiness went through a series of separations in order to so to speak dilute his holiness like a series of step down generators and transformers that will finally enable us to plug our computer into a wall socket without frying its insides. Now each of these spiritual layers that descend one after the other that devolve from one layer above it to a layer below it as you go from one layer to the next layer it becomes further distanced from the creator and therefore it contains a decreased intensity of the spiritual. After an incredible number of these devolved layers God's essence was finally diluted to the point where physical matter could come into existence. We see this detachment and separateness in the Hebrew word for the word world. In the Hebrew world is olam and olam means hidden or concealed because ultimately the creator is concealed in the world we inhabit. We don't see God. We don't immediately sense his presence in a visceral way like you can see the person next to you here tonight. The creator is concealed in this world. Again if God was not concealed the world couldn't handle his presence. For example we wouldn't have free will. You wouldn't have free will if God's presence was immediately evident to you. You would not be able to steal something. You would not be able to violate his will. His presence would overwhelm us and so this process of stepping down God's presence to become less and less and less intense and holy and spiritual to allow it to finally become part of our world allowed us to be human beings. We don't experience God's reality full force but we experience him in a greatly diluted and reduced manner. It's actually not possible to perceive God's presence unless either you are very sensitive to spirituality or you work very hard at trying to perceive his presence. Otherwise it's not going to be possible. According to our mystical literature the land of Israel was the first place to devolve from the last entirely spiritual layer that preceded it. So again there were a series of layers many many many layers going from God all the way down less and less and less spiritual until that final layer that allowed the physical world to emanate and that first emanation of the physical world from the spiritual was the land of Israel. The rest of the earth devolved into places of less spirituality less dense spirituality than land of Israel. So this is what is meant when we learn that Israel is closer to God and has a denser spirituality than other places. That's what it means when it says when you're in Israel you are in the presence of God. The Svasemmes provides an example to illustrate this. One of the 613 commandments we have is to thank God for our food after we've eaten the meal. It's one of the commandments of the Torah. The source for this commandment is found in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 8 and I'm going to read you the source.  That's chapter 8 verses 7 through 10. Now the Svasemmes points out that what's unusual about this passage is that the Torah does not use an imperative form for you shall bless. It's not put into a command form that you shall bless as a commandment. It uses rather the future form merely observing that indeed you will bless. It's almost a prediction not a commandment and the Svasemmes explains that this commandment comes as we saw in the context of a passage describing the magnificence of the land of Israel. Therefore as a place where God's presence is palpable and more accessible and more easily experienced the Torah is basically saying that you will undoubtedly come to bless God for your food on your own without the need of an explicit commandment. You won't need to be commanded because living in Israel you will feel God's presence and you understand intuitively that you should thank him for your food. Another example of the special spiritual nature of the land of Israel is that it is specifically and specially suited as a place that cultivates prophecy. According to Abiodah Levy in the Kusari, different places in the world are suitable to produce certain crops more than others. We know there are certain places in the world that are really great for producing grape wine or grapes or olives. Not everything grows equally all over the world and so because of Israel's connection to God and intense spirituality what it produces is prophecy and prophets and he observes that virtually every single prophet in our history either lived in Israel or prophesied about Israel. The Torah states that God's involvement with the land of Israel is more intense than elsewhere. God's involvement with Israel is different than his involvement with other places in the world. In Deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 12 it says Israel is a land that Hashem your God scrutinizes constantly. The eyes of Hashem your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year until the end of the year. According to Moshe Chaim Lutzato the Ramchal in his book Derech Hashem, The Way of God, what this means is that God oversees the rest of the world with a general providence and God supervises the rest of the world by delegating that supervision to different angelic forces. But the land of Israel God supervises directly without delegating it to any other power in the world. So God's providence over the land of Israel is direct unmodified supervision. Another manifestation of God's connection to the land of Israel is that the land of Israel is extremely sensitive to the behavior of those people living there. The Torah says in a number of places that if we violate the moral and spiritual laws of the Torah the land itself will vomit us out in the same way that if you eat food that is not agreeable to you and it's not good for you your stomach will regurgitate it so that the food will not harm your body. So in the same way we're told that the land of Israel is a very sensitive land. The land itself cannot tolerate certain moral and spiritual sins and if we violate those standards the land itself will regurgitate us, will vomit us out. The Bible uses very colorful language there but on purpose. Now these are just a few of the numerous illustrations of the special nature of the land of Israel. I'll mention just one more. Our sages teach that in the Talmud the air and the atmosphere of Israel itself makes one wise. Just being in Israel and imbibing the atmosphere and the air of Israel makes you wise and that's why the Talmud teaches that the land of Israel is the prime place for studying the Torah. As our sages say there is no Torah like the Torah of the land of Israel. Land of Israel is not just the place where each individual Jew is able to actualize their individual potential but it's the vehicle chosen by God to actualize the potential of the chosen people. When we go back to the beginning of our national story we read before in Genesis chapter 12. God did not just choose Abraham to be a separate nation. At the very beginning of our history God says to Abraham that you're being chosen for a purpose. God says to Abraham that you will become a blessing and that the entire earth will be blessed by you. God says to us, to our people immediately, the purpose you are being chosen for is to bring blessing to the rest of the world.   So to God says to the entire people of Israel you are to be priests, teachers, to the rest of the world. The Torah itself is given in the desert in a public place that's ownerless. It wasn't given in the land of Israel where you would think maybe that's what a Torah should have been given in the land of Israel but no. The Torah is specifically given in an ownerless place in a desert to teach us that it is relevant to the entire world and not just to the Jewish people. And before entering the land of Israel Moses is told to inscribe the Torah on large stones. In Deuteronomy chapter 27 verse 8 he's told to inscribe these words of the Torah Be'erhete very clearly. And the Talmud teaches in Traktate Sota 35b that means that you're to translate the Torah into 70 languages for the 70 nations of the world. Every nation has some relevance to the Torah. The prophet Isaiah teaches us in chapter 2 verse 3 Kimetsion Tetsetorah with Devar Hashem and Yerushalayim because Adam's Zion will go forth the Torah. It's going forth to the rest of the world. And the word of Hashem from Jerusalem. Famously Isaiah teaches in chapter 42 verse 6 and 49 verse 6 that you Israel are to be and or Lagoyim a light unto the nations of the world. This is the incredibly vital mission that God has chosen for the Jewish people. And the land of Israel is the only place in the world where we can create an entire society according to the Torah dimensions. In Israel the language is the language of the Torah. The calendar is a Jewish calendar. The space of Israel itself is soaked in Jewish history and Jewish consciousness. In Israel we can build a model society to model the values of the Torah. Where our government, our economy, our military, our culture can be run according to Torah values. We can't do that in the exile. The vision of the prophets is that through a robust Jewish society based upon the Torah living in our homeland we will make the world itself a garden of Eden once again. Isaiah chapter 60 says that one day the entire world will come to your light. We're to be a light to the nations and the Bible never tells us to shine the light into the eyes of the nations. We're simply to be a light but the God promises that one day the world will get it. One day the world will learn but it's dependent upon us getting our act together and living according to the values of the Torah in our homeland. The prophet Zechariah teaches in chapter 8 verse 23 that in the future 10 people from each nation in the world are going to grab whole of the corners of a garment of a Jewish person and say we want to come with you. We want to follow you because we've heard that God is with you. The great promise of the Bible is that our national redemption will begin with the in-gathering of our exiles. For almost 2000 years our people have been separated from the land of Israel. The book of Deuteronomy chapter 30 itself in the five books of Moses speaks about the return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel. Incredibly there's a secret hidden in this chapter. According to Kabbalistic teaching every verse of the Bible corresponds to a year in history. So the first verse of the Bible corresponds to the first year of history. The one thousandth verse of the Bible corresponds to year number one thousand in history. The five thousandth verse in the Bible corresponds to year five thousand. Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 3 is the five thousand seven hundred and eighth verse in the Bible. The year five thousand seven hundred eight in the Hebrew calendar was the equivalent of the secular year 1948. So that passage in Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 3 speaks about 1948. And if you look up that verse it speaks about God regathering his nation to their land from all over the world where we were scattered. And there are many many secrets and clues and hints in our literature specifically pointing to this year of 1948. The Bible says that when we are out of our land the land will be barren and it will not produce for those who occupy it. It's incredible that we know that Israel was incredibly fertile when we were there. Josephus speaks about what an incredibly productive and fertile land it was. And we know that once we left Israel after the Romans expelled us the land was basically barren. We have a report from Mark Twain that when he went to visit Israel in his days he reports the land was depressingly barren and empty of virtually everything. And yet based upon a passage in the book of Ezekiel chapter 36 verses 8 through 10 our sages teach that when the Jewish people return to their homeland the land will once again become fertile and productive. Our sages teach that one of the clearest signs of the redemption of our people will be when the land begins to flourish once again. And we see with total clarity that this has certainly been the case dramatically since our people have returned to the land of Israel in the 20th century. Anyone that just looks at what's been happening in that land in not just agriculture in incredibly different ways in science in numerous different fields Israel has become as we call it the start-up nation incredibly productive. I want to conclude tonight by revisiting the commentary of Rashi with which we began. We're going to read this commentary by Rashi in its entirety. Rashi's comment to the first verse in the bible Genesis chapter one verse one Ammar Rabbi Yitzchak Rabbi Yitzchak said The Torah really should have only begun from the passage giving us the commandment to sanctify the new moon that it was the first commandment given to the people of Israel. And why did the Torah begin with the account of creation? So Rabbi Yitzchak explains it was in order to recount to his nation his great power the power of his deeds To give to them the inheritance of the nations that's a verse in the book of Psalms chapter 111 That if the nations of the world will say Le Yisrael to the people of Israel Le Stim Atem, you are robbers, you're thieves She kavashtem artsot shivagoyim that you conquered the land of the seven nations. This is the exact same accusation that we're accused of today. The land does not belong to us we stole the land so the answer will be Haim Omrimlehem they will say to them The entire world belongs to the Almighty He created it and he gave it to those who were fitting in his eyes. Beertsono Natana Lehem in his will it was his will to give it to them or Beertsono Natla Mehem and Natna Lanu and it was his will it was his desire to take it from them and to give it to us Bottom line what the answer is to the accusation that we stole the land is no the owner of the land God gave it to us that is how this Rashi is normally read but I want to share with you an alternative reading which I think is very important for all of us this is from a safe for a book called Elahadvorim by Rabbi Slesinger in Israel and he raises a very simple question he says when you think about it what kind of answer is this to the world do you think that today an ambassador of statesmen from Israel is going to walk into the UN and quote Genesis one one and the whole world's going to go oh we didn't realize Genesis one one we'll stop bothering you or Slesinger suggests that that's not really the message of this Rashi he says this Rashi this commentary by Rabbi Yitzchak is not a response to the nations of the world he explains this Rashi based upon a verse later on in Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve and the snake in the garden of Eden where the snake says to Eve you're not going to die if you eat from the fruit of the tree and it's an obvious question how in the world does the snake have the chutzpah to say to Eve you're not going to die God told Adam and Eve if you eat from that tree you're going to die I mean you can say many things but you can't speak nonsense so if Adam and Eve were told to their faces directly by God if you eat from that tree of knowledge of good and evil you're going to die how in the world does the snake have the gall to just say to them no you're not going to die so he answered this question based upon a teaching from the Gona Vilna the Vilna Gona the Vilna Gona sites a verse later on in the story of Cain and Abel where after killing his brother Abel God says to Cain that if you do well that's good and if not sin will crouch at the door at your doorway sin will be crouching to pounce and the Vilna Gona explains the following it's impossible for any person to do the wrong thing if they are thinking clearly and if they have clarity he says the problem with Eve was that when the snake asked her isn't it true that you're not supposed to eat the fruit in the trees of the garden and Eve says no we can eat all the trees in the garden except if we eat from this tree in the middle of the garden God says you shouldn't eat it pen tamut lest you die lest you die almost perhaps you will die maybe you'll die and at that moment the snake had an opening because as the Vilna Gona explains lapetach if you give it an opening if you open the door chatat rovet sin is going to go right in and that was the opening that Eve gave to the snake God told her directly you will surely die but she says to the snake perhaps we'll die the clarity was lost and now it became not so clear and so the snake was able to come in and say you're not going to die if you eat from the tree and so Rosalina suggests that this is what's going on in this Rashi it's not a concern about what the nations of the world are going to accuse us of this Rashi is addressed to ourselves we the people of Israel who begin to doubt and question whether we ourselves have a right to be in the land of Israel and that's why the Rashi begins by saying this verse from Psalms it was in order to teach his people God's people the power of his deeds not to teach the rest of the world and that's why according to Schlesinger's reading this Rashi this is how it works that if the nations of the world say to Israel you are robbers you conquered the land of the seven nations listen carefully now this is Rashi's words haim omrim lahem those jews who are certain of our right to the land of Israel will say to other jews who are not so certain and who question it we're going to say to them the whole world belongs to God hubraah he created it he gave it to those who were appropriate in his eyes now listen carefully it was his will to give it to them now if this was an address to the nations of the world if this was an answer to the nations of the world it should have said it was God's will to give it to you and then God took it from you and gave it to us but that's not what it says here it says that really they are among Israel people who are clear about our right to the land and we are addressing those people who are questioning our right and we're going to say to them that God gave the land to them to the nations of the world ubertsono and it was his will to take it mayhem from them not to take it from you it's not addressing the nations it was God's will to take it from them from the nation speaking about them not speaking to them venas nalano and he gave it to us so i believe that for us as a people today in the world to exist with any kind of strength we have to have a moral clarity we have to have a spiritual clarity we cannot go about our lives questioning and wondering and second guessing ourselves do we really belong there is this land really ours i believe it's important number one to understand what is special about the land of israel what makes it unique what makes it holy and to understand that ultimately our right and claim to the land of israel is simply because the creator of every molecule of existence very clearly as we went through the verses in the bible bequeath this land as an internally inheritance to the people of israel i want to encourage all of us to become clear about this and again i want to encourage all of us to always be sensitive to that dissonance that rabbi utah levy was sensitive to even though he was living a very comfortable life in spain a very comfortable life he understood that that was not his place and that living in the exile is not really the place for any jew and that we may not all be able to go back tomorrow but to realize that we do belong there and that god willing ultimately we will all make it there one day


Welcome back to Marxian Economics, this is Deepankar Basu from the Department of Economics at UMass Amherst. Let me quickly remind you about the structure of this class. So we have so far looked at one video which gives us an overview of the whole class and then we started into the content of the class. The first video was an introduction which discussed the issue of how Marx came to the study of political economy. It discussed the phases through which Marx went over his period of life and we saw that there were two phases of his study, one going from 1843 to 1847 and another going from 1850 to 1883 when he died. We saw that during the first phase of his study, Marx not only engaged with political economy but he also engaged with classical German philosophy and French socialism and what emerged from the critical synthesis of these three strands of European thought later came to be known as Marxism. Two key ideas that emerged during this phase of his study is the dialectical method and historical materialism. Both of these ideas remained with Marx for throughout his life. So when he returned to his studies again in 1850 after he had been chased from different countries in Europe, he finally settled down in England in 1849 and he was able to resume his studies from 1850. So the phase of his studies that runs from 1850 to 1883 was the phase during which he really concentrated on political economy. But during his phase, the second phase of his study, he was always guided by these two key ideas that he had worked out during the first phase of his study, the dialectical method which told him that if he wanted to understand the social system, he not only had to understand its current structure but also identify its key conflicts and contradictions which lead it to change. So that was an idea that remained with him. And historical materialism told him that if he wants to understand society, he has to understand how the structure of production is organized. What kind of relationships emerge in the process of production between different groups of people whom he called classes? And therefore, the key object of his study in the later phase of his study through political economy was a way to understand the key ideas that would help him understand the key social classes of capitalism. So that is what we are going to be focusing on for the rest of this course. So that was the first module of the class. The rest of the class will be broken up into three modules, two, three and four. Each of these three modules will cover the argument developed by Marx in the three volumes of Capital. As we have said in the introductory part, this class is a study of the economic ideas of Marx. And the most complete and comprehensive picture of his ideas of economics is found in the three volumes of Capital. So that is what we are going to be studying. The first volume of Capital will be the focus of the module that we are going to discuss now. The next module will deal with volume two and the module after that will deal with volume three. Now let me quickly remind you what the argument about what the content of volume one is. Marx tells us that the content of volume one is to understand the process of production of Capital. In the introductory section, we argued that the key concept that Marx uses throughout his economic work is the concept of surplus value. And therefore we can restate the content of volume one as the generation and accumulation of surplus value. So in this module, we are going to be studying the processes which are relevant to understanding the generation and accumulation of surplus value. Once we have done that, we will turn to volume two and the content of volume two is the realization of surplus value. Why is this important? Because Capitalism not only wants to generate surplus value but wants to realize them in monetary form by selling the commodities. In volume one, we are abstracting from issues that are relevant to the second question. How does the Capitalist system sell all the commodities at prices that are necessary to realize all the surplus value that was generated? So we will return to those questions when we discuss volume two. After we have done so, we are going to be studying another important issue which is how the surplus value that was produced and realized then gets redistributed in society and emerges as the income of different fractions of the ruling class. So the content of volume three will be an analysis of the distribution of surplus value. So that should give you a good idea of the main economic argument that Marx laid out in the three volumes of Capital. We are going to be spending the rest of the class understanding the key components and details of that argument. So today we are going to be starting with the argument in volume one of Capital.


Towards the night before Christmas, he lived all alone. In a one-bedroom house made of plaster and stone, I had come down the chimney with presents to give. And to see Jess when his home did live. I looked all about, at the same sight, I didn't see. No tinsals, no presents, not even a tree. No stockings by mantle, just boots filled with sand. On the wall hung pictures of the far distant land. With meadows and badges, a large of all kinds. A sober thought came through my mind. For his house is different, it was dark and dreary. I found the home of a soldier one second secretly. The soldier lay sleeping, silent, alone. Thrown up on the floor in this one-bedroom home. The face was so gentle, the room in such disorder. Not how I pictured a United States soldier. Was this the hero of whom I just read? Curled up on a poncho, the floor for a bed. I realized the families that I saw this night. Older lives to those soldiers who are willing to fight. Soon around the world, the children will play. And grown-ups will celebrate a bright Christmas day. They all enjoyed freedom each month of the year. Because of the soldiers, like the one line here. Couldn't help wonder how many lay alone. On a cold Christmas Eve, in a land far from home. The very thought brought a tear to my heart. I dropped to my knees and started to cry. The soldier awakened and I heard a rough voice. Santa don't cry. This life is my choice. I fight for freedom and I don't ask for more. My life is my God, my country, my core. The soldier rolled over and drifted to sleep. I couldn't control it and I continued to wait. I kept watch for hours, so silent and still. I was bold shivering from the cold night's chill. I didn't want to leave on a cold dark night. This guardian of honor, so willing to fight. Then the soldier rolled over with a voice of inferiority. Whispered, carry on Santa, it's Christmas Day. All is secure. One look at my watch and I knew he was right. Merry Christmas my friend, and Merry Christmas to all our families. And to all of you today! On a cold Christmas Eve, on a land far away, I f***ed. Different. Because of the soldier's lying here. Oh f***, they... sorry. Whispered, carry on Santa. Was this the hero of whom I just read? Cold shivering from the cold night's chill. What cold? Cold night's chill. Okay, cold night's chill. I don't want to die. And we both shivered from the cold night's chill. Chill. One more time!


Welcome back, in the last segment we discussed two-dimensional arrays. Now we are going to talk about command line arguments. This also uses arrays and the arrays but the arrays are not really two-dimensional. So what are command line arguments? So far we have executed our programs from the command line by typing dot slash a dot out at the shell prompt or of course we have executed them from by pressing the run button. But you can specify arguments from the command line and even if you are using the IDE, you can get into a shell prompt and then there you can run the program and at that time you can give arguments when you run the program. So for example you can type something like dot slash a dot out math followed by biology. So two words you are typing on the command line in addition to the name of the program that you want executed. So the program can get access to what you type and how to do that is the topic of this segment. By the way a dot out is just the default name given to our program after compilation by the compiler. We can ask the program to give it a different name if you wish or we can rename the file ourselves explicitly. But this is just to keep things simple that we are assuming that we are just using the name that the compiler gives to the executable program that it creates on compiling our program. So I am going to show you a program that is the simplest possible thing. So it does not do anything with the whatever is typed but it just prints and shows you what is typed. The main function earlier had the signature and main open parenthesis closed parenthesis. Now here to get the command line arguments you are going to have a different signature. So essentially your computer when it executes a dot out is going to execute a dot out or it is going to call the main function but it is going to tell the main function that oh here are these additional, here are these things that the user typed when the user started off the program. So therefore there are these additional things. So what are these additional things? Well before getting to that let me just show you the program and then we will explain it. So this is the main function and that is the only function over here but its signature is different and now I will tell you how these arguments are to be interpreted. So arc c is going to give the number of words typed on the command line by the user. So as I said when your computer starts off the main program it is asking the main function to execute and at that time it is calling the main function and it supplies these two arguments. So the first argument says how many words are there on the command line. So this is just function overloading if you will. So you remember that I can have the same name with different signatures and this is just a different signature. So both names are both ways of calling main are acceptable and if you want the program to get access to the command line arguments then this is what is supposed to be used. So I told you what arc c is and then let me tell you what this complicated looking thing is. So to understand that let us just go over what it could possibly mean or some let us do it step by step. So suppose I typed this as the declaration. What does it say? It says that x is an array of char. Now what would this say? So this would say that arc v is an array of char star. In other words each element of arc v is a char star or each element of arc v is a pointer to a char array and arc v has length arc c. So this arc c that is given is has length is the length of this array. So how many elements are there? There are arc c elements in this array. So arc v is the name of an array, it has arc c elements and each element is a char star. So it points to another char array. So I think a picture is necessary so let me draw a picture. So this is this array arc v. So it looks something like this and it has elements 0, 1 all the way till arc c minus 1 because there are total of arc c elements and what is each of these elements? So this is of type char star. So it means it is a pointer and it points to the 0th element of an array and this is the first word on type by the user on the command line. So typically this is going to be dot slash a dot o ut but of course it is going to have a null at the end as well. So this is, so this 0th element is going to type is going to point to this. The first element is going to point to an array which stores the second word type by the user with a null terminator. So let us say the second word type was math and then there was a null terminator. So let me get rid of this. So this is the second thing. And then maybe there was a biology also. So this points to another array. So biology followed by the null character. So this is this complicated looking structure that is given to you. So what is this program doing with this structure? So it is printing out arc v of i. So let us see what arc v of i is. So this is the array arc v, arc v of i is this. But what is this? This is char star. So suppose I write c out followed by some after which I give a char star value. What happens? Well that simply prints out this value, prints out whatever it points to. So this first thing would just point, print out a dot out. The rule to be used over here is that whatever gets printed out will be printed out only until the null character. So c out arc v of 0 will end up printing dot slash a dot out. Then in the next iteration, c dot arc v of 1 will end up printing math. And after that biology will get printed. So in this case arc c, if I had just typed these three things arc c would have been 3. So I have basically told you how this executes but let us just do it again very clearly over here. So arc v is an array of three elements, arc v 0 contains the address of an eight element array containing dot slash a dot out followed by null. So y eight element dot slash a dot o u t and null. So notice that exactly c plus plus will allocate exactly as much space as we want. So arc v contains math followed by null and arc v 2 contains biology followed by null. So basically when these things are executed dot slash a dot out, math and biology will get printed. So what have we studied in this entire lecture sequence? Well, we studied a way of representing character strings first. Later on we will study the string class which is nicer and safer. But as I said many of the ideas that were presented over here will be applicable there as well. And these ideas in any case are used a lot in the c language and you may encounter programs which are specially which only use the c language facilities and therefore this is something that is useful for you to know. Then we studied two dimensional arrays and basically you can extend that idea. So if I write nt a and give three, so three numbers in three square brackets then that gets me a three dimensional array. So what is a three dimensional array? So it is a collection of elements or collection of variables say a i j k. So these, you can think of these as the different names and for this, for this declaration a 10 20 30 I will range from 0 to 19 j will range from sorry I will range from 0 to 9 j will range from 0 to 19 and k will range from 0 to 29. So in all if you write int sorry if you write int a 10 20 30 you will get so 600 times 10 6000 variables. And just as we thought of a two dimensional array as organized in rows and columns you can think of a two dimensional array as organized as a three dimensional object. So rows and columns but stacked on top of each other as well. So those are also needed in many cases and they can be had over here as I said earlier the c++ equivalents will be a little bit nicer and you will see them later on. And yeah so the ideas of indexing and things like that are of course needed for the c++ versions that the nicer versions that we are going to see later. Then we saw command line arguments and these are often useful. So you may want to say that look this is the file that I want to use or rather than get some data after running the program. So by cn you can directly get it as you type the name of the file as you type the name of the executable as you start up the executable program. So this is very convenient and you should definitely write a few programs of this using command line arguments and master this idea. So that concludes this lecture as always the text has several exercises and I will urge you to solve those. Thank you.


Hey, what's up real quick before this video starts my cousin Coulson made a YouTube channel So if you want to go and check it out you can link is in the description He does a bunch of videos with animals his channel is called Coulson's critters He makes some pretty cool stuff, so go down in the link in the description check him out toss him a sweet sub Until I say hey all right. It enjoy the video Okay Ah Welcome to the Sims 4 I haven't played this game in a very long time but I thought that I would play it because I Felt like it. I don't know let's just jump into it. Uh, we're gonna make some new sims We're gonna build a beautiful wonderful house. What happens if we shuffle? I want to see if we get anything real great from oh that mustache is very good That's some inspiration right there. Oh, yes. I love the outfit Why did this just make Justin Bieber this action? Okay, I have to I have to keep this oh my god This actually looks so much like Justin Bieber. That's really funny. All right Justin What are you all right? You you do have weight hold on popularity. You are popular hearty animal Good vampire leader of the pack. Let's just do famously wealthy What if we did that all right Justin you're you're you're you're creative a vegetarian question mark sure Let's go with that. Okay perfect perfect perfect. The outfit is already Great actually I do like that though. Yeah, I mean it's kind of perfect Justin Bieber's He's he was a little ripped. He wasn't that ripped though. He's like he's like that. Ah, maybe like this All right, well Justin Bieber's been been added now. I'm going to add a new sim.  Let's make you an elderly man. Yes. Yes. Yes. What is your walk like? Oh? Yeah, that's that's it. You're deviant for sure.  Yes, you are gloomy a Klepto and a slob there we go now.  Get rid of those pants. Let's see those tootsies.    How do I make you taller or shorter?  Oh, all right. We've got him sexy Sexy boys. Are you're everyday wear? First of all, this is it. This is it. I mean What if we just didn't do bottoms? No, no, no, we'll put a little bit there. Yes. Yes. Yes I kind of like the red I kind of like the red. No, we're gonna go with the red We're gonna go with the red they have good sandals here clown shoes to clown. Let's do clown shoes Do you want a sleeve? We're gonna give you angel wings for sure this one. Yeah, and we're gonna give you that one Yep, you're gonna look great.  No, we gotta have the angel wings We're gonna have the chest take. Yep. This is it. Okay. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about anything What about your face?  Oh, what if he's sad all the time? Oh, that's awful. Oh, no, he's sad all the time Why did I do this? Why did I do this to you?  Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Oh my god. Yes He looks like a goblin from Harry Potter This is perfect. Okay, let's make those ears nice and large. Yes. I wish that we could have them Like droop down that'd be kind of fun now. We will go into the facial hair now. We had one before Not not the like Freddie Mercury one. I want the longer mustache that Yeah, you know, I'm digging it. I Like it a lot. It kind of looks like a mix of you Baba and Someone else. I don't know. I think it's great though the formal wear Yeah, sure With nothing else. Yeah. Yeah. He's got fancy glasses on I think I want these to be a different Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is good. This is good athletic wear. I want something that he can really move around in yeah Yeah, yeah, this is good. This is good. This is good. I kind of like the gold it goes with the with the metal Yeah, this is good for athletic wear sleepwear. All right. I do love these full-body. Oh Whoa, just a towel gee whiz Where's the first suit to bed? Well, I mean I I we've got it. We've just got it This is the party one. I love these full outfits. These are great. This is elegant. This is really really elegant I really like this Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah party outfit party party outfit swimwear Well offer swimwear. All right, we'll let your hair down for this for sure. Let's let it let's let it be long Let's let it be Long let your hair down really let it. Yes.  Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Oh my god. Yes. Okay, but now the outfit the outfit time. Yeah, that's all he needs All you got it. All you need is a towel hot weather cold weather I'm gonna be some good God, okay, we gotta give you some good shoes. Yeah, hugs are fine. Give you a blue one. Yeah, this fits this fits This is a fit. This is a fit. All right. Let's just go into your normal thing. Hello. What's your name? Five four three two one Gulliver Bartlett. I love it. Gulliver. Ah Yes.  What do we got here the ears long? To the side. Yes, wait, can we have one up and one down? Yes, perfect. Oh, yeah.  Hold on smile for me. My oh Come on. Give me a smile But we love him. We love him. We love him. Just big. I just want it to be big big nub All right, what's your pattern look like?  All right, what are we doing? What are we doing for the pattern of this dog? Oh, no. Oh, it's a pinata. Oh, no, it's a pinata No, we made him a pinata. Oh, no, we can paint. Oh no, he oh Oh P Guys, this is super funny. It comes out of here Love that it flipped it like that. All right. We'll just put that there All right. What's your name five four three two one? Cutie fitting all right guys. I think that this pretty much sums up our household cuties There it is. There it is.   I'm gonna just save my game real quick Maybe I can't okay save all right now listen guys We're we're living with Justin Bieber. So you know, he's got cash Money isn't an issue With this guy right here. There's no issue, you know, we can have whatever we want Whenever we want it. All right guys, I'm going to build a home now, all right Okay, now we're just gonna do this do this and do this and then maybe maybe we'll We have to bring it out a little bit probably Just because You know, we'll make a little Little thing right here. Okay. We need a door.  Do they even need a door? They don't really even need a door. We can just have it be open.  Is there an elevator?  Does it work? I guess we'll find out we'll find out if it works or not. I guess They have we have to have flooring right they have to have flooring. What is every house? Need you need at least a window. You can't just have them living in darkness, right? Now we need wallpaper, of course We want it to scream fashion. Oh Right now we need a bed. I guess Okay, we're gonna put a sink here. So they need it's hard to see up here. It's okay We'll just put that there. We'll have a fridge in here just Yeah, I'm right there We'll have a toilet in here just for starters We'll do the practice potty because I don't really think they need a full-size one yet And then I guess we'll have a bed they can sleep on racer dreams racer dreams actually Fits kind of perfectly over here. I kind of love that. Yeah, there we go. And the color is great We do want to give them a little bit of entertainment. So we'll we'll give them some right Yeah, we'll put that there and it's good. All right big TV big big TV for them Is there anything else that they need? I don't think so. We'll give them a light of Some sort We'll put that right here right next to the bed and I think that's it I think that's all you need. Is there a car anywhere? There's a cargo car We could use that or do they have the caboose? The train engine car the leader of the pack Yes, I think we're ready to play to go Let's be let's get to live in guys. Can you get up there? I don't know if it'll work I don't know if it'll work. I don't think it's gonna work guys. I don't think we can use the elevator I I don't think we can have a tall tall tower Which makes me incredibly sad. Maybe we can go like this this high Maybe if we do a little bit of this we do a little bit of this okay, okay, okay? Okay Okay Okay guys we might be able to make this as tall as we desire. Oh We're getting there. We're getting there. We're getting in there. That's as tall as we can make it That is where we want it to be. Oh We've done it folks We've done it. Oh, yes, we have and That's how they get up there. Oh there's sweet humble abode. Oh my god. It's perfect. It is perfect All right, go in craft of sculpture Crafts craft a horse sculpture. That's what I want you to do. This is my bidding. How many steps will you travel? Oh?  Can you imagine having to go for that any steps? It's a gate to your house every day Go on going and doing a grocery run would be terrible. Oh here. He goes though.  Well check your sims inventory. How do I do that? What oh here it is the horse statue place in world? Just I have his horse statue that he made and here it will remain for all eternity Justin Bieber horse statue extraordinaire all right guys. I don't know what this video was, but I'm gonna end it here For now, let me know what you want to see Justin Bieber and Gulliver To the next episode. I guess this is a thing that I'm doing now Thank you so much for watching. Hope you enjoyed. Let me know if you liked it and I will see you later. All right Yeah, okay


following series of coronation rites, a former member of the National Assembly, Mahoud Olalekou Balogum, has been crowned as for the second Olu Badon of Ibarra land. Speaking of the epoch-making event, Professor Yemiah Shibajah loaded the Ibarra traditional ascension system, which he described as worthy of emulation. To satisfy our political whims, we make decisions that do not protect our traditional systems. But this is why the custodians of our culture must always take a stand against us politicians thinking with age-old traditional systems. No politician, no matter how highly placed, can destroy any system without the cooperation of some members of these systems. So therefore I want to use this opportunity to ask the KBAC and the Olu Badon in Council that could work to ensure that the laws having to do with the ascension to the throne of Olu Badon remain sacrosanct. I must congratulate you as you also enter the history books being one of the few governors who have had the joyful and historic duty of handing the staff of office to a new Olu Badon. Ibarra became the hub of politics in the then new nation and the capital of western region. It was and is still acknowledged as the political headquarters of the entire southwest of Nigeria. Ibarra was and has always been a city on a hill, a place of refuge and a realm in which individuals could rise by the grace of their talents on marriage.


Thank you very much. Well, it's really lovely to see so many people here, thanks very much for coming along. So this session is all about using 360 degree images and videos to create VR experiences for education. I say education, hi Graham, as in the school of education where I work. So my name is Hadrian Corthorn and I'm the learning technologist at the School of Education up here in the University of Sheffield. So who doesn't love a nice poll? So a quick poll here just to get a sense of where people are at. Have you created any VR or 360 content? Just pop something in the chat really.  Really? Okay, so we've got to know that brilliant. So I'm getting quite a few replies here. That's good. So I'm glad to see that we're not all experts here because I wasn't going to change my presentation for the experts. Okay, so we've got a really nice mix of people here and experiences of using 360 and VR. So let's crack on. So a bit of context really. So in the School of Education we had the opportunity to get some funding from the university's alumni fund. So I joined the School of Education in about 2017 and found that I had some really willing and interested academics. And I went to them and said, here's this thing, 360 or VR. We can take images. We can create immersive content. What can we do? What can we do in your kind of learning teaching? So we kind of put our heads together and decided we would really like to create a collection of interactive and multimedia VR spaces. So we put together a bid and we got some funding to purchase some equipment. So that was great. We didn't quite get to getting an actual platform or host. That was a little bit more tricky at the time. Actual equipment cameras and stuff were not really kind of prominent in the market. So that was quite easy. And I'll get on to what equipment we used and what platforms we've tried in a little bit. So this is kind of like roughly the structure of this webinar in not particularly this order. It might be a little bit muddled, but I want to kind of do a bit of kind of like a technical primer really about what the technology is. And there's a bit of practical stuff there. So get ready to do some coding. We'll have a look at the hardware you might use to make 360 media. Look at some of the software and workflows that I've used. I'll show you some of the projects. Talk about that in the pedagogy. And we'll look at where you can publish 360 VR spaces to. And hopefully, if I don't waffle on too much, we'll get to some discussions or questions at the end. So the technical primer, I guess, what are 360 images? Well, if you've been on Planet Earth on the internet and looked at Google Maps, Google Earth and Street View, you'll have been using 360 images all this time. So it's based on the technology that Google Street View uses. Google calls these photospheres or I like to call them bubble images because they are like a bubble within image inside them. And what I like about them is you can put them on the web and you can augment them with other stuff. So, for example, in the Street View here, this is one that I've made many years ago. It's augmented with a bit of a kind of navigation thing here. There's a little maffy thing here. And yes, there's a closed button there. So it's got things in it that you can interact with and that's quite nice. Getting 360-degree images, I've opted for the easy way. I'm just buying a 360 camera and this is the one that we've got. It's an Insta360 camera and I see in the chat that a few people have been using those. Generally, these kind of cameras are two, basically two cameras stuck together back to back with a 180-degree fisheye lens on each side. And then you take a picture and it stitches two images together. Anybody who's ever done maths knows that 2x180 is 360. So you get a 360 image out of that. And what you get out of that generally are equirectangular images. Now let's explain what equirectangular images are in a bit. If you don't want to bother with one of these, if you just want to have a try, then smartphones or iPads are perfectly capable of doing this kind of thing. If you're a bit of a DSLR buff and you've got skills and time, you can also do it with DSLRs where you take a bunch of photos from all around you and stitch it together in some kind of software. I haven't done that. I've opted for the easier kind of points and click option. So equirectangular images, we've all seen them. This is what's usually wrapped around a globe and it's at the most common equirectangular image we've actually come across.  This is kind of what you get. So the tops and the bottoms are very, very distorted. So Antarctica isn't flat like that. It's actually more round and it's a bit distorted at the top there. Round the middle, it's a bit more sort of undistorted, I guess. So that's basically an equirectangular image. And to get that into some kind of 3D thing, sphere or bubble, what you do is just wrap that round a 3D thing, a 3D sphere. Easy, pretty easy. So you have a rectangle. You wrap it round the sphere and you get a globe. OK, and we're going to do that. So a real equirectangular image is one from a camera and you can see that it's very distorted at the top and bottom. And it looks like it's got two windows either side, but in actual fact that's the same window. So if you were to wrap that round the globe, the window would join round the back, really. There's a potential problem with that if you're wrapping it round the globe in that we don't look at the world as a globe. We're not a god looking on the globe. We're kind of inside that globe looking outward. So we have to wrap it round something else and we will find out very shortly what that is. So we've got a bit of a practical bit. I'll explain what we're doing. So feel free to do this or if you just want to watch, feel free to do that as well. So what we'll use for this is a really basic tool called A-Frame. It's a JavaScript web VR framework. You don't need to bother going to this URL. That's just for reference really. I've got some more links. So this framework will enable you to easily create VR environments in basically HTML. What we'll use is Glitch, which is an online coding tool. So we don't need anything else apart from a browser. Just to note really there are lots of other easy ways to do this. So it's not all about the coding, but it's a good introduction to understanding how the technology works. So it is just a bit of code really, and it's very easy to get something up and running with this A-Frame thing. Brilliant, you've developed something before and I'll look at that link. So I'll very briefly explain this. Perhaps people have used HTML before, but this little bit just loads the script in. So everything after that is A-Frame stuff. The thing we're concerned with is this thing here, which is a sphere, and that generates a sphere, and the sphere's got some properties in it. So this one here is the bit that we can use to wrap an image around that sphere. We've got various things for the size of the sphere and where it is in VR space and rotating it. There's another thing here, A-Sky, which might be the key to creating realistic spaces. So what that does, this code, is it just creates a sphere and wraps an image around it. What I'll do is I'll just talk through what to do. So what I'll do is I'll just pop that link in the chat first, so you can get that up and start working on it while I'm talking. So basically what I'd like you to do if you want to is go to that link and you'll see a button in the top right-hand corner, Remix to Edit. So you click that and that opens it up. I can see there's plenty of people on there already and it lets you edit that. So if you go along to the Assets bit in the sidebar, you can click on one of the other images, one of the real images, and then paste and actually copy the URL. And then if you go to Line 11, which is the SRC bit, and then in between the speech marks, just paste that in. And what you'll see is a little bit of magic there.  And I'll share my screen and quickly go through that. OK, so we've got this code here, so I'm going to click Remix to Edit and choose the ones with tractors in. There we go. Give that a moment to wake up. OK, so I'm going over to Assets. So I've uploaded some Assets, so I'm going to choose the school here. I'm going to click Copy and then to Index HTML and paste over the URL that's within the speech marks under Source. Voila, we've got something highly unrealistic there. So what we can do, rather than applying the image to the sphere, we can apply it to what's called the sky. So I'm going to take the whole SRC line here, and then rather than get my mouse, rather than the sky having a colour, I'm just going to paste that in. Sky is now the image. So that looks fairly nifty, that. OK, so we've got an image that's all around us. So we're basically within a bubble image. Yes, so we're inside that sphere. OK, so have you all managed to do that, those who've had a go? So with this A-frame thing, cool. It's easy to get something really basic up and running and then extending that beyond something basic requires a little bit more skills in coding. But you can insert text in there. You can insert planes. So not aeroplanes, but sort of like shapes, squares that you can put text on. You can import 3D models. You can add flat images. You can create image galleries. You can add video, all kinds of things within that and interactivity. But there's a bit of a learning curve to it. It's not all coding. So this example here, I'll quickly show you. It comes with a companion app that's called an inspector or something, and it enables you to edit things in a more of a visual way. OK, so that's the practical bit. So I'm going to get back to my presentation, just bear with. OK, so hope that's kind of giving you a little introduction to the kind of basis of this technology. A lot of it's done in the web and it uses 3D technology within a web browser. So in terms of myself, I want to kind of just kind of describe what we've done. So I'll give you a brief outline of my journey with 360. Have a look at the current equipment and the kinds of things that I do and have done. And if you're just starting out and you don't want to spend a lot of money, I've got a few kind of tips of what you can do on a budget, how you can play with this stuff without spending any money. So my journey began back in about 2013. I bought myself a nice nifty Google phone and discovered that on there. The camera had a photosphere camera, which excited me greatly. So I went and took photos from pretty much most continents and worked them up on Google Maps. So I've got loads of stuff on Google Maps and it's all sorts of fun.  And it stitches it all together and comes up with usually quite a nice photo. Then that kind of evolved to where we're at now in about 2017. Well, actually, previous to that, I worked in journalism studies, helping students make multimedia. And I was trying to get them to explore using 360 within storytelling. Academics thought it was a bit of a fad, really. So I left and joined the School of Education, not because they thought it was a fad, I just found it to change. So we had some great academics. I couldn't have done this without the academics. So backing me and having the kind of lots of ideas. So we got the funding. We got three of these Insta360 cameras with these kind of nice tripods. We got this weird looking microphone here, a Zoom H3 VR ambisonic recorder. I haven't really done much with that, to be honest.  Ten, but there's 12 in my cupboard. So I think they'll be breeding in the cupboard. The workflow that I kind of go through after kind of working with the academics, is that what we want to do. We do the photography and filming. So I've got a slide on each one of these, but this is the kind of the basic workflow. So you do your photography or filming, you prepare and convert your files, work out where you want to store them. You might do some image editing or fixing or sweetening. And if you've got videos, you need to kind of just be aware of the limitations and issues, but you can edit them and they are quite powerful. So let's go through that workflow. So a lot of photography and filming. I don't know if I've coined this phrase, but I think I invented it yesterday. The photographer's dilemma, so how not to be in a shot. So with the 360 camera, you're taking a picture of everything all around you, so you don't really want to be in a shot. But we can see Beccy here hiding behind a tree. So this is what we have to do as 360 photographers. We have to use trees, buildings, sheds, bins, pillar boxes. You name it, I've hidden behind it. And for all Beccy there, I actually can't get behind the tree, because I'm already behind the tree. So that's a bit of a skill to learn, so how not to be in shot. Luckily we have, with most 360 cameras, it comes with a companion app that you can use on an iPad. So you can hide within Bluetooth distance and control the camera via the app. One thing that we've learned is to just remember about the point of focus, so the actual subject within the picture. Although you're taking a 360 image or video, you've still got to not think about what's the main thing within there, because what you've got with the 360 camera is you've got what's called a seam, and it's the bit where the two images are actually stitched together, and it can quite often be a little bit distorted or stitching errors can occur. So you don't want that right down the middle of somebody's face. So you need to point the camera roughly at the main thing within the actual scene that you're trying to capture. A little bit about file preparation. Your camera will come with a desktop app, and that's probably the best app to use. So mine is the Insta360, and it does stitching calibration. It'll fix any errors with stitching. It'll do a bit of colour correction, and it'll output in various sizes. And it does some rudimentary video editing if you just want to trim clips. Think carefully about storage as well. That's a problem, because some of these things are quite huge. Images are usually quite small, but obviously if you've got a lot of images, it will mount up. But I've usually found that I can put images on a network and work off them fine. Videos though, they're actually huge. I've come back with 20 gigabyte videos. So you can't really put those on network storage and expect to work from them. So you have to use local storage sometimes. So they're the kind of issues we've got with storage. So you might want to think about editing images. So my favourite tool at the moment for editing images is actually Photoshop. So it's got some really good tools for editing 360 images. So the screenshot at the top here shows you how to get into the 360 viewer. Once you get into the 360 viewer, you can do all the things that you might do on normal images like you can clean things. You can remove things. I usually remove the tripod from the bottom of the picture. You can just select it and use the content and just delete it and it'll fill it in with whatever it needs to go in there. You can heal things. So if you've got any kind of glitches in your picture, you can kind of heal those. And just your colour corrections. If you just want to sweeten that image up, if it's looking a bit dreary, then you can just apply a colour correction. I found that Google Photos also does this. So just sort of images to Google Photos. It's 360 compatible and it's got some cool little filters that you can see here. Or just some basic brightness and contrast controls. And also other camera apps. So you can use the GoPro apps with any cameras of JPEGs that come off it. There's a Garmin one called Verb. And they'll pretty much do the same thing. You'll be able to kind of sweeten your images, do a bit of fixing. So they're the kind of general apps that you can use. So 360 videos. There are issues with them, but it's incredibly powerful and there's a bit of a testimonial from a student at the end which sort of demonstrates that. But issues we have are massive file sizes that need to be compressed. You might lose bit quality. It's more difficult to create slick experiences because of the file size and the resources needed. Some platforms need extra money. That's useful to know about again. Great. And some platforms just don't actually support 360 videos. One little tip I've got is to film from a static position. So avoid moving around because it can induce your users feeling like they want to be sick. Unless you're very, very experienced and there are a few tricks to avoid that, but place your camera in one place and just let the action unfold around it. Again, Adobe Premiere. That's what I've been using for editing videos, 360 videos. It's brilliant. It's slightly complicated to get it set up. But once it's set up, I hope it's got a bunch of dedicated VR plugins. They'll do things like MacGorsey and Blurz and various visual effects. You can insert 3D text within a space and graphics and you could put an idea of the little badge that goes at the bottom of the image. Final cut is compatible with DaVinci Resolve and I believe we've just had a few things on the chat that people with some suggestions as well. A few other notable software. I've said your camera is 360 out. That's great. The screen grab is the InstaOne Photoshop. I've mentioned Premiere After Effects. It does do 360, and it does some really good things with 360, but the workflow is awful. It does tracking and all that kind of cool stuff that After Effects can do, but it's a bit of an odd workflow. One I've come across recently is called Hugging, which is for stitching images together. Premier Plugging is tracking great. Hugging, if you want to do stuff with DSLR, I believe Hugging is one of the apps that you can use to stitch images together. I've used it just to change the like a wonky horizon when I've done some images and that works quite well. Again, it's got a pretty awful interface, so just be aware. Publishing, we've been through what I feel like is every possible platform.  You can add objects, and it's nice and easy. They're probably the ones that most people will go for. Things like Thing Link. Round Me, brilliant. Just keep adding these things, because these are just the ones that I know. If you've got any other suggestions, just pop them in the chat. That's really useful. Yeah, HP5, I've used that one. WonderV is one that we're looking at at the moment. That's very promising. I believe this does multi-user stuff. Graham knows a little bit more. My colleague Graham, who's in here. We can get students in, in groups, and they can chat, they can interact. I believe they can turn the audio on as well and chat, so verbally. If you just want the commander one where you do it yourself, grab yourself a bit of a web host in an eye frame that we did a little exercise earlier with, you'll need a web server, or you can actually do it on GitHub. That'll serve up these kinds of pages quite nicely. Or if you just want something really, really simple, Google photos, we've done a few little projects on photos where you just want the students to look at it, or Google Maps, you can upload your photos there, and that integrates with Street View as well. There's a little kind of web page that I've been looking at that's got a bit of a roundup of difference of free tools. If you want to have a look at immersiveweb.dev, that's quite an interesting page. If you're looking at doing this on a budget, if you're not sure whether you want to spend anything on it, then grab yourself an iPad or a decent phone and get the Street View app, and you can very quickly create 360 photos within a few minutes and get yourself a copy of an A-frame, and you can publish them very, very easily. Again, I've mentioned Google photos. That's a really good app. Facebook, I discovered that if you upload a 360 image to Facebook, it'll render it out as a 360-intracted image, so that's quite nice. Last bit, really, is to have a look at some of the examples and a bit of the pedagogy behind some of our 360 stuff. I've got a few examples that I'm going to go through. One of them is a virtual tour of an early years classroom. This one shows students the layout of a classroom and all the materials that the teachers decided to put within there. The 360 experience does it give students much more than just if you were to do this with 2D photographs and text explanations, what you might traditionally find in textbooks and things like that. They can look around the place. They can see the relationships between different objects. We've also enhanced that with text panels with questions to prompt thinking, reflection and discussion. We've got an example from the National Video Game Museum in Sheffield. We just did a really quick virtual tour of that. This just explores the role of video games in informal education. It's there just as a prompt for reflection on childhood, really. I've got a few examples of how we've used 360 video. Again, it's observing play. We've found that in education it's a really good tool for actually observing children playing in classrooms. A little bit more detail about these. I will put the links in the chat for these. I think this is this one. The broomhole at school tour. We did this on Thinglink. I think quite a few people have used it. Easy drag and drop editing. We can embed media, text, images, video, audio. We did all that. The free version is very good actually. I don't really see the point in actually buying it. It does everything that we needed it to. Some of the features you have to pay for. If you want a 360 video, you have to pay them a bit for that. This is what it looks like. We've got these various hotspots here that help the user navigate to different places within the space. I think I took over 100 pictures of the space. There's quite a lot of different scenes. We've got navigation around the space. We can look at different tables in detail. Then we've got hotspots for information and hotspots for media. The information panel looks like this. It's got a lot of picture in it. Then just a really simple question. Asking the students to have a little think about this space. Then the video one. We've embedded a 360 video within the 360 tour. It's the children playing on this particular table. National Video Game Museum. I haven't got a link for this because it's got student responses in it. We used Google Photos and created a gallery and shared that with students. We found that Google Photos supports 360 images and 360 videos. All we want them to do is have a discussion. This is when we were online as well. We're doing online teaching. They were commenting on the images. It's basic, but it's super simple to make and share. If you want something really rapid and you've got a bunch of 360 images, Google Photos is great. This is what it looks like. We've got a gallery of images. Then we've got some quite active chat. The children will do a starter question. The students will have a discussion about that. Using 360 videos. The top screenshot there is the one from the classroom in the previous tour example. We've used this in different situations. We're just getting students to watch it and reflect on that. They're observing the children playing. About a month ago we did the other example here. 360 videos observing creative play where the kids were playing with various items related to STEM education making things. We were observing with that. With this one we just popped it on Caltura, which is our video hosting platform, which supports 360 video and integrates with Blackboard. Popped it in the Blackboard course enabled commenting. There are student discussions around that video as well. Quite lively discussions as well. Here's a little testimonial from a student. If you don't want to read it all, it's basically saying that using 360 film was an awakening experience. Never before had the opportunity to engage with such an interactive thing. What's good about it is that the viewer or researchers, the power to assess what's going on all around them. From behind above and around and as a researcher and as a group of discussion. They were able to tap into deep level analysis and follow each child on their journey observing how they interacted with people, resources and provision. It's opened up lots of scope of discussion, which they wouldn't have been able to do without the views of the 360 camera. That's quite a good testimonial from a student. A little bit about the pedagogy. One thing that you hear quite a lot is, well it's not a replacement for the real thing, why do we want to do this? I don't think that diminishes the pedagogy at all. It's not a replacement for the real thing and you'd never claim it to be that, it's a thing in itself, it's powerful within itself. I think because it's interactive it helps engagement, so anything that's interactive I think is inherently engaging. The full 360 view, as the student said in that testimonial, the full 360 view of things that can see everything. It's not an editor view so it's not what your teacher wants you to see. You can understand the relationships and interactions between things, objects, people, people and objects. That's really powerful. Something that I've been fairly interested in, it's piqued my interest right from the start, is how it can be impactful on a psychological level. What are the processes that are going on with the new brain when you experience a VR thing, particularly when you put a headset on, but we're not just talking about headsets, it's about accessing it in lots of different ways, but there are theories about how mirror neurons fire, so when you're looking at these experiences of others, you can read a bit more about that on the Simpty website, there's a little link down there. Okay, that appears to the end. I seem to have throttled through that, so quicker than when I've practised it. Has anybody got any questions or thoughts? There's been a lot of stuff in the chat which I'll be interested to read. If you've got any questions, feel free to pop your hand up and you can turn your mic on if you want to chat. I think thanks for sharing stuff, that's really good. Alicia, you raise a really interesting question about what do you have to be mindful of from an accessibility point of view, accessibility is something that I'm really interested in, but with VR, it's really racked my brain because it's not completely accessible. Particularly with using headsets, if you go down that route, there's a lot of problems with people who actually can't handle it, so you have to provide alternative means for them to view this. That's why I really like doing things on the web where you can view it in a headset if you want to, but you can also view it within a browser and there's different levels of viewing it if you can't actually use a headset. Myself, I can have one for about five minutes if I feel sick, so I do have a bit of it to go. In terms of the actual material that you create as well, I'm not convinced that it's fully accessible because a lot of the methods for creating experiences is very visual, so you've got perhaps an image there and you've got text overlaid on it and I'm not quite sure how accessible that is, whether it's compatible with screen readers, that kind of thing, but the good thing is that it's a multimedia experience, so you can have these images, but you can also include sound in it, so you can have ambient sound, you can include narration and all those things that you might include in visual or video, some material. So I hope that's answered that one. Crikey, where's the questions? So Sarah, have you used any of the scenarios with the headsets? If so, what did that bring to the experience? So unfortunately with the headsets, we bought them kind of mid-semester and then we didn't get a chance to use them, we were going to use them and then we got locked down and then we haven't really used them, in a couple of weeks. Not with these scenarios that we've got. The kind of scenarios that we've actually built are linked on blackboards, so for students to have a look in their own time, whether students use the mobile phones or if they've got cardboard headsets, I'm not quite sure. In a way, the headsets are a bit of a nice thing to have, but that's not particularly our priority. We're doing different things with a headset. We're exploring XR applications and kind of how children learn with games and VR and that kind of thing. So yeah, I think a lot Sarah, the headsets are quite limiting in that you have to have one for a start. In terms of using them, I find them incredibly awkward. If you're trying to browse around the internet, it's a really kind of clunky experience and they're very difficult to set up. Hadrian, I think the last question. The recording will be shared shortly after the presentation. If you wanted to share the slides alongside them, could you forward those over to me? Sure, I am. If you're happy for me to now end the recording. Yeah, sure.