Half truths are known to be lies. Leaving out some significant detail that changes the whole picture is in fact liable to prosecution in courts of law. [That is liable under the law of not to lie under oath.]

When people teach half of the Torah--the parts that appeal to the desires of people, that is in effect lying about Torah. It is not authentic Torah.

This is the reason people don't learn Musar. It is like scratching your itch with sandpaper. It hurts. And it does not appeal to sensual desires. No wonder it is not popular.

I admit I am as guilty of this as anyone. At the Mirrer yeshiva which took me  a tremendous amount of effort to get to when I found that the Musar book s were saying without exception that one must work and learn and not use the Torah as  means to making a living nor to be accepting charity for learning Torah it was a message you can bet I did not want to hear. If I had thought that originally I would have stayed in Los Angeles and gone to UCLA. And it hardly made sense to me at that time either. Cognitive dissonance. So I found the books  that told me what I wanted to hear.  I was wrong for thinking I found some some excuse not to listen to the very basic and simple message of Torah to learn a profession and not to use Torah as "a shovel to  dig with." I tried to remedy this later by going to NYU. But to learn physics I found out is better to start young.


My parents were telling me things I did not want to hear so I turned away from them. I thought I knew more.

Musar nowadays has been tailored to tell people what they want to hear.

In Musar from the Middle Ages secular knowledge is considered important. So that message has been edited out since it is not what people want to hear. [Duties of the Heart, Guide for the Perplexed, Maalot Hamidot which has two separate chapters one for the importance of learning Torah and the other the importance of learning "wisdom"].

The anti-Zionism of the insane religious world  today you can bet goes against traditional Musar. They are grasping at straws to try to make sense of their evil and lunatic beliefs. the insane religious world  cover up their lies with lots of rituals thinking that that excuses  them. While they have a point that we all should learn and keep Torah but the Conservative and Reform are much closer to the Torah ideal than the the insane religious world .

Put psychology into the religious studies department of the university.

Psychology is pure pseudo science with all the classic characteristic of pseudo science.
It is not falsifiable. There is no conceivable  experiment to you could point to that would falsify it.
It is just pure religion. And if that is one's religion, then fine.  But the claim to being a science is pure fraud. and there is no religion that is as pure  a fraud as psychology.

People can still study it. I find pseudo science to be fascinating. Put psychology into the religious studies department of the university.

Mainly psychology arose because religious insights into what a human being is proved to be false.
But that is a good thing about religion. It can be falsified. You can follow a doctrine an then see that the leaders or the group itself is highly immoral and if morality and human decency is taken as a mark of holiness then you have falsified the religion. You might not be able to leave it but at least you know the facts. And you might also try to make some adjustments to the system.

Or you might look at the original doctrine and notice how the group itself strayed from it.



Appendix: This is really no surprise to a person that has learned a bit of Kant. To Kant the subject and the object are both in the category of the dinge an sich. That is the essence of what a person is is transcendent. We can know how we act. But we can't know what we are.




.

j34   [j34 in midi format]  [j34 in nwc format]

Music for the glory of God

j33  [j33 in midi]

j32  [j32 in midi]

Here is a link to my little book on ShasIdeas in Shas


Bava Kama 3.



I wanted to add a clarity to the last section of the Maharsha. and also to Tosphot אצטריך
Let's start with the Maharsha. The Talmud asks let's use "he sent"(Exodus 23) for both damages of foot and tooth.  That means it is asking that we don't need וביער. Then we conclude that if we had only "he sent" we would know only quadrant I and II.

So now we need וביער for quadrant III.
What I wanted to say today is that I asked a day ago about the  מהדורא בתרא של המהרש''א. I wanted to answer my question. For let us think did not the gemara say that we know וביער comes for tooth!! How can we say now that it comes for foot? I think this is the exact point of the מהדורא בתרא. That is it in fact comes for tooth exactly like the Gemara said before. But we now expand it into quadrant III also because שקולים הם.
This I think is an amazing way of understanding the son in law of the Mahrasha. And it answers what I was asking before on a few blogs back.

The thing you have to do to get this is to see the contradiction between what this gemara is using וביער for  what the previous Gemara was saying that it has to mean tooth. Not that it can mean tooth but it has to.
This is amazing and I am frankly surprised why the son in law of the Maharsha did not spend more time explaining this.

The next thing is Tosphot. This Tosphot is hard to understand. Tosphot does want to ask why not use ושילח for foot alone. How is this going to work? We said ושילח goes for quadrant I and II because we have two verses telling us that he sent means foot and tooth. I ask how can Tosphot suggest we use ושילח for foot alone?We would have to use the verse telling us foot for itself and then use the verse telling us it means tooth and then transfer that to foot so we would have quadrant II and III. This seems to be something we could not do after that the verse tells us it means tooth.
But then Tosphot to complete his questions says that this question we could not answer the way the previous Gemear answered the question when it was using וביער for tooth.that is because there we had a verse telling us כאשר יבער shows that וביער means tooth. Well as far as that goes Tosphot is right. We cant use כאשר יבער To tell us about ושילח. Those are two completely different words.  But what I am asking with due humility is that I don't understand why there should be a question in the first place. I have full confidence that there must be some way to understand Tosphot. But this minute it escapes me.

________________________________________________________________________________


בבא קמא ג' 'ע''א מהדורא בתרא של המהרש''א.  הגמרא שואלת בואו להשתמש ושילח לשני הנזקים של רגל ושן. זה אומר שהגמרא רוצה שאנחנו לא צריכים וביער. אז אנו מגיעים למסקנה שאם היה לנו רק ושילח היינו יודעים רק רביע שלישי ורביעי.

אז עכשיו אנחנו צריכים וביער לרביע שלישי
מה שאני רוצה לומר  הוא ששאלתי לפני יום על מהדורא בתרא של המהרש''א. אני רוצה לענות על השאלה שלי.  הגמרא אומרה שאנחנו יודעים וביער הוא שן. איך אנו יכולים לומר עכשיו שזה רגל? אני חושב שזו הנקודה של מהדורא בתרא בדויק. שזה למעשה הוא שן בדיוק כמו הגמרא אמרה לפני כן. אבל עכשיו אנחנו מרחיבים אותו לרביע שלישי גם בגלל ששקולים הם. הדבר שאתה צריך לעשות כדי לקבל את זה הוא לראות את הסתירה בין מה שגמרא זו היא באמצעות וביער למה הגמרא הקודמת אמרה שיש לה משמעות שן.

 הדבר הבא הוא תוספות ד''ה אצטריך. תוספות זה קשה להבין. תוספות רוצה לשאול למה לא להשתמש ושילח לרגל לבד. איך זה הולך?  יש לנו שני פסוקים שאומרים לנו שלשילח יש משמעות רגל ושן. אני שואל איך יכול להציע תוספות אנו משתמשים ושלחנו לרגל לבד? היינו צריכים להשתמשעם הפסוק שאומר לנו שזה רגל ולאחר מכן להשתמש עם הפסוק שאומר לנו זה  שן ולאחר מכן להעביר את זה לרגל כדי למלאות רביע שלישי ורביעי. זה נראה משהו שאנחנו לא יכולים לעשות אחרי שהפסוק אומר לנו זה שן. אבל אז תוספות כדי להשלים את השאלה, אומרים ששאלה זו לא היינו יכולה לענות על דרך הגמרא הקודמת ענה על השאלה כאשר הוא משתמש וביער לשן. זה בגלל שיש לנו פסוק שאומר לנו כאשר תבערו מראה כי וביער פירוש שן.
 אנחנו לא יכולים להשתמש כאשר יבער כדי לספר לנו על ושילח. אלה הם שתי מילות שונות לחלוטין.

בבא קמא ע''א
תוספות ד''ה אצטריך
It occurred to me today that תוספות and the last part of the מהגורא בתרא של המהרש''א are dealing with two different questions.
The question of תוספות is what I want to present right now. It is simply this take the חלק שלישי of the גמרא and insert it into חלק שני and you get a question. The חלק השלישי said you get שן and רגל from one פסוק. The second part said you get foot from one and tooth from another פסוק. Now take that one פסוק that we are using for both and ask the same question that the Gemara asked before.
That is now in חלק השלישי we use ושילח for both. Now that is good as far as רגל goes. But what about שן? We used וביער for שן. And we showed it had to be used for שן because of  כאשר יבער. And without that פסוק we would have been justified in using it for רגל. That is an open גמרא. But now insert ושילח instead of וביער. What can you answer now? We don't have anything to prove that ושילח goes on שן.



Appendix:
(1) חלק שלישי של הגמרא is like this.

שאלה: Write ושילח alone and use it for both, for we have two verses showing it can be used for both.

תירוץ: We would think it applies to one alone. The גמרא shows some reason why we would use it for tooth because it has pleasure and so it finds some reason for foot also.

שאלה: We if we would have one we would have to include the other because they are equal in severity.

תירוץ: If we would use it for both we still would not know that the owner is liable when it walked by itself.

(2) חלק שני של הגמרא of the גמרא is like this. אמר מר. We have וביער for שן, and we have proof: כאשר יבער.
שאלה: Why do you need proof? What else could you use it for?

תירוץ: We could use it for רגל.

שאלה: But we already have foot.

תירוץ: We would divide foot into two parts. (We would say the verse for foot ושילח is only for when he sent his animal to graze in someone else's field. We would not know if it walked by itself there and ate. And we would use וביער to tell us that last case.)

שאלה: Now that you have shown you use it for tooth now how do you know that when the animal walked by itself that the owner is liable?
Answer: היקש we make a comparison between foot and tooth. Just like tooth is liable whether he sent it or not so foot is liable in both cases.

בבא קמא ג ע''א One פסוק deals with damages caused by שן.  Another פסוק deals with damages caused by רגל.
We have other  to tell us each verse means as we say it does. We need those extra verses because without them we would say there are two kinds of רגל or two kinds of שן. If he sent the animal there is more reason to make him pay. So we need some reason to say he is liable even if the animal walked by itself. Similarly if the animal ate in a field, there is more reason to make one liable if the roots were eaten. How do we know רביע שלישי ורביעי? Because of a היקש. We compare רגל with שן. In שן we make no distinction between when the owner sent it and when it walked by itself, so also with רגל. And visa versa for שן.

Then a ברייתא uses one פסוק for both רגל and שן, and as for רביע שלישי  we have another פסוק. So what about רביע רביעי? And here we can't use the way the תלמוד accounted for רביע רביעי על ידי היקש because here there is no separate verse for שן. There is one word for both. And to expand רגל into רביע שלישי we needed an extra verse. There is no היקש to tell us to expand into רביע רביעי. The last section of the מהרש''א answers this for the statement that רגל and שן are שקולים in the sense that if you exclude one you have to exclude the other, and if you include one you must include the other.  I am not sure how this helps us. We still know nothing about רביע רביעי.
 Let's go back. We have no היקש between שן ורגל because we are deriving both from the same verse. The only way we got to רביע שלישי was by a special verse. That leaves רביע רביעי empty. There is no היקש between שן ורגל.

On the other hand maybe this works. after all the same logic applies. We don't make any distinction between when the roots were eaten or not by foot. So also with tooth.


5.7.15
בבא קמא ג ע''א אחת פסוק אחד עוסק בנזקים שנגרמו על ידי שן. אחר פסוק אחר עוסק בנזקים שנגרמו על ידי רגל
.
יש לנו אחרים כדי לומר לנו כל פסוק עושה כפי שאנו אומרים שהוא עושה. אנחנו צריכים אותם פסוקים נוספים משום שבלעדיהם היינו אומרים שיש שני סוגים של רגל או שני סוגים של שן. אם הוא שלח את בעלי החיים יש יותר מסיבה לחייב לו לשלם. אז אנחנו צריכים סיבה לומר שהוא עלול אפילו אם בעל החיים הלך בכוחות עצמו. באופן דומה, אם  החיה אכלה בשדה, יש עוד סיבה לעשות אחד חייב אם השורשים נאכלו. איך אנחנו יודעים רביע שלישי ורביעי? בגלל היקש. אנו משווים רגל עם שן. בשן אנחנו לא עושים שום הבחנה בין כאשר הבעלים שלחו אותו וכאשר הוא הלך בעצמו, כך גם עם רגל. ולהיפך לשן.

אז ברייתא משתמשת עם פסוק אחד לשניהם, רגל ושן, וכמו לרביע השלישי יש לנו פסוק אחר. אז מה לגבי רביע רביעי? וכאן אנחנו לא יכולים להשתמש בדרך התלמוד  על ידי היקש, כי כאן אין פסוק נפרד לשן. יש מילה אחת לשניהם. ולהרחיב את הרגל לרביע שלישי שהיינו צריכים פסוק נוסף. אין היקש לספר לנו להתרחב לרביע רביעי. החלק האחרון של מהרש''א מתרץ שרגל ושן הם שקולים במובן זה שאם אתה מוציא אחד אתה צריך להוציא את השני, ואם אתה כולל אחד אתה חייב לכלול את אחר. אני לא בטוח איך זה עוזר לנו. אנחנו עדיין לא יודעים כלום על רביע רביעי
 בואו נחזור. אין לנו היקש בין שן והרגל, כי שן ורגל נובעים מאותו הפסוק. הדרך היחידה שהגענו לרביע שלישי הייתה בפסוק מיוחד. זה משאיר רביע רביעי ריק. אין היקש בין שן ורגל


מצד השני, אולי זה עובד.כל אותו ההיגיון חל. אנחנו לא עושים שום הבחנה בין כאשר השורשים נאכלו או לא ברגל. אז גם עם שן.




Here is a link to my little booklet on subjects like thisIdeas in Shas

 Rambam:  the five difference between the Reason of God and the Reason of Man. [Here "Reason of Man" means  the reason a man would have if he had perfect human reason.] This is not the exact same thing as Kant. With Kant you have limit to perfect reason. And it seems to be a bit different than the Rambam's limits. .




The problem that Kant is addressing is that of Hume. Empirical things we can reason about because we have some way of checking our homework against a background. Physical reality. When we reason about a triangle what background is there to check our work? 


And this seem to me to be a close as one can expect to Kant. For Kant while accepting we have knowledge of a priori things --not based on observation and also not dependent on definitions. But with Kant you have a large area of antimonies where even this kind of reason fails.

So what I am suggesting is a close comparison between the Rambam's five things and Kant's antimonies.


Appendix:
(1)  Aspects of God's knowledge beyond pure reason:
There is no division in his knowledge even when he knows different things. His knowledge does not take something out of the realm of the possible. His knowledge encompasses things that have no end There is no difference in his knowledge before the thing exists and after it comes into being.
Brisk has done very good work in the Rambam and that work is continuing.
The major players in that school are Chaim Soloveitchik, and his direct disciples Baruch Ber  Shimon Shkop. The great book of them all is the master piece of Rav Shach the Avi Ezri.  This I consider to be greater than even the חידושי הרמב''ם. Why? Because even though it was Reb Chaim that opened the door to the Rambam but Rav Shach went in in away that even Reb Chaim could not. Rav Shach  is deeper and clearer. But none of these deal with the Guide for the Perplexed. And I think there is no excuse for that. None whatsoever. If anything the Guide is as deep as the Mishna Torah. Once You have someone of the stature of Rav Abraham Abulfia witting a mystic commentary of the Guide you know something deep is going on there.

Music for the glory of God,

l98


Mathematics

If you have suffered from a certain person the tendency is to find blame in that person's world view. One tends to think that if the system was different evil would be eradicated.

People that have suffered from people that are theists tend to say theism is the problem. If one has suffered from people that believe in a different system, the tendency will be to blame that system. Another example is if people have suffered under the Nazis, then the tendency is to say the belief system of Nazism is the trouble. And this kind of thinking is sometimes justified. After all blaming Nazism for the Holocaust does not seem like much of a stretch. But there are other times that it seems to me that building ones world view on what he sees as negative influences is a dumb way of going about thinking about these things.

Human evil is the type of thing that even people believing in a good system will get the virus of evil. No system is immune. But that does not mean all systems are alike. Nor are all social memes alike. You find one social meme  you think is bad and try to eradicate it you will probably find two that have grown in its stead.

But like Nazism there are certain social memes which are pernicious.

Sometimes one has just found a bad group inside a decent system.
 Personally I go with my parents system, Judaism, but I modify that with a good dose of traditional learning Talmud and keeping Jewish Law. But the basic structure of belief--the world view of my parents of what makes a man into a "mensch" I think they knew more about that than anyone I have ever met.

But their beliefs were not really in accord with Reform  even though we went to a Reform Shul in Hollywood.--a great place--Temple Israel of Hollywood. But teh belif system of my parents was a lot more traditional that official Reform.

To get an idea of what my parents thought and what I think is the proper approach to life I recommend learning Musar. That is the  basic set of medieval books חובות לבבות אורחות צדיקים מסילת ישרים  etc. there are about thirty in all. This is hard reading. The ideas are not hard. It is rather that by reading these books and saying them out loud as you read you get fear of God. And that is hard work. It is not supposed to be light reading.

Music for the glory of God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and of my parents.

b105 

I am upset by the attacks against the USA. Mainly because the USA, the country that I grew up in, was  wholesome and wonderful, and so unrecognizable from what there is today I simply can't comment on it. It is like the first Temple that Solomon built. I am sad it is gone, but there is not much I can do about restoring it.
Mainly I think it was a communist plot. The idea was to undermine American values in universities, and then Americans themselves would destroy it from within. Most people I know don't think the KGB had that kind of influence. But first of all the KGB was highly compartmentalized. And the part of it devoted to disinformation in the USA would not have been known to other department people. Also, I should mention the budget of the KGB for these kind of operations was enormous. And once you have gotten to people in collage and convinced them of the "truths" of socialism, then even when they becomes senators or judges or even the president, they continue with those same policies.
Today the KGB is gone, and I doubt if Russia has the same goals as the USSR. They might want an expanded Russian empire, but I highly doubt if they are interested in the downfall of the USA.
Today the main threat against the USA are Muslims, but they are not the only ones. The Democrats are hard at work undermining the basis of the USA in other ways.

Music for the glory of God,

b98 mp3

b98  [midi] I think I  posted this before some time ago. I am just doing so again just in case. b98 nwc

Music,

q3  [q3 in midi]  q3 nwc

l87  [l87 in midi]  l87 nwc

I might at the end of this blog put down the basic idea but for now I wanted to say over what I think describes עבודת השם the service of God.  The only place I ever saw what could be described as the service of God was at the two Litvak yeshivas I went to in NY.  It was not just that people were learning Torah for its own sake without thought of compensation. It was a kind luminous numinosity.


לנחמן מאומן יש פרק בליקוטי מוהר''ן שנראה שמתייחס אליי בדרכים רבות. זה לווה מהמורה נבוכים של רמב''ם. והוא מדבר על היתרונות  בהבאת אנשים לעבודת השם.
אני יכול בסופו של הבלוג הזה לסכם את הרעיון הבסיסי אבל עכשיו אני רוצה להגיד על מה שאני חושב שמתאר עבודת השם. המקום היחיד שאי פעם ראיתי מה יכול להיות תואר אמיתי של עבודת  אלוהים היה בשתי ישיבות ליטאיות שהלכתי בניו יורק. זה לא היה רק שאנשים לומדים תורה לשמה ללא מחשבה על הפיצוי. זה היה סוג זוהר


It is my observation that learning Torah for its own sake only happens in Lithuanian type of yeshivas. And so I consider that path alone to be in the category of service of God.

 Kelly Ross who I think is the deepest of all philosopher and the widest.

And he also is not much of an authoritarian. 

I call him deepest because he seems to be always able to zero in on the flaws of philosophies that are considered rigorous and logically exact . For some reason he always finds the major flaw. And he is politically a libertarian or more exactly he goes with the American Constitution.

The other thinkers that are important are Karl Popper (The Open Society and its Enemies), Michael Huemer (The essay which destroyed Marxism.). I mind include Allen Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind) (Closing of the American Mind) and Harold Bloom (The Lucifer Principle) (howard_bloom___the_lucifer_principle).

The thing about all these people are they are not authoritarians. But they are different in many ways.

The most encompassing and systematic is  Kelly Ross.

The question that comes up then is how to reconcile this with Torah. If Torah was solely a issue of personal morality then there would not be  any question. But it is public law also in the sense that the only authority anyone has in Torah is to enforce the laws of the Torah. The Torah gives some legitimacy to a Sanhedrin and to a king  and even to prophets but not one of these can change or modify or reinterpret a single law. They can only deal with the questions what is the law and how does it apply and also to solve contradictions based on the 13 principles.

The best interface between Torah and libertarian ideas I think is Kelly Ross. At least he was reading his material that helped me organize my own ideas into a cohesive system.

Music

j27 mp3 [j27 midi j27 nwc]   j15 mp3[j15 midi  j15 nwc]

Even though we find a lot of good points by the Religious Zionists, still if  you want to come to the service of God you have to have something along the lines of a Lithuanian Yeshiva. That is for a least four years you need to concentrate of Torah  in order to get anywhere in it. And that needs to be done with Musar. That is you need a straight Litvak Yeshiva or you need to do this on your own. And if you can't do it on your own you can at least help others to try to do this. The idea here is that a Litvak yeshiva is a kind of incubator for good Jews.

And you cant get the same kind of effect when you dilute the Torah. That is why traditional Litvak yeshivas learned only Torah.--though at Chaim Berlin people did go to Brooklyn collage in the afternoon. [Rav Hutner was going to introduce secular studies even beyond high school but Reb Aaron Kotler begged him not to do so.]

So you can either learn Torah at home or try to start your own Litvak yeshiva.
But how to start such a thing? If you are learning at home I have already written about how to go about learning Torah. Mainly you need to stay on one page for as long as it takes until you can start to see the depths of the Talmud. You keep at that same page day after day with the Maharsha and Maharam until it starts to open up. And you need  a fast session also.
That is for you alone. at most it is two hours per day. But as for making your own yeshiva you need someone that has fit to teach. That is need to impossible to find. One who knows "how to learn" is very rare. The main places you can find someone like this are in the basic set of Litvak yeshivas in Bnei Brak Jerusalem or NY. That is Ponovitch, Brisk, and in NY the Mirrer, Chaim Berlin, and Torah VeDaat. Anyone who has not learned in one of those place you can be guaranteed can't learn.
Don't be fooled by the frauds.