There was something unique about Bava Sali [Israel Abuchatzaira] that that can't be attributed to just the fact of his emphasizing doing Torah and mitzvoth or to his miracles. Miracles we know are a dime a dozen. People in every religion take the miracle workers of that religion to be proofs of that religion. But they are not proof of anything because of several reasons. They can be from the sitra achra. Even when they are from the side of holiness still anyone doing certain kinds of service like fasting and general separation from the pleasures of this world tend to gain some kind of spiritual power. Furthermore miracles happen to everyone and have no bearing on the holiness of any individual

In spite of all this there was something really unusualness about Bava Sali.

What I mean to say by this is I want to bring out the idea that there is an essential contradiction between the idea of human perfection as represented by Bava Sali w and the idea of human perfection as represented by my parents and by Albert Einstein, Newton, and Aristotle.


Now we know outside of the miracles of Bava Sali there was by him a essential emphasis of simple and plain old Shulchan Aruch. Neither for him or for others was there any idea of specific things to emphasize. It was just simple keep Torah. [For the general public reading this blog I think the best idea of how to get an idea of what it means to keep Torah in the ideal sense you should find a sefer hachinuch.]


But There was a very different idea of human perfection as emphasized by people like Einstein.

And in between that were my parents that represented the human n perfection in terms of mentchlichkeit.[untranslatable Yiddish meaning basically human decency].

What I mean to point out here is that each of these paths has pit falls and even actual flaws for most people. But what we can do is to try to focus on certain points that are in each path and try to emulate and stick to these basic points as best we can with Balance and common sense.


I would like to point out that the basic path of Torah and mitzvot is a little subtle.Even with the Rambam writing it simply and bava sali showing a good modern example of how to do it --it still is subtle. The problem as Bava Sali said himself all paths are dangerous. That is one can try to do Torah in the most simple ways that would seem to be obvious and yet find himself in situations in which not just he finds the world that he has placed himself in is predatory but also finds himself doing more objective evil than when he was not trying to keep Torah at all.