A conversation about race in Starbucks

Race is the beginning when Nature starts to make one species into two species. And once this process starts there is no stopping it. You can't fight biology. And if you try, then biology fights back.

For an example you have one species in one area. Then for some reason part of the group gets separated. At first the two species will develop different characteristics based on female choice and environment. For some time they will remain one species, but with different characteristics. That is called "race."  After some time they will become two different species. So race is simply the beginning of when Nature divides one species into two.
Any disagreement between Nature and political correct positions is not really a contest. Reality will win out every time.

The reason this is so difficult to say, even though it is perfectly obvious, is that there has been for some time an attempt exterminate WASPS [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] . [I would use a stronger word: a war against wasps if I could. But war might be too strong a term. Let's say at minimum there is a conspiracy to wipe out WASPS.] And there is a concern that if they become aware of this attempt, they might try to prevent their extinction. So it has become P.C. to say: "There are no WASPS". Or rather, there are no races. But, in all species, there are races. And they are always the beginning of an uncross-able divide.

My learning partner mentioned to me that the problem with Germany was not racism. He noticed that there have been  black Germans for hundreds of years. There was and still is not a bias in Germany against others races. The major problem was that they did not like Jews. That is not a issue of race. Racism and being anti-Jews are very different things. And though I realize that Germany has gone far to make amends as far as that is possible, still I think confusing the issues of WWII with racism is a smoke screen. The problem was not racism. The problem was being anti -Jews.

In fact, if we consider the idea that Esau was a brother of Yaakov, then Germans and Jews are one race.

Gra told him that to the degree one lacks any knowledge of any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in his understanding of the Torah.

Baruch of Shkolov wrote in his introduction to his translation of Euclid a statement of the Gra about secular knowledge. He writes that the Gra told him that to the degree one lacks any knowledge of any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in his understanding of the Torah.
This statement of the Gra is rarely quoted, but Litvaks are aware of it to some degree.
The significance of this is the statement of the Gra in the Shulchan Aruch about not learning secular wisdoms. The Rema and the Rambam write about the Pardes and there is a note from the Gra that is a  polemic against learning philosophy. It is very uncharacteristic of the Gra. One person wrote after that that that note in Shulchan Aruch is not from the Gra and he knows who put it there אני יודע את האיש ואת שיחו "I know the guy and his talk". Later on people claimed the note is authentic.
Since the note deals with general secular wisdoms and contradicts what we know the Gra said elsewhere it seems reasonable to say like the first opinion that it is not authentic.


We know Rav Hutner [The Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin] sent his students to learn in Brooklyn Collage in the afternoons to learn a honorable profession and not depend on using Torah as a way of getting people's charity. And Reb Shelomo Freifeld  [The student of Rav Hutner and the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv] in fact told me to go to collage. In fact he ordered me to go to collage.
[Eventually I did listen, and  majored in Physics at the Polytechnic Institute which is connected with NYU. ] I am not a good example for this matter. My parents also wanted me to go to collage. It was the only thing that they exercised their parental authority about. And it was about the only thing I refused to listen to them. On one hand today it looks like a good thing I went to yeshiva in NY instead. Yet the way NY was I think I could very well have spent 1/2  a day in yeshiva and 1/2 in Brooklyn Collage. [But who knows? At the time it seemed to me that I needed to concentrate on just Torah alone. And at the Mir as a student you were not supposed to take time off to go to university. That practice was only at Chaim Berlin yeshiva and Torah VeDaat


Appendix:
The Seven Wisdoms
1) Grammar
2) Rhetoric
3) Logic
4) Arithmetic
5) Geometry
6) Music
7) Astronomy

(They want to divest from Israel. Sure go ahead. The first PC microprocessor was invented in Israel. Let them all turn off their computers. The intel 8088 was invented in Haifa )

There is a lot of  antisemitism out there. Mainly in universities.
(They want to divest from Israel. Sure go ahead. The first  PC microprocessor  was invented in Israel. Let them all turn off their computers. The intel 8088 was invented in  Haifa )


Any time a guy has his wife take away his children, and his house, and his money, who gets blamed for it? His wife? Of course not. And when blacks are making a war on white USA, who do you think gets blamed for it? Blacks? Of course not. You know who gets blamed.
This is the major characteristic of Wasps-White Anglo Saxon Protestants. They go all out for some dumb ideal like equality or some other such nonsense. And then when it turns sour, they keep on enduring it. And enduring it... and enduring it.... Until it explodes in their faces.  And then they go in the exact opposite direction. No tolerance for anyone,-- especially Jews. And in the meantime who is blamed? Jews of course. Most Jews would not consider the Feminists or Howard Stern or Wasserman to represent Torah ideals. Not even Reform Jews. No one said to make them poster boys for Jews in the first place. And no one said there is anything special about Jews except in so far as we attempt to keep the Law of God. And we are the first ones to admit we don't do a good job at that.

[And no Jew who believes in Torah voted for the anti-Semite traitor to the USA in the Black House.]

Now this was the idea of Chaim from Voloshin that Jews have the quality of combining Divine Traits. That is you find Divine traits like Power or Kindness, etc. All ten sepherot. And wasps often take hold of one trait. That is why Jews are necessary--because they have the quality of combining opposing traits to bring balance to the situation. [See the Nefesh HaChaim by Reb Chaim the disciple\ of the Gra.]

Now I am not going to put all the blame on the Wasps. It has been suggested that there was a certain amount of animosity towards Wasps even before all this. The minimum requirement today to be anyone anywhere is to have something bad to say about Wasps. [Personally I developed a good amount of respect for Wasps. All my elementary school and high school teachers were wasps and they were all very good. Some were outstanding. I had a girl friend who was a wasp and she fit all the stereotypes you see about smart girls. She was smart without even trying. I think she got, according to my memory, a  1198 on her SAT. That is she missed two points from a perfect score.]

It just goes to show we should have stayed out of the civil rights movement  which was a clear war against wasps, and now it is blowing up in our faces. I can't imagine why anyone would have thought civil rights for clear and open enemies of America could possibility be a good thing.

I any case, I  told people a long time ago that tolerance towards Jews and Asians is very different than tolerance towards people who main goal in life is the destruction of White America. But no one was listening. No one.

And if you want poster boys for Jews I can think of a lot better choices. E.G. Susskind, Gregori Pearlman, the thousand and one Jewish professors of Physics and Math all over the world, the roshei yeshivas of the Mirrer yeshiva in NY, and etc.
And I don't recommend being open or tolerant of Jewish cults. Cults are bad for everyone.
Wasps should learn  to discern. There are things they ought to be tolerant of and thing they ought to exclude.There is a golden mean.
Since tolerance became a big thing, people lost the ability to discern the difference between good and bad people.

The Oral Law is not a porous concept. It is fairly well defined

The Oral Law is not a porous concept. It is fairly well defined. The two Talmuds, the Mechilta and Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta, and the Midrashim. When the Zohar came out there was (and still is) debate if to include it in the set. But later on books are at best are commentaries, not the thing in itself.

With so many people trying to pull you into their cults, it is easy to lose focus on this.

So I suggest either plowing through this material on your own at home after work, or to find a straight Lithuanian yeshiva in your neighborhood to go after school or work to do this.

I remember when I was at the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY, there was some kind of after school program where students from the local high schools would come in the afternoon to learn Torah and get credit at school for this work. I don't know why this has to be a solely NY kind of thing. Why could it not be in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Baltimore?
However care should be taken to exclude cults. There is a significant danger level that very damaging cults could take advantage of this arrangement. For that reason I have stressed that this should be only with straight Lithuanian yeshivas. And these types of places can be hard to make. In fact in the whole world there are only a few in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and Flatbush. There is something hard about making such places. I could count the sum total of legitimate Litvak yeshivas on two hands.

What makes a legitimate Lithuanian yeshiva? Certainly lack of "shtick" games plays a role. Schedule also. But I think the main component is the Rosh Yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva has been learning for about twenty years before he became a rosh yeshiva. He is not a novice. He has not been spending his time making money for the yeshiva. he has been learning. He is like a doctor who did his time in pre med and then in med school. Without that period of training he is not a doctor but a dangerous quake.
[Most roshei yeshivas are in dangerous quakes because of the fact that hey did not put in the time.]

The students are also a factor. If you have to pay them to learn then they are not worth money. No one ever paid students to learn in Torah VeDaat, the Mirrer yeshiva or Chaim Berlin. Frankly it is hard to know why people learn in these places but something motivates them. And what ever it is that motivates them better not be money if you want the place to be authentic.

Appendix: I did not take part of that program teaching high school students Torah. I am not sure what they were teaching the students. I assume it was not Gemara, Rashi, and Topshot. It was probably something more basic like the Five Books of Moses in Hebrew. That is my best guess. In general people go through the Five Books of Moses anyway every year but the students were secular students so I assume they were probably needing an introduction. My own background was such that in fact I did spend time on the Five Books of Moses before I got started on Talmud. That was at Beverly Hills High School and in the Reform Temple, Temple Israel of Hollywood. And even later when I got to yeshiva I spend my first year doing a lot of work on the Five Books of Moses. It was only in my second year that the Talmud studies started taking precedence.

Ramban (Nachmanides) concerning the meaning of idolatry.

In the Ten Commandments there is a verse not to have any other gods on my face. לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני. What does this mean? Later on there is a verse "I will send my angel before you". אנכי שולח את מלאכי לפניך. That verse was written before the golden calf incident. So it is not a reaction to the golden calf but rather a good thing.

 The basic idea of the Ramban seems to center on the idea (in software) of network presentation. That is there is a level of the network that is presented to the user. Behind that is a whole network of connections. There is the satellite up-link, and the hardware transistors, and many subprograms, until you get to what the user is actually seeing.
To the Ramban this is פני "my face" and Metatron and the angel that God promised he would send before the children of Israel. That is  the level of interface between God and his world. It is the interface that God chooses to be his representative.
To choose another representation is idolatry because there is nothing behind it. [or perhaps there are bad things behind it.] It is not the representation that God chose to be his representative.


Exodus XX:3 and XXIII:20, 21 would be the relevant places to look at the Ramban.

After the golden calf, God said he would send an angel to guide them, but to the Ramban that was not the angel that was promised before the event of the golden calf which was Metatron.

That means that pantheism is wrong. There is a point at which God's representation stops, and things becomes created from nothing. And not anything or everything can be a presentation of God

Now at this point my learning partner tied this in with something that Rav Nevental --the rav of the old city of Jerusalem said about their making their own representation being the major sin. But the Ramban goes even further and explains that the golden calf simply did not have the software network behind it in the first place.

Appendix:
1) I mean to say here that the Ramban is making a distinction between angels. He equates "my face" with Metatron, and angel of the covenant, and the statement "I will send my angel before you to lead you into the land of Israel." That angel will be an emanation of God. On the other hand there are times when angels are created beings. An example is after the golden calf when God said he would send an angel before them.
2) In any case if you want to see this in more detail then get yourself an English translation of Nachmanides by Chavel. [Or read it in Hebrew on Exodus chapter 20 verse 3.]
3) This explains to us why in yeshivas there is a lot of emotional input into understanding the Oral Torah. That is because what we see here is even if you get the presentation 99% accurate but are wrong on one small thing--that is idolatry.
4) The Ari makes the same distinction as the Ramban but put it at the bottom of Azilut. Question: does that imply a contradiction? No See the Reshash. Shalom Sharabi's Nahar Shalom. [This is printed by the Kabalah Institute at the back of the Eitz Chaim of the Ari.]

The Ramban [Nachmanides]

The Ramban [Nachmanides] has a little piece on Exodus XX:3 which relates to idolatry.

For example he seems to be saying worship of human beings is not a good thing. And it does not look like he makes a distinction whether the person is a tzadik (saint) or not.
[If you only read English, you can look in the Chavel translation.]
Now the Ramban  brings this idea about Nebuchadnezzar, but still what he says there seems to be applicable to the worship of any human being-- including even the greatest tzadik imaginable.
It seems that what he says there goes against the idea of התקשרות [binding oneself in spirit] to a tzadik.
[See the Nefesh Hachaim also in relation to this issue.]

But not only that but if you look at the little piece in the Ramban that comes right before that part, you can see in his treatment of worship of constellations that he says things that seem to not correspond with Reb Nachman.


We also see in the Ramban that people did go to Moshe to ask for a blessing or to ask him to pray for them. [That is at the beginning of Parshat Yitro].

Appendix: Since some people might not have the translation of the Ramban available in their area, I would like to say over the basic idea as well as I can remember it. The Ramban says that one type of idolatry is to worship people. The idea behind it was that when they would see a great person who had great success, they thought that by binding themselves to that great person they would share in that person's spiritual powers. And the Ramban said that that was the opinion of Pharaoh.
That part seems to go against the idea of binding oneself to a tzadik.
But in the part right before that he talks about worship of stars. He says the intention was to give the constellation power by this worship and then when they would have that added power they could bestow it on its worshipers.

If this is true, (I mean the opinion of the Ramban), that can explain a lot of things.

At least it helps me understand why when people get involved with hasidim that they often seem to lose instead of gain. But maybe there is some kind of invisible line that people cross into worship of a human being and when they cross that line they lose holiness instead of gaining it.

He brings a statement from the sages of the Talmud that when there is judgment below there is no judgment above. What is judgment below? It is when a person judges himself on everything he does and says;- and asks himself, "Is it was really right what I did?"

  When a person does not judge himself below, then there is judgment above in Heaven. And when there is judgment above, then when the judgement comes down into this world, it is clothed in everything. Everything becomes a messenger to do the judgement on the person it was decreed upon. So when a person has fear of something in this world, it is because the higher judgment is clothed in that thing, like a prince,  robbers,  or thieves.

The amazing implication is that when you are afraid of something--anything, you have  a way to be saved. Learn Musar.

Appendix:
1) Musar means two sets of books: 1) Medieval books on ethics, 2) books written by the direct disciples of Israel Salanter.

I can give a few names if people want. חובות לבבות Duties of the Heart, אורחות צדיקים Paths of the Righteous, מדרגת האדם  Level of Man. אבן שלמה Perfect Rock.
Musar has the Umbra, Penumbra, Antumbra.

The main body of  Medieval books and Israel Salanter's. Outside of that like a penumbra are books that are not that exact set but are close, like the Shelah, or the Reshit Chachma.
When I was at the Mir in my spare time I tried to go through them and I can say from my own experience that they do have a remarkable effect on people that learn them.
But if possible I think it is better to do this in a kind of Lithuanian yeshiva environment.
And it is wise to avoid cults that call themselves "yeshivas" but do not have this basic Litvak approach.
 In order to qualify as Musar a book can't be about philosophy, or kabalah, or a commentary on anything. It has to be straight Musar or else it does not have the desired effect.

The Cotton Letter made it clear that a Republican controlled Congress will never agree to any deal that allows Iran to have nuclear weapons. This is the not the intention of the Democrats. Yet here we see Jewish people complain about the Republicans who are desperately trying to stop Holocaust 2.0 They even want to indict Cotton for trying to save Jewish lives. Why did they not suggest indictment of Kerry who met with Iran officials a few weeks ago? Maybe the idea is that they simply hate Republicans and try to find any possible excuse to hurt them?

 Jews without Torah are drawn to socialism. In Russia in the early days of Lenin, Jews were drawn to Bolshevism, and then Communism. In Germany, as unbelievable as it might seem, some Jews were attracted to National Socialism. Some Jews voted for the National Socialists in 1932 which brought Hitler, their worst enemy, to power. Today, all too many Jews support the Democrat Party, and are fully behind B. Hussein 0bama; even though he is a known enemy of Jews.   American Jews, out of a sense of guilt, support Israel with their donations, yet they look down on Israel because the Jews there, are not up to "their" standards. 

 American Jews, while in love with Socialism, disdain the freedom and free enterprise  enjoyed by Israelis. Sadly, liberalism or Liberal Socialism as it actually is, would deny Israel the right to exist and would in all probability, eventually get around to once again, rounding-up Jews and concluding as their National Socialist cousins did in 1942, that there must be an answer to the "Jewish Question." The answer of course, is Holocaust 2.0. Liberal Socialists have embraced the Islamic Cause, and have deep down, latent disdain for Jews and anything Jewish.


The Cotton Letter made it clear that  a Republican controlled Congress will never agree to any deal that allows Iran to have nuclear weapons. This is not  the intention of the Democrats. Yet here we see Jewish people complain about the Republicans who are desperately trying to stop Holocaust 2.0  They even want to indict Cotton for trying to save Jewish lives.

Democrats know that people are aware of the meaning of socialism -- the ownership and control of everything by the government -- and that Americans especially have an immediate and visceral antipathy to that. Democrats think that if they talk about freedom (while promising free stuff) while in fact creating tyranny, they will be able to deceive enough people to get away with it.
The Democrats hate almost everything about Israel and America, including the very ideas of limited government, individual rights, private property, self-defense, free enterprise, free speech, etc.

The argument is in LM I:15: One must bring fear up to its root. Because when does not do so then fear is dressed in everything in this world.
The idea is that when there is judgment below there is no judgment above. So when one judges himself on everything he does then there are no judgment upon him above. But when one does not judge himself then they do judge him in heaven and then the judgments are dressed in everything  this world. and when the judgment are dressed in things in this world then he has fears. he is afraid of things because they in fact have the power to hurt him since the higher judgments are dressed in them.



Just as a side not I should mention that there are too many religious groups out there that cash in on the appearance of authenticity. And I admit it would be nice to have a gauge to measure such a thing.
My suggestion for authenticity in Torah would be to find a decent Litvak yeshiva and also go to Israel. Preferably both together. And if you want the authentic Israeli experience I recommend going into the IDF. In fact in the context of Musar there is a certain amount of opinions that are not well to my liking. The amount of people that think being against Israel is a good thing is astonishing. I am not impressed with their arguments.

In the insane religious world, shuls and synagogues tend to be clandestine cults. Or if not actual cults then at least the really evil cults spend a lot of time and effort in infiltrated legitimate places]

A small stick of wood can lite a large one. I may be a small stick of wood, but I am sure  there is a large stick of wood out in the world somewhere that needs to hear what I have to say, and that is this: It is possible to go through the entire Oral Law. If possible, it is best to do this in a kind of Lithuanian yeshiva situation. But it is not necessary. You can do it at home. And after all what can you do if you walk into  a  or shul yeshiva and they try to convince you of some alternative doctrine that is not true and straight Torah? [In the insane religious world,  shuls and synagogues tend to be clandestine cults. Or if not actual cults then at least the really evil cults spend a lot of time and effort in infiltrated legitimate places]
Not every city is blessed to have a Mirrer Yeshiva or Torah VeDaat in every neighborhood.
Last time I was in Israel I was blessed to have a nice straight Litvak Yeshiva in the neighborhood and that was a great help in my learning. That was of Rav Montag in Netivot--the city of Bava Sali.

There might be questions on yeshivas. You might have had difficult experiences in one or the other.
But I want to suggest Abusus Non Tollit Usum. [The "um" at the end of a Latin noun means it is the object.] (Abuse does not cancel use.) That is people can abuse any system even the most perfect system. So what I suggest to you is that if you have had a hard time in learning Torah you have to tweak the variables in a way that applies to your own particular situation. But not tweak variables in Torah itself. Only Torah is Torah. People commonly try to change some aspect of Torah to make it more compatible with the way they would like it to be. That advantage of the Litvak path is that there is a general understanding that only Torah is Torah and it is known that one is not allowed to change it to suit ones taste.

Appendix:
1) Oral Law means the two Talmuds, Sifra, Sifri, Mechilta, Tosephta and Midrash.
To go through it you need one fast session: read and words aloud and in order and go on. The slow one is like in any Lithuania yeshiva mainly to stay on one page for about a week and  keep knocking away it it until it become clear.
2) I am not implying to minimize the time needed for STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] subjects. If you are doing this in university keep it up. The time needed for Torah in such a  setting is only about two hours per day. An hour for fast learning and one hour for learning in depth with a learning partner.
As a general life plan how ever I think people should have about four years in a straight Lithuanian yeshiva anyway - at least half a day besides university.

Musar (Ethics)

I want to defend the idea of learning Musar (Ethics).

Musar is as is well known to be not the same thing as Hashkafa (world view) issues. It is also not the same as Halacha (legal) issues. It occupies its own special niche.

 It is mainly about two sub-issues--Fear of God and character improvement.

It is hard to defend because of lots of reasons. We know that Brisk never became  a Musar yeshiva. We know lots of people, even mashgichim (מנהלים רוחניים), learn Musar and there is not apparent character improvement. 

Some people have been in so called Musar yeshivas and were not happy, and perhaps were even treated not well.

Still, I think it is important for its two areas of expertise, a) Fear of God and b) character improvement.
And I think that there is nothing that can replace its utility in these two areas.
What I mean is that sometimes you hear people saying other books have Musar in them.. They in doing this mean well, but are not really interested in what Musar is about.




Musar here refers to the basic medieval set of Ethics books, plus the books of the immediate disciples of Israel Salanter. [Isaac Blazer, Joseph Horvitz, Simcha Zisel, Naphtali Amshterdam were his immediate disciples.]

Appendix:
1) השקפה  world view issues are dealt with in books like Saadia Geon's אמונות ודעות Faiths and Doctrines. Also in the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam. It is a solid rule that only Reform and Conservative  Jews read these books, because everything in them goes against the insane religious world 's major tenets.
2) Musar and world view issues do intersect in certain areas.  Also Musar and the LM  do intersect in some areas. But what I am suggesting is-- that there are large areas where they do not intersect.
3) At least I want to suggest having the basic books of Musar in your home. I think where Musar is there is a invincible force field that protects the place.
4) The argument that Musar is a good and important and indescribably great thing would have to be based on my own experience and on what I saw in the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY and also on my experience with people that don't learn Musar. I don't think I could defend it based on some theoretical value, or insight it gives.

One thing I know about Russia. Anything you are surprised about is planned. It is their primary strategy. If Putin disappears for a week it is because he wants people to be surprised. And even perhaps to rumor that he is not feeling well. And why would he want that? Because he does not want to waste any more time with negotiations. But also because he does not want a slow build up about the Ukraine. He sees the USA is about to send upgraded tech to the Ukraine.  And that would make it hard to retake it. To me it all points to one thing. He is about to launch a full-scaled invasion. If he wants the Ukraine, he knows he has to take it now. The president of the USA is a weak fool.

Communist strategy to weaken and demoralize America has worked thoroughly. The men are all beta males, or mentally confused cross gender nut cases. This is the perfect opportunity for Putin to launch a surprise. And he loves surprises.
But though this sounds like an alarm, I don't think it is  a big deal. Best thing at this point I say is to recognize the independence of the eastern provinces. Remove the cause of war.


It seems to me he might be using a retreat advance strategy also. First advance. Then pretend that he regrets it and is willing to make amends. then advance again.  And so on and so forth. And this applies to the USA also. Not just the Ukraine. There is still the idea of destroying the USA so that Communism can take hold of it from within.
Communism never had a goal to physically destroy the USA. Rather the idea was to morally disable it so that the USSR could take control of it. The idea is that though things like homosexuality would be against the law in Russia they would secretly promote it in the USA by clandestine means in order to erode and destroy the USA from within. And this goal has gone forward.

I had a few interesting experiences in Israel. But they were spread over different time periods.
And some are a bit personal and thus not easy to write about. And each period provides insight into what Israel is about. One period is when I was in a kollel in Safed of Rav Ernster. . That in itself was a very nice period until Baali teshuva started showing up. When they moved into Meor Chaim --and everyone knows how crazy baali teshva are- it became a nightmare.
There was another time period in Jerusalem in which I spent time with Rav Zilverman [the Rosh Yeshiva of Adert Eliyahu] and his father in law Rav Shlanger the Mashgiach of Porat Yoseph and Pertz Aurbach.

The kind of Judaism I saw in Israel is very different from what is seen in the USA.
I have mentioned on my blogs my different points of view about things but I show make clear  that a lot of my opinions are based on what I saw in Israel and it is because of my experience there that I tend to be critical of Judaism in the USA.

In any case  there was another time period in which I spent a lot of time with the family of Bava Sali in Netivot and Jerusalem. Especially the daughter of Bava Sali, Avigail Buso I found to be an amazing personality,

In any case my learning partner has been on a crusade telling me and anyone who will listen to learn the Nachmanides on the Torah.

Demons

This is an argument between the 'Rambam and the Ramban'. Maimonides and Nachmanides

The Rambam holds they are not real. Nachmanides hold they are but we are not allowed to worship them.
This came up in learning Sanhedrin. But in my own mind it helps to understand why it is that when people try to do the right thing, things go wrong.
When we understand that there are forces out there angels and otherwise--it helps to understand the irrational element of the world. That things don't make sense and the harder you try to do the right thing the more your feel forces at work against you.

When you see evil spreading in the world at an alarming rate, it is hard not to agree that there seems to be hidden forces  of evil at work. "Kelipot" so to speak. Evil gods. Can't there be some demon of homosexuality that is taking hold of people's minds in the USA?

In any case my learning partner has been on a crusade telling me and anyone who will listen to learn the Nachmanides on the Torah. [For English speakers there is the Chavel translation.]
My days are constrained so at least I am passing the message to the world in general about learning the Ramban (Nachmanides).

Russia considers  diplomacy as war by different means. To Russia diplomacy is just another way to get what they would rather get by means of war. That means that they will definitely try to take Eastern Ukraine by war. It is just they can play around with diplomacy to fool people. And they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Because to them power is the goal. Not peace. And NATO will definitely not put the amount of money and time and lives into this endeavor as much as Russia is willing to put into it.

If NATO and the USA and the Ukraine are willing to put up the amount of time, effort, and money,  blood and tears to hold onto Eastern Ukraine as the Russians are willing to put up to get it, then I see some purpose in a confrontation.
But they are not. The Ukraine will never be a part of NATO. Negotiations with the Russians is a joke to the Russians. To them its is just words. And words don't mean an thing.

But the way I see it this does not apply to Western Ukraine. Since all the Russians care about is power therefore the East is a good target. Once  they control it politically, then things are back to normal. But the West would be a whole different all game. The West would not buckle down and would be a liability to the Russians. People would make as much trouble as possible and the Russians would find after taking it that the battle has just begun. And they know this. I simply do not think they could care less about Western Ukraine.
 I say let Russia have the East. All Russia wants is people that want to be part of Russia anyway.

And why was it that all efforts by Ukraine to be part of the EU were ignored for the last twenty years? What ever the reason was is there any reason to think now things have changed? I suspect the reason is business ethics. Every time I have rented a place in the Ukraine the owner has always felt free to come into my apartment every day  when I am gone and steal money and what every else he thinks is useful.  There are no exceptions to this rule. The Russians are very well aware of this character flaw and thus feel that whatever good is in the Ukraine is from the after effects of being under Russian rule.

Few people are thinking ahead. Everyone one thinks if they just escalate a little bit the other side will back down. But take my word for it--Russians will never back down. All that will happen is war at the cost of billions of dollars and human life. Are a few dirt poor provinces in the East worth that?
I know no one wants to hear what I have to say. The Russians want  everyone to think they are innocent. The Ukrainians want the Eastern provinces. But to avoid war the Eastern provinces have to be let go of.
It is not that I think Russia is right for what they are doing. It is just that to avoid worse problems we have to accept that they will not stop in trying to get the Eastern provinces.

Rav Eliezer Shach definitely held excommunication of the Gra is still valid and he instilled this attitude into the vast majority of Lithuanian yeshivas in Israel.

If you consider this world to be dangerous in a spiritual way, it then makes sense to come to saint  for advice.
But you would then have to be cautious about who really is a saint.
I would not mention this except for the fact that it seems to me that I have seen this kind of effect in my own life. But I have not mentioned this idea much because people in general go to people that are not saints. For example there is a whole group that comes under excommunication of the Gra. I would suggest that one should not be involved with them and that their so called tzadikim should be considered as תלמדי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים (Torah scholar demons) not kosher.


There is no doubt that Americans have a different approach to this than Israelis. Rav Eliezer Shach definitely held this way, and he instilled this attitude into the vast majority of Lithuanian yeshivas in Israel, Even Porat Yoseph which is Sefardi but has a Lithuanian Mashgiach, Rav Shlanger.

There is one yeshiva in Jerusalem of Rav Zilverman which goes totally with the Gra and that are many carbons copies of that yeshiva. But that is not what I mean here. I mean there is a very basic mindset in all the Lithuanian yeshivas in Israel that is fundamentally different from American Yeshivas. The first time I discovered this I admit I was shocked. But the way I see things today I would have been well advised to listen to Rav Shach.