היצר רע מתלבש במצוות the Satan dresses up in mitzvot. He never approaches a person saying to do a sin. Rather he always comes saying, "Let's go do a mitzvah." But inside the mitzvah is enclosed a hidden sin that takes away all the value of the mizvah because it is  מצווה הבאה בעבירה

Reb Nachman brings this idea from a midrashic statement brought in Bava Batra. But the Gra says the same thing more or less explicitly,
[This is one of the  reasons I stay as far as possible from the Jewish religious world. But the major reason is not just the above mentioned reason, rather it is that I try to avoid the straight forward idolatry that is the essence of the religious world. You can see this point in the Nefesh HaChaim of  a disciple of the Gra where he explains that idolatry can be directed towards people as much as towards inanimate objects.]

And further I feel a lot of problems that the world faces today are a result of idolatry as you can see quite often in the Old Testament--that troubles come close on the heels of idolatry. 

[That is I think some people like my own Dad work well under pressure. But that is not me.

White society has an underlying current of the drive to excel. -But that is putting it politely. In fact it is the drive to be better than anyone else. This creates a environment in which people that can excel do so. For me however this caused me a great deal of discomfort. In any case it explains why in fact White society does come up with all the new and neat stuff.
[Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry. Differential geometry. Calculus: Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. String Theory, The indeterminacy principle. The wave equation. The Parthenon.  Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Every symphony ever written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio. Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening. Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram.  Polio vaccine. The integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber. Nylon. Roads. Buildings.  Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, that’s nerve gas, and maybe we didn’t really need it.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray, public-key cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.]
Things like this:


I found the Beit Midrash environment--in [Litvak yeshivas] much more congenial to my taste. It also had an element of the drive to excel-- but in a much more relaxed form.
And in fact, even today I noticed that I do not work well under pressure.

You might have noted in the two books on Gemara that I put links to that I bring down the Chidushei HaRambam of Rav Soloveitchik and Tosphot. But as a rule, I never was able to understand Tosphot except by a kind of learning in which I would just say the entire Tosphot from beginning to end every day for a few weeks without understanding a single word. But then at some point after a few weeks or more the whole Tosphot would become clear. But the learning to get to that point was always in this kind of relaxed way or not even thinking whether I understand it or not

[That was however not when I was learning with my learning partner David Bronson who in general took the more direct approach to Tosphot: "Stay on it until you get it."]

[That is I think some people like my own Dad worked well under pressure. But that is not me.]

World view used to be connected with the idea of a systematic philosophy. That idea was lost to the degree that people have world views that are immune to realty and employ self contradictory principles. A lot of work during the Middle Ages in philosophy was done to get to a systematic non self contradictory system. This still existed during the time of Hegel. But after that a world view could be just that --a world view unrelated to reality.

The good thing about Musar Ethics of the Middle Ages is that its structure depends on well worked out world views.

[I mean that Musar tends to depend on the books of Saadia Gaon and the Rambam in terms of world view]

The religious world

The religious world is pretty worthless at this point, but there are still a few decent Litvak yeshivas by which a new beginning might be made. That would obviously be Ponovitch and the great NY Litvak yeshivas. But before a new start can be made, the first thing is to clear out the avoda zara--idolatry-that the Gra was trying to warn people about. [I should point out that Reb Nachman was not in the category of the "herem". ]

If there is any way at all to come to authentic Torah, it certainly is not through the religious world.


When I actually try to think about what it would take to come to Torah, my thoughts automatically drift to the שערי תשובה The Gates of Repentance of Rabbainu Yona. I am not sure why. Maybe it is because he gives there the short and simple way. But mainly, my feeling is coming to Torah and the Absolute Spirit is mainly by learning Gemara and Musar [all the mediaeval books of Ethics], not just the Gates of Repentance.


The way to learn Gemara is to have a fast session  and an in-depth session. The fast one is by reading the Gemara along with Rashi [line by line, word by word] and at the end of the page to read all the Tosphot. The in depth session is to learn one or more Tosphot many times for many days.

The importance of learning Torah is that it is higher than repentance. So when one does not know what of how his or her actions are objectively wrong, learning Torah in itself sends corrections into the world of Repentance.


Reb Israel Salanter noticed the problem that religious people lose the menschlichkeit of Torah the more religious they become. He wanted to correct this problem by means of the Musar movement. He had a few disciples that went out and spread the good news about Musar/ learning Ethics. This to me seems to be a good idea. The way to do this I think is to get all the books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter and of the rishonim and just plow through them word by word.
The printing house Eshkol in Israel used to print all the major Musar books in one set.

Some girls just are interested in you because of your American passport.

. Some girls just are interested in you because of your American identity. Some are interested in your money. And some are not honest. I have sadlly known all these types.Sometimes you can find all three wrapped up in a single girl.

If you find yourself giving free English lessons to someone who is supposed to be your friend, then you know you are in a bad relationship.

I think reading the news is a kind of evil inclination. History also. If one's intention is to relax, then reading news and history does not accomplish that goal. It just makes one more nervous.
Also the Rambam includes reading history in the category of Outside books that one loses his portion in the next world for reading] [That is in his commentary to the Mishna.]




That is to say there is a short list of what are called secular subjects that were recommended by the Gra and the Rambam. [Physics Metaphysics the Trivium and Quadrivium] but outside of that they forbid.
[Most other Rishonim were against learning things the Rambam recommended like Aristotle. Certainly the Ramban and Rav Ovadia from Bartenura. But I have reason to believe the Rambam was right. Mainly my reasoning is that I did no see much in the way of righteousness of even human decency n the path of religious fanaticism. This observation convinced me that the Rambam and the Gra are correct.\]



I should mention the news does not really add much in terms of objective knowledge about the world in any case. You can tell this yourself. Just think about any event that your were personally present at or involved with that was reported in the news. Was there any connection between the real facts and what was reported?

listening to one's parents

Rav Naftali Troup does bring the idea that listening to one's parents is  a command in the Torah. This is usually ignored but still it should be fairly clear in the Ten Commandments.
One place where you see this is in the Old Testament in the book of Jeremiah. The children of Yonadav ben Rekav were charged by their father not to drink wine and not to dwell in a house but rather only in tents. So when they were ordered by a true prophet Jeremiah (to drink wine) they refused to obey him because of the commandment of their father. This got for them a promise from God that the family of Yonadav ben Rekav will continue forever.
This is interesting from the standpoint of obeying one's parents even when what they say is not related to Torah. Or even further--it seems to imply that listening to one's parents overrides listening to  a true prophet.


The idea is that one does not have to think that what one's parents are saying makes sense for this command of the Torah to apply. But it can not be  a case when they command one to transgress  the more severe kinds of commands in the Torah. This is because a positive command overrides a negative command, but not a negative command that has as a punishment being cut off from one's people.


Rav Naftali Troup was one of the  great Litvak sages in litvak yeshivas before WWII.


Why is this relevant?  Mainly because my parents did have a set of wishes for me. This includes things they specifically asked for and also things that their wishes were clear even if they did not express them openly. This is is one of the reasons that when I mention about the idea of the Rambam about the importance of learning Physics and Metaphysics that I sometimes mention my parents.

There is an idea in the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria]  small mindedness. That is that people can fall into a constricted state of consciousness.[or just normal state].

[n the Ari this all comes up in zeir anpin. This in fact has no connection with people except for souls of Emanation like the Patriarchs.Still there is what to learn from the concepts that apply to zeir anpin. The soul of a person is not a miniature zeir anpin as is clear throughout the entire set of the writings of the Ari.]

The way out of limited consciousness is by
 idea of a fulcrum--that is finding small acts and habits that can led to a higher state of consciousness or connection with Absolute Spirit.
These are:
Learning Torah [The Old Testament and the two Talmuds and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach] , Musar [Mediaeval Ethics books], learning fast but simply saying the words in order and then going on with no review until one has finished the book at least four times. Talking with God in one's own language. Avoiding cults. Avoiding sins of the tongue lashon hara, lies, rebuke in the wring kind of way. "Thou shalt not steal" to the ultimate extreme.

Avoiding the entire religious Jewish world is important because the Dark Side just got intertwined  and embedded too deeply. It is just now a large cult.

Whatever religious group one gets involves with, it always seems to end up being worship of people.
Even Buddha who was not asking for worship, did end up becoming an object of worship.
I must say that even though it is good to learn from the wise, it is never good to worship them.

I think it proper to mention that I try to stick with good principles that have been emphasized by wise men. And I try to use common sense to avoid things that may be held up for admiration but which I feel are suspicious.


(1) So worship of people as far as I am concerned is completely out of the question.
(2) I also avoid rebuking others for the same reason. It is a command in the Torah, but it is a command that I feel can cause more damage than good if applied without great caution.  I try to save it for the most serious of issues.
(3)   I definitly agree with the emphasis in the Mir Yeshiva on learning Gemara and Musar [ethics and rules of proper conduct].
(4)  I feel that Rav Silverman [Eliyahu] was right for taking the Gra at his word about putting his signature on the letter of excommunication. That is the only yeshiva that I am aware of that does take it seriously. That is for the same above mentioned reason about the importance of not doing idolatry.

What is relevant now about this is that keeping Torah depends on staying away from Jewish religious teachers as far as possible.

סביב רשעים יתהלכון In Psalms there is  a verse that states "around  go the wicked" This is usually understood to mean wherever holiness is found, around that come the kelipot dark forces to wreak it up.


In Reb Nachman's thought this comes up in different ways. One is the idea he brings from the Zohar that when there is a lot of sin in the world, the opening towards holiness is almost shut. But in order that it should not be shut completely they place there a false teacher.

For me in particular this is relevant because  my experiences with religious teachers has been universally negative in the extreme. I definitely can relate to what Reb Nachman is saying.

That is that religious teachers are actually placed there to keep people away from Torah and to give Torah and bad name. There is no question that there is a great deal of evidence to support Reb Nachman's thesis that Jewish religious teachers are home wreckers and their actual mission is to destroy families and all adherence to Torah.

What is relevant now about this is that keeping Torah depends on staying away from Jewish religious teachers as far as possible.

As ironic as it seems the best places with real authentic Torah are places that go by the Gra--and the more closely they follow the Gra the better.

[It seems to me that this ties in with another idea of Reb Nachman that the evil inclination is a continuous spectrum. That is--it starts at coarse  physical desires but reaches up towards the spiritual evil inclination and even up to the fallen angel the Satan. That is similar to the idea of Reb Israel Salanter that there is  a physical evil inclination and spiritual evil inclination. The spiritual one has nothing to do with physical desires but rather what ever is against the Law of God, the Law of Moses, it gives one a great desire to do.  ]

It should be clear that the spiritual evil inclination is vastly more evil than the physical evil inclination. And this explains the reasons for the phenomenon that I discuses in the above essay.

U-25 E Flat Major   U-23 F Major

The Constitution of the USA

There is an aspect to the Constitution that is not mentioned often. It is this. It was the way in the ancient world that if you had a small village that was just barely surviving and there was a neighboring village that was doing better you had two choices. Do better--work harder. But that turns out to be hard. It is much easier to get a few men together and invade the next village and kill the men and enslave the women. The only protection from this was for the other village to have more men. And thus States arose. The more men--the more protected you were. And thus arose Empires also. The bigger--the better. This is the unspoken story about the USA Constitution.It is a way to get everyone together to make a State.But the unique thing is it is based on moral principles not just might makes right like the Left. [In this I am leaving out the important point that human flourishing depends on there being a state.] In any case the Constitution depends on the kind of people that created it. It can not exist without the majority of the people agreeing with it's principles. I mean it can not be a unifying force strong enough to create a nation unless people agree with it.

The reason socialism appeals to people is also because of agreement but its agreement depends on greed. "Take from the rich and give it to us." It appeals to the lowest denominator of human nature. The Constitution appeals to the highest aspects of human nature.

In the yeshiva world in the Mir in N.Y. and Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway the emphasis was on learning Torah. The basic idea I think is that you can either tell people what your ideas of morality and justice are and hope that they will accept them. Or a better choice is let people learn Torah, and thus teach themselves morality.
This goes along with the basic problem of trying to convince other's of your own ideas. Usually it does not work. But when people learn Torah and Musar along the lines of Reb Israel Salanter and the Gra--in that way they teach themselves.
But I never really saw much justification for this idea until I learned the Nefesh HaChaim by a disciple of the Gra. There he brings the well known ideas about learning Torah from Shas.

That is to say that learning Torah is a drawing down of the light of the (4) שם מ''ה יוד הא ואו הא  and therefore on a whole new level beyond any of the other commandments of the Torah.

The idea of Musar I should mention is also along the same lines. It is not possible to reach the "self" directly because only the surface of the self is visible. But by learning Torah and Musar one indirectly can reach the self. [ I might mention the important principle of not speaking Lashon Hara [speaking evil] about others as being the opposite side of the coin of learning Torah.--That is to say that both of these things together reach to the light of the שם מ''ה {Divine Name with the value 45}

But both of these ideas  are based on Chazal. You can not just go through the Torah and find something that appeals to you and claim that "This... is the main thing."  That is called המגלה פנים התורה שלא כהלכה and the Rif and Rosh say that books that claim that type of thing  are in the category of ספרים חיצוניים -books of the Dark Side.
 Since it came up I might as well expand a bit. The basic idea of the Ari Isaac Luria is that at first there was no place for creation because the Infinite Light was everywhere and so God contracted Himself  to create a hollow space for creation (and left a spot of his light in the middle ) and then drew into it a קו וחוט a line and thread of his Infinite Light which went down a drop and then turne towards the sides to make the first sepherah of circles. Then from there down some more nine more times. Then came אדם קדמון The ten sepherot in the form of  a man. Then from his ears nose mouth were drawn more worlds. Then from his eyes. That last one caused the breaking of the vessels and then the light of the שם מ''ה [name of value 45] shown to make a correction. That is the short story of why it is important to learn Torah. That is because it draws that light which is a correction to all the kelipot and breaking of the vessels.
I usually do not go into this because the Dark Side has taken the Ari as prisoner..

In the beginning of בבא בתרא the גמרא is trying to figure out if היזק ראיה שמיה היזקץ or not? They do this at first by looking at the משנה
The משנה says that if שותפים want to divide a court yard they build a wall.
The words the משנה uses are שרצו לעשות מחיצה.  So the question is what is a מחיצה? A wall? or just some sticks stuck in the ground to show where the dividing line is. The גמרא seems to say that if the word מחיצה means a wall [גודא] then we learn from this that היזק ראיה לאו שמיה היזק.
I have at this point in time no idea what the גמרא means. Does it mean this. If it means a wall then there is no proof one way or the other. Only if it means a division, then we can deduce that היזק ראיה שמיה היזק. Or does it mean there is an actual proof?

I think it is possible that the גמרא is thinking like this. If the משנה would hold היזק ראיה שמיה היזק then it would have written השותפים שרצו ליחלק בונים כותל. That is to say it had an easy way of adding a little more information. But it choose not to do so. Therefore it must hold לאו שמיה היזק



בתחילת בבא בתרא הגמרא מנסה להבין אם היזק ראיה שמיה היזק או לא? הם עושים זאת בהתחלה  על ידי שמסתכלים במשנה. המשנה אומרת שאם שותפים רוצים לחלק חצר הם בונים קיר. המילים שהמשנה משתמשת בהן הן  "שרצו לעשות מחיצה". אז השאלה היא מה היא מחיצה? קיר? או רק מקלות תקועים באדמה כדי להראות היכן הקו המפריד הוא. גמרא נראית שרוצה לומר שאם המילה מחיצה פירושו קיר [גודא] אז אנחנו לומדים מכך היזק ראיה לאו שמיה היזק. אין לי בשלב הזה מושג מה הגמרא מכוונת. האם זאת אומרת - אם פירושו קיר אז אין הוכחה לכאן או לכאן. רק אם זה אומר חלוקה, אז אנחנו יכולים להסיק כי היזק ראיה שמיה היזק. או אולי פירוש הדבר ישנה הוכחה בפועל?


אני חושב שזה אפשרי שהגמרא חושבת ככה. אם המשנה מחזיקה שהיזק ראיה שמיה היזק אז היא היתה כותבת השותפים שרצו ליחלק בונים כותל. כלומר היה למשנה דרך קלה להוסיף קצת יותר מידע. אבל היא בחרה שלא לעשות זאת. לכן היא חייבת להחזיק לאו שמיה היזק.

In the beginning of Bava Batra the Gemara is trying to figure out if היזק ראיה שמיה היזקץ. (Damage caused by seeing is damage or not). They do this at first by looking at the Mishna
The Mishna says that if partners want to divide a court yard they build a wall.
The words the mishna uses are שרצו לעשות מחיצה (that wanted to make a division) so the question is what is a מחיצה (division)? A wall? or just some sticks stuck in the ground to show where the dividing line is. The Gemara seems to say that if the word מחיצה means a wall [גודא] then we learn from this that היזק ראיה לאו שמיה היזק ((Damage caused by seeing is not damage).
I have at this point in time no idea what the Gemara means. Does it mean that if it means a wall then there is no proof one way or the other. Only if it means a division then we can deduce that היזק ראיה שמיה היזק. Or does it mean there is an actual proof?


I think it is possible that the gemara is thinking like this: If the Mishna would hold היזק ראיה שמיה היזק then it would have written השותפים שרצו ליחלק בונים כותל. That is to say it had an easy way of adding a little more information. But it choose not to do so. Therefore it must hold לאו שמיה היזק

 The issue of love and family is hard to figure out. When I was in high school I waited for my Dad [almost every day ] to pick me up at the public library and there I read some of the symposium of Plato which is about Love. I must say growing up in my parent's home along with my learning of Plato gave me a very idealistic concept of what Love is all about.

[This left me unprepared for the cynical type of marriage that exists today -that which is called marriage but is really just a financial arrangement. The "real thing", the authentic connection between souls I think no longer exists.]

What accounts for charismatic leaders? Sometimes someone really knows what they are talking about and that can account for it. That is the reason people will flock to a lecture in Quantum Mechanics from Leonard Susskind.

  But other times it is hard to tell. Most often charismatic leaders  are ignorant of what they profess to know, but are in their position because of the snowball effect. They managed to get one or two people under their influence and then those people go out to make more converts etc. Sometimes like in academia you have  a group of people that award to each other credentials.

A friend played for me  a  little bit of of an Allan Watts talk on Buddhism. He started out saying that survival is a game. He then explained that survival is just a game that people play. He elaborated on this theme  a little and bit and I asked my friend what he learned from that. It occurs to me that what Allan Watts was saying to his audience was that their survival was just a game to him. It seems unlikely that he was saying that his own survival is just a game. I think he took his own survival deathly serious. So I wonder what is it about someone that is spouting utter nonsense that people get attracted to?

Mainly I would have to say that it is the desire to fit into a social group that gets people to accept whatever themes they say and to respect whom so ever they respect.

But unless something is really evil, I think it is best not to criticize. Say criticism for when it is absolutely necessary. I think much of the interest in Buddhism is a reaction to corrupt religions in the West and so it makes little sense to criticize what might be good for the people that are following it..

[People have needs that can be satisfied only in a social group. So the message of many groups is: agree with us and you will be accepted. Disagree? Then get out. ] Women nowadays use that leverage--you want to be in  a relationship you have to agree that she is a supreme being worthy of worship and praise. [At least that is what I found among Western women.]

Renaissance and the Enlightenment

I like the Renaissance a lot and Kant was pro Enlightenment to some degree. I mean though in fact he was pro Enlightenment, still in his system you find an area in which Reason has trouble penetrating. And that seems to leave room for faith. That is at least how Kant and Dr Kelley Ross look at it.

But with Hegel you really do not need the area of the dinge an sich/things in themselves to be immune from Reason, but rather a realm that some kind of awareness does exist.


I have never been able to blame the problems of the modern world on the Renaissance nor on the Enlightenment. Rather my own tendency has been to see Rousseau as the actual source of the problems. Later I saw in fact a few problems in Locke and Hume that I think may also contribute to the problems. But I still would not blame the Enlightenment itself.


[Dr Ross I would surely disagree with me about Hegel, but at this point I think that it is true that Hegel holds from an area of faith/knowledge that is not based on reason , nor understanding, nor empirical evidence. At least that is what I saw one time in reading Hegel. But Hegel would call it spirit--as different from Absolute Spirit.]

And furthermore I think it is necessary to agree with me. How can one think that all areas of spirit are open to knowledge by means of Reason or dialectics in Hegel's system?

Of course Hegel is open to abuse as the Marxists have found out. But I still can not see him to blame for that when openly the Marxists reject most of his system. but use some concepts they found useful.


There are plenty of problematic issues nowadays, but I would not blame the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment for them.

The problem that I see is the Satan that goes around with his agents. The way to get out of the problem with the Dark Side is not at all clear. The thing is there are different areas of value, and the main job of every person is to penetrate to the good core and avoid the kelipa [evil] in each area.

U-22 G Major   [U-22 in midi]

When the Rambam discusses Physics and Metaphysics

When the Rambam includes Physics and Metaphysics in the category of the Oral Law it seems  to include chemistry. That is he says is he referring to these subjects as understood by the ancient Greeks and whether in Mishne Torah or in Aristotle we can see Chemistry being included.
Even though the actual Physics of Aristotle does not seem valid anymore, still the subject matter that the Rambam was referring to is clear.
On the other hand when the Rambam refers to Metaphysics, I think it is clear he means specifically the book Metaphysics of Aristotle. But then going by subject matter I think then one would have to include Kant and Hegel.

Hezekiah (king of Judah) had been giving money [tribute]  to Assyria. Then at one point he stopped. Then the king of Assyria sent an army against the cities of Judah. So Hezekiah said to him "I am sorry. How much  would it take to make peace between us?" Assyria gave some staggering amount and Hezekiah sent it to him. Then the king of Assyria sent an army to conquer Jerusalem.

The lesson seems to be: Do not compromise with the Dark Side. They get a taste of victory and then they just want more.

fake-plastic-rice-being-made-in-Vietnam, it gets mixed with real rice and can kill if eaten steadily.

http://talknetwork.com/2016-11-30-fake-plastic-rice-being-made-in-vietnam-factory-video.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz7ru9P-U7M

Basic principles.

[] Talking with God in one's mother tongue. [As we see King David was doing. We also see the Rambam mention that this was the actual way people prayed before the prayers became solidified and set.
[] No Lashon Hara [speaking bad]. That is no talking bad about other unless you fulfill the seven conditions  the Chafetz Chaim brings for saying lashon hara for sins between man and his fellow man. For sin between man and God these seven conditions do not exist but there are a few other conditions as the Chafetz Chaim goes into in chapter 4.
[] Truth. Speak the truth at all cost.
[] Try review the Oral and Written Law. That is every day one full chapter of the Old Testament at the dinner table with the whole family. That is to get through the entire Tenach from cover to cover.
Also the Two Talmuds. [With the all the basic commentaries if possible].
[] Same with Physics and Math [as Maimonides (the Rambam) mentions in Mishne Torah and also the Guide.].= to get through the basic subjects. I know of no particular text, but at least to get through the basic subjects.
[]The way to do this learning is to say the words and to go on. That is called "Girsa".
[] learning survival skills.
[] If in Israel, it is important to serve in the IDF and otherwise support the peace of the state. [There were plenty of Jews that tried to stop the second return to Israel n the days of Ezra and Nechemia and their names are recorded for a in the book of Nechemia for their eternal shame. Thus the religious world that today also tries to undermine the State of Israel will also been remembered as cursed for all future generations.


I  got to thinking about this after breaking my foot and leg in three places. I was not able to walk for two months so I had lots of time to think about teshuva (repentance). That is I hope to not let this crisis go to waste but rather to strive to understand in what ways do I need to improve myself.

religious teachers are actually demons

Reb Nachman of Breslov has a good point that most religious teachers are actually  demons. That is to say they do not have human souls--though they might have had human souls once. [He calls them "Torah scholars that are demons" and he brings this idea from the Zohar.]
This theory has one thing going for it- it accounts for the damage they cause.
On the other hand if you go with the idea that everyone has an evil inclination, then it is hard to see from where their uniformly evil advice comes from.

The fact is that Jeremiah and all true tzadikim throughout the ages have had to deal with the problem of false teachers.

The obvious question is how to tell who is from legitimate and who is not. From my experience there is nothing in the religious world that is legit except for the rare exception of the great Litvak yeshivas in NY and Ponovitch in Israel.

I bring this up because there is  a great deal that one can learn from the Oral and Written Law [Torah] but the first step is to avoid the teachers from the Dark Side.

[ These demonic Torah scholars use Torah and prayer to relieve people of their money. For them Torah is a way to get ahead in life.]


I might mention that the problem of telling the difference between good and evil I am beginning to see is world wide problem. To me it looks that the Dark Side is very active is getting evil to seem like good. The best solution to this problem I take as being this: Reason perceives universals. That is to say: reason might not tell us much, but it remains the only possible way to tell the difference between good and the Devil's plots..

To put this differently I go with Maimonides that there is a reason for the commandments of the Torah and that is to bring to natural law--that is moral law that is objective. Also this goes along with Hegel that reason can penetrate into the dinge an sich by means of a dialectical process.
But I do not mean that Torah is only consequential morality, rather i think it is like what Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school calls "Ontological undecidability." That is that commandments of the Torah are to bring to some goal and also have an inherent holiness .  

Having a girl friend? To me it seems that nowadays it is preferable to have a girlfriend rather than a wife. I would rather have someone who comes up to kiss me when I walk through the front door rather than someone who yells at me.

The major reason I think that having a girl friend is OK is mainly the two commentaries on the in Even HaEzer that say that even to the Rambam the whole problem is only an איסור עשה a prohibition that is derived from a positive commandment. [That is to say we know this is allowed to the Raavad and Ramban/Nachmanides. The whole question is the Rambam. But even to the Rambam there is no prohibition per se, but rather simply the lack of doing kidushin (the marriage ceremony).]

If you look over there, you will see that Rav Joseph Karo just brings the Rambam, and the Rema brings the opinions that it is allowed. But that is not news. What is interesting is the fact that the two major commentaries on Rav Yoseph Karo [בית שמואל, חלקת מחוקק] both say the Rambam only forbids it from an איסור עשה that is a prohibition that is derived from a positive commandment.

[Much after this someone showed me the Radvaz who says the same thing in some long teshuva [letter].]

See this idea from Chronicles I ch. 2 verse 46.

The reason this is interesting and also important is that not everything people plan on works out the way they expect. Even in marriage. In fact, in marriage I assume most people think hard and think twice before settling on a particular marriage partner,- and even with that it does not always work out the way they expect. Thus this idea of  a girl friend is a very positive option.


[Normally I find it a lot better to look at the Tur to clarify difficult issues. The Tur is ambiguous because he brings the Rosh who clearly does not like the idea but from side reasons. That is-- that there is not any prohibition in itself.]

And a further issue is simply that it is not good to be without a wife. So if having a wife is not possible in places like the USA where women are bad news, the best idea is a girl friend.
[Women in the USA have been determined to destroy men ever since around 1990 and on,]


To me it seems that nowadays it is preferable to have a girlfriend rather than a wife. I would rather have someone who comes up to kiss me when I walk through the front door rather than someone who yells at me.


The reason why Calev ben Yefuna having a few girl friends (Chronicles I 2:46) is important is that he was not a king. So we see there is no special status granted to a king in this regard. Having one or more girl friends is perfectly permitted. [The fact of Caleb ben Yefuna is significant since he was a true righteous person. He was the friend of Joshua and one of the spies sent by Moses. But he an Joshua brought back a good report about the Land of Israel. So the act that he had multiple girl friends is significant.]

The proof from Caleb ben Yefuna I found in the Gra's commentary.

I find it easier to stay healthy when I am not tempted by bad choices.  Fast food was a temptation for me when I was in NY and in Israel. Cheap and tasty. Just for the sake of my own health I find it better to be in an area where fast foods are simply not available.
At one time I would concentrate on black bread, a raw beet and some fried eggs in the morning. That  got my weight down.

Walking or jogging was also pretty good for that.

Sometimes one is however not able to make his or her own choices about where to live.

I was recently in a hellish apartment. So I did not have much ability to take care of my health. Now I thank God that he took me out of that evil place and brought me to a wonderful place. It happened in a kind of ironic kind of way. I broke my foot and spent a month in the hospital but in any case it got me out a place I should have left  a long time ago.

Looking at the kings of Israel, I got reminded that getting rid of idolatry was a central concern. Some of them simply got rid of every last idol they could find in Israel and every single idol worshiper.
I think that I myself have lost sight of this simple idea. Most religious places do worship human beings even though they pretend to keep Torah. But not only that, but furthermore the worship of their particular idol is central to their philosophy.

The first time I was going through Tenach the Old Testament, I noticed  this central concern of many of the great kings only slightly. The next time I began to notice it more so.

My feeling about all this is that it would be great if someone would do like King Asa and just throw out all the idols once and for all. [This is certainly something the Gra wanted to do, but his advice was not accepted. Even the Litvak yeshivas which more or less follow his approach are watered down and diluted and infiltrated.]

I might mention all the idolatry I have seen in the religious world has always bothered me. I just have never spoken up because I figured there must be some excuses for it. After all I have never learned the subject in the Gemara in Sanhedrin 63 in detail. Only after doing the sugia with y learning partner do I feel I have  a better grasp of the issue.

Commandments of the Torah versus Paul.

Though many people think that Paul was a saint, I  think that he said some things which were wrong.  Paul in his letters says there is no need to keep the commandments of the Torah.  He goes over this theme many times. Not just in the book of Hebrews, but it comes up quite often. [Too many times for me to remember. Ephesians is one place off hand I recall.]

If you take a look at the Book of Deuteronomy it says quite often to keep all the commandments. In one place it uses the phrase "כל הימים" "all the days" I think right before the Shema. But that I think was mistranslated in many translations in English  into "כל ימי חייך" "all the days of your life."]

But besides that it does also say "Do not add or subtract from the commandments." And in the later chapter 13 it says a prophet who says true words of prophecy and yet tells you to serve other gods is trying to take you from the commandments of God and so he is  false prophet.



So what ever Paul's reasons might have been, it seems he was trying to claim that people do not have to keep the laws of the Torah and therefore he would be considered a false prophet.
[He was subtracting the commandments.]

P.S. I know that this issue was a debate between Paul on one side and James and Peter on the other as is clear in the Doctrines and Homilies of Clementine. But that seems to be a different issue over there. I am looking at this strictly from the standpoint of Torah.


When Protestants talk about reading the Bible, all they really mean is to read Paul.

What does Buddhism strive for? The destruction of the self.--And it succeeds.

On the subject of constellations of belief I realize that people disappointed with one value system that they have inherited often jump into another value system and tend to project into its leaders all the holiness and light that they expected to see in their former value system but wre disappointed.
So no wonder that given enough time they discover in the new system the same degree of fraud and chicanery.
Mainly here I am referring to the recent scandals in Buddhism but I think my remarks apply in general.

Still I might mention that I do have myself my own constellation of values based on a few fundamental principles based on the Oral and Written Law [the law of Moses].
But I would have a hard time defining my own values. Still just the fact that my son was here in Uman with his interest in Buddhism got me thinking.

First of all I would have to say I disagree with Buddha in terms of the highest ideal being to be unattached to anything or anyone in this world. Non attachment seems to be a good principle when it comes to bad people-- to stay away from them as far as possible. But this is not a good principle when it comes to good and decent people. In particular I see Buddhism as having a goal of breaking family attachments and relationships. That seems frankly as the opposite of getting to one's true self. one's true self is not an isolated bubble in the void.

There are other things also that I am not sure how to phrase. One thing is meditation to come to know one's own mind is not possible since one is only thinking about what one remembers that he or she was thinking a few moments before. You can not think about what you are now thinking because you are thinking it now.

[Besides these I also noticed that the effect of Zen and Buddhism on one friend is to destroy his mind and personality. The more tolerant he thinks he is, the worse he gets. And  that is  what Buddhism strives for--the destruction of the self.--And they succeed. But I am taking Buddhism just as an example. Mysticism in the religious world that I am familiar with seems to have the same mind and morality destroying effect.]

Constellations of Belief

People choose their belief system based on non rational principles. That is they choose a constellation of beliefs that have no rational connections.  For example in politics many beliefs of the Left are unconnected. e.g. animal rights having more value than the rights of an unborn child.
Also these beliefs are resistant to evidence. So clearly these constellations of belief are not based on reasons nor on evidence. Rather they are most often reactions against parents or some perceived opposite social group.


A friend was in Uman for Rosh Hashanah and brought with him a lot of books of Buddhism of the Westernized versions. [Not one authentic Buddhist text.] That got me thinking about this issue of constellations of values.

My basic reaction to Buddhism is that it is a much better than a lot of other things out there.

That is, I do have a basic idea of objective moral values.  So any value system I measure with this measuring stick: does it bring to objective moral values? That is I do not even look at motivation, or words. Acta non verba. [Actions, not words].




A Constellation  of belief means if you believe one axiom of that group that you want to be associated with you have to believe other unrelated axioms or else be kicked out.

"Felix Mendelssohn I think was very great, but simply on a second tier. I mean you have top level Bach Mozart Beethoven. Then the second tier where there are a lot more people Brahms, Mendelssohn, Sibelius etc. Then there are people that are somewhere between those two levels Handel, Hayden Vivaldi etc. and lots of Renaissance.



As for literature --it is hard to tell who is really great. The reason is that takes a lot longer to tell what is of lasting worth. Shakespeare for example has withstood the test of time and even so I am not sure that he is as great as people claim [Not that I read all of his work. After around the play that slandered Joan of Arc I gave upon him.]. In terms of plays and stories on the top level I think Sophocles is a lot better.
{Besides that I think the Rambam would have forbid reading "literature". I doubt if he would have thought there is any intrinsic worth in it. But for that matter he would have also forbid music of any kind. He did not have the same opinion as the Gra about the "seven wisdoms." This basic idea of spending my time learning Torah I would be doing except that I did not get along very well in the religious kinds of places where books of Torah are to be found. So just from simple self preservation I do not go to such places so as not to give them a chance to hurt me any more than they already have.
But if I could I would get my own set of books of Torah and do them at home.--Torah is valid and important but the Sitra Achra has taken over the entire religious world from head to toe.]





I was once playing on the violin on the street in Geula, and a grandson of Rav Israel Abuchatzaira came by and asked me to play something from Felix Mendelssohn. [I think he might have asked specifically for the violin concerto.]
His mother [Avigail Buso] is very much into listening to classical music--i.e. the daughter of Rav Israel Abuchatzeira.
She however did not approve of my playing violin on the street. She offered me this offer: If I would sit and learn Torah she would pay all my expenses. I did not accept at the time because of my grievances against the religious world.They had already done enough damage to me to the degree I did not see this offer as a good thing.

In the book of Isaiah it says in ch 40 "To whom will you liken me?" If God would have any form or substance, then there would be things [Heaven forbid] that one could compare Him to.

In the book of Isaiah it says in ch 40 "To whom will you liken me?"  The Rambam (Maimonides) uses this verse as a commentary on the verses of the Torah that say God has no form.
The Rambam understands this verse to mean simply  that God has no character trait that one could ascribe to anything physical. Thus God has no form, no matter, no substance, no "essence" or anything else that could be ascribe to any physical being.
This is well known and common place, but in the Jewish religious world in the next breath, people will start to talk about God as if he has characteristics that could apply to physical beings or things.

Thus the basic beliefs are self contradictory, and therefore false.

I mean to say that if God would have any form or substance, then there would be things [Heaven forbid] that one could compare Him to. Therefore nothing that one can attribute to a physical being can be applicable to God.
 With the religious this change in the belief system of Torah goes along with worship of their religious teachers. They ascribe Divine traits to their leaders. Thus this change in the philosophy of Torah goes along with a hidden agenda. It is not an innocent mistake.

During the Middle Ages people did not think about politics even though they were aware that there were other forms of government like that of ancient Athens or Rome. Religion was the major source of value in people's lives that is what they spent their spiritual and mental enegy upon.
The reason for this is that politics was irrelevant. They lived under monarchs.


Nowadays people take that same energy and spend it on politics or conspiracy theories or alternative religions.
Breslov, New Age, Buddhism  are all motivated in this same way. Religion nowadays is almost always a reaction against something. Breslov is a last chance effort to find value in the religious world when people have been severely burnt. Buddhism (in the West) is a reaction against Christianity. New Age is similar.

Buddhism tries to break people's ties with their family and friends as if that will lead to Nirvana. They do this in the way of claiming there is no objective truth and therefore all truth is only what is inside of one, not in his relationship with others.

Webs of words are woven by all these cults not to reveal truth but to hide it.

Erez [a disciple of Rav Shick who later became a cult leader seperate from Rav Shick] used to say about Rav Shick's booklets "they have shining words". I always used to wonder about this. Shining words are not necessarily true words. In fact I have an aversion to too many words and too much talking.  One of the reasons I never went for a degree in philosophy was I could not stand the obsession with words that philosopher have. As soon as a philosopher says something about language I change the channel.

Reb Nachman  emphasized the need for a spiritual teacher. The problem with this is legitimating-idolatry -and-cultish-behavior.
[This should not be taken as critique on any of Reb Nachman's teachings but rather on how people misuse them. I consider Reb Nachman to be a true tzadik and I feel that a good deal of my personal growth while in Israel should be attributed to my following his good ideas.]


The legitimating narrative of Breslov lays the groundwork for an authoritarian inclined leader/tzadik– – to draw his followers into a cult-like world dependent on obedience, the master’s approval, and an ethical framework reflecting the master’s self-serving interests.

Breslov

In Breslov it is related related the following exchange  that indicates a view of what a tzadik is supposed to do or be. Someone asked, “If a tzadik is capable of doing miracles, why doesn’t he do them?… Why doesn’t  the tzadik make the blind see, or touch a crazy person and make him sane? Wouldn’t even such a showy miracle as walking on water make people believe in Breslov…” One person replied, “ Miracles are not the thing of Reb Nachman. Many people want miracles, and if they witness miracles they become attached to them. But miracles are only a technique. They are not the true way.”

Here we see the tzadik implying that he too could perform  miracles , only that he dismisses them as “only a technique” which is “not the true way.” He claims not to do miracles because it would distract people from “the true way.” His reply is a slap at Christainity for using flashy techniques to attract people who do not have the highest goals.

One person said
"It should be remembered that the mind of the tzadik is ever pure… and even if the tzadik sins, he is still to be considered a true tzadik

Here the reader is informed that no matter what the tzadik does, it is beyond both the reader’s and the student’s understanding, because the tzadik’s mind is ever pure, a mysterious state beyond the ordinary person’s comprehension. The student is informed that the master’s authority must be taken totally on faith in the infallibility and omniscience that is implicit in his title tzadik. According to this the student is incapable of making any judgments relating to the master’s activities.

 The student is informed that the tzadik’s authority must be taken totally on faith in the infallibility and omniscience that is implicit.. According to Breslov, the student is incapable of making any judgments relating to the tzadik’s activities.

One person wrote:
A tzadik is a person who has actualized that perfect freedom which is the potentiality for all human beings. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. The flow of his consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of our usual self-centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously and naturally from the actual circumstances of the present. The results of this in terms of the quality of his life are extraordinary-buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, security, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion … Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a personality so developed can be enough to change another’s whole way of life. But in the end it is not the extraordinariness of the tzadik that perplexes, intrigues, and deepens the student, it is the teacher’s utter ordinariness.
 This introduction was meant to describe a real tzadik, and by extension, as is clearly stated, all people with the title tzadik. It is not an idealized reference to a heavenly being or some distant or mythological religious figure.

To summarize, in the definitions and descriptions of the tzadik quoted above, there is an extraordinary claim to authority. These descriptions were given by individuals who are themselves thought to be tzadikim (tzadik plural), the very official spokespersons for institutions and believed by credulous people to be the only valid voices of Torah.

One can easily see from these descriptions of a tzadik that it is not necessary for any particular tzadik to make claims concerning his/her own enlightenment or his/her own level of perfection: because  institutional traditions repeat this claim for the person sitting in the role of tzadik. Any particular Breslov follower, who is adequately socialized into a given group, cannot but see the tzadik as expressing the Mind of God. Indeed, the tzadik often believes the same thing. Through its structure, mythology, its ritual practices, and perhaps most significantly through its use of a special set of terms and definitions, the institution reinforces this claim for the tzadik.

WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR  CLAIMS OF SUCH AUTHORITY?

Breslov bases its authority  through the idea of soul to-soul  transmission. This transmission is ritualized as  an event  by which the enlightened mind of the tzadik itself has been passed down through the ages. Similar to one candle lighting the next in a supposed unbroken chain, the enlightened mind of the tzadik is transmitted, from one enlightened tzadik to the next. Breslov claims this transmission is a separate transmission outside the teachings, that is, outside of texts. In doing so it marks itself as essentially different from and more authoritative than a straight forward Litvak yeshiva that claims no authority outside of what is written in the Oral and Written Law which anyone can buy and read. In this Breslov scheme, the living tzadik standing in front of you is the last in this unbroken series of enlightened beings. Hence, holding the title tzadik becomes an unquestioned marker of authority. Everyone else is open to delusional thoughts, self interest, self aggrandizement, and all the short comings of ordinary human beings.

To summarize, the basis for  authority is composed of three elements:

(1) tzadik is considered an enlightened being beyond the understanding of ordinary people – a living person who sits in for the true tzadik.
(2) transmission according to convention is the formal recognition on the part of the tzadik that the disciple has attained an understanding equal to that of the teacher.
(3) Unbroken lineage supposedly starting long ago and continuing through the historical tzadik down to the present day living tzadikim.
It will help in understanding Breslov social functioning to keep in mind the basic model of religious authority. That the standard setup for religious authority requires three mutually reliant zones: (1) a deep origin of truth or perfection in the form of a past sage, saint, deity, or Being; (2) a means for bringing that truth-perfection forward in time; and (3) a contemporary spokesperson for that primordial truth-perfection who is sanctioned to represent it in the present, and distribute it to the believing public, which delegates to him just this power and legitimacy. Religious authority always involved in a "to and fro" back and forth, shuttling back and forth between its deep origins and its application in the present. Put otherwise, in any moment of religious authority, there is always an audience focused on the singular priest-figure, who is expected to funnel the totality of truth and being from the past into the group.


In Breslov the tzadik is the deep origin of truth, transmission and the idea of unbroken lineage are the means for bringing that truth-perfection forward in time, while the living tzadik is the contemporary spokesperson for that primordial truth-perfection.  It is not surprising that around Breslov centers the focus is on who does and does not have  transmission rather than on what it actually means or what these people actually are or do.

This creates a hierarchical power relationship. So called "insight" or "wisdom", can function as the basis of this relationship between student and tzadik. Essentially, every aspect of the student’s life is open to the teacher’s judgment. The struggle occurs over at least two issues, the student wanting to be recognized for having realized the "truth", and over the student being authorized to be a teacher in his/her own right along with the perks and privileges of the position. Both these issues depend solely on the teacher’s unquestionable decision.

 Breslov places importance  on their "tzadik's  lack of self interest and supposed unconcern with his public image. This doesn’t mean there is, in fact, a lack of self-interest, only that the master’s self-interest can more easily be disguised beneath the  ideals of "enlightened mind," selflessness, and teaching. In contrast, common people cannot be trusted because by nature their actions are driven by self interest. The imputed lack of self interest of the tzadik implies that everything the tzadik does is to help the student, whether the student understands this or not.

These imputed qualities of the master:
(1) lack of self interest
(2) everything the master does is to help the student
easily combine to become tools of dominance and abuse in interpersonal relations between the master and his disciples.

And in fact there is widespread abuse.

Causality is true and things have a super-position of a few possible space-time coordinates until observed.

The general way I have thought about causality for a while is that the fact that nature violates Bell's inequality means we have to throw out one of two things (1) reality, or (2) causality/locality. Since GPS proves relativity is correct so we know it is the first assumption must be thrown out.
[That is we know there is space-time, but things have no space-time coordinate until observed.]

There would be no reason to mention this except that I noticed the locality (causality) also comes up in QM in terms of showing that Dirac particles (of 1/2 spin) must be fermions (obey the Pauli exclusion principle) and can not be bosons.
You need the commutator [ψ (x, 0),  ψ*(y,0)] must be zero because the separation between x and y is space-like.  So it seems to me that an important result in QM depends on the fact that there can be no effects that are not local. (The star * I mean as the complex conjugate transposed).

The fact of locality is denied so often that I feel it is important to mention this more than once.

The nicest explanation of this subject I saw in a free book of lectures on QM by Dr. Doren Cohen in Beer Sheva. He explained the subject of Bell's inequality very nicely. Later on on I noticed in the lectures of Allan Guth at MIT how the fact that things with integer spin can not obey the Pauli exclusion principle depends on relativity [no action at a distance].

I used to be a lot more positive about Islam until Muslims made multiple attempts to take my life. One time I think I was saved only in circumstances that could only be described as miraculous. Since then my attitude change slowly. It took time for the full impact to sink in. So nowadays I look at the Muslim invasion of Europe as being a basically bad thing.

The great thing about Reality is that it corrects false beliefs.
Islam has nice sounding words on paper, but when people try to translate it into the real world, something goes haywire and the tendency is to become violent.

When the World Trade Center was destroyed no one thought for a second maybe it is the work of some Catholic nun or Buddhist monk. There is clearly some evil spirit infesting Islam. 

 Should one  follow signs?  I generally do. This was mentioned by Reb Nachman as being a lower level of awareness, but even so it has validity. But one can get too involved in it. When the Dark Side notices one is following signs, then it begins to send signs of its own.
It works better when it is spontaneous--that is when one is not looking, and then out of the blue comes some sign. A friend of mine Moshe, suggested that signs are the result of the higher realms of reality sending messages into this realm.  A lot depend on what god one is following.

Guaranteed income? Who will pay for it? You,

Briefly, the reason is that hypothetical thought experiments  provide a way of mentally isolating a causal, explanatory, or logical factor for examination on its own which normally, in the real world, cannot be isolated, and to do so while still discussing a concrete situation.

 David Hume once came up with this thought experiment: suppose that in the middle of the night, the  money in everyone's wallet, safe, or other stash, suddenly doubled in quantity - so there is twice as much money, but no other changes are made. Would the country then suddenly be enormously better off - would we all be twice as wealthy as we are now? No, in fact we would have exactly the same amount of wealth as we presently do, for there would be exactly the same amount of capital around, and the same availability of labor. (Everyone could then double their prices.) What this shows is that increases in the money supply do not translate to increased wealth; it can also be used to explain why increases in the money supply cause inflation.

Of course, such a scenario is impossible: all our money cannot magically double in quantity. But that is not the point. The reason the thought experiment is useful is that this way of thinking of it enables you to mentally isolate just the one factor desired for consideration: the quantity of money. We imagine just the quantity of money changed and nothing else. In the real world, one cannot do this. In the real world, it is not possible to change the money supply uniformly (i.e. increasing everyone's money, without redistribution) and it is impossible to change the money supply without affecting the economy in some other way at the same time. So I cannot cite a historical case in which nothing but the money supply was altered. This is why thought experiments are useful.

The fact the the big "Trusts" come up with studies saying the opposite is that they have been pro communism for  along time.

In the Torah there is a command to obey and respect one's parents. And in the Shema we find the specific command of learning and teaching Torah to be from father to son. Teachers of Torah get no respect in Torah.

When a  doubt arises in a specific law there is  a command to go to the Sanhedrin to decide how to apply the law. That is; the court of three; and if they do not know, then the local court of 23; and if they do not know, then the supreme court of 71. [That is the authority of parents is basically what they say you must unless it against something else the Torah says. The authority of the Sanhedrin is only in specific cases that come to court because how to apply the law is in doubt.]

Teachers of Torah have  a few things going against them. (1) The prohibition of taking a salary of money in order to teach Torah.  (2) The prohibition of taking a salary of money to learn Torah.
(3) There is no semicha [ordination] ever since the middle of the Talmudic period. (4) Willful lying about all three of the above mentioned items.

But if you look at the general picture of religious abuse it seems to me that the whole problem if really just part of  a larger problem; the fact that the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] uses religious teachers to destroy people's moral values (and sense of reason).
Thus the best idea is to learn Torah at home, along with the few other subjects recommended by the Rambam and the Gra, "the seven wisdoms,"  Physics and Metaphysics. [I mean the Gra said to learn the seven wisdoms and the Rambam wrote that one should learn Physics and Metaphysics.]

How do you find a teacher that will not cause more damage than benefit?

There was a discussion in ancient Athens about if it is worthwhile to train one's children how to fight in armor. Socrates and two distinguished generals and two fathers went to a demonstration of how to do this. One of the generals said that he had seen the fellow doing the demonstration in an actual battle and he had shown himself to be  a perfect coward and incompetent. [See the book of Plato called Laches]

This brings out the more modern question should one send his teach his children to teachers to learn .. meditation? Torah? survival skills? How can one tell what they might pick up?

Even if you have a good idea what to teach your children, how do you pick find competent teachers?
How do you find a teacher that will not cause more damage than benefit?

There is also the trouble of how to avoid criticizing some teacher who very well might be a trickster, but one who still your children get benefit from?
Sometimes one cult is a good way to escape from a worse cult.

  I see this world as a battle ground between good and evil in each area of value. So even if one area of value is good, still the most famous teachers are more than likely to be damaging to that area.

Mainly I am referring here to teachers of Zen and other forms of Eastern religions. My impression is they do not add much good to people's character. But my comments could just as well apply to the religious Jewish world.

I should add that thanks to God I usually was guided in such a way as I almost always had great teachers. Beverly Hills High School, then Shar Yashuv in Rav Freifeld's yeshiva and then the Mir in NY. the best ones were Mr Smart the music teacher. Naphtali Yeagert the rosh yeshiva in Far Rockaway and Reb Shmuel Berenbaum the rosh yeshiva of the Mir.

Lashon Hara/slander

I noticed that when people divorce they often tend to say something negative about their former spouse.This brings up the subject of Lashon Hara [which means saying something critical about someone else].

This subject was very much in the consciousness of most people at the Mir Yeshiva in NY when I was there. It was not a part of the official sessions but there was a grandson of Rav Avigdor Miller  who started a kind of mini-session every day after the morning prayer.
One question that was brought up the was about the law of באפי תלתא in front of three. That is  the law that if lashon hara has been said in front of three people, one can spread it even further because it is already considered to be known publicly. The problem is the person that is asking the question is one of the three. So just tell him "No" and then there will not be three people spreading the lashon hara.

I mentioned to Shimon Buso that often this prohibition is used to protect corrupt people in authority. And he answered me that without learning the Chafetz Chaim, then the whole issue is הפקר a free for all. That is unless people learn the laws about lashon hara then they usually are not even aware that what they say might be lashon hara.
Rav Israel Abuchatziera had only one picture in his home, that of the Chafetz Chaim. No one knows why. But it is possible to speculate that it was a combination of respect along with the reminder to be careful about lashon hara.

On the other hand you are suppose to warn others of possible dangers about fraudsters and crooks and cults. The Na Nach group assumes all religious teachers are fraudsters until proven otherwise. It certainly seems true to me that they have  a good point. [But to me it seems that the real problem is the religious world follows social norms that are opposite to everything the Torah says. What Na Nach say however is true that the main problem starts with the teachers. There seems to be some aspect of the Dark Side that takes over their personalities. The issue was brought up by Reb Nachman who discussed מפורסמים של שקר charismatic evil teachers. But Reb Israel Odessar shortened it to "מפורסם= שקר" once a teachers is famous, then you already know he is false.

Some people in order to lend to their ideas the appearance of divine authority adopt the same device as Zoroaster and Mohammed.
Mani did this having discovered a cave through which there ran a stream of water, he laid up in it a store of provisions, and retired there for a year, giving out that he was on a visit to heaven.  In this retirement he produced his book a work  the ingenuity of which has been greatly praised.

This is common nowadays in the Jewish world. People do not claim to visit heaven physically but they do claim to have gone there in spirit and to bring back their particular configuration of confused ideas. [Instead of trying to nullify the laws of the Torah they make them irrelevant or secondary to their new revelations.]

The particular problem with this is that in the Law of Moses it is stated there will never be  a new Law from God. Sinai was a one time event. [Prophecy is not to bring new teachings nor new interpretations of the Torah]. [Deuteronomy 29:29]

Nowadays it is easier to claim divine revelation since one does not have to go into a cave for a year to do so. But one has to make sure that his disciples are the ones that claim it openly, not himself. It is fairly easy in the West but harder in India where people are used to charlatans and give them tests to see if they are real. In the West all one needs is one or two gullible disciples to get the ball rolling.

Besides all that, a prophecy to add or subtract any commandment in the Torah gives the prophet the category of a false prophet [Deuteronomy 13].

I recall Allan Bloom [in the closing of the American Mind] brought the idea that the social studies departments and humanities at USA universities were mainly postmodern nonsense.

My basic feeling is to go through the basic ABC's from beginning to end. That is to have one session in the Written Law, one session in the Oral Law starting with the Mishna  and getting up to the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. Then one session in Physics and another in Math. Though the Rambam emphasize both Physics an Metaphysics I would hold off on Metaphysics until I had finished Shas and Physics.

The teachers of Postmodern stuff and PC and pseudo Torah I recommend shooting.



[In short the  major ideas about learning I want to introduce are these (1) דרך גירסה the path of just saying the words in order and then going on with no review until one has finished the book. (2) שיעורין כסדרן sessions in order. That is to have separate sessions  each day in all the major subjects. That is to learn them in order. (3) To learn the Written Law  (the Old Testament), whole Oral Law in order,  the two Talmuds and all the midrashim; Physics, Metaphysics ]

limits of knowledge

(1) What you can derive from Socrates  is that it is more important to know what you do not know than it is to know what you do know. There were plenty of people in Athens that knew how to work as a blacksmith and other professions. But they were not  aware of the limits of their knowledge.

The oracle had said about Socrates that he was the wisest and that meant he was the most wise because he knew that he knew nothing. That is to say that even when he went around in Athens talking with artisans that in fact knew their own professions very well, that did not add up against the fact that they were unaware of what they did not know. Therefore Socrates was wiser that all of them because of his awareness of not knowing anything except that one fact that he was ignorant of everything.

(2) This is one of the difficulties I discovered in yeshiva. Sometimes you could find someone who knew a little Talmud. But along with that knowledge came a kind of hubris  that: "Since we know  Talmud, therefore we know everything." Clearly that is a leap in logic that does not follow

(3) This comes up in Reb Nachman a few times. תכלית ידיעה שלא נדע: "The peak of knowledge is that we should not know." [It comes up in a chapter that is reputed to be from the ספר הנשרף the  book that had his deep lessons that he burnt because he thought the world was not ready for those higher lessons. ]

This also come up in השמטות the lessons that were left out but later included as an appendix. That is where he says all the מידות were מתפשטות until God limited them and that includes wisdom.

[4] In the way Buddhism is presented in the West [and Hinduism also] you get this impression that often people that teach it and learn it are unaware of what they do not know. They do talk about higher knowledge without actually being aware of what constitutes knowledge in the first place and what makes it different from opinion.  Nor does it seem to bother them that if there is no atman-no self then there is nothing that can become enlightened.



[5] I would like to mention Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in this context. Dr Kelley Ross holds that there is a third source of knowledge which is not sensory nor reason. Hegel holds that through a process of dialectics reason can cross the boundaries of reason.
 Though I left Kant for last, still I feel his approach to this whole issue is the best.

I was sick

Yesterday was the first day I actually walked (or limped) in 49 days. I am very grateful to God for sending me to the local hospital in Uman where there is a great doctor [Alexandr Sergevitch] and  a great nursing staff. After I broke my leg  and foot in three places,  I was offered a new apartment by a fellow Sasha and my son came from the USA to take care of me.
So God's mercies are great. However this all still leaves me wondering about what lessons were meant to be learned?



I mean to say-- that there is a principle brought in the Talmud: "אין יסורים בלי עוון" "There are no troubles without sin." So any kind of trouble I have is always with some kind of sin. Either some sin caused it, or that the sin simply took away some kind of Divine protection.
I might have seen this in the gemara Shabat itself or the Gates of Repentance by Rabbainu Yona. [In both places that statement of the sages is brought.] But I think I probably saw it in one of the books of Musar from the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter.

[I should mention I was sick in my stomach after being released [from the local hospital in Uman]  and went to the "hospital of the region" where also there was a great staff of doctors and nurses that helped me get better. In fact after taking the medicine they prescribed, the pain went away within about one or two minutes-and that was about the most excruciating pain I have every felt.


Clearly repentance as a concept is simple: to correct what one is doing that is not in accord with the Law of Moses. That is simply to keep the law of Moses. However what that actually means in practice is  not clear to me. What generally was done at the Mir yeshiva in NY was for people to emphasize  certain basic principles in the hope that that would help to come to keep the entire Torah. So in practice what almost everyone did was to emphasize not speaking lashon hara [i.e.not to speak evil about others] and to learn Torah. Those were clearly the two most important principles at the Mir. One could easily say in my case there is a  need to get back to these two things.