Natural man is a primate. A smart primate.

It is somewhat disconcerting to see that Thomas Jefferson had tremendous faith in the common man. And the inherent goodness of the common man. As many people in WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] societies did, they thought that goodness that was grafted onto natural man is inherent. [Stuart Mill made the same mistake.]

Thousand of years of society believing in the Law of Moses, made Western Civilization. Not natural man. Natural man is a primate. A smart primate. Good at using his intelligence to get what he wants. Instrumental reason, not moral reason.

But when it came to the issue of people attacking the USA, he was unequivocal. Exterminate them. So he was no dreamer in the clouds. If people want peace,-- well that is one thing. But people that want war, he was clear what to do about it.

This is a good lesson for today. There are people that want to bring down the USA. Thomas Jefferson would have not doubts about what to do with them.   [The issue came up when settlements on the borders of the USA in it smaller extent then were being systematically attacked.]

common sense.

Often a tzadik merits to one but not more than one main idea. Some "Aitza" piece of advice that can help all others.
But this goes further than just tzadikim.
Mozart wrote a lot of music but there  was only a few of a major masterpieces. Eine Kleine Nacht Musik. The Jupiter Symphony. The Magic Flute.

Rav Nahman actually merited  to a few major pieces of advice for people that each one is in itself a masterpiece. Private conversation with God, Tikun Klali, Seder HaLimud.

My own dad had a  wealth of great invention that he came up with while working for the USA government. But I would have to say the major thing that my parents had that is a contribution to all mankind [if one can get a handle on its essence] is their kind of common sense. Or balance.  There is something to learn from every great person. And furthermore there is a kind of common sense how to avoid the frauds..

Trust in God.

Trust in God involves an awareness that human life is inherently hard. There are customs that help but even with all the customs and good habits still there the basic fact does not change that things are hard. [For example speaking the truth at all cost, is great habit and and help and protection. But in the long run it is limited.] The only thing that can really help is God's will. He has to want to help. And if He wants to help, then help will come.But to gain this can only come indirectly. There is nothing one can do that will bring help automatically. Rather all one can do is hope for God's help. But there is one thing that in fact does bring about that God should want to help. That is trust.
So the best idea in all situations is to gain an attitude of trust in God.

[I have mentioned this subject before. The major areas of clarification about it comes from the book of Navardok Madragat HaAdam, The Obligations of the Hearts, and the Gra on Mishlei. And also Rav Nahman in the Lem II in the lesson concerning Shavuot. There Rav Nahman explains the idea of "making a vessel" for the blessing to have something to flow into.]


One thing you see in Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Hearts] is that there is a difference between medicine cures and working for a living. He treats these two areas differently. On the subject of a cure and King Asa's seeking doctors, Ibn Pakuda [the author of Obligations of the Hearts] says the sin was to seek doctors at all. [That is as surprise since most people think that one can seek doctor's help but trust in God. The Obligations of the Hearts does not go with that possibility. But when it comes to making a living, he is on board with making effort. So it must be that he is thinking the cure issue and the making a living issue are separate.] 

Human worth

Human worth depends mainly on deeds. Evil deeds makes that value disappear. Treason, the present day attempt to overturn the USA to turn it into a communist dictatorship with the whites being the slaves is not a good deed. So everyone involved in this attempt, or even agrees with it by silence, has lost their human worth.
So what needs to be done is to get rid of the so called Democratic party which is really just an attempt to overthrow the USA. 

If gentiles think they have moral codes better than the Bible, well their moral codes anyway change with the direction of the breeze every ten years.

Sex is an important issue but hard to get right. Rav Nahman of Uman suggested a correction for sexual sin --saying the ten psalms 16,32,41,42,59,77,90,105,137, 150.
But as Sefardim noticed during their 2000 year exile in Muslim lands that the only real way to get to sexual purity is by being married immediately that one comes of age.

[In some areas this was necessary for other reasons.]

That is as soon as the boys were 13 and the girls 12, they were married off. Usual the actual arrangements about who marries whom was made many years before that. Just the actual marriage only happened by the boy was 13 and the girl 12.

And even though the men could marry many women, still the arrangement was usually just one wife to one man. 
In Torah law, a man can have many wives and even many girl friends. And in fact we see many great people in the Bible had several wives and concubines. Like Kalev ben Yefuna [Chronicles I 2:46] [Caleb, the friend of Joshua ]

If gentiles think they have moral codes better than the Bible, well their moral codes anyway change with the direction of the  breeze every ten years. and then they think their ideas of morality are eternal,

[Marriage in Torah is not a "sacrament." It does not make sex holy. Nor even allowed. What it does accomplish is to make obligations on the man and other obligations on the wife. The same act of sex that is permitted after marriage is also permitted before marriage. The only difference is to the Ramban it is permitted period. To the Rambam there is lacking a positive command to marry. That is however not prostitution. So Christians have things about sex very mixed up.
That is what comes from lack of study of the Old Testament. When Christians talk about study of the Bible, they never get into the exact laws of the Bible.

So that was when TRW contacted my dad to design the infrared apparatus to put into the satellites.

I wanted to put into perceptive. My dad was not at all part of the space program at first. Americans were focused on getting into space. So from 1960 until 1965 he was in business for himself. [He had invented a super sharp copy mate machine]. So his invention of the infrared telescope was simply in his past at that point. [Life Magazine July 26 1954 pages 24-26](https://books.google.co.il/books?id=D1QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA24&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false) Sure the USA and the USSR were desperately focused on getting ahead of each other in space. Only at some point the USA decided it needed infrared satellites over the USSR as an early warning system.[In case the Soviets decided to launch --God forbid]. So that was when they contacted my dad to design the infrared apparatus to put into the satellites. By the end of the 60's that job was done, and then they put him in charge of a different satellite program--laser communication between satellites.

[That was never implemented until the 2000's when TRW got back into the space program. Before that, TRW was out, since a spy was discovered there working for the KGB. So TRW lost all its contracts at that point. But my dad had already left at that time. My dad left because his work on the laser was finished and he decided to tackle other challenges.]

global warming

It helps to get an idea of the "big picture" as the Gra said [brought in the introduction to the Translation of Euclid into Hebrew by a disciple of the Gra.] One single lack in any of the seven wisdoms will result in a hundred fold lack in understanding of Torah.

For me getting to know the big picture was a kind of amateur interest in Dinosaurs. [Surely the fascination of all young kids--but it stuck with me even after childhood.] But just by getting to know the environment of the dinosaurs I happen to have an idea of what the carbon dioxide levels were back then   and also world wide temperatures. So the whole global warming scare always seemed to me to be less than meaningless.

יאשיה המלך Yoshiya the king is on one hand a sad story

יאשיה המלך Yoshiya the king is on one hand a sad story. However there is a deep meaning behind it.
We know אל תתגרה ברשעים. [''do not start up with the wicked.'] So he must have been aware that getting rid of all idolatry in Israel that the evil would stick in him and his children. You can not fight someone in the mud without getting muddy. But even though he was aware of that, he decided to get rid of idolatry from Israel forever.--even knowing it would be the end of the Temple and his own children.
The reason was תמות נפשי עם פלשתים. [Shimshon  said let my soul die with the phelishtim. it was of for him to be destroyed as long as he could take  down the dark side while at it.] That is: it was worth it to make sure that idolatry would never again be a part of the accepted teaching of Torah in Israel

But that has become weakened. Now idolatry is very much an essential element of Torah as taught in the religious world. This is because the signature of the Gra was ignored and so idolatry is now a part and parcel of Torah as taught in the religious world.

[The basic event that I am referring to here is that that king got rid of all idolatry in Israel, and right after he died his sons took over and the Temple was destroyed and his children were either killed r became servants in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar.

there are many values that are true but not reducible to feeling nor reason.

Even though the Kant-Friesian School of thought of Kelley Ross is based on Leonard Nelson and Fries, it also has a few additions like the idea of that there are many values that are true but not reducible to feeling nor reason.
This seems like an important aid to self-understanding.
At least for me, it helps explain how during one period of time I might have a spark of the need to learn Gemara. At a later time, I might have a different spark. It explains a bit how Mozart, may have been talented, but his music is not reducible to talent.

That is there are objective values--not just values reducible to reason.
 

[It is hard to see philosophers as being on the same page, but you can actually see the importance of the Kant Friesian School by the critique that Robert Hanna presents on Analytic Philosophy.

Christians have an understanding of Jesus that suffers from two weak points. One is that Paul had what looks like a very different understanding of the commandments of Moses than did Jesus.

On one hand the audience of Paul was gentile and the audience of Jesus was Jewish, so by that in itself there is bound to be a discrepancy.

But even allowing for that does not really get to the degree of Paul's being downright against keeping the Law of Moses.
I am sure that reasonable answers have been proposed for this. However I want to point out now that regardless of how you evaluate Paul, the approach of Jesus himself could not have been more clear One must keep all the commandments including those from the words of the scribes. ["The scribes sit in Moses's seat, therefore all that they teach and command that you must listen and obey."]

All the controversies that are in the Christian world could be easily answered by this one simple observation.

[In Bava Batra: "Three are called by the name of G-d, tzadikim, Jerusalem,.." But no one prays to Jerusalem. It is more or less a Plotinus approach that they emanate from God.]

Litvak yeshivas tend to be a mixed bag.

Litvak yeshivas tend to be a mixed bag. Not all perfect,  but they have a lot of good. The main good is they introduce one to authentic Torah,- Torah as opposed to Torah of the Sitra Achra (Torah of the realm of Satan). [i had the great good fortune to have been in to great Litvak yeshivot, the Mir and Shar Yashuv]
But if you realize from where the good energy of the great yeshivas derives from--the Gra, you ought to be able to bypass any institution and simply work on Torah yourself with the need of any group.--Just by following the path of the Gra yourself.

The trouble seems to be that they really do not follow the Gra fully--which anyway I understand can be hard to do. After all the signature on the letter of excommunication is a start. Next would be the individual to get through the two Talmuds with Tosphot, Pnei Moshe, Maharsha and the two sets of midrashim, legal and agadic.]

[I would also add the Hidushim of Rav Chaim of Brisk and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.

In high school, communism and Leftist ideas were being introduced way before people knew that the education system had been infiltrated and seeded by the Frankfurt School.

In high school, communism and Leftist ideas were  being introduced way before people knew that the education system had been infiltrated and seeded by the Frankfurt School. So on one hand American Classical  Education retained some of its structure. For example: as a senior, I took English Literature, and we learned Chaucer. And as a sophomore we learned, The Book of Job. But also Camus!! How did he replace Shakespeare?
[Note--my teacher for Chaucer said in the short story about the cook that used lots of spices, the intent of Chaucer was to be ironic. [Meaning-- that he was a incompetent cook covering it up with spices]. I think this is incorrect. In the Middle Ages a bag of spices was worth a small fortune. Spice was the reason for going to India, and later was the motivation of Magellan to find a fast route to the Spice Islands. The average diet was bland. People would pay tremendous sums for spices especially pepper.


So how did Marxist ideas take over the Department of Education in the USA?

I had a friend who used to be in the KGB, who told me that he thought the KGB simply did not have the means to cause all that on its own. And I tend to agree. It had to have been native, naive Americans.

But after my own studies over the years, I was pretty sure that Marxism simply did not hold water.
[It is based on the Labor Theory of Value. That theory says that the amount of value something has depends on how much labor went into it. Since that value comes only from the physical labor, therefore the owner of the factory is extracting excess value from the workers to feed himself and give them low wages. However that theory is false. If a worker works on making a needle 24 hours a day. That does not make people want the needle more than if he worked on it for two minutes. ]

However being in the former USSR, I realized that there was a stabilizing element to the chaos that existed before and after the collapse.  No one ever told me things were better after the fall of the USSR. No one. So I realized that a lot depends on the people and situation. When things are in chaos and you need wide agreement of people to a central authority, then Marxism, though false, gives a core belief that will unite people--kill the filthy rich and take their stuff. At least you get the vote and then can impose order.
And being in Ukraine, I noticed a lot of people like to steal just by force of habit. It is not at all a kind of place that an American Constitution could have worked. Once you get a certain percentage of the population that like to steal, then the fact that the majority are angels makes the whole system fail. 

So I can see the point of the Bolsheviks in the USSR.
But the same system that the Left is trying to impose on the USA will result in the collapse of the USA. Personally, I would arrest every single rioter and put him on trial for treason.

x4 B Flat Major. This surely needs editing but I have been  sick and not putting any music on the internet. So at this point it seems to me it about time I put just anything on line.

[Some thoughts---  the last 6-8 time needs development. The measures need trimming. I also think the cello needs to be in part B. not just part A. Lots of other things that I just can not decide right now.]


x6

Universities  had their origin with Plato's Academy. But there was no way to get to the truth of things back then by experiments. Still truth was the goal. [The only tool was logical analysis started by Socrates.] And that goal remained the prime value in universities in the West. But also there were small study groups that collected around people like Peter Abelard. And in the High Middle Ages these small groups coalesced to become the Medieval University. Their prime goal was the furtherance of Christ.[Still the official motto on some American universities]  But that was thought to be compatible with Reason--at least possible. [But this marriage was always  shaky. From around 200 AD up until 1200 AD they were going with Plato and Plotinus, but that never worked well. It brought multiplicity into the God-Head, and that according to Torah completely out of the question. So Aquinas made a radical break with the past, and started on the path to combine Faith with Reason based on Aristotle's . [I.e imminent realism--that universals are real and they depend on individuals, Ex. There can not be blue without a blue object. But blue is real. Also are trees. and lots of things which have "universals in common." Furthermore there are formulas which are a different kind of universal. ]  In so doing he was borrowing from the Muslims who had already been going with Aristotle as opposed to Plato for a good long time. [However Aquinas also added a great deal of body to the idea of natural law.]  [The Muslims I imagine probably found the simplicity of God a lot easier to deal with in an Aristotelian framework. and I guess that Aquinas just came to the same conclusion.]

In any case, modern universities no longer value truth except in certain specific STEM departments. Now the major ball player on the field is the VICTIM. And how does one qualify for the greatest victim? By making false accusations. And when the Greatest Victim changes, the old victim gets forgotten. Or more often actually deposed of after he (eer.. I mean "it") has lost his credibility and usefulness.

The classic virtues love, generosity, prudence, humility as all gone, out with the do-do bird.
Now its is power is the prime goal and the way one gets to super-power is by playing the Super Victim.
The psychosis of lust for power has an origin in Nietzsche.  So that does not make much sense. e.g. You are a roommate. You want everyone to share the responsibilities and also the benefits. But that does not mean that is the Reason for being roommates.

The Left always wants one and the same thing. Tear down the old system and put a "Dream Land" in its place. All the benefits also with all your freedoms. How nice if true! But everywhere and everything the Left has brought into it Utopia it been at the cost of mass murder. 100, million just between Mao and Stalin alone. And totalitarianism. ]
The lust for power is not nice. If you meet someone on the street and ask them "What do you value most in life?" And let's say he answers you, "Power. I want power. Absolute Power. And to stop at nothing to get it." You would take a few slaw steps backwards to get away from them as quickly as possible."
But He wins in the election because he promises everything that everyone wants: guaranteed income food medicine. But what you might do is to emphasize the classical values--not promise more money

My high school teacher brought up a hypothetical question. They had discovered a point in the brain that if stimulated brings one bliss.. Let's say you could just carry around a small transistor and stimulate that place any time you wanted? Would you want that?

In the very first Star Trek this was the exact theme. Better to have reality, or a blissful dream world--but not a real world?

I find it unlikely that the Gra would have agreed to making Torah into a shovel to dig with, a money making machine. To receive money thankfully that is offered is one thing. To demand it is another.

Even though going with the Gra I think is important, that does not mean that everything in the Litvak yeshiva world would be thought OK by him.
For example we know in Torah there is such a thing as "Hamas" חמס which is someone takes something that belongs to someone else, but then pays for it. That is to say there is a difference between giving willing as opposed to having something taken for you..
So when a religious party can force the government to give them money which is in clear violation of this Torah rule. [You can not use Torah to make a living with. Much worse is if one used Torah as an excuse to do Hamas (Violence).
The fact that the system of government is flawed in such away that allows this kind of abuse does not make it morally correct. If the form of government would make something correct the Nazi Germany would be above reproach.]

Rather, there is such a  thing as objective morality which does not depend on what people think or how they vote. Right is right and wrong is wrong.

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication is also ignored and that does not make it any less valid or relevant now than it was then. People ignore it, and lose their divine souls and become demon possessed.

[A slight exception is Rav Nahman would is OK]
I find it unlikely that the Gra would have agreed to making Torah into a shovel to dig with, a money making machine. To receive money thankfully that is offered is one thing. To demand it is another.

Authentic Torah is what one gets in the path of the Gra

Authentic Torah is what one gets in the path of the Gra [Eliyahu Gaon of Villna]. This path became the basis of the Litvak Yeshiva world. But there are  areas where the Gra is ignored even there. The reason is that people tend to put feelings above thinking. So when they ignore reason because of feelings  this leads to losing real Torah. This is how the religious world today is mainly going with the Torah of the Sitra Achra. [Dark Side].
What I recommend is to stick with the path of the Gra as closely as possible. To get back to authentic Torah.
Now in the path of the Gra there are two aspects. One is fast learning and the other is in depth. This is thankfully in fact a regular part of every Litvak yeshiva. The morning hours for in-depth learning and the afternoon for fast learning. Fast learning means to get through the basic set of the Oral Torah at least once. That is the two Talmuds, and the halachic and agadic midrashim. [Sifrai, sifra, mechilta are the halachic midrashim. Midrash Raba, and Midrash Tanchuma are the midrash agada.]

The Gra also emphasized the [seven wisdoms] as the criteria for understanding Torah, That is the natural sciences. Not the pseudo sciences taught in American universities. Psychology is an example of pseudo science. Social studies are are not even that. The humanities and social studies are both pure garbage. And produce pure garbage]

Lemaitre discovered the big bang before that in 1927 but in his article in Nature wrote that time and space could only begin to exist after their were already enough quanta around to justify their existence.

Space is an odd kind of thing as Kant noticed. And Lemaitre also in 1931. Lemaitre discovered the big bang before that in 1927 but in his article in Nature wrote that time and space could only begin to exist after their were already enough quanta around to justify their existence.

You can see this in the EPR experiment that shows that time and space do not exist for particles until they are measured. [Some people think it shows non locality. But that is wrong. It might show that or that time and space do not exist before measured. But we know locality is right because of GPS satellites which are a dramatic proof of relativity.]

You can also see this in protons. Protons must know that they travel in space since they originate at some point and when they collide with something they cease. So they know they are going somewhere. But they also know they travel at the speed of light so time for them does not pass. So from their point of view they get from here to there instantly. But they also know they can not travel instantly anywhere. Even at the speed of light they still do not get anywhere instantly. Therefore from the point of view of  a proton, space does not exist. There is some sub-layer underneath space that space is superimposed on.

[ In String theory you have extra dimensions. But these dimensions are all directions of space and time. They are all coming out of a deeper level  that comes before space and time.

Rav Maasud Abuchazeira and his son Rav David.

You can see the fact that honor of one's parents is more severe than is commonly known from the rebellious son.
It is a lot easier to incur the death penalty for disobeying one's parents than people are aware of. It does not need a lot of conditions. That is you need the rebellious son to take something of his father's without permission. [That is stealing]. And then you need him to buy wine and meat. [To go shopping with the money]. Then the parents bring him to a small court of three judges and they give the son lashes. If the son does it again, they take him to the larger city court of 23 judges and they give the death penalty to the son. [Every city had a court of 23].

You can see the severity of this also in the events in the life of Rav Maasud Abuchazeira and his son David. Rav David was in fact a very great tzadik. But one day his father said something that sounded like a complaint to Rav David. Rav David asked, "Why does my father complain?" Rav Maasud, Looked at him and said "I had a great diamond, and now I have lost it." [Meaning that David had lost his great spiritual level]. Then David realized what he had done and went into exile. Then after some time he returned home and when he got to the edge of the city he began cawing on his knees until he got to his father and begged forgiveness.

However parents that are wicked are an exception. Even in the strict legal sense. Rav Shach has a section about this issue in his Avi Ezri. 

This is the Age of Disappointment. People get involved in some political or spiritual group with the best of intentions. Then discover the group is based of fraud or some kind of scam.
The good people will leave the group and spend the rest of their lives wondering what went wrong.
   Some might spend their time fighting the group after realizing it was based on lies. Other might just try to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and get on with things.

  This is different than previous generations when there were plenty of all kinds of groups with all types of strange ideas,-but (and this is a big "but") they did not lie about their basic beliefs in order to entice people.

It seems more noble to warn others and to remove the evil. But not everyone is up to that.

[I am thinking about the warning of the Gra. That is the signature on the letter of excommunication. The fact is that was ignored. But now that it is clear that he was 100% right, people ought to themselves repent, and heed his warning and even warn others.]

I am wondering during the Black Plague  in the Middle Ages, did people need to get tested to see if they had it? How can something be a deadly virus, if one needs to be tested to even see if he has it?

the values that the USA was founded on --the Bible and the Enlightenment can and will survive.

So when people go insane what does that mean? I think that it is two things. One is Hegel's dialectics. where God [Absolute Spirit] is working in the world by a kind of thesis anti thesis synthesis process. And combine that with Heidegger that Being is coming into the clearing.

"racism" and categories of sins

I have never been very impressed with the "racism" charge. I have not seen anywhere in the Bible that that is considered a sin.
If it means feeling superior to others because you belong to some racial group or some other group , well why not? Let's say one is an American, and feels superior to others because of the great things America has accomplished. And then someone insults him, "You are an American" or, "You are a patriot," as a slur. Well so what?
Besides that there is no such sin. There are lots of categories of sins. The Gates of Repentance goes into them in detail. [By R Yona of Gerondi]. But racism is not there. Besides that, people ought to welcome it. It is a compliment to feel that your group has accomplished great things.
So if you are a Wasp, White Anglo Saxon Protestant, then feel racist, and proud of your race. When other races have invented anything even a trillion light years away from this then they will also have reason to feel proud of their race. 

People do not usually put the Gra and Rav Shach in the same category as Rav Nahman of Breslov. But to me that seems like a mistaken approach. True the Gra did sign the letter of excommunication the herem which certainly has halachic validity and ought to be heeded to at all cost. Still Rav Nahman certainly was not in the category of the herem.

The Gra and Rav Nahman have different areas of emphasis. Rav Nahman with prayer, and the Gra with Torah. Happy is one that can combine both.

I have thought about an idea of Rav Nahman [of Uman and Breslov] that there is always some piece of advice for any problem. He never says this in so many words but it is implicit in all of his writings.
Not just the Sefer HaMidot where in fact you have about a thousand individual bits of advice for a whole assortment of problems. But you can see in events reported about him that he was always looking for some kind of advice that would help people in some way or another.
It usually has mostly to do with some positive commandment. So in terms of "sweetening of judgements" [that is for cases where a person feels everything is going wrong with his life]]

But most of these pieces of advice I think have to be done over a period of forty days in a row or more.
Still the idea seems powerful to me and it has stuck with me for a few years.

Now I think there is one major piece of advice I believe has saved me from countless problems and enemies. To speak the truth always at all cost.
But there are other bits of advice I have not seen so much in Rav Nahman but more in the Gra that struck me at also being extremely powerful. Learning Torah along with trust in God.
This I saw in practice while at the Mir in NY. people would learn Torah and put their trust in God to help with making a living and somehow that always worked out. No one ever starved. They all got married and had good children --all the while doing nothing but learning Torah and as for making a living the attitude was "God will help"
I feel this is true and great. But I would like to say that I think Physics and Mathematics are part of learning Torah in terms of this advice. That is also to learn Physics and no worry if you will understand or not or if will help in terms of making a living. Just for its own sake,

I would like to also mention  coming to Israel can be a great help based on a few statements of Rav Nahman about Israel being the place of miracles. And start a Beit Midrash HaGra and Rav Shach. --so that people learn authentic legitimate Torah.[There is no patent on teh name of the Gra and Rav Shach.\]

In the Torah, there is a general rule that when one is extra strict about any commandment, that brings him to afterward nullify the commandment completely. [

In the Torah, there is a general rule that when one is extra strict about any commandment, that brings him to afterward nullify the commandment completely. [This is from the sages and brought in many books of Musar.]
In Torah the rule is "Do not add nor subtract from the commandments." [Deuteronomy 6] This is one of the reasons why the religious world is kind of "off." By adding restrictions, they end up transgressing everything in such a way that all the religiosity is paper thin. From the clothing and outwards. Not the inside.

battle and war for the soul of the USA

What is going on in the USA is that there is already a change of regime. You might be confused when the Left demands there be no police. That sounds like no law and order. But that is not it at all. The Left does have a police, that is the mobs destroying white people and business. The mob is their police. But not just the mob. Already they own the judges and courts and even the Supreme Court. So in essence the battle and war for the soul of the USA is lost. If a white person defends his or her life, they are guilty of assault. Anything any white person  says is easily dismissed instantly with four words "You are a racist."

In terms of a plan of action, my recommendation is to learn Torah [especially the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach] and to trust in God.

I think things would never have gotten this far if people had learned Torah. Marxism could never have even gotten started if people had been aware of the commandments "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet." [And if you learn even one page of Bava Metzia it is impossible to miss this.]

People would never have made an issue of slavery in the first place.
And there never would have been adopted all the principles of the Left that go directly against the laws of Moses.

[ The fact that a lot of Americans are Christians is not the issue. Just because people are Christian does not make the commandments null. No Christians held that way until recently.
Rather there was a distinction made between ritual law and natural law that was stated by Saadia Gaon and Aquinas. From the Pilgrims down until around 1920 the USA was going with biblical principles. \

[I might add here that Russia already knows about the insanity of Marxism. It would be nice if there would be some kind of alliance between Russia and the USA. ]

 I just wanted to jot down my basic interpretation of Hegel, Heidegger, and Leonard Nelson.

It is not very academic but it is way I see them. It is all contained in one word: Plotinus. That is his neo Platonic system. (1) The One, (2) Logos, Reason, (3) Being.

So to me when ever I look at Hegel I see a modification of Plotinus. That is a modification that had to happen after Kant's three critiques. Hegel gets from Being up back to the One. And he does this by means of the Dialectic.

Heidegger is a bit different. He gets from Being to Logos. That is most clear in his debate with Ernst Cassirer. He sees Kant as dealing with the question of life, not knowledge as one aspect of life. [AS you can see also in his Being and Time.] He like Schopenhauer put the main emphasis on the first Critique before the revised edition. His answer  is that Being uses time to manifest itself, to come into the meadow. And the Transcendental Deduction of Kant is to get from Logos to Life [Logos to Being]. That is how Heidegger understands the synthetic a priori. [See that debate with Cassirer.]

Then Leonard Nelson [based on Fries but going beyond him], shows that not only is there non intuitive immediate knowledge [faith], but that has to come before reason and before empirical knowledge.

So maybe it is just me, but I see Western Philosophy after Kant to be foot notes to Plotinus.

Apparently it takes a certain amount of spiritual awareness to be able to tell who is  a true Torah scholar from the realm of holiness and who is a Torah scholar demon as Rav Nahman of Breslov points out. In those two sections LeM I:12 and I:28 he in fact does not give any hints about how to tell the difference. But I recall that in LeM II:1 he in fact does point out traits that one can hold onto that give one the ability to discern.

I might hold that the Lithuanian yeshiva world would be clear from this kind of problem, but the problem is that by ignoring the cherem signed by the Gra the Sitra Achra got into the Litvak world also.  So what one can do? Well clearly the best idea is to learn Torah at home. Go through the two Talmuds and the Midrashim. Another suggestion would be to start a Beit Midrash on the name of the Gra.  [With of course, Rav Nahman's books would be allowed. That would be different from for example the Yeshiva of Rav Silverman in the old city of Jerusalem.]

But the main point I want to bring out is that trusting any religious authorities at all is tied by too much danger. As far as I can tell the majority might be Torah scholars that are demons. Who knows? And once there is a majority then how can you trust any? Frankly the whole religious world seems a bit creepy. So it is better to simply learn Torah and Musar of Rav Israel Salanter at home and teach your own kids at home.

[In any case there is an obligation to get through the oral law which means the two Talmuds, the halachic midrashim and the agadic midrashim. So the best way to do that without distractions is at home.

There is a difference between keeping Torah in truth and the false appearance of Torah of the religious world. Not that this always was the case. But that was the point of the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.  That is to make this difference clear.

The result of his signature being universally  ignored created the situation that the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] got inside and took over the religious world.

[However I think that Rav Nahman was not included in the excommunication since one day I was walking around the old city of Jerusalem and happened into a small library that had the very famous book that printed all the different letters of excommunication plus and the word for word testimonies that were collected in Vilna. So I saw the actual wording if the letter that the Gra signed. Rav Nahman  would not have come under that heading. See for yourself if you are interested.]

At any rate, the actual result is that in order to keep Torah one has to run away from the religious as far as possible,

Lemaitre already back in 1932 said that time and space come into existence only after there were plenty of quanta.
This goes well with Bell's inequality which nature violates. [the Aspect experiment of 1982].

So not that nature is non local. Rather particles do not have classical values in space and time before measured. [That is before they interact with the macroscopic world. It is not as if they need to be seen by a physicist in  order for their wave function to collapse.] [As Kant already indicated that space and time is how we measure things. But with Kant they also exist, but we do not really know what they are. i.e. with Kant the dinge an sich exist, but we do not have access to what they really are.] 

Dr Kelley Ross shows that QM corresponds to Kant's approach. This is a relief from other "philosophers" that imagine they can refute QM before understanding it.

See the Green talk with De'hooft. 

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x3 A Major

Can an IOU serve as money?

Can an IOU serve as money?
Let's say two people own a slave, and one lets him go. So now he is 1/2 slave and 1/2 free. According to Beit Hillel [Tractate Bava Batra page 13] he works for himself one day, and for his master on every other day.
Beit Shamai said but then he can not get married. That is, a gentile slave can not marry a Israelite woman. And a freed slave can. So as a slave he could have his slave wife and not an Israelite. As a freed slave he can only marry a Israelite. So he would be stuck. So Beit Shamai says the owner must let him go and the slave writes  a document (an IOU) for the money that is owed.

But we know a slave only goes freed in one of three ways; (1) A document letting him go, (2) money or (3) injury [24 types].

So here there is no document letting the slave go. Just an IOU. So that must be considered  as worth money  שווה כסף

[I am being short here as this comes up in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri in the beginning of Laws of Selling. In other contexts clearly an IOU is not money. In Tractate Kidushin [see pages 5 and 8 and 47], the Rashba and Ramban that marrying a women by an IOU does not work.]




[Just as a side issue, it does look to me that Abraham Lincoln, really could not free the slaves by means of a proclamation. Certainty he did not expect that the slaves would then turn around and become the masters of the whites. -forcing whites to work for them by the welfare state. And now becoming the ipso facto masters of white people. It is unlikely that Lincoln would have agreed to this.] [The 14 Amendment signed by the southern states under force can not be thought to be valid.]  

The world is being taken over by Lucifer.

The world is being taken over by Lucifer. The question is what to do about it. Learn Torah was the basic advice of the Gra except that I would like to expand his definition of learning Torah to include Physics. {This is based on a few authorities but not all. Clearly Ibn Pakuda חובות הלבבות is on one side. Ramban (Nahmanides), Rashba on the other. Still I have good reason to think Ibn Pakuda was right.]

It might make sense for the USA Catholics and Evangelicals and Russia to join up to fight the forces that are trying to destroy Western Civilization.
I say this because when I was reading Thucydides I began to get an appreciation for the idea of of alliances. --even among people that are not exactly on the same page in everything.

[Russia is a part of Western Civilization since Peter the Great. So the USA and Russia ought to be natural allies.]

Most people in the USA are not Americans. While they might be American citizens but by the very fact that they hate America and are doing everything they can to destroy it means that they are in fact not Americans.
To be an American means to have a minimal degree of loyalty. The teachers unions, the welfare moms, the fem-nazis, the socialists are not Americans in any authentic sense.
Therefore real Americans ought to be aware that they are at war with an enemy that is already in the gates. 

Each true tzadik has some important lesson to tell us all

the problem with identity politics in terms of religion is that one can not believe  what is true based on the religious group one wants to belong to. A good example is Jesus. To believe anything good about Jesus in the slightest way takes one out of  some religious groups. I never thought much of identity politics. I thought it is more important to believe what is true and let the cards fall where they may. Jesus merited to certain aspects of holiness. People that believe in him  receive something of that holiness into their souls.

For every real authentic tzadik merits to some aspect of holiness, but not all aspects.

Rav Nahman merited to reveal the tikun Haklali the ten psalms that one says in order to correct sexual sin. 16, 32,41,42,59, 77,90,105, 137, 150.
That also does not mean that he got everything. He did also merit to show the importance of learning fast by saying the words and going on.
But clearly that is not all there is to it. The Litvak yeshiva that emphasize learning in depth by depth iyun clearly get to a depth and understanding of Torah that people that just learn fast do not even imagine can exist.

Each true tzadik has some important lesson to tell us all. But just as it is important to find the true tzadikim it is much more important to run away from the false pretenders.And to recognize who they are. That is why I keep on emphasizing the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.  To believe in that, can save one from much evil.
Rav Nahman also makes a point of the importance of identifying whom is really an authentic tzaik and to avoid the Torah scholars that are demons.

So in terms of coming to true Torah, clearly the only way is through the path of the great Litvak yeshiva that go according to the Gra. However one must be careful not to disagree with Rav Nahman.


[This idea actually comes up in the 13 stories of Rav Nahman about the king and his servants that all got dispersed by a whirlwind. The tikun come when they all come together.]

spiritual issues

Almost all discussion of spiritual issues is bitul Torah [waste of time from learning Torah]. As Aristotle said it is the mark of a wise person not to ask for more precision in any subject than teh subject merits. It is like asking if a person is a 89.0012% tzadik or perhaps 90.000% tzadik.
Almost all discussions are along the same lines. speculation about what no one knows anything about. and besides that adds nothing to help one be  a better person.
[The trouble with spiritual issues is that they are in an area that is beyond reason. That is an area of value that leads to internal contradictions.]

[You can see this idea in Rav Nahman in the very end of the LeM in the left out portions. There he brings the idea that at the beginning of creation the midot [sepherot] were spreading out without limit.
That includes Wisdom [Reason]. Then God  set a limit for reason --where it could not go past. So when people think to use their reason to understand spiritual issues they are going into an area where reason can not enter and just ends up with self contradictions.]

[This is an essential part of the thesis of Kant also.]

Bitul Torah. [That is the idea that when one can learn Torah he must do so.]
Bitul Torah is a very different idea than the California idea of the supreme importance of having fun.

So is learning Math and Physics Bitul Torah? Well obviously not if it is for the purpose of making a living. But the question is if they are included in "learning Torah". [But I am not very happy with this approach since not everything one can do to make  a living is OK. It has to worthwhile in itself.]
The accepted answer among many rishonim would be that they are not. Nahmanides [Ramban] and his whole school of thought would have said no. This shows up in later books of Musar also.
However there were some rishonim that said yes. Rambam, Benjamin the Doctor author of Maalot HaMidot}, and Ibn Pakuda.

I have thought about then the question that comes up often abut the fact that Math and Physics are hard. On one hand you have "derech Girsa" saying the words in order from the beginning to the end and then review. That is however only one part of learning. Learning I think always has two parts, bekiut and Iyun. [(1) fast, (2) in depth].

So what would the in depth part be? Clearly review, but what method of review would work? I recall at the Mir I used to try to take every section of what ever I was learning like the Pnei Yehoshua and go over it ten times or more. That seems about the best way to do in depth learning.


The ten times review and go on I heard first in Shar Yashuv of Rav Shelomo Freifeld. Later at the Mir in NY I heard about this concept from others. But I think in stead of going on it makes sense to go back page by page. Then times a page then the previous page and then the previous.

Now it is the Reds (the Marxists) that have already taken over the Congress and the Education and the courts. There is literally no one left to stand for freedom except Americans themselves.

Bunker Hill I think is an important moment in American History because that is when Americans decided they were not going to be slaves to the King nor to Parliament.
That is to say that Parliament was treating the Americans as people they could simply tax. The king, King George refused to intervene.
So they declared independence. Or treason if you look at it in that way. But however you look at it they were not going to be slaves.
Thus, the same issue has come up again. The Congress, the Senate, the courts are all treating Americans as their personal lap dogs. Americans have to go along with every possible insanity. You know the list. And woe to anyone who stands up for what is right and true.
So the issue again has arisen. Stand up to the powers that be, or be free? Which will it be? 

But things are not as simple as they were then. The issue is to identify the enemies. It is not longer the English Parliament. Nor the Red Coats. The soldiers of England. Now it is the Reds (the Marxists)  that have already taken over the Congress and the Education and the courts. There is literally no one left to stand for freedom except  Americans themselves.

[slowly wearing down the USA by a constant small wounds. Never a open fight

The Fabian approach of the communists [slowly wearing down the USA by a constant small wounds. Never a open fight], was revealed in private meeting of Communists in Berkeley in around 1993. [I forget the exact year.] So adoption of standards to wear down and break American resistance to Communism took place by infiltration into all sections of industry, university and government. The plan was to constantly knock down Christian-American traditional values.
I can see that process is finally completed. That is why the next stage of takeover is to take to the streets and start the violent communist revolution. That is stage 2.

[Being aware of this does not really help anything, since values are inside of people. If Americans no longer retain the core Christian values that the USA was founded on, then there is not much one can do.] If they go to church, then all they hear anyway is leftist agenda. Accepting of all the communist points, and rejection of everything of the Bible.

[Not that I agree with everything Christians say. Some things seem right, and other things seem wrong. For example the concept that: "Jesus is the same as God" seems obviously wrong. But also the idea of his being simply a prophet seems wrong also. Prophecy stems from (Victory) Netzah and Hod (Splendor) [two sepherot of Emanation], but that does not mean the soul of a prophet comes from Emanation. However, there are souls of Emanation like the Patriarchs, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, David. The Ari said also the soul of Rav Haim Vital. And a soul of Azilut (Emanation) is "divine". Since between God and Azilut (Emanation) there is no curtain. And based on Rav Avraham Abulafia, my opinion of Jesus he was from Azilut. [Light of Kindness (Hesed) contained in the in the vessel of Foundation (Yesod)].

Another area where I disagree with Christians is events like the disciples in the field picking corn. If the grain no longer needed the soil and was already ripe, then that is not a "work". So it is hard to understand what the complaint might have been. But it would not have been that the disciples were desecrating the Sabbath. What probably happened is you had a bunch of the usual sort of insane religious fanatics (of which there are plenty of examples nowadays) looking for something to complain about, while at the same time not really having any idea of the actual law. Nosey neighbors.

[There are other examples. mixing mud with water is subject to an argument in the Rosh. Some rishonim hold mixing water with dirt is desecration of the Shabat; others hold it is permissible. See the Rosh. Washing the hands is another example. The Sages say מים ראשונים מצוה מים אמצעים רשות מים אחרונים חובה the washing before the meal is a good thing. In the middle of a meal, it is permissible. After the meal it is an obligation.

Fourth of July

To celebrate the Fourth of July I think people ought to start a learning session in the Federalist Papers and get through them --word for word. I do not mean to get through them all on the 4th, but rather to start a daily session of one or more pages. This explains a lot of what the Constitution of the USA is about. And the wisdom there does not just apply to the USA but to all people that want to be free. Not free as in anarchy but free as in a peaceful law abiding country which maximizes freedom.

In defense of Hegel I want to say that I think he was looking for a synthesis between freedom and law after he saw the horrors that the French Revolution produced.

So it not that he was simply a "statist". And even if he was so what. His point was to show how truth logos gets revealed through a process of dialectics.  And that that process shows that any concept has some elements of self contradiction until it come to a higher level. And that by that process of getting to teh higher level one can go higher and higher until one reaches Absolute Spirit. It is a thoroughly Neo Platonic approach.

My grandparents--themselves immigrants to the USA did not even bother to sell their property in Newark, NJ. They saw where the wind blows and donated all their property to the city and hightailed it out of there.
In fact, these were the same grandparents that left Poland when it was still part of the Russian Empire and the tzars. [They had left even before WWI]

Sometimes it just is not worth the effort to fight.
So what I am thinking is that people ought to come to Israel.
The USA is just heating up too fast and things are getting close to the boiling point.
I mean if there are no police then things can get ugly fast.

The only thing I can imagine that might help at this point would be to outlaw protests in the interest of public peace and order. And if people do not want to go home peaceably, then to deal with that with extreme prejudice. And as for the police, to give them double their present salary. To back them to the hilt. Give them medals and public acclaim.

x2 mp3 x2 midi x2 nwc

To me it seems sad that there are some differences between Hegel and the Kant-Friesian school of Leonard Nelson. I can see how each complements the other. But the differences that started between Hegel and Fries have just kept on going. It is not that I see peace in itself as a goal. Rav Nahman said there are two kinds of debate one is between tzadikim and other is when a tzadik is making effort to be rid of the Sitra Achra and the wicked.
He brings this in LeM  I:5 and that and also at the end of LeM vol I about King David. [There the issue was the Saul was persecuting David, even though Saul was in fact a greater tzadik than David. See the Gemara that Saul was asking God "You said You would give my kingdom to my friend who is better than me. Now you say you are giving it to David. God answer when you were in the Physical world, (a world of lies), I told you a lie. Now I am telling you I am giving the kingdom to David." So we see in the Gemara itself that Saul was greater. And this is clear in the later prophets where there is counted 7 shepherds and 8 princes that would protect Israel if they were around. And there Saul is counted not King David. 

[The idea of "arguments between tzadikim (the righteous)" is one very useful bit of information in Rav Nahman. It sort of hints to the idea of Kant of the "dinge an sich" areas where Reason can not enter.]]

רב שך במשנה תורה ערכין פרק ד הלכה ט''ו -י''ח

רב שך  במשנה תורה ערכין פרק ד הלכה ט''ו -י''ח and in chapter 24 law 9  of selling brings an argument between the רשב''ם, תוספות, and רמב''ם. The issue is that the רמב''ם seems to decide  the law in ways that at least the גמרא in ערכין would hold to be contradictory. רב הונא בערכין דף י''ד ע''א says one who מקדיש a field full of trees redeemed the trees according to their value and the field according the חמישים שקלים for a field of standard size. Background: One who sanctifies a field for the הקדש can redeem it himself if he gives to the הקדש 50 shekels. If other kinds of objects, then he redeems them according to their value but adds a 1/4. [what is called 1/5 but means 1/5 from the outside.

The גמרא asks does that not disagree with the ברייתא that one who sanctifies trees redeems them and the field goes along with it. And the גמרא מתרצת that רב הונא was saying like ר' עקיבא that one who sanctifies, sanctifies with a good eye. The הקדש would get more. That ברייתא is like ר' שמעון that one sanctifies with an unkind eye. So that the הקדש would get less if redeemed.

The גמרא here clearly holds these two teachings disagree with each other.

So how is it the רמב''ם decides the law like both?

And in fact the ראב''ד says the law is not like רב הונא but rather like רב פפא on ערכין י''ד ע''ב.

There רב פפא says one who sanctifies trees redeems the trees according to their value.

The גמרא asks Let the קרקע go with them to be sanctified and to go out with them to be  redeemed? Answer: this is where he said openly the קרקע does not go with them. So we see that if it would they would be sanctified together. רב שך answers that  גמראה on ערכין י''ד ע''ב clearly holds רב הונא and רב פפא disagree. But not that they in fact disagree. It could be that the sanctifying a field with trees makes everything go together. But sanctifying the trees alone, even if the field goes along with them, still it is not two separate acts of sanctifying. So redeeming would also be in just one act.

The question is, then where did the רמב''ם see this? There does not seem to be any גמרא anywhere that indicates that רב פפא and רב הונא agree with each other.

The answer is that רב שך has a different גמרא. It is the one where there is a difference between R Akiva and the sages about the case one sells three trees. The גמרא there agrees that to both the קרקע under between and around  them the width of 4 אמות is sold along with the trees.But if he says he is keeping the קרקע to the חכמים that is valid and to ר' עקיבא still the קרקע under them belongs to the new owner of the trees. The reason is all who sell sell with a good eye. So in our case, the גמרא can hold like ר' עקיבא and that even when he says he is sanctifying the trees without  קרקע still the קרקע under them comes along with them. But there is only one act of sanctification, so they are redeemed together. That is the גמרא that sees a difference between רב פפא and רב הונא hold like the חכמים and ר' שמעון that one who sanctifies does so with a grudge, evil eye. But if a גמרא would hold like ר' עקיבא then the גמרא would say sanctifying three with no mention of ground the ground comes along both in and out of הקדש. But the law of רב הונא is where he mentioned both field and trees so both are redeemed separately

רב שך במשנה תורה ערכין פרק ד הלכה ט'ו -י''ח

רב שך במשנה תורה ערכין פרק ד הלכה ט'ו-י''ח ובפרק 24 הלכה 9 הלכות מכירה מביא ויכוח בין הרשב’'ם, התוספות והרמב'’ם. העניין הוא כי הרמב'’ם מחליט את החוק בדרכים שלפחות הגמרא בערכין היה סותר. רב הונא בערכין דף י''ד ע''א אומר מי שקידש שדה מלא עצים פודה את העצים לפי ערכם והשדה לפי חמישים שקלים לשדה בגודל סטנדרטי. רקע: מי שמקדש שדה עבור הקדש יכול לפדות אותו בעצמו אם ייתן לקדש 50 שקל. אם סוגים אחרים של חפצים, אז הוא פודה אותם לפי ערכם אך מוסיף 1/4. [מה שנקרא 1/5 אבל פירושו 1/5 מבחוץ

הגמרא שואלת האם זה לא מסכים עם הברייתא שמי שמקדש עצים גואל אותם והשדה הולך איתם. והגמרא מתרצת שרב הונא אמר כמו ר' עקיבא שמי שמקדש, מקדש בעין טובה. הקדש היה מקבל יותר. שברייתא זה כמו ר' שמעון שאחד מקדש בעין לא נאה. כך שהקדש היה מקבל פחות אם ייפדה.

הגרמרה כאן מחזיקה בבירור את שתי הדעות הללו חולקות זו את זו.

אז איך זה שהרמב'’ם מחליט את החוק כמו שניהם?ולמעשה הראב''ד אומר שהחוק אינו כמו רב הונא אלא כמו רב פפא על ערכין י''ד ע''ב.

שם אומר רב פפא מי שמקדש עצים גואל את העצים לפי ערכם. הגמרא שואלת שהקרקע תלך איתם להתקדש ולצאת איתם להיגאל? תשובה: זה שהמקדש אמר בגלוי שהקרקע לא הולכת איתם. אז אנו רואים שאם זה היו מקדשים יחד. רב שך עונה שגמרא על ערכין י''ד ע''ב מחזיק בבירור את רב הונא ורב פפא חולקים על כך. אך לא שהם למעשה לא מסכימים. יכול להיות שקידוש שדה עם עצים גורם להכל להתקדם. אך קידוש העצים בלבד, אפילו אם השדה עובר איתם, עדיין אין מדובר בשתי פעולות קידוש נפרדות. אז הגאולה תהיה גם במעשה אחד בלבד.

השאלה היא אם כן איפה הרמב'ם ראה את זה? לא נראה שיש שום גמרא בשום מקום שמצביע על כך שרב פפא ורב הונא מסכימים זה עם זה.

התשובה היא שלרב שך יש גמרא אחרת. זה שיש בו הבדל בין ר עקיבא לחכמים לגבי המקרה שמוכרים שלושה עצים. הגמרא שם מסכים כי לקונה הקרקע מתחתם ולסביבתם ורווח של 4 אמות נמכר יחד עם העצים. אבל אם המוכר אומר שהוא שומר את הקרקע לעצמו לחכמים זה תקף. אבל לר 'עקיבא עדיין הקרקע מתחת וביניהם שייכים לבעלים החדשים של העצים. הסיבה היא שכל מי שמוכר מוכר בעין טובה. כך שבמקרה שלנו, הגמרא יכולה להחזיק כמו ר' עקיבא, וכי אפילו כשהוא אומר שהוא מקדש את העצים בלי קרקה, עדיין הקרקע שתחתם באה איתם. אבל יש רק מעשה אחד של קידוש, ולכן הם נגאלים יחד. זה הגמרא הרואה הבדל בין רב פפא לרב הונא מחזיקה כמו חכמים ור' שמעון שמי שמקדש עושה זאת בעין רעה. אבל אם גמרא היה מחזיק כמו ר' עקיבא, הגמרא הייתה אומרת שקידוש שלושההעצים  ללא אזכור של האדמה האדמה באה ביחד הקדש. אבל החוק של רב הונא הוא שם הוא הזכיר גם שדה וגם עצים ולכן שניהם מתקדשים בנפרד

Three trees. Rav Shach in Mishna Torah in Arachin 4: 15-18 (and in chapter 24 law 9 of selling)

Rav Shach in  Mishna Torah in Arachin 4: 15-18 (and in chapter 24 law 9  of selling) brings an argument between the Rashbam, Tosphot, and Rambam. Rav Shach as is the custom starting from Rav Haim of Brisk is spending most of his efforts to understand the Rambam.

The issue is that the Rambam seems to decide  the law in ways that at least the Gemara in Arachin would hold to be contradictory. 

Rav Huna Arachin page 14a says one who sanctifies a field full of trees redeemed the trees according to their value and the field according the 50 shekels for a field of standard size. [Background: One who sanctifies a field for the Temple can redeem it himself if he gives to the Temple 50 shekels. If other kinds of objects then he redeems them according to their value but adds a 1/4 [what is called 1/5 but means 1/5 from the outside.]  ]

The Gemara asks does that not disagree with the teaching that one who sanctifies trees redeems them and the field goes along with it. and the Gemara answer that Rav Huna was saying like R Akiva that one who sanctifies sanctifies with a good eye. [The Temple would get more]. That teaching is like R Shimon that one sanctifies with an unkind eye. So that the Temple would get less if redeemed.

The Gemara here clearly holds these two teachings disagree with each other.

So how is it the Rambam decides the law like both?

And in fact the Raavad says the law is not like Rav Huna but rather like Rav Papa on Arachin 14b.

There Rav Papa says one who sanctifies trees redeems the trees according to their value.

The Gemara asks Let the ground go with them to be sanctified and to go out with them to be  redeemed? Answer this is where he said openly the ground does not go with them. So we see that if it would they would be sanctified together.

Rav Shach answers that The gemara on Arachin 14b clearly holds Rav Huna and Rav Papa disagree. But not that the in fact disagree. It could be that the sanctifying a field with trees makes everything go together. But sanctifying the trees alone-even if the field goes along with them, still it is not two separate acts of sanctifying. So redeeming would also be in just one act.

The Question is then where did the Rambam see this? There does not seem to be any Gemara anywhere that indicates that Rav Papa and Rav Huna agree with each other.

The answer is that Rav Shach has a different Gemara. It is the one where there is a difference between R Akiva and the sages about the case one sells three trees. The Gemara there agrees that to both the ground under between and around  them the width of 4 yards is sold along with the trees.But if he says he is keeping the ground to the sages that is valid and to R akiva still the ground under them belongs to the new owner of the trees. The reason is all who sell sell with a good eye.


So in our case the Gemara can hold like R Akiva and that even when he says he is sanctifying the trees without teh land still the land under them comes along with them. But there is only one act of sanctification so the y are redeemed together. That is the Gemara that sees a difference between Rav papa and Rav huna hold like the sages and R Shimon that one who sanctifies does so with a grudge. evil eye. But if a Gemara would hold like R Akiva as is in fact teh law then the Gemara would say sanctifying three with no mention of ground the ground comes along both in and out of hekdesh. But the law of Rav Huna is where he mentioned both field and trees so both are redeemed separately 

Mark McCloskey protects his life and the lives of his family. So self defense is not longer a legal defense in the USA? Answer: No it is not. But even so, it does not matter. You defend your life anyway--at all cost.

 So a home owner protects his life and the lives of his family from a violent mob and the District attorney wants to indite him? So self defense is not longer a legal defense in the USA?

The homeowner who defended his St. Louis property from violent Black Lives Matter activists earlier this week slammed CNN’s Chris Cuomo for making assumptions about his case.

“A guy stands in front of me, pulls out two loaded pistol magazines, snaps them in front of my face and says, ‘You’re next.’ If you were there, Chris, I think you’d feel like you had a right to defend yourself, as well,” Mark McCloskey, joined by his legal counsel, explained on Tuesday.

The lesson to be learned is never go on the fake media. 

חכם עדיף מנביא a wise man is better than a prophet. And Rav Nahman brings in the Sefer HaMidot that a prophet only knows what is revealed to him. So there is no question why certain people with great spiritual insight might have been completely  unaware of what should have been obvious.
There is no reason to think that Isaiah the prophet would have known Quantum Physics. The reason is spiritual values are not the same as universals which are recognizable by reason. And if he would have known QM it would only have been through reason, not prophecy--for prophecy deals with a different area of value 

The area of value that the Middle Ages were good at was content with less form. Later in what was called the Ages of Reason, there was a forte of Reason that recognizes form. [Universals].

So it makes sense that the natural sciences would be what would have started from Galileo and Newton. But the deep thinkers of the Middle Ages had their specialty in the area of content.

[I mean to be bringing an idea of Dr Kelley Ross  that Logic is all form not content. If A implies B and B implies C then if A is true the C is true. But the sentences can stand for anything.
Math has more content than logic since it can not be reduced to logic as per Godel. Physics has more content since it already physical, not just universals. Music even more content since than reducible to math. People have been trying to figure of the formulas of Bach for ages with no success. Then Justice and Right even less form. There are no algorithms to figure out what is moral. Then the realm of spirit is more content and less form. Then God is all content and no form. כי לא ראיתם כל תמונה ביום עמדכם בהר סיני

Hitbodadut [private conversation with God]

 Rav Nahman says there are "Torah scholars that are demons" {LeM I:12}. That does not mean all. The problem is to know the difference.
The idea of Rav Nahman about private prayer I think works here. That is something that a disciple of Rav Nahman , Rav Natan, in fact says: Hitbodadut [private conversation with God] is a help for all things that one needs to come to in spiritual affairs.
Hitbodadut, Rav Nahman in fact said that one who wants to accept on himself the yoke of the service of God ought to spend the whole day in Hitbodadut. [Not just an hour as people think.]

  Rav Nahman did this all of his life. He would take a boat and row out into the middle of a river and spend the whole day praying and talking with God.

[The best approach to Hitbodadut I think is like Rav Nahman in fact emphasized that is to take a day off and go into a forest and spend the whole day talking and pleading with God for guidance and salvation.]]

The values of the Left are predictable. They are thus: "What ever the USA stands for, whatever it has done, is always wrong."

Self Esteem (Pride) in the Torah is a major sin. [In books of Musar it is explained that it is the root of all sin.]] Even though by  Hezekiah the king it does say, "his heart was raised up in the ways of God" in the verses there the implication is that since he had done well beforehand, then his heart was raised and he fell.
However to stand up against enemies does not require pride. It requires belief and trust in God.


The legacy of the USA has been trashed for years. The values of the Left are predictable. They are thus: "What ever the USA stands for, whatever it has done, is always wrong."
So to stand up for the USA does not require pride. It requires trust in God and to stand up for truth and justice and the American way in spite of obstacles and enemies.

From what I can tell this is the third WWIII. But being waged in a different way than previous wars.
Gog and Magog are predicted in the Old Testament to come three times. But here i seems to be more internal than the previous world wars. This is more along the line of war after the Sitra Achra has already entered the gates. This applies in the Jewish world where the dark Side has made its nest. and also in the larger world where the enemies of civilization are already inside the gates. So what seems to be the thing to do is to learn more Torah. That is to try to at least get through the two talmuds even without any commentary at all. [the first time.]