An interesting essay about Israel  I do not comment on this for many reasons. One is that people's minds are either pro Jewish or anti Jewish before any argument. And immune to argument. This divide has little to do if the person is actually Jewish or not. Being Jewish is perfectly compatible with being anti-Jewish, and being gentile is perfectly compatible with being pro-Jewish. These are independent variables.

Another reason is I am trying not to look at news anymore. It just makes me upset. Also I think it might be forbidden.

I should mention that I try to judge people based on their actions. The groups they are  apart of can provide some initial data, but that is not determinate. 

 against science

And to some degree this was an attitude that was common to yeshivas in NY when I was there. Rav Miller wrote a few books attacking evolution that showed that he felt comfortable attacking science though he certainly did not understand it. And that attitude is still common among philosophers of science.
Other people threw in the towel and developed strong cases of Physics Envy. So they created pseudo science that go by the name of real science like psychology or economics.

I am not comfortable with any of these attitudes. And yet this anti science approach did help me stay in yeshiva and learn Torah. That is this attitude gave me a kind of justification that i needed to concentrate on Talmud and later on Luriac kabalah.

Still at some point I started suspecting that this attitude was not Torah based.

This may have started when I saw the frum world is crummy. I thought then that it must be they are not really keeping the Torah properly. The attitudes of the frum no longer interested me unless they could be shown to be derived from the Torah.
I learned in Israel that this anti science attitude was not a part of the Lithuanian yeshiva world there.

I also became aware that this attitude was not that of the Rambam either. Then as far as I recall I looked at the Duties of the Heart and saw that his attitude also was one with the Rambam. So I decided this attitude of being anti science was mistaken.
One woman,  Chaya Tova told me  that her son (who had diabetes and was learning in kollel) on the side had become expert in all the texts relating to diabetes.  She was from a regular religious home and her father taught Talmud in Bnei Brak. She was no baalat Teshuva. And she said this anti science attitude was not at all accepted in Litvak communities.

However I should mention that the years of concentrating on Talmud were well spent. Even with the time and effort I put into it I never could have come to any kind of basic understanding until many years later. Talmud is not a four year program. It is more like a twenty year program to become even barely proficient.

Concerning the Guide of Maimonides and the letter of the Ramban in defense of it.

My learning partner just received from the USA the book in English of Chaval.

In that book is the letter of the Ramban (Nachmanides) to the sages of France about their ban on the Guide of the Rambam (Maimonides). I don't know what it says but I think it must be very important to see how someone of the stature of the Ramban (Nachmanides) understood the Guide.

What I mean to say is that the Sages of France were the people that were still continuing the work of the original Baali Hatosphot. As soon as the Guide came out in Hebrew a cousin of Nachmanides went to the sages in France and asked them to make  a ban on the book. And they obliged. Then Nachmanides wrote to them asking them to rescind the ban.
What makes this interesting is that the Nachmanides has no problem attacking the Rambam constantly in his commentary on the Five Books of Moses.  And he had a very different world view. He was in fact the last of the true mystics until the Ari. So how he understood the Guide and why he defended it must have great significance.
The Ramban {Nachmanides} states in that letter that one who separates himself from the Guide or the Sefer HaMada is as one who separates himself from the Source of Life. So even if on individual points the Ram'ban had no problem disagreeing with the 'Rambam still he is clearly as emotional and upset about the ban on the Rambam as one could possibly be. (Chavel writes there that there is nothing in all of Jewish literature the reflects the depth and intensity of emotion of that letter.)

The Lithuanian yeshivas are afraid of the Trojan horse effect. They are worried that a newly religious person might contain a hidden virus. Often this is correct. But from what I have seen the effect goes the opposite way also. Often people try to attract rich secular Jews  by bearing gifts and seeming nice.
שונא מתנות יחיה It says in Mishlei, "He who hates gifts will live.". It seems to me to be wary of gifts. I also see that the Lithuanian yeshiva world is right for largely ignoring baali teshuva or marginalizing them. The truth is there often is something that is a bit off. Leaving their parents to find the light and the truth and the way seems to by definition indicate something wrong.

Though I am a baal teshuva in the way that I was born into a Reform home and began to learn at Litvak yeshivas. But a  good deal of my troubles came from fanatic baali teshuva. But not all my problem were from that direction. A lot came from sanctimonious religious teachers. {U know what I mean.} But by an large they were also baali teshuva that just sucked up to the system.

In any case, it is difficult to understand how to learn and keep Torah. But you know something is off when people ignore the fifth commandment in order to join some cult.
That is not keeping Torah by any definition.

So what I recommend is for people to learn Torah and keep Torah. But not to support groups that ask for money to make people do teshuva [become religious] because by and large they are doing great evil and harming families and lying about what the Torah says. I think these organizations should frankly be banned as being cults.

____________________________________________________________________________

My idea of a proper learning environment is mainly based on the approach of my own parents plus that of the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY. Torah with Derech Eretz (vocation). But Derech Eretz to me does not include any kind of vocation. What I suggest is from the religious standpoint is to avoid religious cults like the Black Plague and as the Gra already noted. Then from the standpoint o vocation I mainly think learning some kind of manual work is important plus natural sciences and outdoor skills. Most of secular education I am against. Only STEM or basic Blue collar work preparation is OK plus survival skills.

Sometimes an idea is like a seed. You can plant it into someone and it takes root over time. It can be a trap

Sometimes an idea is like a seed. You can plant it into someone and it takes root over time. It can be  a trap or it can be fruitful.



You see this also in philosophy or any of the social pseudo sciences where people hear one idea and that idea acts like a seed that all subsequent ideas gather around to support and provide structure for.
 

 


But  to see why pushing off Devekut in order to learn Torah is a mistake see the anonymous commentary on the first four chapters of the Mishne Torah of the Rambam where he explains that the purpose of the mitzvot is to come to the higher fear and awe of God. Later I learned that people can learn Torah and still be bad. So I realized my mistake, but it was too late to return to Devekut.)


The orbit of different charismatic lunatics:
The basic layout of the religious world is god-kings. That is people that think of themselves as divine  and create a following of groupies  naive people. ]


I did have to figure out a basic approach that would make sense to me and what I found was the basic approach of Maimonides and the general constellation of Jewsih philosophers that agreed or  disagreed with him. That kind of Monotheistic approach --Reason and Revelation made the most sense to me. And this approach seems to encompass all good things .



I should mention that it is not that I figured this all out on my own. Rather I had great parents and teachers who had a kind of balanced world view. In what I saw in my home and at the Mir Yeshiva I saw a kind of approach to life that I think made the approach of Torah with menchlichkeit much more real than I would have been able to figure out on my own.

_______________________________________________________________________________


There is a lot to discuss here. Examples of ideas that are like seeds are a dime a dozen. Every major system is based on one or two basic ideas and then the whole system is made around them.
(Sometimes a system is based on a few conflicting ideas.) Some examples off hand.

(1) Learning Torah. This was the central idea at Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY.
(2) Secular Education is the redemption of Mankind. That is the Enlightenment idea.
(3) The Golden Rule.
(4) Ding an Sich. The modest idea of Kant that there is a difference between what things really are and how they seem to be. This idea gave birth to German Idealism and that contained great things and terrible things.

Songs for Hanuka

q76  q75  b105 m C    b101 b100 n5    n8  B Yochai  Exodus4 n7 bh  q78




What I recommend for Hanuka is to begin a session daily in the Written Law and the Oral Law. That is to start a session going through the two Talmuds page by page.  After that it is possible to start a more in depth kind of session.

Mainly it is best to learn at home unless you have an authentic yeshiva nearby.
The world of Yeshiva is unlike any world that you can imagine. It hearkens back to the world of Eastern Europe.  There is in the great NY yeshivas an amazing atmosphere of Torah. But as a warning to the wise I should mention most places that go by the name of yeshiva are frauds. They might have books and students. But there is a spirit of Torah that they just can't duplicate.

Often yeshivas have a charismatic leader who is the object of worship instead of God. These places should be avoided.


I should mention that I have been looking at blogs on public affairs recently and from what I can tell the problem with the world is that people don't learn the Written and Oral Torah (Talmud). For example I don't think rights for a person to have private property would be an issue after learning Bava Mertzia. I also think that a lot of people's attitudes towards a large variety of topics would be changed for the better by an hour a day of Talmud. [I admit I don't do a fast session anymore. The time I spend is usually on a more in depth kind of learning. But that is because of constraints. If I could I would have a fast session and an in-depth one both. And I would do the same for the natural sciences. But there also my time is constrained. So mainly in the natural sciences I have  fast session. And I hope someday to a more in depth kind of learning there also.

I don't think the Rambam would have agreed with using Hanuka as a reason not to learn Physics or Metaphysics.
He was pretty clear that learning these things is a fulfillment of the commandments to Love and fear God because they bring to an appreciation of God's wisdom that he put into his creation.

One of the lessons however he would have seen in Hanuka was not to do idolatry. That was after all the cause of the original rebellion of the Maccabees. And saying that God is contained in some person in a specific kind of way would be in his view a kind of idolatry. You can hear people saying this and yet they do not think that they are idolaters. I sometimes do not know whether I should speak up or not. While it is true that God made space and time so in one sense there is no place empty of God. But that is simply because space does not apply to him at all. His is מקומו של עולם the place of the world. 

misgendered  Here is a letter form that mentally ill people can use to hurt other people that treat them as if they are in fact mentally ill.

One thing this shows is that the Oral Law is necessary to understand the Written Law.


While it is admirable that in Western society,  great value is placed on compassion for the mentally ill. But this can get out of proportion when power is given to the mentally ill to hurt normal, healthy people.



Appendix: The idea here is that the Oral Law does a good job in explaining the basic meaning of many of the commandments in the Bible. Without the Oral Law it is very easy to get confused about the simple explanation. One can make it all into an allegory if he wants to.

I know that even with the Oral Law, people do this anyway. But with some knowledge  of the actual explanations of the Laws of the Torah it is harder to allegorize  the commandments into touchy-feely "Be a nice guy" kind of thing.

The best advice that I can think of for this kind of problem is to learn Torah. That is every day to set aside a set time  for fast learning [to get through every single last word of the Old Testament, the two Talmuds.  That is the way we, the Jewish people, were taught to keep the Law by Moses and the Prophets. That is to say when we were told by the prophets to keep "the Law of Moses" they meant this in a very specific kind of way. That is, when the prophets told us to" keep the Sabbath" they meant a very specific day of the week. They did not leave it up to our discretion. The same goes with all the commandments. Another example is to "honor your parents." The prophets in telling us this, did not mean for us to choose who we want to be our "spiritual parents." They meant our physical flesh and blood parents.

Moses [Moshe] received the Torah from Sinai

Moses [Moshe] received the Torah from Sinai and gave it to Joshua. That is how Pirkei Avot begins.

The Gra explains "he gave it to Joshua" comes from the verse ונתת מהודך עליו and you will place from your glory upon him.  This is because it never says anywhere in the Torah that Moses gave the Torah to Joshua. [Rather it says he wrote the Torah and gave it to the priests.] Rather the Mishna has to be referring to the אור אין סוף the Divine light.

The idea here is this. The way I explained this a few years ago was in reference to the First Temple.
In the period of the First Temple, the Divine light was shinning without differentiation. When the Temple was destroyed most of it went to Athens and only מלכות שבמלכות royalty of royalty remained in Israel. This is how I used to explain this idea of how the light can shine on a person or a people but it not becoming differentiated until later.

This is also how to understand how the Torah was given to Moshe. It means the undifferentiated light.

Irrelevant variables. These are variables that when the size of the population is increased vanish in effect. Relevant variables are variables that increase in importance when the sample size is increased. I have tried to isolate variables that I think help me over long periods of time. Part of the way I do this is to look at large populations that follow some particular doctrine and see the long range effect of those doctrines. {This is a subject that comes up in Atomic Physics regarding the renormalization group.}

Though you could say this is a subjective process but still it makes sense to me.
Learning Torah [i.e. the Old Testament and Talmud.] I think are relevant variables based on effect on  large population sizes.

Some other variables seem to approach zero in significance as the population size grows. That is most cults say if you just do such and such a practice or believe in such and such a doctrine or such and such a person that your whole life will change for the better. Without this process of evaluation it would be impossible to measure the success of these claims.

I should mention that this is not a simple process. There are aspects of Lithuanian yeshivas that do learn Torah that are questionable. Problems do arise that seems to be relevant to the actual system more than to the individuals involved. You do find that when the system does not work for one person or another that the individual is blamed, not the system. And to me that seems intellectually dishonest. I say rather the fault is with the system, not the individual because there are too many people that are disenfranchised by the system for it to be their fault.
 That is the reason I focus of Torah with a honest vocation instead of Torah alone. That is I think the system needs modification.

There are variables that are relevant on the individual level and approach irrelevance on the large scale. A person's parents are like that. As a rule they are worthy of gratitude and respect but there are some that are downright destructive.



Some variables work in moderate sizes. Talmud seems to work best in small populations--yeshivas or communities built around a yeshiva. And that is a good thing. Take away the Talmud and the social glue disintegrates. People without Talmud find some charismatic leader to follow who makes them into his groupies and zombies.

But you can't expect a large society to be like that. First of all one of the most precious values is missing--freedom.

And some variables work only on a large scale. On a small scale they vanish into insignificance. It is rather a whole large society built on some great ideals can display amazing compassion which each  member would not do.

Ideas in Talmud Updated  Ideas in Bava Metzia Chapters 8 and 9 Updated  Title page for Ideas in Bava Metzia


Title page for Ideas in Talmud



I added a few ideas in the Ideas on Talmud and made some minor corrections in spelling in Ideas in Bava Metzia.

I added an old idea in Sukka and also added a comment to make one of the essays in Bava Metzia a little more clear.

I added the comment that a שוכר כשמומר שכר so that in the Mishna on page 97 the renter and owner agree that it was a big אונס --otherwise the renter would have to take an oath. Actually I did not put all that into my note but it might be that I should


The truth is if I could I would put an introduction to the essays to lay out the whole subject before I start my comments--but that would be the same thing as just opening up the Gemara and learning it from scratch for anyone and everyone can do that just as well as I can and even better. In my experience, most people can learn Gemara a lot faster and better than me. It usually takes me a few weeks until even the basic ideas get absorbed into me.


There is a lot to think about in terms of the relationships between what I wrote on BM page 104 and BM pages 81 and 82. I wrote  a drop, but there are questions. For example. The way Tosphot looks at Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer on page 81 it seems like Tosphot is thinking that the משכון guarantee is owned completely--not just as a משכון. The reason seems to be that we have קנין for regular acquisitions and קנין for guards. Maybe there is no separate  category for acquisition of משכונות?
I later looked at Tosphot on page 82 {BM} and I saw I had to revise my note. Tosphot holds a guarantee is not completely owned. Does that change anything on page 104? I don't know.

The most severe mistakes is walking away from the yeshiva world.

See the story about Adam and Eve. There after they ate and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden there were set there fiery angles with swords to guard the pass so that Adam and Eve would not be able to get to the Tree of Life.

 But one of the most severe mistakes is walking away from the yeshiva world. That is what you would call the Lithuanian kind of yeshiva world. That is not to say all these yeshivas are perfect. But more or less when one is a part of them I was walking in the way of the Torah in the most simple basic way that was understood by the rishonim. Walking away from that even to join what one thinks were better groups is the result of the power given to the devil to make things glittery and seem full of light when they are in fact full of darkness.

But the Devil never tries the tactic of telling people "Come and let's do a sin." It is always "Let's do a mitzvah." The Devil tries to get one to walk away from Torah by telling him that some other alternative group is keeping Torah so much better. They have so much more life and and so much more strict etc.  And they are doing it so much more faithfully.   In spite of this knowledge, after one leaves he  can't get back to  the straight and simple path of learning and keeping Torah.

I wrote once a whole book of memoirs. It has thankfully been lost with time. Still my memories contain a good deal of facts that relate to modern issues. For example my experiences with Shelomo Freifeld. It would take a whole new book to go into that. But mainly my point would be this. There are no simple answers.  They write books today about him. And they say he was a tzadik. And that might very well be true. But he was more of  a rosh yeshiva than a tzadik. And there is  avast difference. But I do remember that in his yeshiva there was an amazing spirit of Torah that swept me off my feet. I was so involved in Torah that every second away was like torture.
And that was when I met his son in law Naphtali Yeager. Naphtali had a deep way of learning that I have never seen afterwards. Later I went to the Mir in NY and I was not disappointed. But there was something missing in the Mir that I had felt in Reb Freideld's yeshiva.
But that is all I can really say about this because it all just raises questions in my mind about what was really going on. These are questions I have had ever after and never found any kind of satisfactory answer.
I should mention that Reb Freifeld did not think much of me. Nor did any of my teachers--ever. And their critiques of me were always justified. This is a subject not for now, but I am no tzadik--never was and never will be. But I do love the Torah. And I still think that learning and keeping Torah is the greatest thing on earth. --Even if I can't do it myself.


Some facts about Shar Yashuv, the yeshiva of Rav Freifeld. It was geared to bring people up to speed in learning the Talmud. And it was mainly about "עיון" learning in depth. The idea of בקיאות learning fast was frowned upon. Nor was  there any Musar סדר period of time devoted to Musar. השקפה the world view that was advocated was derived from Rav Isaac Hutner.
There was a  a Breslov fellow that used to come into the place. David Dun.This person I could never figure out. He would invite me over for Shabat (Friday night) and when I would come to his home after the regular prayers on Friday night no one would be home. There was one bachur there who was connected with Breslov (i.e. Rav Shick). It was from him I got the book of prayers of Reb Natan. But Rav Freifeld did not allow any evangelizing of Breslov in his yeshiva.

When you need a miracle you should go to the source of miracles directly -to God.

I wanted to say that just before I saw part of it I had been thinking of the problem of simony. That is money for miracles. This is the Jewish world is called a "pideon", that is money you give to  a tzadik in hope for a miracle.



When you need a miracle you should go to the source of miracles directly -to God.  But the idea of Talking with God in ones's own words is much more important than saying psalms or written prayers.
He said it is impossible to be a kosher person without this kind of approach--that is talking with God in a private place every day. One should go to a forest or someplace in the wilderness and spend the whole day just talking with God in ones own words.given a limited amount of time to talk with God,  it is best to go to place where you can be alone and talk with God from your own heart in your own words rather than go to any kind of religious setting.

For the glory of God here is a waltz

q74 [q74 in midi] I am not sure if a waltz has certain rules or not. I can see a minuet does. So this can't be a minuet.

q71 [q71 in midi]  q72 6-8 time [q72 in midi]   q75 [q75 in midi]  n56 [n56 in midi] q73

 [q73 in midi] q3 [q3 in midi] q4 [q4 in midi]  q5 [q5 in midi] e72  [e72 in midi]

I feel like Kant in a specific way. Just like Kant found himself between two schools of thought and found something right in each one--and also something wrong. So also I feel I am in a similar kind of situation. I was in two great yeshivas in NY and saw a lot of what is right about learning the Oral and Written Law. But I also saw what is wrong. But I also grew up in an amazing home environment with my parents and brothers. My parents were the most amazing, wholesome, compassionate, responsible, loving,  and sincere people I have ever met. Yet there was something missing-- learning Torah. So what I feel I need to do is to find some middle ground. Torah with work and the natural sciences is my formula.

The Mishna says, "All Torah that does not have work with it is worthless." {Pirkei Avot chapter 2} You can say we "don't poskin [decide the law] that way" because it is a debate between Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai and Rabbi Ishmael. However we do poskin [decide the law] that way. It is an open Halacha in the Rambam.

People ought to learn Torah in the straight Lithuanian yeshiva path. Cancel all classes in pseudo Torah. [And most classes in "Torah" are pseudo Torah. One needs to be extra careful about from whom he or she learns Torah. Sadly most people that present themselves-as teaching Torah are teaching Torah from the Sitra Achra. It is hard to find legitimate Torah nowadays. What might be the best thing is to stay home and get a regular Talmud and go through it yourself--every last word of Gemara. Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha, and Maharam from Lublin. When you learn the actual Oral Torah yourself at least you know you are getting the real thing.]

 But they also should work and not be using Torah as a way to get charity money.

Newton was a straight monotheist

My learning partner noticed that Newton was a straight monotheist. That is he believed in God but not the Trinity. I mentioned that there is a simple proof against the Trinity. It is this: Christianity is committed to two contradictory theses. One is that  a=g (God), b=g, and c =g. But a is not equal to b is not equal to c. That is the Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Ghost is God. But the Father is not equal to the Son. The Son is not equal to the Holy Ghost. 
But to knock Christianity over this issue does not seem to me to be  a good idea. The reason is that I think that Christianity misinterpreted what Jesus was saying. At the time there was no example of a Jewish Tzadik for Christians to understand what he was doing and what he was about.

The idea of "My father and I are one" is a simple expression of דביקות-Devekut -attachment with God. When one feels the light of God on him, and flowing through him, he can say he is "One with God." That does not mean the Trinity. But at the time how could anyone have understood this? The only similar types were prophets, but that was clearly not what was going on.

If not for this mistake, Jesus would simply have become another tzadik in the spectrum of Jewish Tzadikim.


That is not the same as a saint. A tzadik brings something special in the world. And people that follow that tzadik can gain. But they can wreak up the whole thing also.

In any case, the whole thing seems like a distraction from sitting and learning Torah.  But this seems like an important enough subject for me to at least state my opinion about it.  I have often found that when I need help in some way it is generally Christians that will help. The idea behind this I think is that every tzadik brings something special into the world. Thus the idea of compassion got into people that go along with that belief system. The problems however is the idea that the commandments were nullified. Also there is the problem with worship of a person. 

A nice thing about the Lithuanian yeshiva approach it that it tends to combine numinous holy and powerful experiences of learning and keeping Torah with great intensity along with a remarkable lack of religious delusions.  In fact, anything that even seems like  grandiosity is rigorously exuded.
To some degree this maybe over done. They tend to err on the side of caution. But judging by how many delusional religious fanatics there are than wander into Litvak yeshivas it seems that they are justified.

This leaves us with the question how to discern between delusion and authentic religious experience?
Probably there is no way.