My impression is that there are too many books. I think the minute a person has finished shas (talmud) with rashi then he is fit to be a rav.

(1) My impression is that there are too many books. I think the minute a person has finished Shas (Talmud) with Rashi then he is fit to be a rav. (no pseudo semicha needed. In fact anyone with semicha is by definition a fraud since semicha itself is a pretense. Everyone know the type of semicha recognized in the Talmud is no longer in existence. So people that get the title rabbi today are people that do willful fraud.)
All the other books don't add much to this.
often the other books give people the feeling that they know halacha because they learned in the Shulchan Aruch how to kill animals and to salt them. This goes for the other books also.
I don't mean to belittle the greatness of the Shulchan Aruch but without shas it seems to do little for people.
(2) But then you could ask what about Halacha and Hashkafa [kosher world view]? What about modern issues in keeping Shabat etc? I plead like the Maharshal- better a wrong halacha based on Shas than a right halacha based on the poskim-authorities.
[3] After Shas I think people should
learn the two basic halacha books, Rambam and Shulchan Aruch with the Beer heiTeiv straight from beginning to end-from the first page to the last. And then start again.

Do like Maimonides said- learn Aristotle and Kant for hashkafa. And Modern Physics for what the Rambam called Physics. Though to the Rambam, Chemistry would also fit into what he called Physics.
[] Kabalah I would drop. True that philosophy does not get anyone very far (Modern philosophy is a desert.) but that probably better than Kabalah. Despite the great insights of people like the Ari-Isaac Luria, kabalah has one basic drawback- the Zohar. Not only do people that learn it consistently start to believe that they are the messiah.--but also the basic words "im kol da" show it is a medieval forgery.
A little real spirituality that is true is better than a lot that is based on a lie.

[] All this brings me to a good question: what would a Judaism based on Talmud be --if after all I claim that orthodox Judaism is not it. I would have to admit that conservative Judaism is much closer to what I think Talmudic Judaism would be. They have a lot of basic points that I think are necessary for a true to Talmud Judaism, e.g. support for Israel, Monotheism, an application of the delicate dance between Talmud and reason. I am sorry to say it but there is nothing from the Talmud I can see in the insane religious world  today. It all looks to me like one sick fraud.

Arizona Mom Faces Child Abuse Charges After Arrest for Pouring Beer Into Her 2-Year-Old's Sippy Cup If we understand tyranny in this way we can see how America has collapsed in to tyranny.

If you think I am exaggerating take a look at these headlines  I saw after  I wrote this small essay here: Arizona Mom Faces Child Abuse Charges After Arrest for Pouring Beer Into Her 2-Year-Old's Sippy Cup


Though I am aware of the KGB spending a lot of time and effort on subverting American universities during the 60's and 70's. still it occurred to me that the pervasive culture of suspicion and suing and lack of understanding what human rights are in America really comes as a result of the very essence of democracy. I am not absolving the KGB entirely because they certainly tried to give American a push in the wrong direction--a direction it is taking now. But still as my KGB friend said when I asked about the student movements of the 1960's: I don't think the KGB had the resources to be able to have that kind of influence. I.e he said and still thinks until this day that the KGB simply could not have done the job on its own unless a lot of the emotion and direction was indigenous. As i think about it now i must admit that from what i remember the atmosphere of the 1960 was extremely pervasive. I think i will have to limit my idea that it must have simple been in the higher areas of education that the KGB was trying to convince the top echelons of the schools of philosophy and education of their approach. In that I think we can see there were successful

Which brings me to one of my favorite heroes- Socrates. He was not much for democracy. He saw it as a final step of deterioration before tyranny.and he was not stupid. He knew that democracies are about those two magic words "freedom" and "equality". But just wait a minute--he says also that having a king is the best form of government. Today we tend to think of a king and a tyrant as being synonymous. Socrates sees democracy and tyranny as being close to synonymous and the king on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. My way of explaining this is that a king allows no political freedom but allows total economical and personal freedom. a tyrant allows no economical or personal freedom. If we understand tyranny in this way we can see how America has collapsed in to tyranny.

What is bad about Modern is exactly that "Modern" defines them. Not right and wrong. . If psychology is the in thing then they make a psychology school. Even though is is pseudo science. [First: there is no conceivable observation that could disprove  psychology -therefore it is pseudo science. Second: Freud was an idiot. The human mind is not a steam engine with pressures and steam outlets. Not all human phenomena are results of turning one kind of heat energy into mechanical energy or sexual energy into civilization. Only an idiot could think to reduce all human motivation to the one that he saw in himself. There are more wheels
and balances in this clock than are easily imagined. I image in the time of Freud when the steam engine was new, this must have seemed progressive. It is like people today try to explain human thinking like computer programs. It sounds classy and new and plausible. But in a hundred years from now it will sound like Freud explaining human thinking by showing how we are like steam engines.
sublimation --turning one kind of energy into another. talking to reduce pressure. Every so called great insight of Freud he got from steam engines. And to believe that people believed this nonsense?!
And these were the same people that thought Kabalah was crazy!  Sorry but the show they put on the wrong foot. Psychologist are crazy and insane for even believing such idiocy about human beings in the first place.



The one thing Torah is supposed to give to people is a sense of the difference between right and wrong and true and falsehood. Nothing in the modern orthodox world indicates that they got that lesson. At least in the charedi world they have a guide post--Torah and Talmud.

talking with God as a friend talks with another friend and pouring out ones' heart and problems to him.

Talking  with God as a friend talks with another friend and pouring out ones' heart and problems to him.


 I can suggest a general approach towards attachment with God. Talking with him in an informal setting. Let me just say I am not the first person to think of this. It looks a lot  like what King David was doing. .

People should do this all day from the morning  until evening. People should pack a lunch and a bottle of water and go out into the forest and talk with God all day long. 

 However I think that everyone in the world should learn and finish the Talmud with Tosphot and the Maharsha. However I don't want it to seem that this is because the Talmud is somehow the greatest of all books. Not at all. Rather because it is a great book and opens up a connection with the Divine.The way it does this is it examines the written word of God in rigorous logic. It does not think that it is up to every individual to decide what it means for them, but rather that it has objective meaning that it is upon us measly human beings to strive to find out with all means possible.

This might seem difficult to understand but perhaps I can make it clear. It seems to me that God has blessed humanity with a few great books. Each one is important but does not have all the truth about people and life. But rather some aspect of truth. To me it seems the one on the top of the list is the Torah (The Old Testament).

There are two approaches to Talmud. One is the present day  way which began with R. Chaim Soloveitchik. I must say that I did not learn this way personally. I heard many lessons along the lines of Reb Chayim. But when I got back to my shtender "seat" I plowed through the Talmud with the Tosphot and Maharsha and the early "achronim" (later authorities like the Pnei Yehoshua). Sometimes I would go over and over a Pnei Yeshoshua about ten or more times until I got it.
But even this way could not be called traditional. The traditional way of learning was different. The principles were these: (1) Learn Tosphot. (2) It is forbidden to add any so called principles to make Tosphot make sense. He wrote it to make sense on its own. If you have to add outside concepts, then you don't understand it. [Sadly, most people are taught that you don't understand it unless you add some outside principles. So they spend the whole day making up nonsense, and they call it "learning" and think that people that don't do this idiocy can't learn.] (3) There is a point that you get to when you understand Tosphot that something comes up almost by magic. Some thought or question. It is that magical point that is called "Learning." For me it is very hard to get to that point.
The way of Reb Chayim Soloveitchik was different. He did add yesodot יסודות or principles, but from elsewhere in the Talmud itself. And he did it in a way that does fit.
The major school of thought of Reb Chaim [Chidushei HaRambam] continued through Baruch Ber (the Birchat Shmuel), Shimon Shkop, and the most difficult  of all- Rav Eliezer Menachem Shach of Ponovitch (that is his book the Aviezri).
These four constitute a whole and complete set by which it is possible to understand the Rambam.
No home is complete without them.

psychologists provide much of the ideology justifying divorce

Professor Allen Bloom: "Psychologists provide much of the ideology justifying divorce—e.g., that
it is worse for kids to stay in stressful homes (thus motivating the potential escapees—that is, the parents—to make it as unpleasant as possible there). Psychologists are the sworn enemies of guilt. [The exact opposite of the Torah which says that without feelings of guilt there is no repentance. ] And they have an artificial language for the artificial feelings with which they equip children. Psychologists who deal with these matters simply play the tune called by those who pay the piper. The facts of the market and the capacity for self-deception, called creativity, influence such therapy. Teenagers are not only reeling from the destructive effects of the overturning of faith and the ambiguity of loyalty that result from divorce, but deafened by self-serving lies and hypocrisies
expressed in a pseudo-scientific jargon. Modern psychology at its best has a questionable understanding of the soul. It has no place for the natural superiority of the thoughtful life, and no understanding of education. So children who are impregnated with that psychology live in a sub-basement
and have a long climb just to get back up to the cave, or the world of
common sense, which is the proper beginning for their ascent toward
wisdom. and they have an ideology that provides not a reason but a rationalization
for their timidity."

Socrates: And if, I said, the male and female sex appear to differ in their fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such pursuit or art ought to be assigned to one or the other of them; but if the difference consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of the sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same pursuits.

What Socrates is saying here in plain English is that we don't start out thinking men and women are different in ability. We give them exactly the same education. But when and if an individual begins to show more aptitude or interest in one specific area then we concentrate on that.






As an introduction let me just say that I have liked woman from day one. It is only bitches that I don't approve of.




The Republic by Plato:

"Let us further suppose the birth and education of our women to be subject to similar or nearly similar regulations; then we shall see whether the result accords with our design.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean may be put into the form of a question, I said: Are dogs divided into hes and shes, or do they both share equally in hunting and in keeping watch and in the other duties of dogs? or do we entrust to the males the entire and exclusive care of the flocks, while we leave the females at home, under the idea that the bearing and suckling their puppies is labour enough for them?"

"No, he said, they share alike; the only difference between them is that the males are stronger and the females weaker."


"But can you use different animals for the same purpose, unless they are bred and fed in the same way?"

"You cannot."

"Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education?"

"Yes."

(The education which was assigned to the men was music and gymnastic.)

Yes.

Then women must be taught music and gymnastic and also the art of war, which they must practice like the men?

That is the inference, I suppose.

I should rather expect, I said, that several of our proposals, if they are carried out, being unusual, may appear ridiculous.

No doubt of it.

Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness continue to frequent the gymnasia.

Yes, indeed, he said: according to present notions the proposal would be thought ridiculous.

But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of innovation; how they will talk of women's attainments both in music and gymnastic, and above all about their wearing armour and riding upon horseback!

Very true, he replied.

Yet having begun we must go forward to the rough places of the law; at the same time begging of these gentlemen for once in their life to be serious. Not long ago, as we shall remind them, the Hellenes were of the opinion, which is still generally received among the barbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and improper; and when first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians introduced the custom, the wits of that day might equally have ridiculed the innovation.

No doubt.

But when experience showed that to let all things be uncovered was far better than to cover them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward eye vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, then the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the shafts of his ridicule at any other sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh the beautiful by any other standard but that of the good.

Very true, he replied.

First, then, whether the question is to be put in jest or in earnest, let us come to an understanding about the nature of woman: Is she capable of sharing either wholly or partially in the actions of men, or not at all? And is the art of war one of those arts in which she can or can not share? That will be the best way of commencing the enquiry, and will probably lead to the fairest conclusion.

That will be much the best way.

Shall we take the other side first and begin by arguing against ourselves; in this manner the adversary's position will not be undefended.

Why not? he said.

Then let us put a speech into the mouths of our opponents. They will say: 'Socrates and Glaucon, no adversary need convict you, for you yourselves, at the first foundation of the State, admitted the principle that everybody was to do the one work suited to his own nature.' And certainly, if I am not mistaken, such an admission was made by us. 'And do not the natures of men and women differ very much indeed?' And we shall reply: Of course they do. Then we shall be asked, 'Whether the tasks assigned to men and to women should not be different, and such as are agreeable to their different natures?' Certainly they should. 'But if so, have you not fallen into a serious inconsistency in saying that men and women, whose natures are so entirely different, ought to perform the same actions?'—What defense will you make for us, my good Sir, against any one who offers these objections?"

(I am trying to avoid saying that Hegel was positivist but he sure was on the slippery slop towards it. And his thought led to disastrous consequences in the twentieth century. Despite his depth of thought, it is hard not to see all the tendencies of Nazi and Communist totalitarianism in his thought.

In Western Civilization following the Enlightenment, there is supposed to be a connection between Man's Laws and Natural Law [Natural Law is not what people do naturally but rather do what is their "telos" to do. That is at any rate how natural law was understood by its originators the Stoics, Saadia Geon Maimonides and Aquiness]. Man's laws are at least supposed to have as a goal to come to Divine Law. This started with Saadia Geon who defined many of the laws of the Torah as Laws of Reason. The Rambam (Maimonides) took this process further. It ended up with John Locke. The attack of on this Natural Law concept was from Austin. This is what is called legal positivism.

After this introduction, we can understand Germany. Hegel was the most popular and powerful influence in Germany during the entire 1800's. His idea of the individual being an insignificant part of the State is what led Germany to a radical Legal Positivism. Sadly, this same process is happening in America. (I am trying to avoid saying that Hegel was positivist, but he sure was on the slippery slope towards it. And his thought led to disastrous consequences in the twentieth century. Despite his depth of thought, it is hard not to see all the tendencies of Nazi and Communist totalitarianism in his thought.
This does not bode well for systems based on Hegel today or Legal Positivism. (In fact, taking a glimpse of Supreme Court decisions in the U.S.A. it is hard to see any connection at all with the U.S.A. Constitution. It looks to me like pure Legal Positivism. I mean, for Bruce's sake, what does someone growing vegetables in his back yard have to do with interstate commerce? Why would the Supreme Court think they have any right to rule in such matters- except that they want to?

[Just to be clear- Hegel still sees the "Absolute" as the standard. And to him, the Absolute is rational. To to have it embodied in "The State" does not in theory equal Legal Positivism. This is because there is a prior source of authority. It could be that he would even agree that the Absolute might not be embodied automatically in all government resolutions.]

So you don't want to hire criminals? Hmmm...

In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission signaled that it would begin to crack down on employers who use the criminal histories of job applicants to discriminate against them illegally. ...

So you don't want to hire criminals? Hmmm...

(1)The God of Maimonides and Aristotle

(1)The God of Maimonides and Aristotle tends to lack personality. (2) The omnipotence and benevolence of God, while happy and comforting to contemplate, generates the Problem of Evil, that the evidence of the world and of events frequently would seem to contradict an omnipotent and benevolent agency.
(3) It seems to me that Yaakov along with Job and King David [עד אבא למקדשי אל אבינה לאחריתם in Psalm 73 ] found some way of dealing with these issues. The way they did this was to project God's goodness out over a longer period.
To me it seems that this was the opinion of Job and God himself who agreed with Job.
The friends of Job said: "God is just". God said they were wrong. Point blank. At point blank range. There is no way to misinterpret this because the entire Book of Job shows this.


 The first statement is that Job was without sin. So trying to fudge the variables here does not work. Trying to make it that there were other faults is clearly not what it says. Then the whole story of how God caused him to suffer in order to win a debate with Satan just shows the point. Because you want to win a debate with someone does not give you cause to make someone else suffer. This is the clear position of the narrator of The Book of Job 



What enrages people is that the Rambam understands the Torah thorough the eyes  and world view of Aristotle. And that he is not embarrassed about that makes it worse. At least he could try to hide where he gets his ideas from like everyone else. And what makes it even worse is that no one can claim to understand the Torah better than the Rambam unless they want to seem like an arrogant, ignorant fool. Thus people just ignore the Rambam when it comes to the world view of Torah.

My approach is different than the generally accepted approach. I say the Rambam was right, and everyone else simply does not understand the Torah.

In any case  the Rambam's approach to Torah is I think about as close to the actual Torah approach as possible. In another approaches there are strong elements of polytheism. They may not reach pure polytheism but they certainly come close. Today  Torah practice often contains polytheist beliefs. In fact it is almost an axiom that the more strict one is in practices the more likely there are underlying polytheistic beliefs. Monotheism is not the same as polytheism except in number. There is more than a quantitative difference. There is a qualitative difference. A difference in world view. And the world view of Torah could not be further away from what people think it is today. It presents a reality that is radically different than what people think the Torah is about.

A Rambam Yeshiva would not be anything like the yeshivas we see today. The books there would be the Mishne Torah and Aristotle's encyclopedic work, Physics and his other encyclopedic work, the Metaphysics.   In the beginning of Mishne Torah he writes that the Mishne Torah contains all the Oral Law and take a good look at his language there when he says "One does not need any other book from among them."  "One reads the Old Testament and then the Mishne Torah and one does not need any other book from among them for any law," i.e. the books that he just mentioned in that paragraph. However he says one needs no other books to know what the law is (that is what among the laws of the Talmud is the halacha. But that does not mean that one understands the meaning of the law without knowing the Talmud. That is how all sages of Israel after him understood him. That is without the Talmud one can not know the meaning of any law in the Mishna Torah of the Rambam. Just like the Guide require background in Aristotle and Plato so the Mishna Torah requires the background of the Talmud.



So you can ask then what to do after you have read the Mishne Torah? You can finish it in two weeks easily. Start at 9:00 AM and go until 5:00 PM. A normal working day. You can finish it in two weeks. Then he explains you learn "the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot which are the Physics and Metaphysics of the ancient Greeks." Here too he explains this clearly in several places in the Mishe Torah and  Guide. And he not ambiguous in any way. You can see what enraged people about the Rambam. He says after one has finished reading the Written and Oral law (as he defines Oral Law to mean his book the Mishne Torah) then he spends all his days learning Physics and Metaphysics.



So clearly a Rambam approach to Torah  would be a radical departure from what people think today compromises a Torah approach. And he writes in a letter that the only reason that his book was not accepted as the final decision is because of the arrogance and pride of people wanting honor and power. So when the final redemption comes and arrogance and the evil inclination will be eliminated from the world then his book will be accepted as the objective truth. In the future the Mishne Torah of the Rambam will be considered as the truth and final decision. The son of the Rambam who became the Rav of the city after the Rambam in fact taught the Mishna Torah instead of Mishna or other things that had been customary to teach between the afternoon and evening prayers.

 My personal opinion is that Physics today (and Metaphysics) has gone considerably beyond Aristotle and that today the Rambam would hold to learn the Old Testament, then the Mishne Torah and then modern Physics and Kant. (I must admit I  have not gotten far in Mathematics or Physics. My impression is they both need about the  same amount of time and effort as knowing the Talmud even at the most amateurish level.  That is about 20,000 hours each. That is you have the normal 10,000 hours for just barely scratching the surface. Then the next 10,000 hours for gaining expertise. That was in any case my own experience with Talmud and it seems to me that Math and Physics are not all that different.)

And I should mention that this is the way I have accustomed myself to be learning for some time now. The only thing is I admit I do learn Talmud as I thing it is the only way to understand the Mishne Torah. Without knowing from where the Rambam gets his decision, people always misunderstand what he is saying. [And they think they understand.] For that reason, one should also learn Talmud and Rav Shach's commentary on the Rambam together with the Rambam..

[I should mention that this is not how Litvaks go about learning. And for myself if I have any time for learning at all I go straight to the Gemara. Being limited to what you can get I would say get a Bava Metzia (one full Talmud Tractate with Tosphot Mahrasha and Rif.). One Musar book and one of Jewish world view like the Guide for the Perplexed.

Why do I think that Islam is a threat to America? (This is rhetorical question.)

Why do I think that Islam is a threat to America? (This is rhetorical question.)


Ask the Bulgarians, Greeks, Ionian Greeks and Armenians about how different things were. Moslems were murdering, raping scum from the start, and they are murdering raping scum today. Dirty too. Greeks founded and maintained a circle of splendid cities on the perimeter of Anatolia 5 hundred years before Christ. Islam massacred raped and pillaged the city of Smynra (Izmir now) in 1922 and at that time over one million Greeks who had lived in Analtolia for thousands of years were either killed or forced to emigrate to Greece. Similar stories of course with the Armenians, Hungarians, Serbians and Bulgarians, in fact with all unfortunate enough to come in contact with these people.
Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Christian empire till 1453 when 'peaceful' Islam conquered, massacred, raped and pillaged it.
It is today what it always has been, an anti-civilization nomadic primitive and violent culture. Islam has no place and no part in Western civilization and must be entirely removed from Europe and America.

Though I am against Communism- but still it was based on the Enlightenment ideas and trying to create a just society. (And there were abuses that the czars were doing at the time, e.g. getting involved in WWI.) So I see the debate between Communism and Capitalism as an internal thing, a honest disagreement of how to have a working just society. But Islam is different. It is the worst threat to civilization on every possible level. Islam is the number one threat to the continued existence of the human race and planet Earth.



"To begin with, all manner of leftists are stuck with that whole cultural-relativism thing, at least when it operates to the detriment of the white race, Western culture, and America and old American ways. That drives them to cuddle up to primitive non-Western peoples, the more dodgy and exotic the better; and, to the extent they can, import them into the United State." -Nicholas Strackon

Most leftists (including the femi-nazis) are reticent to admit that they will ally themselves with the most barbaric creatures on Earth if they too are anti-Western and anti-American.
They know EXACTLY who/what they are standing with, but will do so anyway.



Just while I am at it let me mention a problem in political philosophy that relates to the inability of the left to see the threat of Islam.
As John Searle put it: "The leading political event of the twentieth century was the failure of ideologies such as communism, and in particular the failure of socialism in its different and various forms. The interesting thing is that we lack the categories in which to pose and answer questions dealing with the failure of socialism. If by “socialism” we mean state ownership and control of the basic means of production, then the failure of socialism so defined is the single most important social development of the twentieth century. It is an amazing fact that that development remains unanalyzed and is seldom discussed by the political and social philosophers of our time. "

Here is a good example from todays news:
Muslim insurgents attack Kabul hotel; 15 killed
One guest at Spozmay Hotel, Sharif Aloko, said he and 11 friends were sitting on the patio eating dinner when the gunmen entered wearing police uniforms and strapped with explosives. Three of them stood guard outside the restaurant while another one shot a father and a daughter while Aloko and his friends watched in horror and the family members pleaded “please don’t kill us.”
(Washington Post)
In the world of philosophy, there is no way to understand what is wrong with Islam. And when people lack a way of understanding something they simply can't see it. (like south American tribes that live on plants that they grow. They will starve rather than go fishing because the concept does not exist for them.) I mean take yourself for example. You are reading this little essay. How would you examine this? Clearly people have lots of buttons you can push. If you read Talmud or the Bible--it tends to push certain buttons in people. Some people read the Bible and go out and start a Salvation Army or a soup kitchen. Some people read Talmud and decide on daily schedule that that is basically taken up with learning and prayer and high moral standards. Some people read the Koran and decide that to murder lots of Jews is the way to come to the highest spiritual levels of Enlightenment. But if you try to analyze why this is or what is going on you are at a lose. The problem is Modern Philosophy in itself. It is the prime fallacy of Philosophy. It is the fallacy that it makes sense to look at a structure without knowing the contents of the structure. So philosophers feel they can examine religion without regard to the contents of the religion.
Here is what Steven Dutch says about this: " What we can call The Fundamental Fallacy of Modern Philosophy might be defined as the idea that it makes sense to study structure divorced from content. This is the idea that has given us businessmen who think they can "manage" without knowing anything about what they manage, critics who claim that only the technical excellence of a work of art matters, not its content, and sociologists of science like the one with whom I corresponded who think you can study the Velikovsky affair without regard to the scientific validity of Velikovsky's ideas."

hindu revisionism and Prabhakar Kamath

Hindu Revisionism: Was Shankaracharya Deceptive Or Just Ignorant?



(1) I want to mention that the type of revolution that the Bhava Gita was trying to do I look on with approval because of many aspects.
To break through the rule of the Brahmins seems to me to be worthy since basically the ruling class of Brahmins came to India from Iran and enslaved the local population and made them into the untouchables and created the Vedas to give spiritual significance to their rule. The BhavaGita and the Upanishads intended to break that rule and bring people to a true spirituality.

"I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years"

"I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years"
Now is his chance.
The problem in America is possible to analyze as one problem with different faces.

(Problem 1) Democrats are depending on their belief that Americans are stupid and can't remember a promise made four years ago. ["I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years." (It has gone up 17 trillion dollars.)]

Personally, I think this is wrong. I don't think Americans are stupid and I think the Democrats are wrong in this.
In fact, I was very impressed when I was growing up with just the general level of intelligence of average Americans. Whether it was my teachers in school in Math or Physics or just regular American soldiers. Not only did I discover that Americans are smart, but that they are alarmingly smart. So smart to make me intimidated. The average America solider could talk with me about Spinoza or a regular professor of English in Brooklyn Collage could talk to me about Dostoevsky and display an expertise which really flattened my ego. My high school teachers studied the Book of Job with a depth that I never saw afterwards. America today has changed, but the old America was unbelievably smart.


(Problem 2 in America) There is no division of power. Long ago the different parts of government decided that they could all act in concert, as one unit. So the Supreme Court has never limited government power-because they have decided that they themselves are a part of government. Why should they limit their own power?

(Problem 3) This monolithic government can then promise to people lots of money and the blacks and people that their social identity (progressive) depends on their supporting black causes (i.e. reform Jews) vote this monolithic government into power in spite of it being against the constitution of the USA which limits government power.

(Problem 4) In the original America, people like Jefferson did not think that it would work without education. But education today is political indoctrination. And the higher one goes into American universities, the purer the Marxism becomes. I personally saw the texts that they were teaching in social studies at my university where I was learning Physics. They were pure Hegelian-Marxism.

Reb Eliyahu from Villna. The Villna Geon

Today a learning Talmud partner of mine mentioned to me about the Kol Hator [קול התור] of the Geon from Villna. He had not seen the book before so he was unaware of a lot of the history about the Gra. He wanted me to fill in the details.I will try to be as brief as possible. I said "the nice thing about the Gra is he is Kosher."
The Gra (the Geon Eliyahu from Villna) had an unusual way of learning. In general he has a completely different way of looking at any subject and only mentions it in hints. But sometimes when he is more explicit he surprises you. Like on the Mishna "aruga which is 6^6" his commentary looks at it from a completely different perceptive than anyone else and answers all the questions on the Mishna perfectly and it is a way of looking at it which seems to be impossible to think of on one's own.

This seems to be characteristic of the Gra.

This conversion got in the question of the excommunication. I said that it is clear to me that the Gra was right. I mentioned that one reason for the excommunication was due to  teaching Shabati Tzvi's version of Kabalah and also pantheism. I am pretty sure that the Besht did not know that the teachings of the silversmith from Villna that the Besht praised so highly  were from a false prophet of Shabati Tzvi.
(He said that one that learns them will merit to true Divine Spirit.)

But ignorance people say is no excuse. The fact of the matter is that in Orthodox Judaism today are  teachings that are  based unintentionally on Shabati Tzvi.


Pantheism: Now I have nothing against pantheism. If Spinoza would have proved it, that would be fine by me. But that is not the issue at all. The issue is that the Torah does not hold from pantheism. It holds from monotheism. So to lie about the Torah and to claim that it teaches Pantheism is a problem of fraud and lying.

And it does not help to make a difference between Pantheism and Panetheism since the difference is meaningless since the word "pan" means everything. To say you mean that God is everything and beyond everything is simple expanding the word "everything" to include "everything." [It is just a word game to try to get out of the fact that they are teaching pantheism.] But that is what it meant in the first place. So Orthodox Judaism is playing with words. Also the Torah does not teach either one. not pantheism nor panetheism. The faith  and world view of Torah is Monotheism.

In Israel I saw a lot of kabalists. There was never anything about them that indicated any higher type of person.

In fact, if I could I would today change the whole way I went through the Talmud.
The things I would change would these: I would have gone to university 1/2 the time like Reb Shelomo Friefeld [the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway] told me to do. I would not have ignored the advice of my parents and teachers. (But at the time, I did not see much I liked in university and was not up to learning Physics. Nowadays I have discovered a way of learning Physics, I just say the words and it goes in. This is no joke. It actually worked when I was in Polytechnic Institute New York University. But there I modified this system a little  to say the words forwards and backwards.)
In terms of learning Torah itself, I would have one daily period of Talmud with Tosphot and the Maharsha in order from the beginning to the end of the Talmud. The other daily session I would have would be Chaim Soloveitchik's masterpiece, the Chidushi HaRambam. This means in plain English that I would spend much more time of the so called in depth type of learning which I ignored at the time.

In Israel I saw a lot of kabalists. There was never anything about them that indicated any higher type of person. This in fact would be a great subject for another essay. 

I want to mention a serious problem with package deals.

I want to mention serious problems with package deals. One major problem with package deals is that one rejects things that are good because they are part of some package that has some flaw. A good example of this is the Talmud. The Talmud can be taken as one package, and then rejected because it has some areas which it is flawed in. Or it can be accepted as one package and then one accepts doctrines which are in fact "not very good" as my dad would have put it. The usual example of a part of the Talmud which is not so great is the attitude towards gentiles. However if we look at the Muslims that are devolving, we can see at least a little of the point of the Talmud. Clearly the human race is breaking up into two distant parts--Western civilization (the Judeao-Christian West) and the Muslims on the other side (with some nations like China and Japan being part of the Western part because of their orientation.)
The problem is that obviously gentiles from Christian nations are not the worshipers of the stars [Akum] of the Talmud. They are not idol worshipers in any sense of the word because to be qualified as an idolater, one has to be worship a different god than the God of the Old Testament. Christians simply do not qualify because their God is the God of the Old Testament, even if they worship him in a different way than we would consider kosher.


Further examples are numerous. Christians also taking the New Testament as a package deal get bogged down in the quagmire of internal contradictions.

However there are times that one should take a package deal and just try to sort out stuff after he has bought the product. I got born into a great package deal--the home of my parents. This was--it is true a Jewish home-but it was also much more. It was a home that had too much love that is possible to describe. The powerful principles that was there are not possible to put now on paper. They can not be described. Torah was a part of our home' and so was Physics and the other natural sciences. Classical music was important there even though my brothers listened to modern stuff that shall remain nameless. But all this was external. There was something about the very essence of our family which made it one package deal that I can not describe.

At any rate, some package deals are pretty good.

()  Let me just say that the Talmud is great package deal if you decide to just accept the good things which are three basic things. One is rigorous evaluation of individual laws of the Torah, second is the structure of the laws--how they all fit together; third is the rigorous evaluation of verses.
Of course people that say they are taking one whole book as a package deal are never really doing so. They are taking some issue- usually a completely trivial issue that has little of nothing to do with the basic message of the book and elevating this trivial issue to Divine status. [However it does seem to me that some people in fact do get close to the basic message]

Of course sometimes Talmudic scholars are not very good examples of  Jews. In fact often they do not provide good examples. This is to be expected as the prophets themselves cursed the Jewish people with the curse of having bad leaders. When we did not accept true prophets we were cursed with accepting false prophets and following them.

Even today the the group known as Na Nach  assume that any famous teacher of Torah is a phony. They can be a little extreme in this but it is often quite true. ("Arrogance of office" as Shakespeare put it.)




() Another example of a package deal is racism. Sometimes based on game theory this can be justified.
I quote: Geoff's Blog (Geoffrey Falk):" For example: 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.

We have no qualms about being treated as “numbers in actuarial tables” when it comes to paying for health insurance, split down by [the different life-expectancy of] men vs. women, or by smokers vs. non-smokers … and we certainly don’t consider the (actuarial tables) practice itself to be the least bit immoral … yet if you judge others by their membership in, say, a high-crime group (e.g., poor blacks), you’re guilty not merely of judging individuals based on the characteristics of their group, but of a moral fallacy (and a moral failing).

If racism and sexism are morally wrong (for judging people by the characteristics of their group), then group-characteristic-based insurance must be equally morally wrong. And so are all other forms of mechanical prediction, even though they work better (i.e., “as well as or better,” which on average is better) than the “clinical method” of treating people as individuals.

That is, the most-efficient way of doing things, which causes the least total suffering, and the greatest benefit for the greatest number, is also morally wrong.

Actuarial tables are “formal, statistical stereotypes,” based on simple things like sex, smoking, diet, race, etc. They provide more-accurate (and thus more fair) judgments about the individuals they represent, on average, than do one-on-one, individual evaluations of the same people. What makes you think the same thing wouldn’t be true for other characteristics, outside of life expectancy? And if it would, what makes you think that that superficially unfair approach wouldn’t be the best way we have available to minimize suffering (or alternatively, create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people)?"

 Descartes. When one sees a mountain the mountain is contained in one's mind. The actual mountain that one sees being in one's mind. Descartes said basically the same thing but there are several ways some people interpret him.
Decartes: "There is an ambiguity in the word "idea". "Idea" can be taken materially, as an operation of the intellect, in which case it cannot be said to be more perfect than me. Alternatively, it can be taken objectively, as the thing represented by that operation; and this thing, even if it is not regarded as existing outside the intellect, can still, in virtue of its essence, be more perfect than myself"



Dr. Michael Huemer An essay on Descartes ;-- That the actual mountain is in ones mind. The way Huemer understand this in Descartes is by another idea of Descartes that there are different levels of existence. Existence to Descartes is not an all or nothing proposition. [A good example of this is universals.] [This levels of existence thing I remember seeing in either Plato or Aristotle--I forget which.]
Huemer: "But in Descartes' ontology, things are capable of having different grades of existence (165) (he considers this "completely self-evident" (185)). Further, he makes it clear that the way in which things exist in the intellect is one of the lower grades of existence."




The other way to understand this is by the representation theory of ideas. This is how Thomas Reid understands Descartes.

also had a representation theory of ideas, based on what he says about vision in which he closely rephrases the Aristotelian idea about how vision works, but with subtle differences that make it more in accord with quantum mechanics}. Its seems to me that he would go with the idea of direct perception and not with the neo-Kant idea of representation.
a value creator  like Moses or Socrates; - a civilization founding person. A bringer of new values into the world.  The things that are particularly interesting about him are the seminal ideas-- ideas that he just hints at, but which open new horizons of thought. The originality of his thought also is indicative that we are dealing with a real mystic, not not a good copy cat of other people.



Appendix:

1) In short what Professor Huemer is getting at is that for the rationalists the idea of the mountain is more perfect than the mountain itself and thus  is more real. It is a modified version of Plato.



2) Prof. Michael Huemer is located at
Philosophy Department, CB 232
University of Colorado

3)  The area to think about here is the idea of Kant--the thing in itself-the dinge an sich. And this he applies to objective objects just as much as to objective ideas. Could this dinge an sich be more real than this reality in the cave? Surely Schopenhauer thought so. Schopenhauer wanted the real dinge an sich to apply to the Will--certainly the most real thing to Schopenhauer. 
 [What I mean here is that the dinge an sich can be understood to be on a different plane of existence than phenomenological reality.]

My father served 8 months in the European Theatre of Operations ( France , Germany and Switzerland )

I know I should have posted something about my fathers military record on June 6, D-day. I am sorry I did not so at least for today I am putting it here. The reason I have not mentioned it much is that it always seemed to me that what he accomplished after World War II eclipsed what he did during WWII.

He enlisted on October 12, 1942 when he was 24 years old. He attended the Yale Airplane Maintenance Engineering Class 44-33. According to his enlistment record, he was qualified in arms—carbine and was an expert with a pistol and a sharpshooter. He was an aviation cadet for maintenance engineering. He was discharged so that he could receive a commission as a second lieutenant. This record indicates that he was called to active duty on November 4, 1943.


He entered active duty on July 20, 1944, and was an aircraft engineering officer 4823. His medals were the American Campaign Medal, Army of Occupation Medal and World War II Victory Medal. He served 1 ½ years in the US and almost 8 months in Europe. He left active duty on September 29, 1946. His serial number was 0 872 281. He was promoted to captain just before he left the US Army, and served in the US Army, Headquarters and Base Service Squadron 413th Air Service Group 40th Bomb Wing United States Air Forces European Theater. In the US, he served at Great Bend , Kansas and was in charge of maintaining 6 B-29 aircraft for the unit. He supervised the work of 75 enlisted men. In Europe, he was a civilian personnel officer. He served 8 months in the European Theatre of Operations (France, Germany and Switzerland ) with the 413th Air Service Group and was in charge of 1500 German civilians, supervising 1 officer and 20 civilians. He spoke German fluently at the time.
[He was responsible to decide whether to hold a German for war crimes or not. So besides the specific Germans that he was in charge of, he had to sign the release forms of thousands of Germans. That he why he decided eventually to shorten his name from Rosenbloom to Rosten. I think this was someone's idea of a great joke--to have a Jew sign the release papers of  Germans.


He had a base in France in which damaged aircraft could come in and be repaired within minutes. He trained different personal to how to check and fix only one small part of the plane. So when a plane came in with damage his whole crew swarmed over the ship and fixed it up in minutes and sent it on its way. This was the reason for one of his medals.



The most interesting time of Dad’s professional career was when he returned and was at Fort Monmouth and then his very secret work at Hycon, and created the camera of the U-2, and on the highly secretive SDI Star Wars project.

Much of this information I found out after he was gone. As a father I knew him as a very simple person that loved me, my brothers and my Mother very deeply.
He never talked about his work of his WWII experiences. The peak of living for him was taking us all to the beach on Sunday, and going into the mountains of Southern California skiing once or twice a year. We could not go to the beach on Shabat because I had to spend my time learning Hebrew and Torah.

After seven years working on SDI [star wars] he left TRW and began private business and also he invested in the Stock Market.

His was the general path  Torah with "Derech Eretz", (the path of the world). Torah and work as two sides of the same coin--but not  any work but some work for the benefit of others. I can't explain this but my brother used the word that I think describes it best "Balance."
A word that describes it is Yiddish is to be a "mensch"
He invented a machine called the "copy-mate" which was an extra sharp kind of zerox machine based on focusing of x rays. And he marketed it for about five years until the American military swooped down and recruited him for SDI. So from what I can tell it seems his major contributions to the American Military were night vision and focusing of infra red -- and laser communication between  satellites. He might get honorable mention for the U-2 camera but there apparently were two teams for that and I am not sure whose actual camera was used in the end.