1) Trust in God is a confusing issue. The story with king Asa  seems to imply that his sin was to go the the doctors alone without trust. But it seems that Navardok--that is Joseph Horvitz- would say any kind of action directed towards getting ones needs met is not good. And he would say saying to oneself or others that one is trusting is just fooling oneself. It is self deception. He would say one should serve God and then God will find some way to help him.
 2) The Tenach says Asa was punished because he went to the doctors for help instead of to God.  2 Chronicles 16:12
 3) This is a well known controversy, between the Chovot Levavot and the Gra.
4) My impression is that it is not clear that trust relates to action. To me it seems clear one can be working all day and be trusting in God and one can be sitting and learning Torah and not be. That is there is not an strong tie between action and trust. However if one is trusting then it is reasonable to ask why work?
5) The way this idea of trust was understood at the Mir was to do what one must whether in mitzvahs or in secular pursuits which are required by the Torah--e.g working for a living. But not to be doing even that for any reason but that the Torah requires it. The way it understood it it was close to Navardok but not exactly.
The idea was no matter what--what is decreed on a person will come automatically. But by doing God's will in ones life has the potential of averting a bad a decree. And if it is decreed that one should have things he needs then these things will come no matter what.
I know this is hard to understand but that was the basic unspoken attitude.

6) I suggest looking at the Madrgat HaAdam  and the Chovot Levavot and tell me if you can make any more sense out of it that this.
The Gra's opinion seems to be based on an Agadah. That is significant because the Gra said all the secrets of the Torah are hidden inside the Agadah.

)

It seems to me that Islam is idolatry.

This is an idea about idolatry and  then a little bit at the end about my idea of Islam.
But I should make it clear that this is only my tirade against Islam, not against Arabs or Iranians. It is their evil murderous religion that is the problem. Not the people.



Introduction: We all know that idolatry is forbidden. The question is if one serves an idol in more than one of the four services [burning, sacrifice, pouring, bowing]. Does he bring a sin offering for each service? [The sin offering for doing idolatry is in the book of Numbers 15. ]
R. Zakei said no, and R Yochanan said yes.
(Sanhedrin 62a)

R. Aba wanted to say this depends on an argument between R. Natan and R. Yosi. (R Yochanan like R. Yosi that all the acts are just one act. )
R. Natan asked why is "fire"(לא תבערו אש בכל מושבותיכם ביום השבת) mentioned concerning the Sabbath day? Are not 39 types of work forbidden? (That is: any type of work that was done to build the tabernacle in the desert before Israel entered into the Land of Israel is called ''work'' in the Torah. This is because the Torah says not to do the work of building the tabernacle on Sabbath. It is a simple deduction that therefore the types of work that went into building the tabernacle would be considered work by the Torah. If they are not considered work when it comes to the Sabbath then why would the Torah forbid doing them on the Sabbath? So now we have a simple and easy measure of what is considered work on the Sabbath.)
R. Natan  answered, it is to divide. (That means to say that if one forgets about several types of work and does them on the Sabbath day, then he brings a sin offering for each type of work.)
How does he know this? It is because of a general principle that anything that was inside of a category and then was mentioned specifically comes to tell us something about the entire category.

R. Josi says the reason fire was mentioned by itself to tell us it is only a prohibition. [That means to say doing work on Shabat is one of the most severe sins in the Torah. If done on purpose it gets the death penalty, if done in front of two witnesses, and also a warning was issued right before he did it and he acknowledged the warning. That is, to get a death penalty in the Torah, one really has to be trying hard to get it.] If the sin was done by accident then he brings a sin offering (a she goat or she sheep.) One can't bring a sin offering for playing cards on the Sabbath.  Sins are well defined in the Torah. We find some people don't like what the Torah considers a sin and thus they try to redefine what a sin is.  But that is not the Torah approach.
At any rate, the idea of R. Yosi here is that fire is only a normal prohibition, not the death penalty.

My question here is on R Yosi. Does not he agree with the principle that what ever was in a category and has gone out to be mentioned specifically come to teach us about the entire category?
[I could have said my question in a second but in case some people might be looking at this blog that do no know much gemara I thought to give a brief introduction to my question.]
Now I wanted to mention that this is not the first time this kind of thing has come up. We find the same thing about bowing to an idol. There too the Gemara says it comes to teach about itself alone. But there I don't ask my question because though it is true "bowing" was in a general category of idolatry, still there is another verse that also come out--the verse about sacrifice. And if "bowing" was to teach us about idolatry, then "sacrifice" would not have had to be mentioned. So instead we say "sacrifice" tells us about the whole category--to forbid all types of service that were done in the temple in Jerusalem and then we are stuck with "bowing" that can't tell us anything except about itself. So I am not bothered with "bowing." It is only about "fire" that I am asking this question.

At any rate my learning partner suggest that perhaps the reason R Yosi uses the "fire" for itself alone is he had nothing else he could do with it. He already had division of work from the verse in Leviticus 4:2. And he thought that this is the reason why even "bowing" is used for itself alone;-- because after we have "sacrifice" (זובח לאלהים יחרם) coming to tell us division of services, then we can't use "bowing" for anything else.
Actually I think that I get 0.5 credit for this idea. Because my learning partner suggest this is the reason we use bowing for itself alone. But I think it was I that decided we could use the same reason for fire. (I am not 100% sure that it was I but I remember arguing this way. So I think it was I that came up with it.)
Even so it seems to me to be a cop out. After all if it was in the category then it did not need to be mentioned.So what in the world could it possibly means "It comes to teach about itself?"At least about bowing it makes some sense because we can have an act of idolatry that does not get the death penalty. so maybe we did need to hear this about bowing. But fire? Why mention it? To tell us it is a mere prohibition. Fine so tell us that about the entire category!!!
_________________________________________________________________



My impression is that idolatry has more to do with numinosity than with statues. This I saw a  few times in Rashi where he defines "accepting another god as ones god" as meaning intending it for godliness. מכוויין לאלהות
For this reason, it seems to me that Islam is idolatry because they are not intending the God of Israel. While on the other hand we see Christians going through a mediator, still their intension is to the God of Israel. I means to focus on what is the source of numinosity. And that source is determinate.

Even though I have not worked it out completely I think we can see that idolatry has two parts to it. One is serve towards a idol and the other is accepting the godliness or spiritual power from any being besides God.
I must have written about this before. But Let me just say that the Gemara does not deal with the idea of a mediator at all. On the contrary. When Abyee is brining his proof that  one that does idolatry from fear or love without accepting the godliness of the idol he brings the idea that when one bows to a house of idols and thinks it is a synagogue that he is not liable because his heart is towards heaven. And a statute also--he says if he does not accept its godliness it is nothing. So Abyee and Rava are definitely thinking about accepting of godliness as one factor here.  I mean to say that accepting the godliness of some person or object to Abyee is obviously liable. It is just that he says more cases are also liable. But since the very god of Islam is not the god of Israel and the numinous aspect of it is clearly different than the God of Israel that means the god of Islam is a false god.
That means we would have to treat Muslims as idolaters and not accord to them freedom of religion until they curse the god of Islam.

I should mention that we don't want to expand the definition of idolatry to anything we don't like. You have to remember that idolatry is something  that requires the death penalty. It is an act that if done in front of two witnesses get the electric chair. So we don't want to make up our own definitions. This is something the Torah says to the court that they must give the death penalty for. It is not an option to forgive.
For example let's say you love your wife. And perhaps sadly enough maybe you love her more than God.
Maybe she means more to you than going to heaven. Maybe being married and having children is the total meaning of your life. That is not idolatry.  Idolatry has to be an act of worshiping some god other than God by one of the four acts, sacrifice, bowing, pouring, burning. There has to be the kind of numinousity involved with it that is involved in religious worship.

Now of course worship of a human being can be idolatry. But it is not the same thing as love. It has to be the kind of worship that people do to actual physical idols

Trust in God without any effort.

 Trust in God without any effort. From where does this come? Navardok (Joseph Yozel Horvitz) claims this comes from the Ramban [Nachmanides]. But no one seems to know from which Ramban. My learning partner today mentioned a certain Ramban on a totally different subject that might be related. The idea is the the name of God in the Torah "El Shadai" tells us that there is a level of Divine intervention that goes beyond the way of nature. I did not mention this to him but it did occur to me that this might be what Navardok was all about. That is when one trust in God then God sends his help even beyond the way of nature.
This he also brings from the Gra in a somewhat more explicit statement and from the Chovot Levavot also.

The actual statement of the Gra is based on a story in the Talmud. Raba Bar Bar Chana did not know what the verse means "Throw in God your burden and he will take care of you." the verse uses this strange word יהבך.
One day he was lifting his burden and a strange walked over and said to him give me your burden יהבך and I will lift it for you.
The Gra said that it is not the idea that the stranger knew the meaning of the word. Rather Raba did not understand what trust is supposed to be. Is one supposed to trust in God but still do effort, or is one supposed to trust in God with no effort. He thought surely one should do effort. But then he saw that one it is decreed that help will come to a person then that help will come no matter what. Even to the degree that people will ask to help you.
 My suggestion is that there is an aspect of ontological undecidability about this. For certainly we are supposed to do our job in this world. If we can show that the Torah requires us to work then that would be what we are supposed to do without any relation to the question of having our needs met. And certainly it is easy to show the Torah does require us to work. As the sages said as a covenant was established for Torah so was a covenant established for work. כמו  שיש ברית כרותה על התורה כמו כן יש ברית כרותה על המלאכה
And what one finds is people do use the Torah to make money -which is forbidden- and then hide behind the claim that they are trusting.
So there is some hidden aspect to this whole question.
I wanted to add the fact that the Gra saw this in an Agadah {stories in the Talmud or outside the Talmud like in Midrash Raba} is significant because the Gra held the deepest secrets of the Torah are contained in the Agadah.
Appendix:
 I wanted to add that being prepared and learning survival skills is a regular part of what one should learn. It is like Torah itself that one does because one is required to do it--not for benefit in this or the next world. Survival skills and self reliance are simply a part of "the way of the world" (Derech Eretz) that comes before Torah.

Elijah from Vilnius

The Vilna Geon, Eliyahu from Vilna, had an idea about Kabalah and also concerning the state of the world today. He said good and evil are mixed together. For this reason he warned about practical Kabalah.
But you see this in a lot of areas. The example that occurred to me today in with  a great thinker in analytic philosophy, Quine. He came up with this great idea of "alpha -1". That is the first uncountable infinity minus 1. I forget where this idea came up but it is a very important tool. But that was in a subject he was good at. When it comes to other areas of Kantian thought he had some ideas that were not so great.

When you dig you find great thinkers that had their share of really bad ideas. And this goes against the grain of human beings. W all want to find some nice package deal. But we can't. Every great person we find ends up having as many bad and sometimes really destructive ideas as tremendous great and beneficial ideas.

to finish Shas [Talmud]

1) A not so well known idea  is to finish Shas [Talmud]. To be qualified to have an opinion about anything in Torah, he first need to have finished Shas. That means to have gone once through the Babylonian Talmud in its original language. But this idea of finishing Shas came up so much in  NY, that I forget the entire context. Yet  I was very frustrated by the fact they they took sometimes a full two weeks to go through a single page of Gemara. Yet years later I began to see why they took so much time on one page. Because today it seems to me that unless one learns what it means "to learn" (Gemara) when one is at the ripe age of eighteen, then he will never learn it. I have tried to explain to people what it means to be able to learn but I feel like a dog barking up the wrong tree. Even on this blog I have a whole essay but I don't think I have explained it properly. It is not knowing a lot of Gemara. And it is not knowing a lot of commentaries. It is like playing the violin. I can't explain what it is but I can teach it and I can tell if someone knows what it is or not.

That being said I want to say that there is a point to finishing Shas also. Or what I would rather say --to finishing the Oral Law That is to finish Shas with Tosphot and the Maharsha,  the Yerushalmi, the Sifra and Sifri and the Tosephta.
 Most of the people that I knew that could learn were in NY . I think a good number of them did in fact finish the Talmud. Reb Shmuel Berenabum definitely did. But the main way they did this was by devoting the afternoon to fact learning. In Israel it was hard to tell who really could learn or not.It is not like the violin that you can hear. One thing seems certain -- that Rav Elazar Shach of Ponovicth could definitely learn. You just need to see his book the Avi Ezri.

So what I am suggesting to people is that no matter how much or little time you have to learn, I think you should divide it into two parts. One a fast session. Say the words and go on. If you don't understand at first eventually it will sink in. and the other is an in depth session.


2) You can already tell however that there is more to say than what I have written. I also meant to point out to laymen what it means to learn Torah and what it means to be an expert in Torah. This is something everyone needs to know. It means to have finished Shas and to have a basic grasp of what one has learned.
It is not to be called rabbi or have ordination from some fraud. In fact today anyone called rabbi is almost guaranteed to be a fraud. People that learn Torah for its own sake never get ordination and consider it to be a scam.

3) Also the Gra has an idea that to learn Kabalah it is first necessary to have finished Shas. 
So on one hand he is not against Kabalah. But on the other hand he does have this idea that one needs some kind of spiritual preparation for it. Otherwise it is damaging. The Ari himself has such an idea. and he says one that learns kabalah without knowing Shas and Poskim [Medieval halacha authorities]--it kills him spiritually.[That statement of the Ari is not well known because it does not appear in the introduction to the Eitz Haim but rather in the three books of the Ari on the very end of Deuteronomy.]

I was barely able to get thorough any of this in my first few years in Mir Yeshiva and Shar Yashuv. Since then I have made little progress. I was only due to the grace of God that he sent to me an amazing learning partner, David Bronson, with whom I did a drop more of learning and then wrote my two books of Bava Metzia and Shas. But I am sad that I do not seem to be able to make any more progress.

My suggestion is to learn Torah and to combine Torah with trust in God

I think the world is in great danger.  Some of the issues are known to people because of the threats of war.
But I think the lack of a consensus about what human beings are about and ought to be about is also at the root of these problems.

My suggestion is to learn Torah and  to combine Torah with trust in God.

But trust in God does not mean that you assume things will work out the way you want.
As far as that goes I think along the lines of God, Job, and Schopenhauer. I want to seperate the problem of Theodicy from the subject of trust. The idea of trust in this context is what Joseph Yozel Horvitz said in his book the Madragat HaAdam. "One does not need any cause. Rather what is decreed on a person will come without any cause at all." [What is decreed will happen. If you want something that you think has not been decreed then you could do something like learn Torah or so something you think will affect the heavenly court. But working for it physically is unlikely to affect the decisions of the heavenly court.]
 The Gra said that one that learns Torah from a person that is learning for money, that is damaging to him, and he will lose all the Torah he learns, and also all the Torah he has already learned.

One thing Schopenhauer was right about that Freud picked up, the centrality of sex.

One thing Schopenhauer was right about that Freud picked up, the centrality of sex.
So I wanted to relate a story of  that relates to this. There was a girl (the daughter of a good king) that some evil king desired. And with the amount of resources at the bidding of a king he was able to convince her to be his wife.
Then he had a dream that she would kill him. He did not know what to do. To keep her at his side was too dangerous. To send her away was even more dangerous. To kill her he did not want to do after all the effort he had spent on getting her. In the meantime the love between them got cold. And she too began to hate him. She ran away. He sent people to search for her and she was found by a palace of water. Everything there was made of water, the roof and furniture, etc. She could not go in because clearly anyone going into this palace would drown. The king came with his army to capture her. When she saw this she decided to risk going into the palace even the risk of drowning. When the king saw this at that point he was so frustrated he said they should shoot her rather than let her escape. And he and his army ran after her, and they were all drowned.
She had been hit by ten arrows smeared with poison. But she managed to get into the inner part of the palace and there she laid, sick and wounded.
And who can heal her? Only one who can get into the palace, and take out the arrows and sing the right songs that bring healing.

And that is the reason after one has done something wrong sexually he or she should go to  a natural body of water and say these ten psalms from Biblical book of Psalms 16, 32,41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150. These psalms contain the ten songs that can heal the daughter of the good king.

The idea here is that everything people do has significance. That is to say materialism is wrong. There are aspects of the world that are not material. Plato called them universals. An example is the number two. This is not something you can bump into as you walk down the street. Nevertheless  it exists. Yellow is another example of a universal. We know yellow exists, because yellow is a color. The truth that yellow is a color depends on yellow existing. Therefore yellow exists. Morality is also a universal like yellow. Even though it is not material. And sexuality is the center of all human relationships. If anything humans do has a moral sub-layer to it it most certainly is sex.

1) I wanted to bring the argument between Rashi and Tosphot about "learning Torah lishma."
(Let me just clarify. "Learning Torah lishma" means not for an side purpose. It is learning Torah for its own sake. It is opposed to learning Torah either for money or honor.)

The issue that comes up between Rashi and Tosphot is the statement, "Forever one should do a mitzvah even not for its own sake, because from that one will come to do it for its own sake." That is opposed to the other statement, "When one learns Torah not for its own sake, it is better he should have been aborted. "
Rashi makes a difference between learning for honor and learning to argue.

Tosphot (and clearly the Rambam and the son of the Rambam in his Musar book) reject this distinction.
But I wanted to say that just because someone is accepting charity to learn Torah does not mean they are learning for money.
They might very well love the Torah, and not be able to find any way of learning it without that context.

Tosphot in Brachot accepts the distinction of Rashi, and then rejects it later in Pesachim. Tosphot hold that leaning Torah for honor, money or to argue is all the same. And one who learns Torah in such a fashion it is better they had been aborted. The Gra hold with this second answer of Tosphot. He holds that when it says, "It is better to learn not lishmah, because then one will come to lishma" it means  not everything in  set of "not lishma." Rather it means, one who learns not lishma--that is he lacks the lishma. So the case is he is learning "stam," with no intention.
That is to the Gra with no intention at all  is OK, but if it is for money it is better he had not been created.




It makes sense to put the Rambam here together with the Gra because then what the Rambam says  in Pirkei Avot chapter 4 Mishna 5  will go together well with this. [Not that the Rambam brings this for a proof, but rather it seems to parallel his opinion there.] [See the book of musar written by the son of the Rambam where he actually says exactly like Tosphot in Pesachim]

I sometimes see things in Hegel that impress me and sometimes not.

  I sometimes see things in Hegel that impress me and sometimes not. One of the things that I noticed recently was his triadic system. Normally I would just dismiss this as mere speculation. Then it occurred to me that he assumes this triadic system as being a part of the metaphysical nature of the world. And that is what we see in triangulated categories.

  You get one triangle of categories--the normal result of diagram chasing- and then you bring it to the next level up. It is a system remarkably like Hegel.


  You have to understand Hegel, Schopenhauer in relation to Kant as people understand Aristotle in the context of Plato.


  Schopenhauer also had an insight that becomes clear in the light of physics.
In the world as will and representation he considered the will as the cause of everything--the thing in itself. this is inaccessible to us. but the world is the representation of this will, the dinge an sich. we do find the world as a hologram. I am sure Plato would be pleased .
[The holographic  aspect of the world is what Plato meant by the story of the cave.
See String Theory--in which a black hole and the universe is a hologram.
The idea comes from the idea that information is not lost. Information is turning out to be the most fundamental unit of Physics. And where is that information? It is in the Divine mind [see Plotinus]. The universe is expanding in a way that indicates it is being fed space, and that the event horizon of the universe beyond is is not possible to observe. And that that horizon itself is a holographic projection of what lies beyond it.]


[I don't mean this literally. The string theory hologram is horizontal. Plato's is vertical]

talking with God--as opposed to praying to God.


Serving God is to pack a lunch and get oneself hiking gear and go off into the wildness for an entire day and talk with God the whole day.

 And this has nothing to do with meditation.

The question on this comes from Tana Deve Eliyahu vol. I chapter 9.  Hezekiah the king prayed to God that his capital city Jerusalem should be saved from Sennacherib.The prophet got a message from God. and went to the king. he said it is the custom of the world that when one talks to someone greater than himself that he is filled with fear and you talk with God like he was your friend?





דביקות and devekut is the purpose of the mitzvot. [See Deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 20] Even though it is also counted as one of the number of mitzvahs, but also it is explicit in the Torah that it is the purpose of the mitzvot. Same as the Rambam did not count living in Israel as a mitzvah because it is the teleological purpose of the mitzvot. And the mitzvah of attachment is different from the actual emotion of being attached to God. The mitzvah is to be attached to a Torah scholar. To patronize his store, and to marry to him your daughter. etc. That is not the same thing as when the Torah says to do the mitzvahs in order to be attached to God.
Talking with God as you go about your daily business is better after all than not talking with him. Talking with him is being attached with Him, and not talking with him is not being attached with Him. Deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 20  says do the mitzvahs in order to get to Deveikut (Attachment with God).

There was another time I was having a problem understanding some drasha (explanation) of the Sages about a verse about returning lost objects. [I know a lot of people have questions understanding how the Sages derive things from verses.] This was an usually difficult problem because it seemed to me very much not like the verse in question. And he showed to me how the verse in question was impossible to understand simply. It was about a lost object that some had been hired to watch (in Exodus 22). And the verse then goes on to say כי הוא זה, "A person loses an object like this." Where is the this if the object was lost? After that I began to notice things myself of why or how the Sages make a drasha (explanation). The book that deals with this is the Torah Temima by the son of the Aruch Hashulchan. But the things that I noticed were in cases where the verse changes the way it treat a noun as male or feminine.  Or leaves out a necessary "את" "Et." Without the sages saying so they will see in these cases a reason to look at why the verse changes the gender of something.

The redemption of the wise son

Self- Reliance is a value to that at first glance might seem different than trust in God.
But it is not. Trust in God  means you do your obligations and trust in God that as long as you are doing your part, he will do his part.
And there is an element of doing nothing for ones own needs, but simply sitting and learning, and God will take care of the rest.

But I want to claim that this approach is predicated on the idea that the highest ideal one should strive for is to be learning Torah all the time. A very Gra type of idea. And I don't disagree with it. But I do say  that learning self reliance and survival skills is one of the things that is in the category of a mitzvah that can't be done by others. חמירא סכנתא מאיסורא. One must be more strict about things that could potentially cause harm more that things that are forbidden. [Gemara Chulin]. (תיקון הגוף קודם תיקון נמפש) And trusting in the "system" must definitely be the greatest source of harm I can imagine. Don't let trusting in the system you live in  be confused with trusting in God.


  Thus, to make a long story short. Prepare a survival kit. Get off grid. Send your kids to the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts to learn outdoor skills, beside their regular Torah education. And as the Sages said--teach them  a hard core skill that people will pay cold, hard cash for.
Teach your boys to be men. And what is a man? Is it someone who know a lot of Talmud? No. Learning Torah is very important. But it does not define what a man is. A man is someone you want to have next to you while you are in a WWI trench or in the heat of battle. Someone you can rely on. Some whose honesty and integrity and competence is beyond question. Not someone simply using the group for their own benefit.
And these qualities depend on trust in God. For without trust in God people lie and cheat and are not trustworthy because they think by that they can get ahead or gain advantage. When you trust in God you are not afraid to keep your word.



What trust in God is. It  means doing your job --doing what the Torah requires of you and then trusting that God will make things work in the way he knows is right.

When Hezekiah (חזקיה) the King prayed to God when Sennacherib came to destroy Jerusalem. He said, "King David could trust in you with sword in hand. Solomon could trust in you in prayer. But I can do any off that. I have to trust in you will I go to sleep."
That is King David could do effort but that did not reduce his trust in God. Hezekiah  was saying that if he himself would do any effort that could possibly take his focus of the main idea that everything depends on Gods will. So he did no effort. Even the effort of praying he was afraid could cause him to think his salvation came from his prayers. So he went to sleep and in the middle of the night God destroyed the entire army of Sennacherib.

Appendix:
(1) Self reliance was probably the most important value to my father. Or at least it was the one value that he strove to put into us kids--his boys. But obviously there were other unspoken values in our family like family values, and above all "being a mensch"--(that means in all situations acting like a decent moral human being).
(2) Now being off grid does not mean not to use a computer. There is lots of important work that can be done only on computers. At least for me that is how things are. But what off grid means is have your own solar power source.
(3) Belief  in God is rational.
 Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED. (You could prove the second step that everything has a cause by noting that nothing can come from nothing.) (I mean to say you you take the level of the second step up from an empirical observation to an a priori fact.)
(4)There is a story from Nachman from Uman that taught me something about trust in God, the story about the simple son and the smart son. I could not relate much to the simple son because I just do not share many traits with him. But the smart one really rang a bell in me. In the story he was always asking, "Maybe there is someplace better for me than here."

The story in short: A father had two sons. One smart and one simple. when they were in their teens the father told the that they should go and find some kind of work because he could not support them both any more. The smart one thought what is the main thing? To get married and have children--but there is time for that. Fist I have to see the world. He got a wagon going to Warsaw. He had no money but he offered to work on the way for the owners. He got there and though they were good employers he decided t to drop them and look for better paying work and more honorable. Maybe there are better employers than them. Maybe there is a better place than here. That was his constant refrain. See the end of the story.  But in short the idea of Nachman was that this is a wrong attitude. And it comes from being too smart for ones own good. One should trust that the situation one is in is for some reason unknown to himself, and accept it.

Just to bring the point a little closer to home let me mention the smart son keep on piling up academic qualifications and also learned several professions. then  decided it was time to start making a family and started to travel back home.
the simple son stayed in his home village and learned to make shoes and took a wife and stayed put. and since he was simple or rather dumb he knew the business only partially. So he  made very little money. But his custom was to be happy always. he would get home on Friday night and ask for the Sabbath meal. his wife would cut off a piece of black bread for him. He would ask for the fish. his wife would cut off another piece of black bread. and he would ask for the soup and she would cut off another piece of black bread. and he would go wild over the supreme taste of the bread as if it contained all the wonderful flavors in the world. In the meantime the smart son got back to town and there was no place for him to stay so he stayed with his old friend the simple son. and he was never happy. and he always was complaining about his situation.
One day the czar was going over the records and saw in one of his towns there a census listing someone simply as the smart one and another as the simple one. And he sent for them out of curiosity. The simple one came and the king discovered than he really was not dumb but he was simple by choice and had made an early decision in life not to think about things [that is not to double think anything] but to accept the world the way it is and to depend on God. The smart son decided not to go to the czar because he thought it was a trick. He thought, why should the czar send for just a nobody?" At some point he convinced himself that there really was no czar at all and the county was just ruled by a senate. And he used to go around with a friend trying to convince people that there was no czar. [Rachmana Litzlan, Heaven save us!]
He fell lower and lower because of his smartness and the simple one rose higher and higher because of his simplicity.
The simple one became the prime minister because the czar was so impressed with his simplicity. and the smart son go involved in law suits.His case eventually came before the prime minister--the simple son. And right about that time a Jewish saint [tzadik, a Baal Shem Tov kind of person] came to town. The simple son went to him for a blessing and the wise son just ridiculed the Baal Shem Tov.] This kind of personality shows up sometimes among the Jewish people. No one really knows what makes them tick. But they seem to have amazingly deep insights into the world and miracles pop up around them like jelly beans.



The smart son fell into hell. And the asked the tzadik to help him. And he eventually was redeemed.
So this story could be called the redemption of the wise son.
(5) Go into a forest and talk all day to God while being alone. It is not a public event.

The Lithuanian world and trust in God

I wanted to discuss in a practical way the idea of trust in God. It is not like I have any great revelations about it but I wanted to go a bit more into detail than I did the other times I talked about Navardok.

One very important introduction to the subject involves an argument between the Duties of the Heart Chovot Levavot and the Gra about effort. The main idea of the Chovot Levavot is to trust with doing effort. The Gra says no effort.
  But no effort still means to be doing your obligations between yourself and God and between yourself and Man. So no effort still means you are doing something. But not to get anywhere in life. But rather to be doing your obligations.
And for people that might not be aware of it, one obligations according to the Torah are well rounded. They are more than rituals. Obligations of the Torah involve a lot of things that most people would considered just good character. For example not to hurt people in money we know is from the Torah. But also not to hurt them in words is also from the Torah. [See Sefer HaChinuch for all the obligations of the Torah.]
Trust with no effort was the way of Navardok. It was based on the Gra, the Ramban [quoted by Israel Salanter but no one has ever been able to find.] Trust in God is not exclusively a Jewish doctrine. And you would expect that anyway just by the fact that it is an a priori value. So it has to apply across the board.

Mainly trust in God means to do what you know in your heart is right and trust that God will not let you down if you do. It means taking your moral obligations seriously. And this is not necessarily a private or individual matter.

If possible get the two books that deal with it  in detail ---Chovot Levavot [Duties of the Heart by Bachyee Ben Pekuda], and Madragat HaAdam by Joseph Horwitz

Tractate Sanhedrin 62a

There are 42 sins for which one is required to bring a goat or a sheep to the temple in Jerusalem. [Leviticus 4] [The sexual relationships in Leviticus 22, (e.g. sleeping with ones sister, aunt, a male, an animal, etc.) work on Shabat, and a few more.] [You don't get to have a barbecue as you do if you bring regular sacrifices like peace offerings.] The sin offering can only be eaten by priests. There is a 43rd sin that one brings a sin offering for--that is idolatry. But its sin offering is only a she goat. [See this in the middle of the Book of Numbers.]
That is only if one does idolatry by accident. Now I have to say that there are five things one can't do for an idol. The regular four services [offering a sacrifice, burning a sacrifice, pouring wine, bowing,] and the service that is specified for that idol.
So what if one does several services by accident? Does he bring one sin offering or more?
R. Zakai said he brings one sacrifice. R. Yochanan said to bring one for each service.
R. Aba wanted to say this argument is really an argument among the people of the Mishna.
R Josi said why is fire specified on Shabat? To tell us it is only  a prohibition that is all. It is out of the category of the other 39 types of forbidden work. [R. Natan says fire comes to divide.] R. Aba is thinking at this point one doing all the 39 types of work is obligated only one sin offering (goat or sheep).
Rav Joseph said R. Josi might also divide the types of work from the verse when a soul sins נפש כי תחטא [Leviticus 4]   בשגגה מכל מצוות ה' אשר לא תעשינה ועשה אחת מהנה
"When a soul sins in one of the commandments of God which should not be done and he does one of them."
This is all introduction. to a small point. The actual way this verse is understood is אחת שהיא הנה והנה שהיא אחת. That is the Gemara is thinking about the last three words of this verse there is something extra that is not necessary. So what is it coming to tell us?
My comment here is that there is no way the verse could have said ועשה הנה. And does them. That makes no sense in Hebrew. So while I can agree to the opposite side of things that it could have written ועשה אחת instead of ועשה מאחת. That is fine.And that would be to tell sometimes one is obligated for one forgetting many offerings--like if he forgets that it is the Sabbath day and does many works.
But you can't write ועשה הנה. If you write anything it has to be אחת מהנה. "and does one of them." So what I am suggesting is that the Gemara means you could have left out the whole word!מהנה
And the verse would have read "and does one." And then by the fact that the extra word them is written now we know there is a time one forgets each individual type of work and does many and then he has to bring  a sin offering for each type of work.

But this is not a new idea. I wrote this down here a few day ago--in short hand fashion.
After all this I wanted to think about this whole Gemara from a broader perspective. Just think about it. At first it starts off trying to make an argument between two Talmudic sages into an argument between two sages of the Mishna. That is just plain classical Gemara thinking. But then things start happening I don't understand. It gets to a point where the two sages of the Mishna agree about division of work on Shabat.
So should that all by itself not be a proof for Rabbi Yochanan? I mean is that not what you would expect?Why does the Gemara not jump at the first opportunity it gets to help out Rabbi Yochanan? It instead runs to bowing [Deuteronomy 17].
I want to suggest that it is interested in helped Rabbi Yochanan and that that accounts for the fact that after it takes care of the argument between Abyee and Rava about serving idols from fear of love that it jumps back to division of work to suggest from this same verse it used for Sabbath and tries to use it for idolatry.
And that is my idea for today.This not what you would call ''lumdut.'' [in depth learning]. In a way it is completely and utterly trivial. Still it is just something that I am trying to understand in this Gemara.


Appendix
It is Rabbi Josi who learns from the verse. and later R Yonatan explains how. He said it is from אחת מאחת הנה מהנה אחת שהיא הנה והנה שהיא אחת/
It seems he is learning thus--it could have said one but instead said from one. so we learn even if one does not do a complete work like "shem" from "shimon." And it could have said them, but instead said from them to tell us not just from the 39 types of work but also the generations--subcategories of work.
And then from the fact that both words could have been skipped entirely we learn "one that is many" he knows it is shabat but forget many kinds of work, he is obligated many sacrifices. And many that are one--if he forgets it is shabat but knows all the types of work then he is obligated only one sacrifice.

How to learn Physics and Mathematics.

1) How to learn Physics and Mathematics. My suggestion is to have one session right when you wake up in the morning. 20 minutes minimum, but it should be an hour. It should be in the way that the Talmud  Shabat 63a says-- always one should  גורס say the words  and then review even though he forgets and even though he does nit know what he is saying." Don't review. But the next day you can review if you want. And in fact if you want to review the same material a lot of days in a row (e.g. forty days in a row), then that session will count as an in-depth session.
In any case, you need one in-depth session and one fast session. That fast one is also like the first, except you take a text of math or physics, and just say it from the beginning until the end, and you do that again until you have finished it four times.
The idea is that when you say the words a kind of outer light אור מקיף is formed around you. But you don't understand because the outer light has not come into you yet. So you have to say the whole textbook at least four times for the light to come in.




2)This should be learned with books of ethics and fear of God - before and after. Because the entire purpose of this is to bring one to see the wisdom of God as revealed in his creation. But for that to work, ones vector has to be towards God. And words don't have a lasting effect without fear of God.

 3) This is really the exact same thing as Talmud learning. Except for the Talmud if possible you need to get yourself a learning partner. But if that is impossible, then you do the same as I wrote here. You take one page of Talmud with the Tosphot and Maharsha and do the whole page--just saying the words. And the next day you go back and do it again for about forty days. Or until things start becoming clear. [That is the in depth session. The fast one is the same except the  next day you go to the next page. I mean here what is called an half page.עמוד. A whole  two sides is a lot to do with Tosphot. So I am asking only for one side of a page.] [Don't go to any synagogue to do this. Do it at home.]

4) In the morning I used to have a coffee or tea until I heard of the idea of Bava Sali (Israel Abuchatzaira) to have coffee and tea in the same cup.- [I mean to say the first twenty minutes after you wake up are critical. You can take a few minutes to get the coffee and tea and learn Musar/ (books of ethics and fear of God). But this hard core Mathematics learning has to be the first thing. Before breakfast, before school, before davening (prayers). But obviously you say the "Shema Israel" right when you wake up.]

5) The most important thing to remember, a little bit is also good. Even if you do not learn a lot of you are not great at it doing a little Physics is also good.

 And not to be stubborn about it. Don't worry if you don't understand at first because eventually you will understand.

Especially I hold from the forty days in a row thing. I would sometime stake one chapter or a few chapters and read them word for word forty day in a row and often not understand anything until the day day when it would instantly all become clear.

That is if you do this you will certainly know a lot more Physics than you do by giving up on it, or learning second hand trivial stuff.


6) And as for the desirability of this I defer to Maimonides in his Mishna Torah and More Nevuchim and my parents.
Though some people disagree with the Rambam in this, I feel they can't override him. In minor things or individual laws  I do admit one should take the Rambam in the context of all the Rishonim [medieval authorities]. But an area that was a major thesis of his, I feel no one can override him. It is a heavily weighted variable for him.
I did not say anything about solving  problems because I am addressing the need for general knowledge. As for individual problems, that is a whole other ball game.
Even for people that learn Torah all day,  Physics and Mathematics are essential. See the introduction to the translation of Euclid by Baruch from Shkolov-the disciple of the Gra (Elijah from Vilnius). And the Rambam הלכות תלמוד תורה פרק א הלכה י''ב

7) I wanted to add that you don't have the right to claim you don't understand a physics or math textbook until you have read it--word by word, cover to cover, four times.

 8) The way to understand this is to see that there are hidden levels of the human soul. And "makifim." מקיפים "surrounding light". . But I would rather take an idea from the Ari and  The idea is that when you say over the textbook--even if you don't understand it, you have one makif מקיף. a surrounding light that has gotten close to you by your saying the words. When you say the whole text again the outer light gets close  to you. And when you do this in an environment where there are others also engaged in this the effect is stronger.

American judges are a serious problem. Many problems that people have in their individual lives to corrupt judges. I don't intend to go in detail into this, but let me say that I have seen this a lot. My impression is that Constitutional Law is mostly involved in Supreme Court decisions. As if that has anything to do with the Constitution. You don't encounter many judges that have actual read the Federalist Papers that explain what the Constitution is all about. This might seem like something you can ignore if you are not actually in court. corrupt judges destroy the entire society. See the last of the thirteen stories.

The basic idea of that Torah lesson is about faith in God and that when people  have a lack of faith, they fall into problems that nothing can cure not medicine, or merit of ones parents, or even calling to God in prayer. It is a long lesson but the basic idea is that if people try to get back to faith it is the corrupt judges of a a society that make it impossible.  And I definitely saw this in NY.



Now to some it is easy to critique any religious leader because you always know you have secular society to fall back on.
But what would you do if secular society itself would break apart?

This problem is similar to utilitarians that can rely on the fact that they live an a Judaic Christian society to assume everyone has a common sense idea of morality that they can safely attribute to common sense.
[The assumption of higher and lower pleasures is fundamental to Mill. And he uses this distinction to come out with a Society that looks suspiciously like one based on Torah values. ]

This is of course obviously wrong. We only think it is common sense because we grew  up in a society founded on Judaic Christian values. A society based on utilitarianism without Torah would be a society of pigs--even in theory it has to come out that way--to the LCD lowest common denominator..

So we need Torah and we need teachers of Torah.. And this applies even to the larger American society as much as to the Jewish society.

But authentic teachers of Torah? They are hard to find because in the first place anyone with ordination already has by definition a little bit of fraud mixed up with them. Maybe some more than others. But in any case true ordination died out 2000 years ago. The last people to have it were rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Yehuda ben Levi, early amoraim. Anyone that allows themselves to be called  rabbi after that is by definition a fraud.
So this is a little different from the Catholic church or Zen Buddhism where you need ordination fir anything you do or say to have validity.
[Just as one cannot become a Catholic priest without a bishop putting hands on a head, one cannot become a Zen teacher without having been authorized by a Zen teacher. And almost always that authorization is “vertical,” teacher to student.
If someone wants to be a Zen teacher, they must be made one. And that ceremony is public or has a major public aspect to it. And for the most part there are written documents involved. And on those rare occasions if there aren’t documents, there are witnesses.
If you ask someone who claims to be a Zen teacher who authorized them and they throw you out, you may safely assume that person has made it up. If that person says the question proves you’re not enlightened, then this suggests that person has made their credentials up. If they say it is none of your business, they are probably a fraud.]

In Torah things are just the opposite. The word Rabbi has a very very specified definition according to absolute objective standards. And the Talmud itself says those standards no longer exist for anyone. So according to the strict definition of Halacha anyone called a rabbi is a fraud.
The Sefardim never had this problem until recently. Their teachers were always "the sage" the Chacham חכם
And for a long time Ashkenazim never had such a problem either.. Who ever was the most learned was the one who gave the class in Mishna between Mincha [afternoon prayer] and Maariv [evening prayer].

Russia is a bear. And they just went into their normal twenty year period of hibernation. Now they are waking up and they are hungry, and looking for something to eat.

NATO does not understand Russia. The reason is that Russia does not play by the rules. They have plausible deniability. They can send in soldiers into anywhere they want and say the soldiers were on vacation. They can show their military might all over the world and say they are simply doing training exercises.
The can't understand Russian because Russia has a whole different set of rules. In the West you want to destroy a scientist you simply print an article in a newspaper that accuse him of racism or hating women. And he loses his job and wife and children and things are back to normal. Russia has simply been sitting back an watching the West consume itself in a piranhic frenzy about  blacks, women, gays, etc. Russia does not care about any of these things. You can criticize them all day long in Russia and no one will blink an eyelash.
Russia is a bear. And they just went into their normal twenty year period of hibernation. Now they are waking up and they are hungry, and looking for something to eat.

I usually don't use this space for politics. And I might just delete this whole essay. But for now that I am on a role let me just say I can see the position of Russia concerning eastern Ukraine. The Russian point of view is simple. People in the East of the Ukraine  want to be Russians, so let them be Russians. They also think they the Russians civilized the Ukraine, and without them the Ukraine would be everything they say they are. And they are 100% right. Two very valid points.
What I was thinking is anyone in the East of the Ukraine that wants to be Russian, perhaps they should be given a certain sizable sum of money to go live in Russia? It is not the best idea but it is certainly better than war.

Trust in God

The opinion of God in the book of Job that it was blasphemy to accuse God of being just. Then what exactly is the idea of trust?

Job was saying that he was guiltless. And his friends were saying that God never punishes anyone unless they are guilty. And God in the end came and said that his friends were wrong. Though you could explain it differently but we know from the narrator's perspective that the simple explanation is correct. So then what does it mean to trust in God?

Answer: Trust in God is an independent variable than whether one is doing good or not.
Joseph Horvitz [The author of the מדרגת האדם] (student of  Israel Salanter ) brings the statement of the Sages on the verse, "One who trust in God kindness will surround him." (Psalms 16) They say: "Even a wicked person that trusts in God, kindness will surround him."
  The way this is understood is one should be doing God's will.  And using his or her reason to understand what God's will is. But even if one fails and misunderstands Gods will, then still trust alone will save him.
In theory it applies even to people that knew they were transgressing God's will. Because trust is an independent variable.
  The Geon from Vilnius (Elijah) also said in a similar vein one who trust in God even though  transgresses major sins, is better than one who keep all the Torah and mitzvot. [In the book אבן שלמה]

   I discovered this book called the Level of Man (Madgragat HaAdam מדרגת האדם). [This is known today by the name Navardok]
And this book has trust as  central theme. And what makes it all the more interesting is the fact that the author did practice what he preached. But also after I left the Mir to go to Israel there was something about this approach that stuck with me. Maybe even until this very day.
So the fact that there was a time I actively tried to walk in that path and for a time it worked and for a time it seems to have puttered out makes wish I could figure out the proper approach.
People of course know the argument between the Chovot Levavaot [Duties of the Heart] and the Gra about effort--השתדלות.
The former says one should do effort, and the later says not.
The proper approach is to do what God asks of you. [But even this how do yo know? It was assumed you use your faculty of reason to try to understand as best as you can God's will for you, and then if you do that then it is understood that everything else would be taken care of from Heaven.] [Or to be as explicit as possible: learn Torah and everything will work out.]

But to get back to my story, there was a time that I decided --also based on my understanding of Torah that I ought to work for a living and stop the trusting in God approach. That not only did not work, but it seemed to me that I was being shown a lesson from heaven of what happens to a person when he trusts in his own efforts and abandons trust in God.--Everything not just falls apart, but it falls apart with a vengeance.
Of course this probably was because of the vector involved, and probably has little to do with whether the actual law (Halacha) was like I was thinking. If ones vector is to God and then he turns away, that is probably worse than if the vector was never pointing in that direction in the first place.
[Trust is not just a principle to do what is right and assume God will help you. It is also a key decision making tool. It helps to decide what to do.]

How this applies in the larger world I am not sure. I am only trying to give people an idea of how it applies in my world in my realm of decisions that I have to make. People in different situation might find this principle applies in different ways according to their present problems.
For the general public that are interested in this  recommend the book Madragat Hadam which give the best presentation I have seen on this subject.