The fundamental distinction between the polytheistic worldview and the monotheistic worldview of Torah

So, let's begin: pagan religion. The fundamental idea of pagan religion.

That God is subject to the will of the tzadik.

In pagan religion there's  a fluid boundary between the divine, the human, and the natural worlds. They blur into one another because they all emerge ultimately from the same primordial world stuff. 

Discerning the will of the God is really of little use, because even his will can be thwarted or overthrown by a tzadik.

The pagan cult, is a system of rites.  So the pagan cult, is a system of rites that involves a manipulation of substances — again, tefilin, candles, and so on — that are believed to have some kind of inherent power, There's always an element of magic in the pagan cult. It's seeking through these rituals and manipulations of certain substances to, again, let loose certain powers, set into motion certain forces, that will coerce  God to be propitiated, for example, or calmed or to act favorably or to vindicate the devotees, and so on.

The fundamental idea of Torah, which permeates the entire Torah in his view, is a radically new idea of a God who is himself the source of all being — not subject to a tzadik . 

He doesn't have in the Bible a female consort, a Shechina . 

 Nature isn't God himself. He's not identified with it. He's wholly other. He isn't kin to humans in any way either. So there is no blurring, no soft boundary between humans and the divine. 

 Magic in the Torah is represented as useless. It's pointless. There's no metadivine realm to tap into. Power doesn't inhere in any stuff in the natural world. So the world is sort of de-divinized. 

Power, or Divinity  isn't understood as a material thing or something that inheres in material substances. God can't be manipulated or coerced by tefilin or words or rituals. They have no power and cannot be used in that way, and so magic is sin. Magic is sin or rebellion against God because it's predicated on a whole mistaken notion of God having limited power. 

There are magical conceptions throughout the Torah . But because God willed them . 

 There's no ritual or incantation,  or material substance that can coerce a revelation from God. So, we will see things that look like magic and divination and oracles and dreams and prophecy in the pagan world and in ancient Israel. But  the similarity is a similarity in form only. And it's a superficial, formal, external similarity. Each of these phenomena he says is transformed by the basic Israelite idea of one supreme transcendent God whose will is absolute and all of these things relate to the direct word and will of God. They aren't recourse to a separate secret lore or body of knowledge or interpretive craft that calls upon forces or powers that transcend God or are independent of God.

Now since God is himself the transcendent source of all being and since he is good, in a monotheistic system there are no evil agents that constitute a realm that opposes God as an equal rival. No divine evil agents. Again, in the pagan worldview the primordial womb spawns all sorts of beings, all kinds of divinities, good and evil that are in equal strength. They're sort of locked in this cosmic struggle. But in the Torah worldview, if God is the source of all being, then they're can't be a realm of supernatural beings that do battle with him. There's no room for a divine antagonist of the one supreme God, which is leading us down here to this point: that sin and evil are demythologized in the Torah. 

There's nothing inherently supernatural about sin. It's not a force or a power built into the universe. In Torah evil is transferred from the metaphysical realm (built into the physical structure of the universe) to the moral realm. I've put it up here for you. Evil is a moral and not a metaphysical reality. It doesn't have a concrete independent existence. And that means that human beings and only human beings are the potential source of evil in the world. Responsibility for evil lies in the hands of human beings. In the Torah, no one will ever say the devil made me do it. There is no devil in the Hebrew Bible. 

 Evil is a moral and not a metaphysical reality 

Even tzadikim are not gods.

In the Torah,  Nature  is not divine. It's demythologized, de-divinized. the created world is not divine, it is not the physical manifestation the Creator. The line of demarcation therefore between the Divine and the natural and human worlds is clear. In Genesis 1, the view of God is that there is one supreme God, who is creator and sovereign of the world, who simply exists, who is  incorporeal, and for whom the realm of nature is separate and subservient. He has no life story, no mythology, and his will is absolute.

In Torah, humans are created in the image of God, but humans are not, in fact, gods. They are still creatures in the sense of created things and they are dependent on a higher power. Even tzadikim are not gods.

This God transcends nature.   He's not identifiable as a force of nature or identified with a force of nature. Nature certainly becomes the stage of God's expression of his will. He expresses his will and purpose through forces of nature. But nature isn't God himself. He's not identified [with it]. He's wholly "other". He is totally different. He has no Divine substance. He isn't kin to humans in any way either. So there is no blurring, no soft boundary between humans and the divine. 


I write this because I have seen that this issue requires clarification. Though all the above points are clear in the Torah itself, you can see them explained by Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed and in Emunot VeDeot of Saadia Geon.

Is one allowed to learn Torah in order to get ordination and a paid profession?

This is believe it or not not obvious. You can read statements from the sages of the Talmud about not learning for the sake that people should give one honor. But to get an explicit statement is hard.
[In those days there was no profession of having ordination and getting money through Torah. Rather if one was recognized as being learned then it was a mitzvah to patronize his store.]
 We find programs oriented towards getting semicha [ordination].
 However I want to argue here that in fact it is forbidden to learn Torah for the sake of eith making money by doing so (kollel) or becoming qualified to gain ordination in order to make money. . This is in spite of the fact that my opinion is against what is considered to be common knowledge
I base my idea on a small book of sayings of the Gra called "Even Shelema" .

In chapter 5 paragraph 16 we find him quoting the Gra that when the evil inclination tries to seduce one to learn Torah for the sake of some physical benefit or  in order to become a rabbi it is better to learn books of Musar.

The actual statement of the Gra supports this. It come from Proverbs chapter 21 verses 5 and 6.
And the whole statement certainly supports  Rav Meltzan.

In money issues is where the whole religious thing goes wrong because people change what the Torah says and lie about it in order to keep the money rolling in.

If you are part of such a system then vote with your feet and be willing to be an outcast rather than betray the Torah.

And Musar whether from the Middle Ages or more recent tends to present a straightforward idea of what it means to keep Torah.

This to some degree puts me into confusion since what some people think is keeping Torah is in fact a lot of rituals that have no source in the Talmud. But that is not the only issue.

There is also my observation that character and human decency do not always correspond with exactitude in mitzvot.


This is not any kind of logical objection but still it is enough for me to wonder then what is the right path? For I assume menschlikeit (human decency) ought to be a good indication of a person's place in the next world. I don't expect bad people to be in Gan Eden no matter how much they are strict in rituals.
This is to justify why I feel it is necessary to understand how to keep the Torah and I don't think that it is very simple.
This gives my justification for my at least raising a question about how to go about keeping Torah.

As ad hoc as this sounds try to take a balanced approach based on how I received the Torah from my parents. But I also look at people that according to my judgement reached some kind of human perfection and try to find one or two traits in them that I think are worthy of emulation.


What would be the main things? The Written and Oral Torah, and human decency.  Human decency here means a composite of several things: speak the truth at all cost, never steal lie,  cheat,  and to be self sufficient. Don't accept handouts.

But the Torah is  really a balanced approach to life. It was not anywhere near what you would call frumkeit. The best approximation would be conservative Judaism.

Appendix:
In my opinion people ought to go to public school, and learn Torah when they come home. There should be at home the whole set of the Oral and Written Torah. That is the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud, Tosephta, Sifri and Sifra. And if people don't understand Hebrew, then also the Soncino Talmud in English. And they should go through the entire Oral Law from start to finish.

I am not advocating here bitul Torah. As much as a person can learn Torah he should, but he also needs to learn an honest profession. This is a requirement of the Torah itself. And making use of the Torah as a profession is something the Torah specifically forbids.

My learning partner is into the Paleolithic diet. And I thought to give people an idea of what his thoughts are on the diet issue.

To some degree he started out along the lines of Maimonides in the Mishna Torah, and he developed his ideas along those lines.

By his interest in health issues he found that ''bullet proof coffee'' site that I have the link to on my blog. and the Mercola health site.
It was on his suggestion about raw vegetables that I started eating beets. And that got my weight way down. In fact I could have kept on losing more and more lbs that way, but one day the mother of my girl friend said I was too skinny, and that simple comment took the wind out of my sails. But I still  jogged and ate black bread with beets.
I even got a mixer at his suggestion, but that turned out to be too impractical. But it does bring me to what I wanted to mention today. He uses his mixer for greens.  [lettuce, parsley,etc.] 

He is very unhappy with vegetable oil, and sugar. And believe it or not fruit also. He quoted to me the Maimonides statement that one should stay very far away from fruit. And only recently defend his idea by the fact that apples have twice as much fructose as glucose. And that we know is turned 30% into pure fat.

And fat itself he thinks is good. In fact he was recommending to me this idea of the bullet proof coffee site to have butter and coffee in the morning to get a burst of energy. I did not get all the details but look here if you want more information https://www.bulletproofexec.com/

He also mentioned recently about eggs--raw.  I mentioned to him that that was like the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he is a cop putting all kinds of stuff into his mixer in the morning--but who ends up saving the world! He commented to me that that is why  he looks like he does.

You might ask why is this essay on this site. I got the idea from the statement in the Talmud about one person asking another about health issues and the the question of "bitul Torah" [time that can be used for learning Torah but was spent on something else which is a  very grave sin called "bitul Torah."] came up. The answer of the Talmud was חיותא דברייתא it is the life of the creatures so it is definitely an important part of Torah

Introduction: If a person bows down to a statue that was once worshiped but he does not know this, and he knows that bowing to an idol is prohibited, is this nothing? Or is it idolatry by accident?

My learning partner asked a question in the Rambam. In chapter seven of laws of accidental sacrifices he says one who does not know a statue is an idol but he knows bowing down to an idol is forbidden and he bows down and sacrifices and offers incense and pours out wine in front of it is obligated only one sin offering.
In Sanhedrin 62b we find Abyee searching for some example of idolatry by accident.
The context is that he is having an argument with Rava if one serves an idol from love or fear but does not accept it as his god. Is he liable or not?
Abyee says "yes," and he starts to fish around for some example of idolatry by accident to say that that is a case of serving from love or fear. So he finds some statement in some place that says there is such a thing. Then he asks what is the case? Did he see a house of idols and bow down thinking it is a synagogue? Then his heart is towards heaven. Did he see a statute of a king and bow down? If  he accepted it as his god, then he is liable; and if not, it is nothing. So it must be from love or fear.
The question that comes from that Gemara on the Rambam is that it seems like exactly the case of the Rambam. He bows down not knowing it is an idol, and knowing that bowing to an idol is forbidden, and the Gemara says לא כלום הוא it is nothing.
My learning partner suggested that the Gemara is talking about a mistake in the facts of the case, And Abyee and Rava are arguing about the law. This sounds really funny at first, but if you think about it you  can see his point. Abyee is saying he bows down from fear of the idol but thinks it is permitted--that is the case of idolatry by accident that Abyee is searching for. So at that point I suggested looking at the Mishna LaMelech on the Rambam (Laws of Accidental Sacrifices, chapter two) where the Mishna LeMelech makes this distinction and goes into some detail about how it works.
I also asked someone to bring me the book of Eliezer Menachem Shach, the Aviezri on the Rambam which I hope will shed some light on this problem.

In the meantime I hope to do some thinking here to decide if my learning partner is right. At this point in time it looks to me that he is correct.

Appendix:
1) I left out a few details in the above essay.
One is that the Gemara does not actually say that the statute in the case of Abyee was worshiped. Rashi does say so. But it is forced by the logic of Abyee anyway. Even if Abyee would have talked about an אנדרטא statue that had not been worshiped he would have had to add an extra clause in the Gemara to get to the case where it had been worshiped.

2) The other very important detail that needs to be brought up is this idea of my learning partner. Let's think for a minute what could he mean?  My learning partner is suggesting that Abyee means two things. If one serves an idol from love thinking that that is allowed then he brings a sin offering. If on purpose then that is the death penalty. If he makes a mistake in material facts like if the statue is in fact an idol then we see right in the Talmud itself that Abyee says that is nothing. So it certainly looks to me that my learning partner is correct.
Now we find in tractate Shabat that there is an argument between Abyee and Rava about cutting a radish and it turns out that it was attached. Abyee says he is liable a sin offering. Rava says no.[Shabat 72b]. But in the case where he picked up a radish and it tuned out that it was attached then both agree he is not liable. So what do we have from this? This: if one picks up a radish on shabat thinking that it is allowed to do so then he brings a sin offering. If he did not know it was attached it is nothing. Exactly like idolatry.--except it is not exact. What is the difference between this and cutting the radish?

Some random ideas in Torah
1] Joseph and his bothers. Joseph was considered by his brothers to be in the category of a רודף one who is running after someone to kill them. [The law is that if you see someone running after another to kill them you are obligated to kill the chaser.] This is clear as the sages of the Talmud said in a Midrash that he was saying about them that they were calling the children of the girl friends  of Jacob "slaves" and they were eating a limb torn from a live animal. The second one is part of the seven laws of the children of Noah which if transgressed incur the death penalty.
Of course Joseph had seen them do just that, but as we find in the Talmud an animal created by means of Sefer Yetzirah does not require shechita and there is no law of אבר מן החי  for it.
The case of calling the children of the girl friends of Jacob ''slaves'' we find that one who calls someone a slave is suspected of being a slave himself. The idea is they thought Joseph wanted to enslave them. גונב נפשות.








2] Rabbi Akiva was being tortured to death. that does not mean water-boarding. it means they were tearing his skin off his flesh and tearing his heart out of his chest.  his crime was that he taught Torah publicly after the Bar Chochba incident. after that incident the Romans forbade teaching torah in public, doing the brit mila (circumcision), sanctifying the new moon, and living in Jerusalem for all Jews.
The Talmud discusses this incident and relates that Rabbi Akiva said to his disciples I have waited all my life for this moment. should I not embrace it when it comes?  And as the Romans reached his heart he said the Shema, "Hear o Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." and his soul left him on the word one.
This means that in general when one says the Shema and feels that his soul is about to leave him from great attachment with God he is supposed to stop his "devekut" in order to remain alive. But in the case of Rabbi Akiva he was under no obligation to limit his devekut because he was going to die in any case. So when he said the Shema he said it with such great attachment to God that his soul left his body on the word One--not because the Romans were torturing him.

3] What is the "peshat" (explanation) in the incident when Joseph made himself known to his brothers?
Joseph wanted to bring his brothers to do repentance on their evil deed and also wanted to make sure that their repentance was sincere.
Bringing them to repentance we see when they said all the evil that was coming on them was because of what they did to Joseph.
But it was only when Joseph saw Judah was willing to give himself up to a life of slavery in order to rescue his younger brother--then Joseph saw their repentance was real.מדה כנגד מדה. they did not mind the pain they caused their father and they were afraid of being slaves. here Joseph saw they were willing to go into slavery to save their father from pain and their younger brother from being a slave. the exact opposite of when they were willing to sell Joseph as a slave,

fear of God is sometimes coupled with stupidity.

In the book of Job 4 with find the idea that fear of God is sometimes coupled with stupidity. This is famous in the USA where anyone with fear of God is automatically suspected to have  a low IQ.
הלא יראתך כסלתיך Is not your fear your stupidity? (Job chapter 4)







Appendix:
You can see some problems associated with the fact that fear of God can be connected with stupid ideas from the fact that the pilot of Asiaair was a devout Muslim. It is reasonable to assume he mistakenly thought that by killing Christians he would end up in the garden of Eden. I think we can all agree that it is unlikely that his wish was granted.
Call me an Islamophobe, but when I research the pilot from the missing flight QZ8501, Captain Iriyanto, I access the local news in Indonesian, not in English. There I find out that the pilot of the missing flight QZ8501 and like the pilot on the other missing flight MH370 are both devout Muslims, 
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/12/pilot-missing-airasia-flight-qz8501-devout-muslim-slaughtered-christians/#5QPCzeAFVWuzpLT0.99

In one place the Talmud says to finish the book even if you forget and even if you don't understand. Avoda zara page19

  [.ליגמר איניש אף על גב דמשכח ואף על גב דלא ידע מאי קאמר ׁׂ[עבודה זרה י''ט

In one place the Talmud says to finish the book even if you forget and even if you don't understand. In another place it says לעולם לגרוס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
("Always one should learn fast even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying.")
And it brings it from a verse גרסה נפשי



I had a lot of trouble with this idea.
Where I was learning Torah, they were definitely emphasizing learning in depth. And would spend a week or two of learning on one page of Talmud.

Eventually I began to see the wisdom of their teachings me in depth
I believe that if I had not gotten the idea of how to do it then, I never would have gotten it.
Where ever I have gone in the world, I have noticed that even among people that learn Torah, few have any idea of how to learn. The most simple basic concepts of Talmud are foreign to them because they never learned with any rigor.
But I do think this fast learning part of Talmud is also important.

And I have applied the idea of fast learning to other areas of learning that I have had to do when I went to Polytechnic [a branch of NY University].

So my idea is for people to get themselves a whole set of Talmud and go through it, with all of the Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot, and Maharsha.
I don't remember exactly but I think this used to take me one simple half hour per day.

[People would positively make fun of me when they saw I was trying to learn fast. In those days, I was not even going very fast. I was  doing tractate Ketubot and I would say over the "shtikle" paragraph twice or more and then the Tosphot twice, and go on.  And there were a few chapters I also did with the Tosphot HaRosh when I did not understand Tosphot.] But that was still way too fast for most people's taste. {Today  what I was doing would be called learning in depth! You see how far this generation has fallen!! Nobody even knows anymore what real learning in depth is.}

For people in Israel that speak Hebrew I want to write an idea concerning Maimonides and Shabat First in Hebrew and then in English

For people in Israel that speak Hebrew I want to write an idea concerning Maimonides and Shabat

First in Hebrew and then in English for English speaking people whether in Israel or elsewhere.

הרמב''ם כתב שאם בן אדם עשה מלאכה בשבת בשוגג הוא מביא קרבן חטאת. היינו ששכח המלאכה או ששכח את העונש, וזכר את השבת. אם שכח כל השלשים ותשע הוא מביא שלשים ותשעה חטאות. זאת אומרת שהוא פסק כרבי יוחנן ששגגת עונש שמה שגגה. אבל לריש לקיש רק שגגת מלאכה שמה שגגה. בגמרא מדייקים ששגגת כל הל''ט מביא ל''ט חטאות. אבל אם שכח כולן במה הוא זוכר את השבת? לא שואלים את זו על רבי יוחנן בגלל שהוא יכול לומר ששכח את העונש. אבל מה ר''ל יכול לומר? מתרצת הגמרא: בתחומין ואליבא דרבי עקיבה.
אבל זה כנראה אינו עוזר להרמב''ם. הרמב''ם משמע ששכח כולן ועדיין מביא ל''ט. במה זכר את השבת? בנו של הרמב''ם תירץ: יכול להיות שהרמב''ם דיבר רק במצב ששכח את העונש. או שזכר איזו תולדה. החברותא שלי תירץ שאין שום סיבה לומר שהרמב''ם לא יכול לומר גם כן תחומים. רק בגמרא רבי יוחנן לא היה צריך את התרוץ הזה. אבל זה כל שכן: אם זדון שבת ומלאכות ושכחת עונש הוא שגגה, כל שכן שכחת מלאכות זכירת תחום שבת

What I am trying to say here is that if you think about it you can see that the only difference between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish is if doing a work on purpose is considered an accident of he forgets the punishment. The is the sole and only point of difference. There is no stated argument between them if remembering boundaries is considered remembering Shabat. The only reason the Gemara had to scrounge around for that was because Reish Lakish needed it. But there is no rational or logical reason to think Rabbi Yochanan thinks that that is not called remembering Shabat.
In my opinion this is an amazing insight from my learning partner. Pure genius.

It is not the first time I have seen things like this from him.




1) Maimonides says if one does an act of work by accident on the Sabbath he brings a sin offering. This means if he forgot that it was forbidden or he forgot the punishment, but remembered it is Shabat. And if he forgot all 39 types, then he brings 39 sin offerings.
2) This comes from the Talmud. In the Mishna you have the same idea (Talmud Shabat 69a).
Forgetting Shabat means one sin offering. Forgetting  work means a sin offering for each type of work.
3) R. Yochanan says forgetting the punishment is also called forgetting. To Reish Lakish only forgetting the work itself is called forgetting.
4) So there is no problem to Rabbi Yochanan. He could say forgetting all 39 types of work is liable 39 sin offerings  because he forgot the punishment.
But to Reish Lakish how can we explain the Mishna? If he forgot all 39, then in what way is he remembering Shabat? In boundaries according to Rabbi Akiva. (R. Akiva holds the 12 mile boundary is from the Torah. )
5) But this answer for Rabbi Yochanan on the Mishna does not help us for the Rambam.
The Rambam seems to imply even forgetting all 39 completely brings 39 offerings.
6) The son of the Rambam was asked this. He said It could be the Rambam is only referring to the clause where he remembered the work but forgot the punishment.
Or he remembered derivatives of the 39.
7) My learning partner suggested that perhaps the Rambam could answer the same thing as Resih Lakish. The reason is this if Rabbi Yochanan [who the law goes like in all cases against Reish lakish] holds remembering work but forgetting punishment is an accident then all the more so forgetting work and remembering boundaries. There is no reason to believe that Rabbi Yochanan would disagree with Resih Lakish that remembering boundaries is also called remembering.
Clearly no one wanted to go this way because they thought: "If we don't hold by Reish Lakish then how could this answer work?" But if you think into it you will see that my learning partner is right.





8) The Lechem Mishna also deals with this question. He disagrees with the answer of the son of the Rambam, but he gives an answer that to me to be hard to understand. The way it looks to me is he wants to answer that the Rambam is thinking of this as forgetting both Shabat and work. But how could that answer the Rambam is beyond my ability to understand since the Rambam himself says in such a situation he brings only one offering. If anyone in the great wide world has a way of understanding this Lechem Mishna, I would appreciate if you shared your thoughts with me.

9) I have mentioned before that for this reason it is important to have in your home a the set of the Chaim Soloveitchik's book on the Rambam, along with his two students' books [Baruch Ber, Shimon Shkopf, and Eliezer Menachem Shach's Aviezri. These four people brought a revolution to the world and a rigorous painstaking logic to understanding the Rambam. So even if they might not deal with my specific question, they would at least have some ideas that might help us.]
( Shmuel Berenbaum, was also learning along these lines but he never printed anything. They recorded his classes towards the end of his life though. That was at the Mir in NY. He was during his life giving the deepest classes in Talmud, more than anyone in the world except for Rav Shach at Ponovicth in Bnei Brak

To talk to God like you would talk to your best friend or your own parents.

1) To talk to God like you would talk to your best friend or your own parents. This should be private, but it can and should be done anywhere.
To tell Him your problems and ask him for guidance to come out of your problems and also to thank him for what you have and also just to discuss things like you would  with a friend.
2) To have sessions in Torah every day in order. That is one session in the Old Testament,page after page. One session in Talmud, the the Jerusalem Talmud, then the Tosephta, Sifiri and Sifra until you have finished the Oral Law. and then you repeat the whole process again.

The Rambam's idea that learning Physics and Metaphysics brings one to Love and Fear of God

To understand the Rambam's idea that learning Physics and Metaphysics brings one to Love and Fear of God. [This is stated most openly in The Guide for the Perplexed, but also shows up in Mishne Torah.] [The Rambam tells us what he means in different places. he says this in elliptical form as he warned us openly that he would write in that way. He defines the "Work of Creation" (מעשה בראשית) and "Work of the Divine Chariot" (מעשה מרכבה) in the beginning (Introduction) of the Guide. Then in the Guide itself, he tells us what is the purpose he sees in these--the Work of Creation to come to fear and the Work of the Divine Chariot to come to love.  This approach of the Rambam is quoted virtually verbatim in all later books of Musar (Medieval Ethics).] (Seeing deep secrets in the מורה נבוכים Guide for the Perplexed is not new. Rav Avraham Abulafia wrote a whole books explaining the deep secrets of the Guide. And Rav Abulafia himself is not  a minor figure. He is quoted at length by both Reb Haim Vital, the disciple of the Ari) in שערי קדושה volume 4 and also by Moshe Kordavero.)






My feeling about the actual way of going about this I mentioned in some blog essay some time ago.
Mainly I think one should get one math book on Abstract Algebra,  Algebraic Topology { Especially Allan Hatcher's book}, and a decent book on String Theory and Quantum Field Theory.
The way to learn this is in my opinion to guard the first twenty minutes when you wake up as if every minute was worth a few billion dollars. The learning you do then and the twenty minutes before you go to sleep are worth a whole day's worth of learning. Bava Sali had coffee and tea in the same cup when he got up for the midnight prayer. (Thus I heard from Moshe Buso his grandson).

I know there are people that think one should learn Torah all day, and not learn any secular things. That was not the opinion of my parents nor of the Rambam. My reasons for siding with the Rambam here is mainly experience. It is not some deep insight I have into the nature of things. It is just that by experience I got the idea that my parents and the Rambam were trying to tell me something that I did not want to listen too and in the end it turned out they were right. So if I can go back and retrace my steps at least I can tell others and hope they benefit form this idea that perhaps the Rambam knew what he was taking about. Perhaps even more so than people that thought that he did not "get it."

[In terms of what the Rambam said about learning Metaphysics, my feeling is the best thing is Kant and Leonard Nelson. That is what is known as the Kant-Friesian School in the USA and in Europe it is called Critical Philosophy. However, I also think Hegel is important though there is is tension between Hegel and the Kant-Friesian system. Dr Kelley Ross in his development of Negative Transcendence does openly refer to Hegel idea of a ground or background where contraries like Being and Non Being become one. He mentions this along with Heidegger's Being itself as opposed to "being things."]

One way of learning is to review ten times, This I heard fromRav Friefeld. But I did not adhere to it very well. However I have begun to see the importance of this idea -in particular in Math and Physics. I mean to say that I think to review each page ten times, and then go on is the idelway to learn

If one does an act of work on the Sabbath day by accident he has to bring a sin offering.

If one does an act of work on the Sabbath day by accident he has to bring a sin offering.
If he does it on purpose then if the act is done in front of two witnesses that warned him and said if you do this  you will be doing an act of desecrating the Sabbath and you will be brought to beit din and stoned. If he acknowledges this and says, "I agree and even so I will do it,,"then he is stoned. If any of these conditions are not fulfilled he is not stoned but also he can't bring a sin offering because the act was done on purpose.
This applies to all the 43 things in the Torah for which there is a death penalty. In all cases there needs to be a set of conditions or else the case is thrown out of court.
So what is an accident? Rabbi Yochanan said even if he forgets the punishment but remember that the act is forbidden then that too is called accident. Reish Lakish said, "No. That is called on purpose. Only if he forgets that the act is forbidden is it an accident."
The Rambam says if one forgets an act of work but remembers it is Shabat or forgets the punishment then he is liable a sin offering. Even if he forgets all 39 types of work than  he brings 39 sin offerings.{ Each one is a goat or a sheep.


So he decides like Rabbi Yochanan. But then what about the end of the rambam? If he forgot all 39 types then in what way is he remembering the Shabat? And if he in fact forgot the Shabat then he is liable only one sin offering! Now this Rambam comes from a Mishna and Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish were disagreeing about it. And there Reih lakish said it could be he remembered the boundary of Shabat which is 12 miles from the Torah according to Rabbi Akiva. But this does not help us here. The son of the Rambam was asked this. (Abraham ben Moshe). He said three answers. One is he forget 39 principles but remembered at least one derivative.

I forgot the other two. But I wanted to suggest perhaps the last part of the Rambam is not referring to the first 10 words where he says the case that he forget the work is forbidden. Perhaps the end of the Rambam is only referring to the case where he forgot the punishment.

[I can't be sure that Reb Avraham himself did not answer this until I get a chance to see the Rambam again.]

The idea of the Gra based on Proverbs 3:5 is that one can trust in God with doing no effort, because what is decreed on a person will come no matter what.

1) As for the issue of Trust in God, it looks like the Chafetz Chaim and Joseph Horwitz from Navardok were siding with the Gra. And they were specifically trying to make trust in God a separate variable than doing mitzvot. They both claim that trust in God has nothing to do whether one is righteous or not.
{The idea of the Gra based on Proverbs 3:5  is that one can trust in God with doing no effort, because what is decreed on a person will come no matter what. This is not like the Duties of the Heart that one should do effort also.}



But in their way of thinking, learning Torah is the highest of mitzvot. So they are both thinking that trust in God is not an excuse not to do a mitzvah one is required to do. That is the axial that the Lithuanian Torah world revolves on. That learning Torah is the highest and most important of all.

 
  I myself have an approach I base on my Maimonides and my parents which is more a balance between Torah, prayer, Physics, and Mathematics and self reliance.

  In any case, the point is the same--you do what the Torah requires of you  in order to do God's will, and as for the rest you trust in God.
2) Also I feel that self reliance is an essential part of Torah. I think it is just too easy to fool oneself that he is relying on God when in fact he is relying on the social system he is a part of. There is just too much self delusion in the religious world.

when something is decreed for you from Heaven, then people will ask you to allow them to do it for you.

Should you trust in God, but also make your own efforts to get your needs fulfilled? Or should one sit back and relax and depend on God to do everything for you? This does not seem like a hard question. Even in the Torah, we find working for a living is a good thing. כמו שנכרתה ברית על התורה כן נכרתה ברית על המלאכה. And this seems to be the approach of the חובות הלבבות.
The Sages in the Talmud seem to say otherwise. The רבנן [the students in the local beit midrash--learning hall] did not know what this verse in Mishlei [Proverbs] means (chapter 3: verse 5) בטח בהשם בכל לבך ואל בינתך אל תשען "Trust in God with all your heart, and do not depend on your own intellect." One day Raba Bar Bar Chana was walking with a merchant, and he was carrying a heavy bag. The merchant said to him, "Take your burden יהבך, and put it on my camel." [Tractate Rosh HaShanah page 26 side b].
Elijah from Vilnius (The Gra) said that it does not mean the merchant understood the meaning of the word יהבך when no one else did. Rather, they thought one should trust in God, but also go around getting his needs met. So that caused them not to understand the verse. It should say "your needs" "צרכיך."
But then they saw that Raba Bar Bar Chana was carrying this heavy bag, and he should have had to pay the merchant to take it for him, but instead the merchant asked him to let him take it. They concluded that when something is decreed for you from Heaven, then people will ask you to allow them to do it for you.

From here we see one needs no effort, but what is decreed for you will come to you without any effort on your part at all.
This seems fairly plain. And in fact there were a number of years when I did just this and it worked exactly as stated . But in the meantime I fell from this high level of trust. But I still am aware that this kind of trust in God does work.
But it does not absolve one from doing what the Torah requires of you. So you are supposed to learn Torah and learn an honest profession. You might learn Torah only and trust in God to support you. That is legitimate, But if you are going around asking for charity to support your learning Torah that is not legitimate. Because that shows you are not trusting in God, but rather using the Torah as shovel to dig with.
From my point of view I say to everyone--learn Torah at home. Buy yourself the Talmud (Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds), the Tosephta, Sifri and Sifra, and plow through them. Every single last word. And Musar (Medieaval Ethics) too. (Duties of the Heart, Paths of the Righteous, מסילת ישרים ספר הישר,  ספר המידות לבנימין הרופא etc.--There is a basic canon of Musar books.)

This idea of trust in God is something that I try to say over to myself when I get up in the morning in order to fix this in my soul. [That is I try to say over the verse of Proverbs and the comment of the Gra and he added note where he explained the purpose of the verse is to show that when one trusts in God totally, then he needs no effort at all. 

have a fast session and an in depth session.

My basic feeling about Torah is to have a fast session and an in depth session.
The fast session should be to get through the Written and Oral Law a least once completely.
That is the Babylonian Talmud with Rashi, Tosphot and Maharsha. Every single last word.
Next step is do the same with the Jerusalem Talmud with the three commentaries on the page.
Next the Tosphta with the Chazon Yechezkiel.
Then the Sifri and Sifra. An hour per day on this will get you through this in a few short years, and you will have plenty of time to  do university too.

That is the entire corpus of the oral law that was handed down generation after generation.
However Zohar and later Halacha writings are good to learn, but they are not the Oral Torah.
 Maimonides wrote, "Just like you can't add to the Written Torah, so you can't add to or subtract from the Oral Torah."
.


The Shulchan Aruch is a book written by Joseph Karo (as an abridged version of his large work the Beit Joseph). The Shulchan Aruch on the printed page has a few large commentaries on it e.g. the Shach, Taz, Magen Abraham etc. It would usually take about forty minutes to go through one page even if you are reading very very fast.  Go really fast.
After you have finished the book once fast you go back over it and the second time you will understand more than you did the first time. And then you do it again a third and forth time etc.


I have found this to be helpful when it came to my having to go to collage to get an education.
I applied to Polytechnic Institute of New York University and they gave me a small sample test in Math to see if I could go to Calculus the first year, or if I had to take remedial course. I had no idea which side of the paper was up. So I  got a textbook that covered basic algebra, trig, vectors, matrices etc and just plowed through in is the way that he said and believe it or not when I took the exam I got all the questions right!
[I was in Uman, for three months before I took the test. The fast session I did in my spare time from Rosh Hashanah until the end of the festivals. Then I reviewed, reading every chapter, plus the exercises. Plus I did a Calculus text which was great, but oriented towards economies. So when it came to right hand sums of Riemanian integrals I was lost, and unprepared.]
(Since then I went on doing the same kind of learning--saying the words and going on, and no repeats until I get to the end of the textbook. )
[During my university years I learned saying the words of every textbook forwards and backwards--twice. This I based on an idea I saw in Isaac Luria (The Ari'zal) and Moshe Chaim Lutzato (The Ramchal). Later I decided it was just taking too much time to do everything that way, and I went back to the approach of the Talmud in Shabat לעלם לגרס אינש עא''ג דמשכח ועא''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
This approach is gone into detail in אורחות צדיקים  a classical Musar book



My basic point here is that learning Torah does not depend on place, but on commitment. Like it says in the prayer in the morning right before the Shema "unite our hearts to serve you". When one unites his own heart to learn Torah he can succeed.  But I think it is best to do this only at home or else in a place that is devoted only to Torah learning. Otherwise one will be distracted.
My impression of local synagogues is that they are in general not good places to learn Torah. Learn at home.

Islam has a problem with being from what could be called the "Dark Side."

 The god of Islam is the Satan, and that is simple to see from the actual events surrounding Mohamed. The revelations supposedly from God allowing him to do things which we would not considered very kosher were clearly not coming from the Creator, but from Satan.  And it is not news that Satan comes to people and makes them think they are getting revelation from the Creator.

  Christianity is not idolatry
  We have the original defense of the Trinity from Boethius. Later people tried to defend it by means of Plato and Plotinus. And after about a thousand years they gave up on that, and went to Aristotle.
(The Protestant way of defending this is to ignore the question.) So we have basically two kinds of defense. The Neo Platonic way is simple. It is the same as what we call sepherot. The Aristotelian [Aquinas] way is also rather straightforward-- aspects or modes of God. Whether any of these defenses works is not the issue. But what is the issue is the fact that they believe they are worshiping the God of Israel, the Creator. [This site http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/12/incarnation-approached-subjectively-the-mystical-birth-of-god-in-the-soul.html  seems to have a Martin Buber kind of approach. In any case, Catholics nowadays try to defend it by means of Aristotle, because the Platonic approach had too many problems. So Aquinas went over to Aristotle and that is how things have been since then. See the blog of Edward Feser. ]
  As we see in Abyee Sanhedrin 62 that one who bows to a house of idols, but thinks it is a synagogue is not idolatry because his heart is towards heaven.
So in any case it is not idolatry. And that is that. So Merry Christmas and good will unto men, and peace on Earth.


  This is not like the Rambam. However it is not a principle of faith that the Rambam can never be wrong. The Rambam can be wrong, but we believe he is 99% of the time not wrong. But in a least four cases I know he is wrong. One is the mouse that is  half dirt and half alive. Spontaneous generation. (Look at that Halacha and you will see he means literal spontaneous generation, not evolution.)

  The Menorah we know was like Rashi. The reason the rings were invented was that Venus gets brighter and dimmer and that could not be explained by the spheres--contrary to the Guide. And in Pirkei Avot there is one place where the Rambam explains a Mishna based on a mistaken text  in Onkles.
So while in actual decisions based on the Gemara it is certain he could not make a mistake. But that is because that was his forte. But in other areas he was not infallible. (And according to the Rambam the authority in halacha is the Oral Law, not the Rambam. That we see by his order of decision making concerning a beit din or  a judge that makes a mistake. The first thing is that any decision not like  דינים המפורשים בש''ס (things stated openly in the Talmud)  are simply thrown out of court without a second's thought.)

Appendix:

1) Not that it has anything to do with the issue of this blog but still I think in the background people wonder what the Torah has to say about Jesus? The hagadah in Sanhedrin did come up recently in my studies. I just happened to be there in Sanhedrin. And I think on and off I have seen things on this subject but never put them in my blog because it did not seem relevant to any Jewish audience.
So I forgot most of what I saw.
Now let me make clear even if Jesus would be everything Christians would say, it would not mean we could worship him or any human being or pray to him or even to praise him.
That being said let me at least mention that the Jesus mentioned in the Talmud is not Jesus son of Miriam because we have a good idea of the time period Jesus lived in. We know when Peter was crucified and the other disciples also. We even know when the brother of Jesus was killed. All these events were right around the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jesus the Talmud refers to it says openly was a disciple of Yehoshua ben Prachia who lived at towards the beginning of the Second Temple period. [see Pirkei Avot] The minimum separation in time here is two hundred years.
They can't be the same person.
Besides that I have seen few positive references. One from Isaac Luria. That was in those days I was learning Kabalah. So I might be forgetting exactly where I saw it. I think it was in the book of Chaim Vital on the Torah at the end of the book of Genesis. Plus it is well known the very positive things that The mystic Avraham Abulafia had to say about this subject. Professor Moshe Idel brings him in several places. Plus there is Yaakov Emden. And that is that. All these people clearly thought very highly of Jesus.  But no one thinks it is proper to pray to him or any human being. And that is why this issue is so charged with emotion. This is because some people think if Jesus was as great as they say we should all worship him. But that is wrong. We only should worship God alone, and great people and even great tzadikim we should respect and learn from.

In any case, sex between males is among the things not allowed according to the Torah.

In any case sex between males is among the things not allowed according to the Torah. As for dissident children בן סורר ומורה - there are rather strict conditions for which that law applies. (e.g. the amount of meat he needs to eat to be liable is almost humanly impossible to eat in the required time period).
In any case there is never a death sentence unless any act is done in front of two kosher witnesses and warning is given. The warning has to be about the reason for the prohibition and also the punishment and the perpetrator has to acknowledge the warning. It is like Miranda rights in that respect. Otherwise the case is thrown out of court.

Appendix

1) It is understood that the laws of the Torah were all addressed to Jews alone. Every single last one.
The question of what gentiles are obligated in is simply uninteresting to the Torah. As far as the Torah is concerned if someone wants to keep the Torah--very nice.
[''I have put before you this day the life and the good, and death and evil. So choose life by keeping these commandments.'' Deuteronomy. Now there is a deal you can't turn down. Who does not want life and the good? No one.]
2) In any case the subject does come up. We have the well known seven laws that were given to Noah. And how much of later laws that were given to Moses apply is subject to debate.
A ger toshav גר תושב the Rambam decided is one who accepts the seven laws in front of the Sanhedrin.
But there is an argument about that. To some opinions in Mesechet Gerim--a tractate outside the Mishna- a ger toshav is one who accepts on himself not to do idolatry.
In the middle ages the idea of gerei hashar גרי השער came up and the Beit Joseph did consider gentiles that were civilized to be in that category. That is a step up from gerei toshav, but not yet a full ger.
3) The Seven Laws, include not to murder, and not to do idolatry. Islam seems to be idolatry since they are worshiping   a false god. (They call him God, But you can call many people by the same name. That does not mean they are the same person. When they worship Satan, it does not help if they give him the name of the Creator. In fact it makes it worse.)