I think there is a deep spiritual reality inside the Torah and Talmud.

This was a question asked of me a few years back and my answer:

 (from the beginning of this May 4.5.12):"First, I am in need of some kind of deprogramming. I attended aish ten years ago for ten months and have never been able to shake the feeling that I am a bad person for not being orthodox. Any suggestions?
Second, do you believe or think that the Torah was actually given to Moses on Mt. Sinai? Everything I read in the academic world (James Kugel and some of his footnotes, David Carr at Union Theological, several others here and there) tells me that Orthodox Jews are mistaken in this belief. Also, the Greeks began the idea of authorship and it it is even likely that until Hellenic times no one said that Moses wrote the Torah. But once they gave authorship out, the Jews gave the Torah to Moses.
Third, are all of us ex-aishers suffering cult like symptoms of guilt and fear? Are all Jews suffering this as well? What is the future of Orthodoxy? I think it will always “pretend” because the community matters so very much. But what do you think?"


Torah from heaven is not the same as Torah from Sinai.
The Written and Oral Torah are inspired from Heaven. That has nothing to do with the physical location of where there were written. From what we know from the Rambam many parts of the Torah are allegories and were never meant to be taken literally. That includes Genesis.
Genesis was meant to tell us Creation ex nihilo. (That already cancels Orthodoxy. The irony is they like to claim others are falsify Torah.)





First Torah from Sinai is often confused with the issue of "Is the Talmud from Sinai?"
Part of the problem in the Orthodox world is that they succeeded in spreading the claim that everyone in Europe accepted that the Talmud was from Mount Sinai. This stacks the deck for Orthodox Judaism.
But it is false. No Jews in Europe thought the Talmud was given at Mount Sinai. The very idea in itself is ludicrous. Jews thought it is a great book that explains with great logical rigor how to keep the Torah. Saying it is a great book is not the same as the claim that it is from Sinai. No Jewish people in America thought the Talmud was from Sinai before the fanatic Orthodox came. The way the got people to believe this is by the fact that faith is a good. When it gets too expensive people don't buy it. The orthodox paid people to believe it by the promise of sex, shiduch, and money.

[My parents and all their friends had never heard of the idea that Talmud was from Sinai and if it had been mentioned they would have laughed.]


However being influenced by Plato and Kant (I believe in the world of Forms), I have to admit that I think there is a deep spiritual reality inside the Torah and Talmud [numinous is the current word for it]. (The dinge als sich selbest- the thing in itself.) Normally I would have just gone with Schopenhauer on this question and called God "the Will" and be done with it [i.e. an irrational force]. But according to later writings of Schopenhauer the the thing in itself is multidimensional. The irrational will is just one dimension. So I am led back to the basic idea of God being good in the long run. i.e the God of Moses, Job and Plato.
First I think holiness belongs to the realm of the thing in itself.
note: Things-in-themselves are the way that reality exists apart from our experience, our consciousness, our minds, and all the conditions that our minds might impose on phenomenal objects.

The Talmud excels.

The Talmud rocks!

The separation of milk and meat is in fact based on verses. This is one area in which the Talmud excels. Even if I think the Talmud is not perfect, but it excels in certain areas; and understanding verses is one of those areas. Though I am not holding in that subject matter right now, in working out in a logically rigorous manner the meaning and the laws of different commandments the Gemara [Talmud] does an excellent job, and in fact the only job.



It has been many years since I looked at that subject but so I don't remember the exact idea but just for an example of the way the Gemara looks at verses from a rigorous perceptive look at Bava Metzia at the end of chapter 11 and the many long Tosphot there.

The greatness of stereotypes

The greatness of stereotypes.
I have made a career of not believing stereotypes and giving different groups the benefit of a doubt. I have always been proved wrong and the stereotypes have always proved true.




Observe:

Kirsten Brydum was traveling across the country with an Amtrak pass and an old bicycle. She was meeting with fellow Marxists around the country and campaigning for Obama. Fresh from protesting the RNC National Convention, she arrived in New Orleans by train. While bicycling around New Orleans’ all black 9th ward ghetto to campaign for Obama, she was shot in the head. Residents would not even call the police to notify them that a dead white girl was laying on the sidewalk. Her body laid in the streets for hours until a construction crew drove by and noticed her.

Even the New Orleans police issued a statement saying “robbery does not appear to be the motivation.” All evidence suggests that she was murdered simply because she was white.

That girl would still be alive today, if only she had believed the “racist” stereotypes about black violence.

I quote Pinker: "The Blank Slate has also served as a sacred scripture for political and ethical beliefs. According to the doctrine, any differences we see among races, ethnic groups, sexes, and individuals come not from differences in their innate constitution but from differences in their experiences. Change their experiences—by reforming parenting, education, the media, and social rewards—and you can change the person. Underachievement, poverty, and antisocial behavior can be ameliorated; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so. [Hence, the social engineering of the Left.] And discrimination on the basis of purportedly inborn traits of a sex or ethnic group is simply irrational.
The doctrine of the Blank Slate became entrenched in intellectual life in a form that has been called the Standard Social Science Model or social constructionism. The model is now second nature to people and few are aware of the history behind it."

There is a curious feature about American politics. A substantial body of political opinion, in the media, academia, and popular culture,and the White House [ simply despises America -- its history, its principles, and its institutions.

A few problems in America that need correcting


[1] The empirical approach of John Locke is not true for these reasons: (1) People have other ways of receiving information than just the five senses. For example I know a piece of paper can't be green and blue at the same time in the same place. I don't know how much this affects the whole John Locke type of Government scheme which eventually became the United States of America. Maybe not much. Clearly Kant was just as liberal as Locke and he was the one who plowed the middle ground between the empiricists like Locke and the Rationalist like Leibniz.
(2) Desire for sex overcomes the desire for self preservation. Desire to protect one's family and children overcomes the desire for self preservation. If self preservation was so absolute no one would cross the street-ever.
(3) People are not born blank slates and can't be social engineered to be what you want them to be. However it is a fundamental tenet of Feminism that people can be socially engineered. This is wrong and they know it because they never admit to this principle in public.


[2] The other problem is that while there are individual black people that are fine outstanding Americans (Allen West is a good examples) the general black population is highly hostile to the U.S.A. except to get as much money they can by welfare, and have contributed highly to its moral and social decay. The problem of a major hostile population in America is something the Constitution was never meant to deal with. It is the same reason you don't want Arabs to be voting for their governments in the Middle East;-- because that will only result in a major Muslim terrorist state that is powerful rich with oil and highly antagonistic towards Western Civilization.

[3] Civil society is like a circle inside a larger circle. It is the area the American government was meant designed to protect. This is the area of private contracts between people that government has no right to interfere with. This is a realm that the government has already entered and controls. But this precious area I hold was intended to be the place for personal observance of the Bible. For civil society needs a holy core to power it. Without that it is empty of meaning.

[4] "Democrat" has come to mean ideas that are wrong. For example while human rights are good, the meaning of rights in the Bill of Rights are negative rights. They refer to things you have that the government can't take away. Rights do not refer to things you can demand from other people, e.g. not to feel insulted. There is no such thing as a right to receive money, goods, or services from anyone else. Social benefits and health care are charities, not rights. The idea of rights has become useless. I claim it is better to go back to the Ten Commandments, and especially the one that goes contrary to all liberal agenda: "Thou shalt not covet anything that is of thy neighbors'."


[5] An example of where this entitlement mentality leads. The family of Thomas Duncan, the person that brought the Ebola Virus to the USA from Africa wants to sue? What is wrong with this family? Duncan lied to get onto his flight to the U.S. and never should have been here to begin with. He exposed hundreds of people to Ebola and infected at least two of the nurses who dedicated themselves to his care and are now fighting for their own lives. Duncan received far better care than he would have in Liberia. It would be appropriate for the Duncan Family to express nothing but gratitude to Texas Health Presbyterian which provided the best care they could for Duncan and did so with compassion and risk to their own lives.

One person wrote: "Since the libertarianism lacks the concept of Common Good ("Lose the 'We'")
This is one thing that bothers me about the John Locke (Libertarian) point of view. But on the other hand the point of view that does into account for the "We" (Rousseau, Hegel, Marx seem to have a problem concerning the "state of nature"). To them the "state of nature is benign." [Which is not true anyway.] And yet the Marx thing is that all higher aspirations can be linked to money. According to him people have a point of view because of what money class they belong to. This seems like contradiction in Marxist thought. I.e. "we" would all be nice if "we" would have the exact same amount of money. But then where is the "we". The we only exists if everyone has exactly the same amount of money. But until then we are raving wolves?

Why I bring this up is that in fact the lack of the "We" does bother me in America. It seems like Allen Bloom said: if you tell everyone that their motives are monetary alone, then eventually you will succeed in creating that type of person.

The "We" that I suggest is based on a common belief in Torah. (The unifying  meme of Western Civilization is the Torah.) That is the Written Torah. And the Oral Torah. The later is any actual laws that were handed down that are considered to be Biblical though they are only hinted at in the actual verses, for example the 39 types of work that are forbidden on the Sabbath day.

Western Civilization has already gone a long way with the unifying belief in the Torah. All I am suggesting here is to continue in this basic approach.

On sugar by yahoo

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brainpower, according to US scientists who published a study Tuesday showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats' memories.
Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) fed two groups of rats a solution containing high-fructose corn syrup -- a common ingredient in processed foods -- as drinking water for six weeks.
One group of rats was supplemented with brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while the other group was not.

According to the Torah, a lesbian relationship is not a sin at all. A male homosexual act gets the death penalty if the act is done on purpose in front of two witnesses. You need a court of 23 judges that have the authentic ordination also. (That ordination does not exist anymore.)

A lesbian relationship is not sin. A male homosexual act is a sin. That means if the act is done in front of two witnesses and a warning is given that the act is a sin and receives the death penalty, then the penalty is given.

Situation two: If there are not two kosher witnesses, and the act was done on purpose there is nothing one can do but repent. Repentance means that one accepts upon himself not to repeat the act. This by definition brings Divine forgiveness.

Situation three: If the sin was done by accident [for example a man thought it was his wife in bed with him] then he must bring a sin offering. This can't be brought anywhere except in the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, bringing a offering anywhere else is a sin on the same level as homosexuality. This is explicit in the Torah (Old Testament) itself. That means that at the time there was a movable Tabernacle, one could only bring offerings there. And to bring one elsewhere is a sin of "cutting off" (which is called karet כרת in Hebrew). Once the Temple was in Jerusalem, it can't be erected else as Nathan the prophet said to King David.

So nowadays we (Jews and Gentiles) can't bring a sin offering anywhere. However repentance is always open to every person and always helps. (Repentance is accepting on oneself not to repeat the sin and confession before God and feeling guilty about the sin.)
No matter what where the circumstance repentance always brings some measure of forgiveness.

[If not for the words of Nathan the prophet to King David, then we would be able to build another Temple anywhere in the world. The problem nowadays is that Nathan said the Temple Mount would be the only place God would rest his presence from then on. So we are kind of stuck.]

Appendix: Repentance is simply accepting on oneself not to do the sin that he did. How do we know this? From the law that if a person does kidushin [marries a woman] on condition that he is a perfect saint even if he is a perfect criminal she is considered married because of a doubt: he might have thought not to repeat his sins ever again at the time he made the marriage. So we learn that if he in fact did think to never repeat his sins he is in fact a perfect saint. That is repentance is that hard and that easy. It is a thought. But a thought with that much power and conviction that in fact one never repeats the sin. It has little to do with what most people think of as repentance. If you want to see proofs in the Torah for this I suggest reading the book Gates of Repentance by Rabanu Yona where he bring Biblical proof.

[But repentance is not enough except for missing a positive command. If one has transgressed a negative command, one needs Yom Kipur. If a negative command that has karet attached to it then also afflictions. If hilul hashem, then only death brings forgiveness. See Rabbainu Yona who brings this from the gemara ]

About Kabalah today

 Isaac Luria  had some amazing revelations, but his revelations weree based on his own perception of the divine realm. This is a different type of perception than the perception that the Torah was written by. This type of perception in most cases has to pass through the Intermediate Zone. This is what gives it its mixed results.

In any case I think Rav Shicks emphasis on unifications is wrong. I did this because I was attached to Rav Shick but today I think this emphasis is wrong. Though I agree learning the Ari [Isaac Luria] is important. However I do not recommend the Zohar. Even if the Ari used it as a jumping board for his revelations still I think it is not from the Rashbi. I admit it is just one word which convinces me of this  עם כל דא "although." This usage for "although" is an invention of the Ibn  Tibon family [עם כל זה]. It is not ancient Aramaic but a medieval invention. So what is it doing all over the Zohar? Answer: The Zohar was written by Moshe DeLeon.
If we would be talking about ancient Hebrew or Aramaic it would say אף על פי.

Allan Bloom: "Descartes' ego, in appearance invulnerable and godlike in its calm and isolation, turns out to be the tip of an iceberg floating in a fathomless and turbulent sea called the id, consciousness an epiphenomenon of the unconscious. Man is self, that
now seems clear. But what is self?
Our embraced psychology leaves us with this question."

I would like to suggest that this relates to the mind body problem. I don't think we need to come to the idea of the soul to understand the self. I think the soul can exist and that God can reward a person for good deeds in the next world. But I don't think you need the soul to understand the self.

So there are three domains of the mind: Biology, Human Psychology, Spiritual. Each interact. But it is not reductive. Each interacts in a chaotic way.
So even if there biological origins of some, still some spiritual free will will interact with it, and so will some aspect that is of human psychology but not spiritual. 

But this secular system of the USA can work only if the center core is based on the numinous sacred power of the Torah

But this secular system of the USA can work only if the center core is based on the numinous sacred power of the Torah. And the central core of the Torah is not the book itself but rather two central themes which permeate the entire Torah and form its own core and central value system--the coming of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and the building on the Temple in Jerusalem.

[I am looking at this post now a few years later and I thought to add that these two themes while certainly important are not the only ones in the Torah. Generally you can see that belief in God and no other gods is important. And in fact this later theme seems to be the hardest. After all idolatry can refer to worship of anything besides the the one true God the First Cause. So idolatry does not have to refer to wooden idols . but also to worship of dead people. And idolatry can be Jewish idolatry also.] 

A general Biblical approach to womanhood would be first of all not like the feminist movement. It would also include the idea of dipping in a natural body of water once a month. It would also include a day of rest, not on Sunday. It would go against socialism, as being opposed to "Thou shalt not covet."

It would  not be liberal with commandments. That is, it would not expand them beyond their actual definitions. But it would not contract them either. And it would assume that what God means to say in the Bible, is what it actually says.

We know that as a matter of fact, most of the commandments of the Bible were addressed to the Jewish people in the desert. But that does not preclude anyone from joining the club who wants to join. But if you join the club you have to obey the rules. You don't get to change them. Even Jews don't get to change them. The rules stay fixed like the Northern Star.

Just like in the Torah itself different weight should be given to different verses, also this applies to doctrines of Torah. [You would not put a sentence from Bilam like come curse Israel and put it on the same level as a verse that starts with "And God spoke to Moses saying..." Surely cursing Israel can't be on the same level as one of the Ten Commandments.--I hope not anyway. Though judging by the general attitude of the world towards the Jews it seems like most people consider Bilam's commandment to be authoritative.] The Torah itself has basic doctrines that disagree with Jewish theology which came after Torah. Also the Talmud has different doctrines that are different than those of Jewish thinkers which came later. The Rambam (Maimonides) also has a system of doctrines which is different from those that came after the Rambam. And as for myself I also have two sources of information which I hold from personally--Reason (the school of Leibniz) and Empirical evidence. (Not like John Locke. I don't think empirical evidence is the only source of knowledge. And I think it can be proved logically that it is not by simple counter examples.) Also I believe there is a third type of source of knowledge called faith
At any rate, ethical monotheism is certainly a belief of the Torah and in particular the doctrine that God is simple- not a composite. This incidentally is accepted by Christians also and is called "divine simplicity." However the Rambam has a few doctrines which are not from the Torah, nor from the Talmud. He expands the prohibition of idolatry to include the idea that God can be enclosed in body. This is certainly against the Talmud which has God clothing himself in a body to give a haircut to Sancheriv. It is also not the basic idea of idolatry of the Torah itself.
Also, in the Torah God does change his mind. According to the Rambam basing himself on Aristotle God can't change his mind. This simply is against the Torah. Point blank.
Another example is Job. The Talmud and the Rambam because of theological reasons can't accept basic premises of the Book of Job. The reason is that the book of Job goes against the book of Deuteronomy. But in the book of Job, the narrator makes it absolutely clear in the beginning that Job was innocent, and he was not being punished for any sin at all. This is an absolutely clear part of the narrative because without this the entire narrative falls apart. And in the end God says that Job was right and his friends theology was wrong. [This is also against Jewish tradition. His friends were saying the regular Jewish approach.]

Final note: Any system of human interaction, if brought to its extreme, will result in evil. finding bad things in the Talmud or Rambam does nothing to disprove the basic system.you can do the same thing with democracy. The problem with outreach in general is that it is based on the jelly bean argument. If you have only two jelly beans in a jar and you take out the red ones you are-left with the other one. An example of this type of argument is: since all gentiles are evil so the Torah is automatically right.

People in general need a moral compass. Reform Judaism seeing the abuses and problems of Jewish leadership, decided the most current up to date German philosophy of the 19th century was the way to go. The sad thing is the most up to date and popular German thinker was Hegel. (Later they added Freud who based himself on Nietzsche.) Reform Judaism could not have chosen a worse philosophy even if they had tried. 

Schopenhauer claims that facts about the physical world have no internal significance. In this point the Rambam surely disagrees. The Rambam holds learning Physics and Metaphysics (of Aristotle) is higher than learning Torah. The Ari ( Isaac Luria) also from also disagrees. He has a whole list of Divine names that are embodied in the physical universe. See the large Sidur of the Reshash [from the grandson of Shalom Sharabi] for the whole list. (That is besides the smaller list in the Eitz Chaim itself). Some of these Divine names are from the Eitz Chayim itself (The book, Tree of Life of Isaac Luria) but not all. This is common with Shalom Sharabi- to fill in missing gaps in the writings of the Arizal. [The Ramchal also does this like for the intentions of mincha for Shabat.]
In this world is hidden holiness; and even in the lowest regions in spirituality is hidden the highest holiness that comes from the hidden statement of creation. In the first statement of Creation there is no "He said"


To the Rambam when you learn Physics and MetaPhysics you directly fulfill the mitzvah of Love and fear of God. These are not means to come to fear of God or love, but direct fulfillment of the actual commandments.
You can see this in the beginning of the "Yad HaChazakah" and also in the Guide. All later Musar books quote the Rambam about this but seem innocent about what he was actually intending.

This is similar to the mitzvah of being attached to God Deuteronomy 13:5. The Sages ask how is this possible to fulfill. And they answer by marrying off ones daughter to a Torah scholar and doing business with a Torah scholar and  giving money to a Torah scholar.
The Rambam brings this statement as meaning that doing these things is an actual fulfillment of the commandment;- not just a means to come to attachment with God.


Where do you see that truth is in the ground? In physical matter? Why is it that the Rambam insists on seeing in facts about physics the highest truths? He probably saw it in a Midrash. God wanted to create Man. The angel of truth came and asked how can you create Man when he is full of lies? God took the angel of truth and threw him on the ground, as the verse says, "He threw truth to the ground." So we see truth is in the ground--i.e. Physics.

Some of the pluses about Gemara [Talmud] and some of the negatives.
The good things are an infinity, painstaking, rigorous, logical approach to the Bible. Of course no gentiles can see this because if they ever pick up the Gemara at all, it is a translation. Not that I am against translations. but -you really can't see the profundity of the Talmud without Tosphot [commentary on the side of the page of the Talmud] and the Maharsha [a later commentary located as an index in the back of the Talmud], and about a week of work on one Tosphot [comments on the side of page of the Talmud]. The only way to ever see this is to get to a point where you see some question on Tosphot that seems to make it make no sense, but then by faith you keep on plugging away until you reach the next level and see how Tosphot answered the question with some slight change of wording and was hinting to some great deep idea. Few people are aware of this in the Talmud, so they never understand its importance.

Another positive thing is that it does not try to derive morality from a small number of principles. This is a trap that all moral philosophers fell into for the last 2000 years, and there are plenty of counter examples to all of them.
Another great thing about Torah and the Talmud is that we can exercise a certain amount of control over how we are forming beliefs. It is up to us, for example, whether we believe whatever we hear on television, and we can choose to suspend judgment rather than accept conclusions according to a certain method.
Since we are primates, we need a way of getting through our desires and animal nature to perceive moral values. It does not happen automatically.



We need some method of forming beliefs that is systematically directed at the truth -- in other words, a method such that, in general, when you use it you will probably acquire a true belief rather than a false one. For if we don't apply such a method, then we will probably have false beliefs, and we don't want that,  for obvious reasons. E.g. something will happen to us when we leave this world. If it is true that there is a hell, then it is better for people not to end up there by doing things they think are good deeds like blowing up Jews or other such misinformed actions.] Now, it could be doubted whether there are any such methods.
And that is my complaint. The Talmud is fallible. It does automatically lead to true beliefs about moral values. It is good, but not perfect. And as a system, it can be abused by those willing to abuse it. Many fall into this trap of assuming their interests and ideas  are the interests and ideas of the Talmud.