In the Guide of Maimonides there is the parable

In the Guide of Maimonides there is the story about a king and the levels of closeness to him in his country. [1.] People outside the country. [2.] People inside the country.  [3.] People around the palace. [4.] People on the inside of the palace in the outer areas. [5.] People with the kind in the inside area of the palace. The allegory refers to God. People outside the country are barbarians. People inside are people with morality of reason (the Rambam calls this level the "laws of the ancient Greeks"). People around the palace are those who learn and do the Talmud ("the Talmudiim"). The people inside the palace are the physicists. People on the very inside are the prophets and the philosophers.

The putting of philosophers on the inside with the king does not seem to be applicable nowadays.

See how i got fired by the ryerson philosophy department.

See also Michael Huemer. [Dr Kelley Ross also. Plus Allan Bloom]
Basically I have an idea that philosophy comes in stages. The Ancient Greek Philosophy started with the question how is change possible? Then Plato answered it and from then until Plotinus was tying up loose ends.
Then the problem of Faith and Reason began with  St. Augustine and Philo. That went until Descartes. With Descartes began the Mind Body Problem. That went until Kant made his sort of synthesis.  Now the reason philosophy is  a mess is that the next problem has not been found.

I myself think the argument between Hegel and Fries [as represented in the writings of Kelley Ross, and Leonard Nelson] is the most important issue today. How do you deal with it?

One way I have thought of is along the lines of Michael Huemer. [I assume he gets this from the school of the intuitionists like G.E. Moore]. That reason recognizes universals. But even with that knowledge tends to be as things appear prima facie unless further evidence is forthcoming. He holds there is no such thing as pure empirical knowledge. Even what we thing is empirical always has a element of a priori.

"iyun" learning in depth

The best way to understand what Torah is about is by "iyun" learning in depth. Though there is something to be said for "bekiut" [fast learning], still unless one learns in beiyun/in depth, it is impossible to ever come to authentic Torah. But what is "Iyun"? The way I managed to do this was by simply repeating a Tosphot or a section of the Avi Ezri or Rav Haim of Brisk every day over a long period of time until it started making sense. [This sometimes could take me more than a month.]

This seemed to work in a situation when I did not have my learning partner around and was forced to do the learning on my own.

I mentioned this once to my learning partner in Uman [David Bronson]. I mentioned to him how I was frustrated during my first years in Shar Yashuv [a Litvak/Lithuanian type yeshiva in NY] that the whole emphasis was on "Iyun" learning in depth. I thought how can you do in depth learning before you have the big picture [having finished that tractate at least a few times]? Later I began to see an interesting phenomenon. That is this: that people that do not get the "Iyun thing" immediately at their first couple of years in yeshiva--never get it.

[So my first years were spent with a lot of Maharasha, the long Maharsha [commentaters on the Maharsha]Pnei Yehoshua. That was because I was trying to make progress along with iyun.

The way I see things today is that it is best what they do in Litvak yeshivas. The morning for in depth learning and the afternoon for fast learning. "Fast learning" means going through a lot of pages of Gemara with some Tosphot. [with fast learning one ought to get through the two Talmuds, midrashim, and the Ari.] As for the even wisdoms that the Gra emphasized  i try to have a few sessions in which i get through one chapter and hold my place with a place marker and then go back through all previous chapters. I have four major sessions in depth that i try to do for the sake of my son izhak--algebraic topology, Emmey Nother's invariance principle [i have a book on that], quantum field theory, and the avi ezri. 

F major for violin and winds

Music file mp3 w11 w11 in midi  

  w11 nwc

I thank God greatly for the privilege of writing music. I had thought that I would never be able to do so again until recently He granted to me to write again.

I also want to thank Mr. Smart my high school music teacher.

C Major for English Horn and Flute.

Music File MP3 w10   w10 in midi format

[w10 nwc]

A lot depends on how dedicated to learning Torah one is,

A major attraction of the Litvak path is family values. Does it actually work? I would have to say it does to some degree. A lot  depends on how dedicated to learning Torah one is, and how much one's wife is. If you start out with the basic idea to learn Torah and to trust in God to make ends meet, then certainly the Litvak path works well. But if you start with wavering, then  it is like a top spinning around. You know when it will fall because that is when it starts to waver.

I do include math and Physics in the category of learning Torah however.
But most secular subjects outside of these two I consider Bitul Torah. Some secular subject however I think are OK to learn because of Parnasa/[making a living] like medicine.

The terms "bitul Torah" refer to the fact that one is obligated to learn Torah whenever he has time. It matters not if one is smart or not or even understands what one is learning. ''Bitul'' means literally ''nullification.'' This is a lot more serious than the idea that one is obligated to learn Torah. It makes not learning [when one can] into a sin.

How I encountered this idea was in a small book "Binyn Olam" that I saw in my first year in Shar Yashuv. And I still hold by this idea strongly except that I expand the definition of learning Torah to include Math, Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle.
Not that I am able to learn much myself. Rather my intention here is simply to set the record straight about what the Torah is all about.

The disciple of the Gra, Rav Haim of Voloshin wrote a small book about this important subject also.

So what I suggest is to go through the two Talmuds with Tosphot and Maharsha and the commentaries on the Yerushalmi [Pnei Moshe, Karban HaEda.] Plus Math and Physics. But since neither math nor physics has an official set then you simply have to get through the basic subjects with whatever books most make sense to you. That would be String Theory, and Algebra. [Algebra nowadays is divided into different parts. There is Abstract Algebra, Geometric Algebra and Topological Algebra.

[So I am not thinking of math and physics as just for parnasa [making a living] but rather a regular part of learning Torah. This is not something you see in most Musar books. Rather I mainly got this idea from the very first and most important Musar book the Obligations of the Heart. Part III Behina. where he goes into the different aspects one should study about God's wisdom. There he talks about many aspects of creation. And then goes into the spiritual aspects of creation--so we see they are different. In any case this is more clear in other rishonim.

With Kant and Leonard Nelson there is one answer why discovering the right path is so hard.

With Kant and Leonard Nelson there is one answer why discovering the right path is so hard. It is because any area outside of conditions of experience falls into a category of knowledge that he calls the dinge an sich where reason can not venture into. And when it does it ends up contradicting itself.

This seems to limit any possibility of coming to Truth, However-Hegel and Rav Nahman of Breslov both provide a template why there are diverging paths towards truth and virtue.  To Rav Nahman [who I assume was not under the excommunication of the Gra as you can see if you look up the actual language) said the reason that true tzadikim differ is to make free will possible. See LeM I chapters 4 and 5. To Hegel there is a slow progress through time towards truth, (the absolute idea). He means this: the dialectic of Soctrates was not just a way for him to get to the truth. It is the path towards truth in all human history.

But with Hegel it is not the same as saying you just pick up what is right in one system and what is right in another. Rather there is an organic process inside any one consistent system in the first place that leads towards the other and that process goes on with the other until both come to a higher synthesis.

That does not however refer to the need to fight evil. One should not use either idea as a reason not to fight evil. Rav Nahman specifically talks about "disagreement among tzadikim (saints)".

There is a valid reason to listen to the Gra

There is a valid reason to listen to the Gra in so far as his signature on the Herem (letter of excommunication) was based on facts. It certainly was not mistaken. But even if  a sage makes an excommunication that is because of false assumptions, the herem is still valid.

The reason I say this is because I ask from where does the force of a Herem (excommunication) come from? Nedarim (vows). {I say that because of the regular commentaries on the Rambam.} And what is the law of a vow? It is if one says, "My bread is a sacrifice to you," that is valid, and has legal standing. That bread is in fact forbidden to the other person. It makes no difference why the person said it in the first place. And this is not a decrees from the scribes. It is a Torah law.

[In fact I wish I could follow more of the advice of the Gra-especially about learning Torah and trust in God. But in whatever I can manage to listen to his amazing ideas, I am happy.]

"Spirit of Torah"

 To get the "Spirit of Torah" it is necessary to learn in a Litvak yeshiva. But furthermore. It tends to instill a certain faith in the sages of the Mishna and the Rishonim [mediaeval authorities]. That is: when I was in Shar Yashuv and learning with Naphtali Yeager [the son in law of the rosh yeshiva who eventually became the rosh yeshiva himself], that was when I discovered the depths of Torah.
[Mainly by deep study of Tosphot].
But to my way of thinking this does not exclude some secular subjects. I feel the natural sciences plus metaphysics would have to be included in the category of learning Torah. This is based on Saadia Gaon and the later Rishonim. However when I was in the Mir secular subjects  were more or less frowned upon.

I admire people that do sit and learn Torah all day, but I just was not able to do so myself.

However it is odd that the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication is ignored to a large degree even in Litvak yeshivas were you would expect it to make a difference.

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication for some reason is ignored.This is curious since it certainly has legal validity. And the fact is the spirit of Torah really resides solely in the Litvak Yeshiva environment. So to come to Torah in an authentic way really requires a walk in the Litvak path based on the Gra. And the peak -the Mount Everest-of the Litvak yeshiva world is Ponovitch -based on Rav Shach. But to some degree, most Litvak yeshivas can impart that authentic Torah experience.

The idea here is that to come to Torah in an authentic way really requires a group. One might learn Torah alone, but to get to that inner spirit requires a Litvak Yeshiva.

 I am myself not in any kind of Litvak environment (that is my fault). But once I found my muse when I was in two: Shar Yashuv and the Mir of NY.

The idea here is rather simple. It is the super-organism that Howard Bloom talks about. What makes a Litvak place unique is the set of values that it is based on --straight Torah.

But further--for the spirit of Torah there is a need for the group or institution to be consciously based on the Gra.


[I might add here that a "Herem" excommunication comes from the law of nederim/oaths in which one can forbid his object to another person. Thus a Herem also has that power. --if it is done by someone who can do it. And there is no doubt that the Gra had sufficient Torah knowledge to give him authority to establish a herem.]

The laws about Herem are not in the Gemara itself directly related to Nedarim. They are simply assumed to be valid. Rather the reason that I say they are connected to Nedarim is the achronim say  that is from where herem gets its legal validity.

One important aspect of the herem is that it is not "Niduy" rebuke. Rebuke is a lesser form of herem. Herem itself is more restricting.

w9 music file

w9 Music file mp3  w9 in midi   w9 in nwc

It seems kind of unfair to Hegel to say that he does not have a place for faith in his system when his whole system is an attempt to justify faith.

Hegel and Leonard Nelson (picking up some concepts from Fries) were rivals about the legacy of Kant. With Nelson there is something like direct justification of faith as a source of knowledge that is not based on reason nor sense perception.

Hegel definitely justifies Faith also but not as a separate source of information outside of reason or the senses. In fact he does not address the Mind Body problem at all. Or in the way it was understood then the difference between the rationalists and the empiricists.
He assumes right from the start that all knowledge needs an immediate source of information [senses] and an a priori element. This he calls "notion".

Hegel sees himself as doing the same thing as Aquinas. Except he thinks he is doing it in a more rigorous fashion and also taking  Kant into account.

My feeling about this is that "Notion" of Hegel is close to the immediate non intuitive knowledge of Fries in the sense that in the first place you have to ask about the limit of reason that Hume came up with --that reason can only discern contradictions.  This was accepted by Kant. But it is not true. Reason recognizes lots of things besides contradictions. But these other functions are different in some sense than pure reason. They have elements from empirical sense and also from a priori sense.

And the non intuitive knowledge of Fries occupies a similar ground--somewhere between sense perception and reason.

It seems kind of unfair to Hegel to say that he does not have a place for faith in his system when his whole system is an attempt to justify faith. But he does so in a different way than Nelson. 

two arrows of time if you combine with two arrows of entropy come to amazing results

There might be two arrows of time that meet to make the now different from the future or past. Feynman had such a paper. It did not produce at the time any great results but if you combine it with two arrows of entropy it does come with amazing results.

A physicist from the USSR did some great work in this direction [Georg Ryazanov] but his work is I think lost.

It was not really formulated in a way that would make it helpful today. Still its results were so astonishing that I spent a lot of time trying to iron out the details with him. But we never got it into publishable form.

The problem with the whole thing was that it was more or less classical physics. But the good things about it were that with two arrows of time and two of entropy with four worlds he got results with the exact mass of the electron and other particles.

Actually the paper might still be in existence in one of the "Way Back When" Internet places that store old data. His son [who I think teaches physics in Princeton or somewhere like that] also might still have his papers.

A few issues regarding the New Testament.

It seems to me worthwhile to mention something I find odd in the New Testament. It is not just that Jesus says to keep the entire Torah including the Oral Law. ["The Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses and therefore all that they say to do that you must do..."] The thing I find curious is that wherever you look there, Jesus is always depending on the authority of the Law of Moses. Not just once or twice. I mean to say Christians may quibble about what it means when he says that the Law is eternal and will never be nullified. But how can you quibble with the fact that he considers the law to be obligatory on himself and all others.

So how can you argue with that? True that Paul does say that gentiles do not have to keep the Law. However that is understood anyway since the most commandments were addressed to Israel.
[Later it does look like Paul wavers on this point. But that does not seem relevant to the basic issue about what Jesus held. Paul was addressing gentiles and so the issue just does not come up at all.]

A few more comments about this might be in order. One is the Sabbath day of rest. Ears of wheat that are not in need of the ground one can pick on Shabat. That is to say if they are totally ripe. So what the disciples of Jesus were doing on Shabat was totally permitted. While it is true that picking unripe wheat is one of the 39 kinds of forbidden work, still picking ripe wheat is not. And unless there is a specific degree from the sages not to pick even ripe fruit or wheat we do not make up our own decrees. [I mean to say that while there are plenty of decrees from the sages but after the time of the sages of the Mishna we can no longer make up our own decrees. This authority lasted only up until the end of the Mishna period. Even amoraim could no longer make decrees.]

To address another problem in the New Testament: The Oral Law. On one hand in Mathew 23 does say to listen to the Oral Law. "The scribes and Prushim [Pharisees] sit on Moses's seat and therefore all that they command you to obey that you must obey."
The Prushim a group that was fanatically religious and not the ancestors of the sages of the Mishna. However the Prushim did accept the Oral Law, but added tons of their own restrictions. [They were not the teachers]] They are well known all throughout the Gemara. For example they ate "חולין על טהרת הקודש" regular food as if it was the remainder of sacrifices. [note 1]That is it can not come into contact with anything "Tamee" unclean.
  Obviously this is not a restriction of the sages of the Mishna and certainly nothing that the sages of the Mishna did or taught as being desirable in any shape or form. So clearly the Prushim are not in any way related to the actual sages.


[note 1]
[I mean to say that there are different degree of "Tuma", an Av (a principle), a 2nd, 3rd or even a forth degree.  Food can be eaten no matter how unclean "tame" it is. even if it has been touched by a dead lizard. Only the food of sacrifices or truma has to be clean. That is let's say you have decided to thank God for some deliverance. So you bring a thanksgiving offering to the Temple. The priests then sacrifice the animal and you get part of the meat. That meat must be kept clean. In fact eating it in a state of tuma is Karet. But eating it when it is tame is not karet but still a prohibition from the Torah.

And since it is derived from a sacrifice it can become tame even to the forth degree. That is a dead lizard touches food. That food is allowed to be eaten--but it is a Rishon. [First degree of Tuma]. Then that food touches other food. That other food becomes a Sheni [2nd degree]. Then that other food touches more food. If that last one is truma then it becomes a 3rd degree. If that truma then touches the leftovers from the thanksgiving offering then those leftovers become a forth degree and can not be eaten. But none of this applies unless one has in fact brought a sacrifice.

There are many more issues. One is "sonship". A soul of Atzilut has the category of son. Souls from the next lower world "creation" do not have that level but rather are called servants. Most people have souls from the lower worlds. Only souls from Emanation are called "son".This is all very well explained in the Ari-Rav Isaac Luria.

many commandments of the Torah have to do with good character.

The Musar movement of Rav Israel Salanter was meant largely to help people improve their character traits. But it has a side advantage to help people become aware that good character is an essential part of Torah. In fact this was a surprise for me. My first year in Shar Yashuv [a Lithuanian type of yeshiva based on the Gra], I spent some time learning the Sefer HaChinuch. There I discovered that many commandments of the Torah have to do with good character.

Music in F major. mp3

Music File mp3 w8 

My only question here was about the song that this starts with. At first I added a measure to make it more symmetric. But then it occurred to me that it makes more musical sense without that extra measure. (But I left in that measure when the song is repeated in C major.) The reason is that I have seen in Mozart that he will not insist on symmetry when the actual song makes sense with an odd number of measures. I was very surprised when I saw this in Mozart but I figure if it is good enough for Mozart, it is good enough for me.
[I think this is common in Mozart but the first time I saw it was when I counted the number of measures he put into one of his pieces and I saw it came out an odd number.--But it seems impossible to tell by just listening since it makes perfect sense with the odd number.]

The Gra signed the decree of excommunication.

I have long thought that the prohibition in the Torah not to do idolatry refers to the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side. The realm of Satan.] So it is clear why the Gra would have signed the decree of excommunication.
But if one asks what obligation does anyone have to listen to the Gra? I would answer that this comes up in the laws of Nedarim and Shavuot. The achronim [authorities after the Beit Yoseph]] in fact discuss what force does any excommunication have? [We know it is valid because the laws concerning excommunication are brought in tractate Moed Katan] But why is it valid? The Achronim say it is derived from the law of a neder [(oath) נדר]. A person can forbid his object to another person by saying: "This object is a "karban" קרבן [an animal dedicated as a sacrifice] to you."

But my point is that the signature of the Gra is not what makes the Sitra Achra [the dark side] to be evil. The Satan is evil anyway. It is just the signature of the Gra that makes it more clear.

[Just to be a bit more clear. A neder [(oath)] is brought down in the baMidbar (The Book of Numbers). It is forbidding an object to oneself or to another. It is not the same thing as a shavua (to swear). Both are laws that come from the Torah. So when we have laws of "Cherem"  (חרם) or "Nidui" (נידוי) these have the force of Torah laws. [But that is only when the court that makes the excommunication has sufficient authority to do so. Not anyone who decides to put another person into cherem can do so.] So when the Gra signed that letter of cherem, it has validity in so far as anyone who violates it is automatically in cherem themselves and that everyone is obligated to listen to it. [I.e., just like a person can forbid his object to another person--even if that other person does not like it or agree--so a cherem brings about an automatic obligation to listen to it even if you do not agree with the premises on which it is based.

Cafeteria type of religion.

Cafeteria type of religion. Too many choices. Some of which are defended well. Some not.
Plus the problem of combining faith with reason. Since faith itself is unclear and also what reason by itself proposes is not clear how can combing two kinds of mud bring to clarity?

The best idea that I have been able to come up with is as my Mom put it: "To be a mensch"
That is a decent human being. To know the difference between right and wrong is not hard as long as one does not lose his common sense. And most of religion and philosophy is directed towards getting people to jettison their common sense.

That is why I have found it helpful to read Michael Huemer web site and his essay why I am not an objectivist where he spells out clearly the idea that Reason recognizes universals. Moral principles are universals.



[However I should add here that I do hold with the basic canon of Torah Law which is the Written Torah, the two Talmuds, plus the basic commentaries of the Rishonim [medieval authorities]. Also Rav Avraham Abulafia, the medieval mystic and Rav Isaac Luria.] But for some reason I never studied Avraham Abulafia very well. When I started looking at his writings those writings had not been printed at all. Tye were only in the ancient medieval Spanish-Hebrew script. So every words took time to discover. Only after that a fellow printed the entire corpus of Rav Abulfia and made it available on line. But by then I had already gone off into other adventures and studies.

the argument of Berkley that is supposed to show we only know what is in our minds.

Michael Huemer apparently does not think much of the argument of Berkley that is supposed to show we only know what is in our minds. It seems to me he must not think much of the argument of Hume that is supposed to show that all that reason knows is what can be derived by definitions. (note 1) Even Kant did not like that much and showed that in fact we know by pure reason things that can not be derived by definitions like the fact that two lines can not enclose a figure while three lines can.

So he expands the role of reason.

This seems to me to be  a lot like Hegel who does not assume any automatic limit to reason except that it needs a kind of back and forth process to make progress towards the Absolute Idea.
That is a bit different than Plotinus who starts with Logos [Divine Reason and comes down to this world. Hegel starts in this world "Being" and works up towards the Divine Idea.

(note 1) Actually Hume never gives an argument for this. He just assumes it since he learned Euclid which is based on that idea. You learn things in geometry based on the beginning axioms and you deny what comes out contradictory. But in spite of repeating this often he never gives and argument for it.[As pointed out by Bryan Caplan)

the Litvak Yeshiva approach-- is that it is the most faithful to Torah.

The main thing that I found important about the path of the Gra and Rav Shach -the Litvak Yeshiva approach-- is that it is the most faithful to Torah. There however can be differences how individual places are. I found my experiences in Shar Yashuv and in the Mir in NY to be amazing.
However for some reason or other I did not appreciate what I had sufficiently and therefore walked away from that path --thinking I would find something better elsewhere00and that did not happen, [Even though I did find amazing advise and lessons in Rav Nahman of Breslov[ but nothing really comes close to my experience at the Mir.


 My first year was in Shar Yashuv. That is a yeshiva of Rav Shelomo Friefeld who was a disciple of Rav Hutner the founder of another famous Litvak yeshiva in NY, Chaim Berlin.
My first year I now recall must have been floundering. I think I really only got into learning Gemara intensely in the second year when we started Hulin. The third year was Ketuboth. Then another 1/2 yer Yevamot  and then my Dad helped me to enroll in the Mir. Both Shar Yashuv and the Mir were great but the reputation of the Mir is that of an Ivy league school like Yale or MIT. In those days Shar Yashuv was considered to be a beginners school. However I was learning there with Naftali Yeager who was later the rosh yeshiva and his method of learning was as deep as anything I saw later in the Mir.

w8 Music File MP3

w8 Music File MP3  w8 midi w8 nwc

Just finished now. I am very grateful to God for granting to me to write music again after a whole year that I was not able to.

The history behind the music is that I liked classical music and did not think very well of anything that comes after Beethoven. So when I began to write music, it came out in classical style.
It might be said also that my high school music teacher. Mr. Smart, I believe had a taste for classical music. As an orchestra we used to go on tours [not for pay] [even though we were only a simple high school orchestra--but we had some really talented people in the orchestra like Wendy Wilson who was the first violinist] In any case--on all those tours we played only classical music.
And I simply refused to listen to anything else. So I guess in some way you might say I intended to absorb only classical music. So when I write music myself that is what it sounds like.

One of the advantages of learning in a Litvak Yeshiva is that you get an idea of the importance of learning Torah. You see learning Torah as a goal in itself and in fact as the supreme goal. Not as just another good thing to do.

One of the advantages of learning in a Litvak Yeshiva is that you get an idea of the importance of learning Torah. You see learning Torah as a goal in itself and in fact as the supreme goal. Not as just another good thing to do.

[This you can see in the Nefesh HaHaim of Rav Haim of Voloshin].

Another great thing about it is that you do not make learning depend on how smart you are. You realize learning Torah is for everyone.

But the question does come up what is included in this commandment? I think it is fair to say the entire Shas with Tosphot and the rishonim counts as "learning Torah."

But once you get past the Beit Yoseph [around 1500] then I am not so sure. After the Beit Yoseph it was just too easy for anyone to write books since the printing press was invented. So most of the achronim are just not up to par.

[I however have to put the Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua into the category of Torah].

[And I add Physics and Metaphysics as I discussed elsewhere.]

The origin of Philosophy in ancient Greece actually started with the question how is change possible?

The origin of Philosophy in ancient Greece actually started with the question how is change possible? So it looks to me almost as if philosophy has come a full circle to the same question. [If there is no time, then nothing can change and therefore nothing can interact with anything else.] That is in Relativity, time and space are laid out in such a way as they are almost interchangeable except with a minus sign in front of time. In that way of looking at time, there is no particular value "the present". And if there is no present, then change is impossible since change can happen only in the present. 

But we also know Quantum Mechanics. And in Quantum Mechanics we have the two slit experiment and also the Bell inequality. [Bell's inequality is based on the Einstein Rosen Podolsky experiment.  ] if we only had Bell's inequality, then we might say that things can have effects far away instantly. Or we might say that nothing has a time or space value until it is measured. Since we know Relativity is true and also we know that Nature violates Bell's inequality so we know the second idea is true. Things have no time value until measured.  And this to some degree shows that Kant was right that time and space us how we measure things. They are dinge an sich--things in themselves that we have no window into. [What Bell's inequality shows is not strictly what Kant held, but it gets close. It shows that things do not have space time values until measured. But there is space time.

The present day calendar was directly adopted from the calendar of Meton in Athens. It is not even mentioned in the Gemara.

The present day calendar was directly adopted from the calendar of Meton in Athens. It is not even mentioned in the Gemara.
So the best idea is to go by the actual molad [conjunction].[As you can see brought in Tosphot in Sanhedrin page 10].
The Gemara does mention that "nowadays we know the time of the new moon" but does not say anything about a calendar. It could be referring to calculations already known in ancient Babylon about what time the "molad" [conjunction of the moon and sun occurs].(not to some hypothetical calendar that was used only in Athens)

Just to be clear --I am not arguing if the court [Sanhedrin] has the right to adjust the date of the new moon. (This can also be argued based on the Gemara in Sanhedrin page 10. But it is not what I am talking about here.) Here I simply mean that the Sanhedrin did not in fact adjust the calendar. If they would have you would except the Gemara to have mentioned it somewhere.

they do not learn enough Gemara.

The Catholic church is now involved in trying to redefine homosexuality in a way that makes it OK.
This just goes to show that they do not learn enough Gemara. After all a short glance at tractate Sanhedrin in the chapter called "Four types of death penalty" should clear up the issue. 

Impeachment

I think the treatment that President Trump has been getting is really disgraceful and that it will all work to undermine the Left. Hitting Trump is like hitting a solid rock with one's bare fist.

The rosh yeshiva of the Mir in NY, Rav Shmuel Berenbaum in the afternoon learned fast.

In the Mir Yeshiva in NY I saw that the rosh yeshiva Rav Shmuel Berenbaum in the afternoon learned fast. That is in the afternoon session which went from 400 PM to 8 PM. I had to walk by his seat in order to get to where my place was in the study hall. When I walked by his seat at 400 PM I saw he was holding on one page. Then when I walked by a few hours later I saw he had gone on about 20 pages. That is a lot since even just to read through a whole page [two sides] as fast as you can with rashi and Tosphot takes about and hour and twenty minutes.
So even though the Mir in NY was known as the place that learned in the most depth that must be referring to the morning session [from 900a.m. until 2 p.m.]

The point is that there seems to be no choice. Even those who want to learn in depth have to spend time learning fast. And those that learn fast seem to need to spend some time learning in depth or else risk not understanding anything.

This applies to Physics and Math also. At least, I see in my own case that I need two kinds of sessions. A fast one where I learn by just saying the words and hope that somehow the ideas will penetrate into my subconscious. And another kind of session where I do learn the same material over and over again until I get it.

The lack of learning in a Litvak Yeshiva is what causes people to give up on learning even things they want to learn but think that they can not because they do not understand.
In a Litvak yeshiva you get the attitude that you should learn even if you are not smart. And also you learn ways of learning that are effective so much so that even a block of wood could become a rocket scientist.


One very important aspect is to say the words=and not read in silence. One major reason for this is that saying the words gives one the fulfillment of the commandment to learn Torah as it says in Kriat Shema You shall speak of them." You do not fulfill the commandment to learn Torah by just reading. You must say the words at least as a whisper.

[However in a Litvak yeshiva (i.e. a learning and study hall based on the path of the Gra) usually thinks of learning Torah as being confined to the Written and Oral Law. What I propose is to expand this definition to Physics and Mathematics and Metaphysics. This is based on the Rambam who says this quite openly in the Guide for the perplexed and in Mishne Torah but I have seen this also in Musar books based on Saadia Gaon. (e.g. Hovot Levavot)




w6 Music file mp3

Aristotle's Revenge.

Ed Feser has a book on Aristotle, Aristotle's Revenge.
This is apparently along the lines of the Rambam who held Aristotle was the best.
But from what I can tell Feser deals with how Aristotle would answer modern problems. [But also I should add he is building a system based on Aristotle and with insights from analytic philosophy. I do not think he is claiming to be simply explaining Aristotle.]

But there is a whole other train of thought by Kelley Ross going with Plato as he would modify Plato in the light of Kant and Leonard Nelson.

Then there is Michael Huemer who holds from idea that reason recognizes universals. He builds on Prichard. [This is really not all that different from Hegel]

These three strands in philosophy today seem to me to be much more in common than they differ in details.
All hold the same basic thesis that was stated simply by Dr Huemer: Reason recognizes universals (which includes moral principles) and that morality is objective

importance of finishing Shas.

I got to my first Litvak Yeshiva Shar Yashuv, and they talked about the importance of finishing Shas.

[But even before that I was always frustrated when in high school we did not usually finish a book. ]
I heard that Tesla also had this thing that when he started a project he just had to finish it.

But in any case I have to add that in Shar Yashuv there was also a great emphasis on learning in depth. So right away I had this kind of conflict whether to learn fast or slow. So I had a kind of compromise where I repeated the section of the Gemara with Rashi twice and then went on. Eventually I started learning the Rishonim also-- and Akronim [later authorities after the Beit Yoseph like the Pnei Yehoshua and the other achronim that came before Rav Haim of Brisk] also.

w2 w3 music files

W2 music file MP3


w3 Music mp3

Rav Shach's Avi Ezri

In terms of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and the books of Musar of the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter I think it is best to have sessions in which you finish the book in the way of "Girsa" just saying the words and going on. No review]. But that is besides a separate session in which you learn the book in depth. That is you take just one section and go over it many times.

[When I say Rav Shach's Avi Ezri I really mean that whole school of Rav Haim of Brisk and his disciples  up until Rav Shach that really showed the depths of Torah.
When I had little time for both a fast session and an in-depth session, I used to learn the Avi Ezri in the in-depth way of going over a whole section once every day until it started becoming clear.
But in terms of Musar (works on mediaeval Ethics) I preferred (because of limited time) to at least once get through all the major works of Musar. So I mainly just read through the classical Musar [Ethics] books. חובות לבבות, שערי תשובה, מסילת ישרים, ספר היראה המיוחס לרבינו תם, מעלות המידות של בנימין הרופא
Obligations of the Heart by Ibn Pakuda, Gates of Repentance by Rabbainu Yona, Mesilat Yesharim by the Ramchal, the Book of Fear attributed to Rabbainu Tam, The Greatness of Good Traits by Binyamin the doctor.

The great thing about Musar is that it gives a good idea of the big picture and the importance of good character. In fact Musar reveals an imporant truth--that without good character traits, nothing else can even begin.

There are also Musar books written after the Middle Ages which Rav Isaac Blazer listed in his book on Rav Israel Salanter.

The Musar "thing" and the Gra and Rav Shach seem imporant to me since I think if one is going to learn and keep Torah at all, it makes sense to do it in the right way.
I say, "Do it right, or do not do it at all."
 The way I learned Rav Shach when I was in Uman and was learning with David Bronson was by going over the actual Gemaras that Rav Shach is based on.

"generational curse"?

Is there such a thing as a "generational curse"? That is sins that a person has a disposition to fall into because he inherits those tendencies from his ancestors?
I heard from a friend who used to be in the KGB about a friend of his that married a gypsy. But when he married her he did not know her family background since she was white. [He had never heard that some gypsies can be white.] And lo and behold his children grew up to be thieves! They not only stole but had an obsession to steal. So he looked into the background of his wife and found out that she was a gypsy.
[I met that fellow at birthday a few celebrations at the home of this KGB fellow. At the time I did not know his story.]

So it is not just in certain ethnic groups that you find strands of DNA which predispose people towards certain traits but also in family lines.

The two books of Maccabees do not mention the miracle of the Menorah going for 8 days.

The two books of Maccabees do not mention the miracle of the Menorah going for 8 days. Rather it says the eight days of Hanuka were meant as to make up for Sukot which they could not celebrate in the right time. So instead when the Maccabees were able to take over the Temple, they celebrated for 8 days [since Sukot is 8 days.]
This would answer the question, "Why 8 days?" which everyone asks.[That is the first day the Menorah was lit the time span of its burning was regular. So why eight days if the miracle was only for seven?]

telos in Aristotle is a future cause pulling things towards it.

Dr. Kelley Ross [Kant Fries School] mentions that when  natural science dropped "telos" it lost something valuable. [Clearly biological organisms have goals. Just like you can not have a science of Physics that holds there is no such thing as matter.] And that would be according to both Aristotle and Plato. Telos in this case does not mean intention or intelligent design. It means some future cause instead of a past cause. It is something pulling things toward it. [As opposed to a past cause pushing thing forward.] In any case Telos to me seems important since in Physics things tend to go towards a state of least energy. And most of Physics in fact is based on this idea. [This does not contradict Newton but it is simply how the Physics works out.] And I might mention the little electron that knows whether there is one slit or two. So it knows where to go. It is like matter that always seems to know where to go based on the state of least energy.

[The idea of telos in Aristotle is a cause, not intelligent design or some goal things have. It is one of the four types of causes. It is not the same type of concept we have when we think of having a goal. Aristotle's telos casues things from a future time.]

The Rambam held that Aristotle was right about most things.

The Rambam held that Aristotle was certainly right in everything he said and wrote about things on earth except about the eternity of matter. Muslim philosophy before him also was very much Aristotelian.[Al Farabi. Ibn Rushd, et. al.]
But Christian Philosophy was for almost a thousand years Neo Platonic. Until Aquinas. My impression is that he changed from Plato to Aristotle for good reasons.
Then at some point around 1600 people started noticing problems in Aristotle. This is the theme of Novum Organum [1620] by Francis Bacon.
So Dr Kelley Ross (of the Kant Fries School of thought) said at that point it would have made sense to get back to Plato.
But Ed Feser suggests that Aristotle is still better.

The Rambam, at any rate, holds the learning of Aristotle's Metaphysics is in the Category of learning Torah as you can see in Mishne Torah in laws of learning Torah where it says to divide the sessions of learning into three parts. One part he says is Gemara. And then he adds the important sentence: "And the subject called "Pardes" [vineyard] is in the category of Gemara." And he already defined what the word "Pardes" is referring to in the first four chapters of Mishna Torah where he goes into the subjects of Physics and Metaphysics,- and at the end he says, "These subjects are what the Sages called "Pardes'".

The girl friend approach

I see marriage nowadays as problematic. 10 years seems to be the uppermost limit. So it seems to me the best idea is the "Piligesh" girl friend approach. And there really is nothing wrong with that. We see in דברי הימים Chronicles I 2:46 that Caleb [the friend of Joshua] had a few wives and girl friends.
This is a well known subject so there really is no need for me to go into it. (note 1) Since the majority of Rishonim [mediaeval authorities] allow a piligesh there is no reason to forbid it. I have heard some people suggest that it is in the category of ניאוף  (adultery) which is certainly not true. Adultery is sexual relations with a woman who is married to somebody else.
But then you could ask about זונה prostitution. But the main definition of "Zona" [prostitute] which the Torah forbids to a priest is a woman who has had sexual relations with someone who is forbidden to her by a prohibition of the Torah. See tractate Yevamot.

(note 1) Just for a bit more information this comes up in the Tur. The Tur is the son of Rabbainu Asher the author of the Rosh pne of the major rishonim. In short the whole issue is an argument among rishonim and the Rosh himself seems to hold it is allowed but the problem he sees is the Mikve issue. So I might just add that for that reason it is worthwhile to be near a natural body of water--a sea or river.
The Raavad and Ramban (Nahmanides) both hold that relations with a girl friend is permitted. The opinion of the Rambam at first seems to forbid but the Ramban/Nahmanides brings a different version of the Rambam that holds it is allowed. In the Shulchan Aruch of Rabbeinu Yoseph Karo the opinion of the rishonim is brought as an argument between the "Mehaber" the author, Rav Juseph Karo and the "Rema" Rav Moshe Iserless. But as to the approach of Rav Joseph Karo, the Helkat Mehokek there says that at most it is an "isur ase" a negative command coming by force of a positive command איסור הבא מכלל עשה

Saying the words forwards and backwards is a way of doing review that I have done from time to time.  When I was doing Physics in NYU I in fact used this method of study. The reason that I originally thought that this is a method comes from the fact that it is mentioned even in the daily prayers. At the end of the 13 principles of faith there is a quote from a verse "For your salvation I await O Lord." [This is from the end of Genesis] And there the words are permuted. Also in the prayer for seeing the new moon you find a verse that is said straight and then backwards. "May there fall on the fear and trembling ..."
For this idea I also found support in the Ramhal [Rav Moshe Haim Lutzato] the author of the famous Musar book the Mesilat Yesharim.

The reason I did this when I was learning Physics was not that I doubted the path of "Girsa" (of Rav Nahman of Breslov) which is just to say the words in order and go on. Rather it was because of the urgency of passing my courses. I had to pass exams so I do not have time for the path of Rav Nahman which though may be more effective in the long run but for immediate results I needed some kind of system of learning that would help my grades.

[The idea that this would help even in a language not Hebrew I got from the medieval mystic Rav Avraham Abulafia. He I accept as a legitimate authority since he is quoted at length by Rav Haim Vital and Rav Moshe of Cordoba.]

[I still think this is only a part of learning. I still believe strongly in "Girsa" (saying the words and going on) as a separate session.)] I ought to add that sometimes I use this method to understand Tosphot. For example when there is a long hard Tosphot that I do not get at all even after doing it daily for many days-then sometimes I resort to this method.]

In the Mishna in Shabat one of the things that are listed that one must not light with for Shabat is wax. [במה מדליקים ובמה אין מדליקים... אין מדליקים בשעווה] So for years I would light only with olive oil.

In the Mishna in Shabat one of the things that are listed that one must not light with for Shabat is wax. [במה מדליקים ובמה אין מדליקים... אין מדליקים בשעווה] So for years I would light only with olive oil. And when I found myself in situations in which I could not light with oil oil I did not light at all.

However the Shiltai Giborim on the Rif suggests that modern day wax may be different.

I also got the idea that to lite with oil oil was what is called a "hidur mitzvah" [an extra specially nice way to fulfill the commandment].

Rav Israel Salanter's idea of learning Musar has a few different kinds of benefits

The main motivation I had for learning Musar (=books of Erthics by the rishonim mediaeval authors) while at the Mir in NY was that I saw that people that emphasized fear of God in their own lives seemed to do a lot better in learning Gemara than those that did not. I.e. there were people that did not learn Musar were smart, but their logic often seemed "krum" or crummy. While people that emphasized Fear of God when it came to Talmud their logic always seemed a lot more straight.
[Then on the other hand I recall there was one fellow at the Mir that seemed to be getting too much into Musar and that certainly did not add to his learning nor fear of God.]

Some years and tears later I asked a fellow to get me the book of Isaac Blazer [the disciple of Rav Israel Salanter] The Light of Israel and I noticed right on the first page he makes a claim that Musar heals spiritual disease. That is he says there that just like the body has physical diseases so the soul also can get sick. And just like for physical disease one goes to a doctor so for a spiritual disease one must go to the doctors of souls which are the rishonim--the authors of the books of Ethics of the Middle Ages.

Another advantage of Musar is it is more philosophical true to Torah. It comes in a time period when people were thinking more rigorously about philosophical issues. [So you do not have circular logic which plagues most philosophers from the Enlightenment and onward. That is most Enlightenment philosophers assume what they set out to prove.

Hegel and Leonard Nelson

Hegel and Leonard Nelson have a difference concerning immediate non intuitive knowledge. The difference can be thought to be vast because in Hegel's system there does not seem to be room for awareness of values that do not seem dependent on reason or sensory perception.
For example--what is the difference between J.S. Bach and mere modern noise? With Kelley Ross and Leonard Nelson there is an answer. But in Hegel there is only pure reason and sense perception and their synthesis.
So to me it seems that each is important.
[In Poland there are people that think the argument between Leonard Nelson and the Neo Kantian people--Herman Cohen and others was overly exaggerated. But I would go further to suggest that even the difference between Nelson and Hegel are overdone.]
[Bezmenov in his video explains how communism infiltrated American universities but that does not seem to me to be the fault of Hegel.] Any system can be perverted. see https://stevedutch.net/pseudosc/10dumrel.htm

Christian writings

One theme that comes up in Christian writings is the Oral Law. I would like to mention that most things that are considered to be from the Torah in the Gemara have support from a verse. One early example I encountered was in Shar Yashuv [Rav Freifeld yeshiva in NY]. That year we were learning Yevamot and I saw how the issue of Yibum is treated very rigorously and derived from the verses. I also saw this in my first period in the Mir when we were learning Nedarim. In particular I recall the 11th chapter of Nedarim where the verses are analyzed in a very rigorous and logical fashion.
So legal issues --about what the Torah really requires is really a forte of the Gemara. And I see no good reason for Christians to disparage the Talmud.
 However there are other times in the Gemara that instead of open verses, the meaning of a text is derived by the 13 principles of derivation.  These rules-- most rishonim believe make things that comes from them to be considered from the Torah. However the Rambam thinks rules that come from the 13 principles of derivation can be overturned by a later court of law that is wiser and more numerous.

However it seem to me the main unconscious objection of Christians to the Oral Law is that there are a lot of rules. I can only wonder what they would say if they saw a NY code of Civil Law. Or if they ever would walk into the Harvard Law Library. --And they are accusing the Oral Law of having too many rules? That is rich!

The other theme that comes up is the idea of Jesus being God which certainly he did not hold from. However it is common in Moshe of Cordoba and Rav Isaac Luria to find people whose soul is from the world of Emanation [Azilut A-tzi-lut] which is considered to be Divine in the sense that there is no dividing curtain between Azilut and the Infinite One.

On the other hand there is a noticeable tendency to criticize belief in Jesus in any shape or form that goes beyond criticisms like these.It seems as if people are just searching for ways to criticize Jesus and anyone that believes he was good as a forgone conclusion.[I mean to say that they have come to their conclusion before weighing the evidence.]

Jesus I think would have been more accepted if not for the introduction of external doctrines which seem to interfere with his message

Jesus I think would have been more accepted if not for the introduction of external doctrines which seem to interfere with his message and do not seem to contribute anything on the positive side. For example bitul hamitzvot [nullification of the commandments] and the worship of him as is done seems to be doctrines that are just added baggage and tend to rake away the value of his message.
The actual message I assume is more or less contained in things that he said instead of things said about him. There are lots of examples of this. One case would be the Sermon on the Mount. That seems to be meant literally even though there do not seem to be many people that think that Jesus was actually serious about the rules he was prescribing there.
However, I believe that the Amish and Mennonites actually do take the rules of Jesus seriously. I think that is what distinguished the Anabaptist.

It is tragic that the only places in Israel that follow the path of the Gra and Rav Shach are the yeshivas of Rav Zilverman in Jerusalem and Ponovitch and Brisk.

The importance of the Litvak Yeshiva path is mainly in a closed community that is based on Torah. It is not really meant as a way of government. So as far as government goes I am on board with John Locke and the  Constitution. of the USA And the Constitution itself recognized the difference between state government and federal government. But on the level of small communities I see Torah in the way of the Gra and Rav Shach as being the ideal to strive for.

I ought to mention for the sake of clarity that somehow or other through my experience in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY that when I got to Israel I underwent a spiritual transformation. So I am convinced by reason but also by personal experience in the validity of the straight Torah path advocated by the Gra. 

It is tragic that the only places in Israel that follow the path of the Gra and Rav Shach are the yeshivas of Rav Zilverman in Jerusalem and Ponovitch and Brisk.

I found the contribution of Dr Kelley Ross of the Kant Friesian School to be quite amazing.

I found the contribution of Dr Kelley Ross of the Kant Friesian School to be quite amazing. The major points are immediate non intuitive knowledge and a polynomic theory of value. The reason this helps is that there seems to be areas of value that are not reducible to true of false. Sometimes the question is J.S. Bach as opposed to noise. And even in areas of true of false you have to start with axioms that are immediately clear-but can not be reduced to prior axioms.

Still the argument of this side of Kant with Hegel seems a bit a bit overdone. There seems to be a lot more in common between Hegel and Leonard Nelson than there are differences.

In any case, what is important about Kelley Ross is that in his system there is this kind of knowledge that would be called faith. But then comes the question how to distinguish between true faith and false?

My feeling about this is that any bit of true knowledge has to come from a component of immediate non intuitive knowledge and also a component of pure reason. But that does not make it infallible. If Empirical evidence goes against it, it has to be modified of maybe even thrown out.

Communism based on the idea that man in state of nature is good.

while Michael Huemer is right that Communism is based largely on the labor theory of value it also has an implicit foundation in the state of nature of Rousseau  that man in the state of nature is good. All theft and murder and all other human evils come from society. But if you would put back man in the state of nature everyone would be loving and kind and cooperative. (It is just the exploiters that extra value from the workers that would have to be gone.) No need for government or rules. But Marx admitted the tremendous abundance that capitalism creates. So he postulates next stage of evolution where the means of production will stay put, but the exploiting class will disappear, and people will revert to their natural loving kind state --but along with that there will be no government nor society and no inequality so  no reason for theft or violence.
[Marx did not usually say from where his ideas came from, but in one comment he acknowledged he was influenced by Rousseau. But it is more than that. He claimed his ideas were scientific. The idea was to create a science of man that would be on the same level as Newtons science of gravity and motion.]

So Allan Bloom [The Closing of the American Mind] is right for tracing the  crisis of Western World as being rooted in the question about what is man in the state of nature.]

To learn from the middle and outwards

One thing i heard in high school by an assistant to the physics teacher. To learn from the middle and outwards. [He also said from beginning to end and from end to beginning.] This idea is a great help in learning Physics since it is often the case that i need review to understand what I am learning. But review in itself can be hard to know from where to start. So what I do is just to start where I am already holding in the book--for example Polchinski's String Theory Notes. [The idea is to  just start from where i am already holding [e.g. page 60] and then to go back to the previous section and from there just to say the words in order until i get to where i was at page 60. and then to go back to two sections before and from there also to work forward to page 60. etc until i get to the beginning.

the idea behind this--that makes it worthwhile- is the books of Musar which go by Rav Saadia Gaon that Physics and Metaphysics are in the category of learning Torah. [However this is an argument among the rishonim.]

The Gra says when people do open evil, it is easier to guard oneself from them. But when people hide their hatred in the hearts and pretend to be your best friend, you can not guard yourself from them.

There is a Gemara that says that the first Temple was destroyed because of idolatry, forbidden relations, and murder. The Second Temple because of baseless hate, and that baseless hate is worse.

So I was wondering how this is possible until I saw the Gra explain this. He says when people do open evil, it is easier to guard oneself from them. But when people hide their hatred in the hearts but pretend to be your best friend, you can  not guard yourself from them.

[To me this seems clearly to be a hint to what Rav Nahman was talking about in his lessons about people that are evil even though they are scholars. See Le.M. Vol I:12 and I:28] (If the Gra's letter of excommunication would apply to Rav Nahman I would not be quoting Rav Nahman. But my opinion is that it did not apply to Rav Nahman.]

[Incidentally I saw in the Five Books of Moses that is printed with collected commentaries by the Gra that  at least one issue why he signed the letter of excommunication was that of Kishuf--black magic that pretends to be from the realm of holiness.]

Bava Kama page 13

The most obvious problem on Bava Kama page 13 is that the Gemara only deals with one of the two possibilities in R. Nathan. Why does it not deal with the possibility that in the case of the ox and the pit that both are thought to have causes all the damage? Well Tosphot seems to deal with this. He at least implies that that would already make it clear that R Nathan would agree with R Aba. I can not see why?
Just for clarity's sake let me present the basic subject. R. Aba says a peace offering gores another animal. One collects from the meat, not the parts that go on the altar. [That means they both share equally. The owner of the damaged animal can not say he wants only the meat.]
ר' אבא אמר שלמים שהזיקו גובה מבשרם ואינו גובה מאימוריהם
The Gemara says R Nathan could agree with this because he holds in his case on page 53 that owner of the pit has to pay 3/4's damage because the damaged animal was found in his pit. But clearly that is only to one opinion on page 53. What about the other opinion that both the owner of the pit and ox caused full damage.

To me it seems clear that if I would be learning with David Bronson that he would not move from this issue until it would become clear. But I pretty much gave up already on understanding this.]

The reason there is some lack of clarity for me here is the issue of "Breira" choosing after the fact.
That is let's says two people inherit something. Can one say retrospectively that one part went to him?
So here whether each one did all the damage or one each did half why does it make a difference? So let's say in the case of a ox and pit that cause damage and each does half. So how would that apply to the case of an animal that gores another? The owner of the gored animal would be able to say some particular part did half the goring if you say "Breira"( choosing after the fact). But then if both do the whole damage also you can say the same. If he can choose which part then he still can choose that part of you say Breira ( choosing after the fact). 

straight Torah

The main advantage to the path of the Gra and Rav Shach is that it is straight Torah. That is--no admixtures. So even if one like me who does not have that merit that is needed to walk on the path of straight Torah still it gives you an idea of what straight Torah is supposed to be about.

To some degree this is also the advantage of the Musar movement of Rav Israel Salanter except that Musar itself seems to be liable to led one to distractions.

Also I should add that even though in theory the Litvak Yeshiva world identifies with this straight path of Torah, a lot depends on which particular institution you are dealing with. In my opinion Ponovitch and Brisk are the best in Israel. I myself was in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in the USA and both places impressed me very much. -In different ways. Shar Yashuv was definitely very much into the spirit of Torah as much as the Mir but their ways of learning were different. Shar Yashuv was more along the lines of calculating the subject in its place. The Mir was into learning in a more global way like Rav Haim of Brisk.


[Neither were into learning anything mystic even though I did venture into that area myself later.]

I forgot the path of Shar Yashuv until I encountered it again in my learning partner in Uman, David Brosnon who also learns in  exactly that same way. And that is more or less the path along which i wrote my two books on Gemara.חידושי הש''ס עיוני בבא מציעא

The Torah does forbid taking or giving interest on a loan. So how is it that banks do this even in Israel? The way this works is based on a gemara in Bava Metzia [page 104] which says that an iska [money given to deal with] is half a loan and half a guarded object. That itself is based on a mishna in Bava Mezia page 68 that says to give money to someone to buy some project or product and to sell and they will divide the profits is forbidden unless the one who is to do the selling gets paid. [How much is a debate.]

The way this works is that half is a loan that has to be paid back. So the lender can not get profit from that. But half is a משכון object that one is paid to guard. So the first party can get profit from that. The trouble is that there has to be risk so that it is not interest. The risk part is on the guarded object which if stolen does not have to be paid back. The basic idea is that any time there is a possibility for the lender to loose or to make money that is not considered to be interest.


So how much does the one that receives the money have to be paid? This is an argument among the sages of the Mishna. Then Rashi and Tosphot disagree about our particular Mishna holds. Then there is a debate between Shelomo Luria and the Maharsha and Maharam about what Tosphot and the Rosh mean. This is a long and hard issue that I have just begun to work on. The Rif, the Baal HaMeor and the Ramban also have a lot to say about this but I have not had a chance yet to get into this in detail.

development of philosophy?

So what do you learn from my post yesterday about the development of philosophy?

One lesson is that the issues that Kant and Hegel were dealing with were not the same as the issues in the Middle Ages.  So a person might take Aquinas or Saadia Gaon or Maimonides and still have to deal with more modern issues like the Mind Body problem.
You can also learn to ignore twentieth century philosophy as being vain and empty and as John Searle put it "obviously false".
The most recent developments that are of interest are of Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school which does take a certain direction in Kant. With him there is a kind of knowledge which is known and yet not from reason and not from the senses. So you might well understand that to be a defense of faith.
[That is a continuation of Leonard Nelson.]

Another development is Michael Huemer. That is a development of Prichard and the Intuitionists. That is to say that reason recognizes universals.

Hegel is the most rigorous and systematic of almost any philosopher who has ever lived. It is not just that his system puts things together. It is rather that everything is connected. To me he seems to be a direct develpment of Plato and Plotinus.--But he is informed by Kant and Schelling.

Pre Socratics, Decartes, Hegel.

. The Pre Socratics with the question how is change possible? After all what is already is. And what is not is nothing and can not be made into an "is". For it to become an is it already has to be something. This led up to Plato who said the realm of the Is is one realm--the true realm. The world we are in --the changing world is the world of change. Then came Aristotle and Plotinus and after that it took some time to sort things out.
Then the Middle Ages with the question of faith with reason. in the world of Torah it was Saadia Gaon who combined them. After him everyone accepted that a synthesis of faith with reason is the proper way of Torah.

The proper approach here also was unclear  and all Torah thinkers were going with Plato until the Rambam who turned to Aristotle. The remainder of the Middle Ages was simply to clear up the loose ends.

Then began the Mind Body problem with Descartes. This question has two approaches to it. One from John Locke. He was the beginning of the empirical approach to this. i.e. the mind --reason--abstracts from the senses. That is how it gets to pure reason. By this process of abstraction. [Hume went on this path after Locke.] Then the Rationalists- Spinoza, Leibniz. Berkeley was a radical version of this holding that all we know is what is in our own heads.
Kant published two versions of the Critique of Pure Reason. He treads a middle path where there is a ground of validity of pure reason--but only within the confines of conditions of possible experience. -not actual experience. Then came the neo-Kant people that understood Kant in different ways and modified him. That would be Fichte and Hegel on the side that reason can go into the thing in itself  (dinge an sich). Then Fries on the side of immediate (not through anything) non intuitive (not by the senses) knowledge  --a kind of third source of knowledge.
 In any case after Kant people were either trying to figure him out and also Hegel. Picking up the loose ends so to speak.  The World War One came and everyone abandoned Kant and Hegel and anything German. So the 20th century was a lot of mediocre people making up profound sounding stuff. As John Searle said about 20th century philosophy "It is obviously false."
Like there was one girl listening to Sartre talking how words mean on thing for the person talking but something else for the one listening. So a twelve year old girl asked him "So why are you talking?"
Dr Kelley Ross considers the Kant Fries School as a kind of continuation of Plato.
. Hegel to me seems to be also a kind of continuation of ancient Philosophy Plotinus in particular. At least consciously Hegel was giving a defence of Christianity though many took his ideas in the opposite direction. I think in some way that Hegel went even beyond Aquinas in this sense. That with Aquinas he got everything to fit together (as a large puzzle). But with Hegel, the pieces all are interconnected as an organic whole.

In the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria]

In the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] you have a basic scenario like this. Before the creation of the world there was simply the Divine Light everywhere-and thus no place for creation. So there had to be made an empty space חלל הפנוי from where God emptied out his light.But he did leave a source of light in the exact middle. Then he sent down a beam of light that as onion rings [ten rings] --crown until royalty. Then after that he sent down again light in the form of a man אדם קדמון. Then this form of a man sent light down from his ears nose mouth and eyes. These formed world outside of the body of Adam Kadmon. One world created from this was "Akudim" stripped. The nekudim "dotted". [both are mentioned in Genesis in report about Jacob with the striped and spotted sheep.] Then there was the famous Shivrat Hakelim [breaking of the vessels]. So at that point we have the vessels along with some sparks of light left in them falling down into three lower worlds Creation Formation and then the Physical Universe. Then begins the process of bringing up the fallen vessels and repairing them (this repair happens in the place where there were the dots nekudim but at this point this is called Emanation Atzilut). [In more detail it makes sense to learn the Eitz Haim of the Ari. That books gives the full picture in more detail. Other books of the Ari deal with other issues like the Shaar HaGilgulim which talks about the root of different souls. A major theme there is how a lot of souls have their root in Cain and others in Hevel his brother. But it is useful to know that the Ari himself revealed that information to his student Rav Haim Vital to give him details about the roots of his soul [Rav Haim Vital's] which was from Emanation. The idea is that there are rare souls whose come from the world of Emanation. It is well known that the patriarchs are souls of Emanation. This is one reason why you find some souls to be from Emanation, That is to say some souls are united with some sephera of Emanation like Abraham being united with the sephera of Hesed Kindness. Isaac united with Power etc. But also you can have a soul that is from Emanation but just a spark of some sephera there--not the whole sephera.
[I knew someone who wanted to convert and the question was asked if they thought Jesus was divine? I do not see how that is a valid issue since lots of tzadikim are thought to be divine in the sense that the world of Emanation is considered pure divinity. כולו אלקות
[The way I see the Ari is as a modification of Plotinus]

Questions on the Gemara -Talmud.

In the Talmud there are some passages that give some people pause. I would like to say that I asked David Bronson in Uman about some passages that were bothering me and his answer was to open the particular passage and see what it is actually saying. Most times that cleared up the issue. But that does not mean there are no good questions or that everything in the Talmud is 100%. Rather the Talmud is an approximation of the Oral Law. It is how the Oral Law had been handed down and written down. But there are differences between things that are directly from Mount Sinai and things that were judged to be so by one court of law in one generation that can be overturned by a later court if the later court is greater in wisdom and number.
But in any case, there were some passages that were brought to my attention that I would like to address.

One is a case brought that a person tied up another and put him in his basement--he is not judged guilty of the death penalty. That is in Bava Kama dealing with laws of causing indirect damage. So the Gemara there does not go into the issue in more detail as it does in Sanhedrin where the actual subject of murder comes up. There in Sanhedrin it is brought that when you have a murderer who has murdered but without the condition that would make him judged guilty accoutring to the laws of the Torah but you still know he did murder, you take him in a cell and give him dry barley  until he dies
The idea is that in the Torah it is hard to actually incur the death penalty since the conditions are hard to come by. That is there has to be two witness that see the act and the act has to be direct--not by indirect causation and there has to be a warning by the witness right before the act saying to him, "If you do this you will incur the death penalty because of such and such a verse."

I should be impeached.

I should be impeached. I confess. I did an infamous tit for that transaction today. A despicable quid pro quo. I bought two packages of potato chips I offered money to the owner of the store to give me those two packages. {Maybe Trump and I can share a cell at Sing Sing prison?]

Mir Yeshiva in NY

I was discussing some of my path that led me to the Mir Yeshiva in NY and later to Safed. In the conversation Spinoza came up. The basic story is this. I knew that Einstein liked Spinoza so from the age of 11 until I actually went tom Shar Yashuv and the Mir I learned Spinoza. But not that I had any concept of his being supposedly under some excommunication.

In fact I think that for a excommunication to be valid the people making it need to have a certain degree of knowledge in Gemara. But if the people that put him into excommunication are anything like the religious leaders today then their ban is not valid.--This is for the reason that there is no Tosphot anywhere in Shas that you can ask any  religious rav about and he will know the answer. They are simply ignorant. The reason is to get into their position they have connections and learn a few laws but knowledge of gemara and Tosphot --forget about it.

So the idea of excommunication is  valid idea and when it is done properly certainly has legal validity. But that I think could not have been the case with |Spinoza.

In any case the only book of Spinoza I was familiar with was the Ethics and from that I got the idea that morality is objective and that reason recognizes moral principles.. His idea of God I also did not find a problem with since to him the center of gravity is on God-not nature. Nature is simply God doing his thing. Natura Naturans--Nature naturing. Still in all that was not my concept of God which was more along the lines I heard at home--of God that is the first cause and that hears and answers prayer--and is not the world but rather the creator of the world.
At any rate, to me going to the Mir just seemed like a natural continuation of the education I got at home and in Temple Israel.--that moral laws are recognizable by reason--and that God hears prayer.
My fall from the Mir I think was because I was not really finding myself in that environment very well. I had gotten married and somehow sort of got pulled away from learning. In the long run I think I ought to have been stubborn to stick with the straight Torah path of the Gra and the Litvak Yeshiva world.

The way to go about learning Physics in my opinion does not involve books that are meant for laymen. See this blog :https://motls.blogspot.com/ where you can see that books written for laymen give wrong ideas--especially nowadays.

Instead the best way to go about is I think is to say the words and to go on. לומר את הדברים כסדר וממילא יבין ואם לא יבין תכף יבין אחר כך ואם ישארו איזה הוא דברים שאף על פי כן לא יוכל לעמוד על כוונתו מה בכך כי מעלת ריבוי הלימוד עולה על הכל שיחות הר''ן שיחה ע''ו


From where do you learn that learning Physics is a part of learning? From Musar. חובות לבבות הקדמה ושער הבחינה פרק ג
Also in the Mishna Torah Laws of Learning Tora-- about dividing one's learning into Written Law Oral Law and Gemara and "Pardes" is in the category of Gemara--and the Rambam says there that he explained what Pardes is in the beginning of Mishna Torah in the first four chapters. There he explains Pardes as the subjects of Physics and Metaphysics as you find in Aristotle and his later commentaries.

religious truth

My opinion about religious truth follows a idea that is brought in the Phenomenology of the Spirit by Hegel. You can look on a process of growing of fruit a fruit tree thus--the bud is destroyed by the blossom, Then the blossom is destroyed by the fruit. Or you can say the bud is sublimated into the blossom and then the blossom is sublimated into the fruit.
So Plato Aristotle Aquinas Leibniz and Spinoza were like the bud and blossom that eventually develop into the full fruit.


I see religious truth to be along the same lines.

For example in Christianity the issue about the Trinity is in a process of development as one can see in this blog https://trinities.org/blog/.
That is to say it is becoming more clear as time goes on that Jesus was attached to God in the sense that the commandment says to love and fear God and to be attached to him. That does not mean he was God. See also the book on Sonship by Professor Moshe Idel.

However this is not to say that the Trinity is all that much off. In fact we find lots of saints that are considered divine. The name of the Ari on his grave is האלקי ר' יצחק לוריא אשכנזי.. The Divine R, Isaac Luria. Lots of saints are thought to be souls of Atzilut Emanation. See the whole discussion in teh main book of Rav Nahman of Breslov the LeM vol 2 about tzadik who is בחינת בן ר'' אליעזר וצדיק שהוא בחינת עבד כמו ר' יהושע

page 13 of Bava Kama

There is something going on in Tosphot on page 13 of Bava Kama that I am finding hard to understand. Why does he bring up the issue of whether the ox does full damage or half in his question on Rashi. I was puzzling about this until I saw the second edition of the Maharsha. Still the issue is unclear to me.

The basic issue is this. On page 13 the case is a peace offering gores another animal. The law is the owner of the animal can not say I want the parts of the animal that are not brought as a sacrifice. They both have to share equally. The Gemara asks who is this going like. If to the sages then it is simple.
ר' אבא אמר שלמים שנגחו גובים מן הבשר ולא מן האימורים היינו החלקים שעולים על המזבח. הגמרא שואלת לפי מי זה? אם לפי החכמים אז הוא פשוט.. מה הדין של החכמים? הוא אם שור דחף בהמה לבור-בעל השור משלם ולא בעל הבור. ולפי רש''י הכוונה היא שבעל השור משלם את הכל אם הוא מועד וחצי אם הוא תם. תוספות שואלים אם כן מה הדמיון למצב של שלמים שנגח ששם גם האימורים הם חלק מן השור? תוספות מוסיפים בתוך שאלתם על רש''י שבשלב הזה של הגמרא אוחזים שכל חלק מן השלמים עשו כל הנזק. שאם לא כן וכל חלק הזיק רק לפי חלקו אז  הניזק יכול לומר שמגיע לו רק הבשר ולא האימורים. אבל לי נראה שזה תלוי בדין של ברירה. ואם זה תלוי בברירה אז מה משנה אם כל חלק עשה כל הנזק או רק הזיק לפי חלקו?


What is the case of the sages? It is when a ox pushes another animal into a pit. and the sages say the owner of the ox pays, not the owner of the pit.  Rashi explains the sages that they mean if the ox is tam [never gored before] then the owner of the ox pays a full half and if it is muad [it gored before] he pays full.
Tosphot asks if so then the owner of the pit has no portion in the damage and so what is the parallel to the case of the peace offering?
But then Tosphot adds that Rashi must be holding at this point in the case of the ox and the pit that the sages are holding the ox does full damage. Why because otherwise why would the owner of the ox pay full damages. But also the Maharsha add a further reason. That is the if the sages hold the ox did half damages then when we get back to the case of the peace offering there would be a good reason for the owner of the animal that was damaged to claim only the half of the ox that does not go on the altar is the part that did the damages.

The thing about this that I find difficult is the question is this not then a case of brera?[choosing a portion after the fact. ]

learning Torah

I noticed today in the book of Rav Nahman from Breslov a few interesting ideas.

The idea that he introduces is that by learning Torah with energy one merits to grace in such a way that ones requests are answered whether from heaven of from people.

The way learning Torah with energy is explained in the commentary on Rav Nahman [Parparot LeKhahma] to be the idea of learning Torah with "Hatmada" constantly and with effort.

When in my life things were going better and I was successful this particular lesson did not make much sense to me. Things were going my way and my prayers were being answered.

However nowadays when things stopped going my way and I have no grace in the eyes of God [in such a sense that my prayers are answered] nor of people it makes a lot more sense.

However I do not see it all that possible to reinsert myself into the Lithuanian yeshiva world where in fact Torah is learned with energy and hatmada (constantly)

This is an argument between Tosphot and the Rambam. The idea is there is a cause of damage that is sufficient in itself to cause the damage. But another person adds to it. Is he also obligated. This is like a case of fire that is burning hot enough to destroy a stack of hay but someone throws an extra stick in. Is he also obligated for his addition?

If you have a pit in a public domain that is ten hand breaths deep and someone adds to it another hand-breath is that obligated for damages? This is an argument between Tosphot and the Rambam.

[See the Rosh in Bava Kama, chapter 2. And the Shiltai HaGiborim on the Rif].

It seems to me that this might depend on the argument between the Sages and R. Natan in Bava Kama 53. Over there we have acase an ox pushed another ox into a pit. the sages say the owner of the ox is obligated not the owner of the pit. R. Natan said in the case of an ox that never gored before the owner of the ox is required a 1/4 and the owner of the pit is obligated in1/2. In the case of an ox that has already gored two times before each pays 1/2. It seems to me that the Rambam here is going like the sages.

The idea is there is a cause of damage that is sufficient in itself to cause the damage. But another person adds to it. Is he also obligated. This is like a case of fire that is burning hot enough to destroy a stack of hay but someone throws an extra stick in. Is he also obligated for his addition?



[There is an argument between Tosphot and Rashi about what the sages actually hold --but I simply have not had a chance to take a good look at their argument yet. As I mentioned my life has been total chaos for a over a year.]

Danny Frederick [https://philpapers.org/rec/FRETCE-3] says that there is a theory of Berkeley about justification for government that comes from the fact that without government there would be really terrible consequences.

path of my father

I would like to present the path of my father.[Philip Rosenblum (Rosten)] For me it is kind of hard to define but if I give a little background on how I was raised that might make it a bit clearer.

The main thing about it was balance. So learning Torah in the way of the Litvaks --the Gra and Rav Shach is certainly a part of that. Authentic Torah. But it was more along the lines of a balance of values.
His parents came over from Poland right around WWI. His father Yaakov Rosenblum was invited to the USA by his older brother who was married to a girl from Poland. [Not the same city.] When yaakov got to the USA his brother suggested that they send for the sister of the brother's wife so she could marry Yaakov. "She would like you" the brother and his wife said. So Rivka, my grandmother came over also to the USA and married Yaakov.
So My Dad and his brother and sister all went to public school while ,my grandfather worked in a bakery in lower Manhattan.

My Dad went to Cal Tech [the California Institute of Technology] and he liked it. It was not his way to emphasize any particular advice of path to me or my brothers but clearly he like the idea of technology and classical music. So my brothers and I all went to public school but in order to learn Torah we went to Temple Israel in Hollywood.  But I want to add that my parents also wanted me and my brothers to go to the boy scouts. But somehow that simply did not stick with any of us. But that was one area that my father definitely emphasized to the nth degree--to be self reliant.

I continued my education in Shar Yashuv and later the Mir in NY and after that i majored in Physics at NYU.
So you see there is a kind of aspect of balance in the path of my dad that is hard to define. He also I must add volunteered for the USAF during WWII and was sent to the European Theater of action. He became a captain in the USAF.

So what you mainly see from this is that his path was more or less to be  "a mensch". [Which is how my mom put it.]

But there was something much more that that. He had that undefinable quality that you see in navy seals--never give up. Commitment, Integrity, Loyalty. Things that you can not learn from a textbook.

Henry the fifth simply kidnapped the Pope

Henry the fifth simply kidnapped the Pope until he agreed with the position of Henry that the king has the right to appoint bishops over his areas.

In any case the situation today with the Catholic church does seem problematic. I would say that in fact there has been a kind of evolution. In fact I have been looking at Smith Wigglesworth, Maria Etter, Semour [Azusa Street], Ameiee Semple McPherson and Kathryn Kuhlman. And it does look that there has been a kind of evolutionary process.

Litvak Yeshiva world.

I admit I did not do very well in the Litvak Yeshiva world. I did not have the kind of staying power that some people have to stick with learning the Oral and Written Law --at all cost. At some point, I got distracted --you might say. I got involved with Breslov. In so far as that means to listen to the amazing advice of Rav Nahman from Breslov, that is a great thing. But the tendency is for it to distract from plain simple learning Gemara. Or at least that seems to have been the effect it had on me. Later when I actually got to Uman and was able to learn with David Bronson, the interest in Gemara started up again. But I can not claim to be any kind of Litvak type of person. The reason my blog is labeled after Rav Shach and the Gra is I see them as ideals I would like to strive for,-- but do not claim to be anywhere near their amazing levels.

I ought to add that no matter how much one is devoted to learning straight Tora in the Litvak way, it is needed to marry a girl that also holds from this as a life goal. It does not help much if you are devoted to learning and your wife is constantly criticizing this and asking for more money.

This kind of situation is inherently unstable.


[Still I do not want to sound critical of Rav Nahman who was a great tzadik. Just because I understood his advice and approach in the wrong way does not mean that it is mistaken. As Steven Dutch wrote that he can not conceive of any system that can not be corrupted.'

"There is no perfect system

I am completely unable to conceive of any legal or social system that can’t be subverted or abused. People who crave power or status will gravitate toward whatever confers those rewards. And they will always discover ways to get the rewards without paying their dues."

https://stevedutch.net/Pseudosc/Dutchrules.htm



 [Anyway, ideas are true or false because of how they correspond to reality, not how their believers do.](https://stevedutch.net/Pseudosc/10DumRel.htm)

objections to Christianity

I have concluded that Christians do not know the objections to Christianity. Nor possible answers.

The objections are many but at least a major one is that of idolatry. Is it in fact idolatry? Clearly this was the objection that the Trinity came to answer. This is why the alternative view of Arianism was rejected. [Even though it is clear from the NT itself that Jesus did not consider himself to be God.]

So the questions have to be divided into different groups. Is the Trinity or any of the various approaches to the trinity correct? And then let's say that none of them are correct. Then what is the right view?

Mt view about this is that the Trinity is not correct. I do not see anything that indicates that it is true or that Jesus held that way at all. [A person can be דבוק attached to God without being God. You see this in the verses which say that one must be attached to God. The actual quotation I forget but basically it says "Thou shalt fear God and love Him and be attached to Him." ולדבקה בו]

But does this in itself make the whole thing no good? I doubt that. There are examples of people that are considered to be from the world of Emanation that is brought in the Remak and Rav Isaac Luria. And it is well know that souls from the world of Emanation are considered to be on the level of "son" as opposed to souls from Creation which are on the level of servants.

As for the idea that God can wrap and cloth himself in a physical body is dealt with in the Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin about the Barber that gave Sennacherib a haircut. The Gemara there says openly that that was God himself and that if it would not be openly stated in the verse it would be impossible to say. [So if it would only mean it as a allegory then it would be possible to say. so the Gemara means that the verse is literal. That God himself came down as a Barber and gave Sennacherib a haircut.

It is also curious the visceral reaction people have towards Christianity. But this seems to be a different subject. Since the intense hatred most people have towards Christianity does not seem related to the actual objections but rather comes from a deep sited irrational l hatred. But this is not a subject that I understand very well. Mainly I think it is relate to what Michael Huemer writes about why people have irrational political beliefs. [Group identity is a major factor.]

Dr Kelly Ross [Kant Fries School] brings an idea about immediate non intuitive knowledge which to me seems close to the idea of Michael Huemer about intellectual perception. In short the idea of immediate knowledge is knowledge that is not through anything. It is known immediately. But to me this does not seem all that different than Michael Huemer's idea that reason recognizes universals.`

The library here is closing in few minutes. So let me just add that Huemer's idea is that universals that things like laws of nature or moral laws. These are recognized by the faculty of reason. But this is prime facie. That is why more clear principles can defeat less clear principles.

I really have to go so I recommend looking up their web sites.