The reason why life is hard is theodicity. That is the problem of evil. Not just that there is free will, but also often things happen to us that are very bad and we have no control over and there seems to be no reason for.

The reason we talk to God like we talk with a friend is not because every prayer is answered but rather because we hope the accumulation of prayers every day over many years will make an effect.
My Talmud learning partner told me about a farmer who planted the wrong crops every year. Either barley when there was only a market for wheat or visa verse. Once he found some versa in the Torah which indicated to him that everything God does is for the good. So when people would ask what crops he planted, he would say "The right ones." And somehow after that, things started working out for him.

In the Talmud Shabat 63 we find in learning one should finish the book he is learning and then go back over it in detail. It even suggests learning by just saying the words and going on. לעולם ליגרס אינש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר

The idea is that you present the contents of what you are learning to your subconscious, and automatically the process of synthesis takes place while sleeping or while doing other activities during the day.


we see also in Kant:

From the Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy


Kant characterizes synthesis as that activity by which understanding “runs through” and “gathers together” representations given to it by sensibility in order to form concepts, judgments, and ultimately, for any cognition to take place at all (A77-8/B102-3). Synthesis is not something people are typically aware of doing. As Kant says, it is a “a blind though indispensable function of the soul…of which we are only seldom even conscious (A78/B103)”.





I have thought that this would be helpful for Physics and  I found it helpful.  [At some point I decided natural sciences are important to learn based on the Guide of the Rambam. I would have done chemistry and biology also, but I decided if I would spread myself too thin I would not get anywhere. However at at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, I did have to take chemistry also besides my major. 

When do you need ordination from Sinai to make a halachic decision? Actually not often. But it does need to come from the Gemara. One of the advantages of the real authentic Shulchan Aruch  is it gives a clear picture of the sugia in the gemara and how it develops into the halacha. But if one does actually know the Talmud well enough to be a מומחה לרבים  [a expert that has been tested by other experts and never found to make a mistake, and whose decision has been accepted by other experts] then he is allowed to decide cases involving money as long as they are not cases of wounding or theft. These last two need ordination from Sinai.


The idea of the halachic based on דינא דגמרא the law of the Gemara is well established even in the Rambam. The Maharshal  wrote it is better to decide from the Gemara itself even if one is wrong than to decide based on the Rambam even if one is right.

The basic idea is this. The mishna says one needs three people to judge monetary cases and three [later Rava will explain this to mean  people with the authentic ordination from Sinai] in order to judge robbery and wounds. It is late here but in short according to the Torah we need three people with authentic ordination for everything but the sages made an exception for loans and cases of admissions. What comes out is that the requirement for authentic ordination is not required in  MONETARY CASES. So far the gemara has not said anything about more general halachic rulings.

The people that present and teach Kabalah are caught in a delusional world called the Intermediate Zone that gives those who enter it a feeling of great power and insight.

Every wisdom has a אבן ניגף stumbling block in it. That is you can get so deeply into it that you are doing OK and then you trip over the hidden wire. This applies to what is  taught in Humanities and Social Sciences Departments of universities as is clear from that fact that the students of professors in those department lose common sense and  enter in worlds of delusion. But I wanted to bring up the issue of Kabalah which is known to have a similar kind of stumbling bock in it.

The people that present and teach Kabalah are caught in a delusional world called the Intermediate Zone that gives those who enter it a feeling of great power and insight.

But I get the idea people are interested in numinous reality. Maybe I am also. After all I was at two amazing places in NY which were learning Torah the Oral and Written Law- and yet something inside me felt I was missing something. Where does one go to quench his or her spiritual thirst?

I would avoid Sitra Achra {Dark Side} places as much as possible. The Dark Side is seductive and inviting and seems full of light and love and Jewish rituals to make it seem kosher.

One nice thing bout the Kabalah Center is they do concentrate on the Ari alone and avoid all the Sitra Achra Kabalah that came after the Ari.  That is the best option for those interested in that area of study. Besides that I have not seen or heard of any place that deals with the mystic side of Torah that is not simply the Sitra Achra in disguise.


Now I should mention what the Ari was intending was to get a mental picture of the spiritual worlds above and by this to be attached to God. The problem is most people do not get attached to the Side of Holiness by this but rather to worlds of illusion.

And for laymen it is hard to discern who knows what they are talking about and who does not. Even I have this problem when it comes to other things that I have  knowledge of but not enough to tell who really knows it well and who is a quack. But at least in kabalah I do know enough to tell who is from the side of holiness and who is not.

The Gra brings up the point that a case brought before a judge might require a decision based on the pleas but the truth might be elsewhere. In such a case he said the judge must remove himself. This occurred to me when learning the Rambam concerning civil cases. The Halacha might require one decision but the judge might be aware that it is  a דין מרומה. There is something under the surface that is not being presented. See Shir Hashirim on the verse הנה מטתו של שלמה.
If the judge decides like the truth against the law of the Torah then there is the sword on his neck. If he decides like the law of the Torah against the real truth then Hell opens up beneath him.

The basic idea of Paramenides I paraphrase like this "What is must be. What is not can't be"
This was later contradicted by Herculitus who said the very essence of the world is change. Plato resolved this with dividing reality into two realms. The unchanging real world of ideas and the shadow world of changing things. Kant also divided things into the dinge an sich and phenomena. But to him you cant know the dinge an sich."Things in themselves." This was the opposite of Plato.
Schopenhauer accepted there are two separate realms. But to him there is only one Ding An Sich: the Will.
This can help us understand the verse אין עוד מלבדו. That the First Cause, God, is the only thing that must be. Everything can be or might not be. Their existence depends on him. But they do exist. This is how the Rambam explains the creation. He says it is יש מאין  ex nihilo. Not from himself.God willed the world to be. He did not make it from himself, but from nothing.

This idea of something from nothing is so important to the Rambam that he spends a good portion of volume 2 of the Guide to defend it and he says if one does nothing believe in this the the foundation of the whole Torah falls away.  I should mention that to disbelieve this would take more evidence that is available either to reason or to our senses. Also the Nefesh HaChaim cant be used against this because if you look carefully at his language you will see he says that אין עוד מלבדו means there are no other powers in the world besides God

Ideas in Talmud  Ideas in Bava Metzia  [I did a few spelling corrections and also I did not want to get into a halacha issue too much about if you are learning Torah and there is a minyan davening. I do not think you have to answer but I did not want to get into this subject in a book about Bava Metzia


Title page for Ideas in Talmud  Title page for Ideas in Bava Metzia

Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides

I had come to appreciate the Guide. When I returned to Israel the second time I ended up in an shul in Ramot 3 [a suburb of Jerusalem]. There I opened up the Guide and saw one short chapter that had this remarkable sentence in it לא הצם והמתפלל הוא הנרצה, אלא היודעו. ["Not he who fasts and prays is desirable, rather he that knows Him."]

The Rambam sees Faith and Reason as interacting. That is each informs the other. Reason guides Faith and visa-versa. Each is lacking without the other.

This is a key insight. In the original צמצום contraction of the Ari we find the Infinite Light was contracted. We find this contraction was in each of the מידות (ten sepherot).
.
 This is the idea of Kant that not just human reason, but pure reason is limited. 

(I am here depending on the intuitions of Isaac Luria. And I believe there are sufficient reasons for doing so. What makes him important is his own intuitions of the higher worlds, not the Zohar that he was using to express his ideas. As we know from Kant every representation is given half by the subject and half by the object. So his ideas were half of how he saw things and half of objective reality.]
 [The Reshash רב שלום שרבי Shalom Sharabi gives a good account of this in the  Nahar Shalom.

At any rate, we see the importance of balance in life. This is because one can go over the boundary of wisdom and thus lose faith. And when that happens then wisdom itself becomes stupid because it has faith included in it. Similarly faith we it goes beyond the boundary of wisdom stops being faith of side of holiness but becomes faith of the Dark Side.

This idea of the Rambam is expressed throughout the Guide. But it shows up especially in the parable about the King and his country.  There are people outside the country and people inside. There are people closer to the capital city and people inside. There are people close to the palace and people inside. There are people close to the king's chambers in the palace and people that are in the ouster chambers.  The people outside the country are the barbarians. The people inside keep Torah. The people close to the palace know and keep the Talmud perfectly. The people inside the palace are the מדעים [Physicists in the language of the Rambam]. The inner chambers are where the prophets and philosophers are. The Rambam starts that chapter saying he is not saying anything different there than what he already explained. In this parable we see the idea of a balanced life where people learn the Oral and Written Law and Physics and Metaphysics together.

Bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem

Bringing the Ark of the Ten Commandments into Jerusalem  The music was written circa 1996



Moses being drawn from the Nile by the daughter of Pharoh    music written around 2012



Joseph and his father music is j33 written about 3 years ago  


David the Shepard turned Warrior  



Jeremiah the prophet mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem    The music here was written in NY.


Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah music is q92


i1 b98    

avraham and isaac  The music here was made while waiting in the Borispol Airport to return to NY. [that was probably around 1995]. I think that was the year I had lost my papers. Usually when I go through a lot of suffering, God gives me some kind of great song afterwards.[There is a kind of song towards the end which God gave to me when I first went to yeshiva in NY]


Joseph with his father Music written around 2011 around the time I discovered an answer to a question in Bava Metzia page 97


Moses drawn from the river by the daughter of Pharoh

A large majority of religious teachers are possessed by forces from the Dark Side. A



 The power that the false tzadikm and false messiahs have over us is because of the the support they get from religious teachers. If we would simply learn and keep Torah simply none of these problems would be plaguing us.

It is true that a מומחה לרבים can decide a halachic issue in civil laws. But the qualifications to be a מומחה לרבים are not qualifications that any religious teachers have. They are just innocent idiots that give qualifications one to the other. 

Reb Natan I assume was a gilgul of Natan from Gaza and corrected his sin of supporting a false messiah by supporting a true tzadik. But in doing so he overdid it.

[The main criteria  for a מומחה לרבים is not that he has been accepted by the crowd but he has been tested by people who themselves experts  in the whole Mishna and Talmud and has never been found to make  a mistake or not know a halacha. So who would that be. I would have to say people who in fact were known to know the Talmud well. Not people who had their reputations built of other criteria. So if we look at the true criteria that the Chazal give us it is fairly easy to see that there were people and probably still are a few who do qualify. Rav Shach, Reb Moshe Feinstein, Shmuel Berenbaum. The trouble begins with Baali Teshuva who find some Chrismatic lunatic and decide to call him a "Baki BeShas" expert in Shas. So the idiot gets a reputation for knowing the Talmud because people want this to be so. Not because it is in fact the case.

Michelangelo's Rachel the music is n1  black hole  i3

Moses looks on the history of the birth of the People of Israel  the music here is the same as Moses the Law Giver. I am just trying to figure out how to put this kind of thing together. There is Michelangelo's Leah and Rachel and various events. There is the expulsion from Gan Eden. The giving of the Torah is a way to bring us back into the Garden of Eden but we have to go through the fiery swords of the angels guarding the way .

רות המואביה Ruth the Moavite woman is thinking about the right path in life and she chooses the God of Israel


This is not complete. It is just my first attempt to put something on utube in this way.
The music is q1. The pictures are of Ruth and her thoughts as she is thinking about her path in life.
 and decides to join her path with Noami. She becomes the grandmother of Kind David.

She was born into Moav a nation that was at odds with Israel. A Jewish couple arrived in Moav because of a famine. She married one of the sons. That son died. She was a widow. Her mother in law Noami was on her way back to Israel, Ruth decided to join her. The lesson is even when you are down and out--there is still hope.

It is hard to know when someone knows what they are talking about. It seems to me the only way to to know the subject yourself. Without that it is hard to know.
It is easy to get fooled by credentials  that in many cases were given by people equally as incompetent. The problem is not just credentials that are not relevant to the subject. Sometimes the very fact of the being credentials can show a problem. 

To learn Musar and Gemara. I think with the input of these two things every day that you will see blessings in all of the other areas you want to have go well. So what I think is to do every day about 1/2 hour of, each one. [You could add time to each session if you want. But a half hour of Musar and a 40 mintutes of Gemara I think are the best way for one to get out of problems. The power of Torah is great. Musar means traditional Musar like the חובות לבבות (Obligations of the Heart) or of the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter.]

 I am look at learning Torah as a kind of unexplained thing that has power to help one in life. 

You see this kind of thing in the Old Testament when Elisha the prophet told the Syrian general to be tovel [immerse himself] in the Jordan River seven times and he would be cured of leprosy. Sometimes there is some small thing that can help one in life enormously, but one does not know what it is or does not recognize its value. 

There is a thing as learning the Ari in depth.[That is Isaac Luria.] The surprising thing is that the people that are supposed to be so called "mekubalim" never know the Ari at all. They are all frauds. There is one fellow however, Michael Kohler, who I discovered actually did the work and knows it well. He apparently thinks that the head of a Kabalah yeshiva also knows it well but I think he is wrong about that.  The head of the Kabalah yeshiva just wrote  a book of "look here and look there" so it sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

What is surprising about this is the complexity of the Ari is no where near that of a a single Tosphot. It is not hard at all. But it takes a lot of work. [But still It is nothing compared to Field Theory.]  Even with that degree of simplicity, all the people that are supposed to know it are frauds.

What does this matter? The point that I am driving at is that it is worth doing this work. The reason I think it is be worthwhile is that attachment with God [Devekut] is a result of this learning when it is done right.

There is a well known problem with this kind of learning. And we do find the Ari himself warned about this at the end of the few books on the Torah itself. שער הפסוקים is one place. In any case  avoiding the frauds is the first order of business. The way to do this is actually quite simple. Do the regular Torah learning in a normal Straight Lithuanian Yeshiva. Then after you have gone trough Shas a couple of time [that is in a fast session] then you get the set of the Ari from the Kabalah Institute. They have the best edition. And then you learn the Eitz Chaim many times, or the Mavo Shearim, which are both the major sources needed to know the system of the Ari.

And don't go near anything later than that. The trouble with the later supposedly mystic stuff is it all is drawn from the false prophet of the Shatz and just reading it infects the people that read it with that energy from the Sitra Achra which does not have a cure as far as I have seen. It is fatal to one's spirit and soul. I never saw anyone that fell for it that did not die spiritually from it. [After the  Ari, Yaakov Abuchatzaira,  and Shalom Sharabi are the only ones that I think are OK.]

Still on the subject of the previous essay. The question of conflict between mitzvot is brought up in Yevamot and in Bava Metzia pgs 29  and 82a. עשה דוחה לא תעשה אבל אין עשה דוחה לא תעשה שיש בו כרת ואין עשה דוחה לא תעשה ועשה. [A positive mitzvah pushes off a negative mitzvah, but not a negative mitvah that has as its penalty cutting off from one's people] That is a long sugia in the beginning of Yevamot. Also העוסק המצווה פטור מן המצווה. [One who is doing a mitzvah does not interrupt in order to do another mitzvah] That is the פרוטה של רב יוסף in Bava Metzia. There you see even if one is involved in a small mitzvah, he does not have to interrupt in order to do a great mitzvah. For example one has found a lost object like a towel. Since he has a category of a guard he does not have to give charity even if a poor person walks up to him and asks for charity. And Raba does not disagree that if it would be the case that a poor person asks that he is not obligated and in fact should not interrupt. It is just that Raba says we don't say he is making a profit because a poor person might ask for charity.

One of the issues that come up from this are the fact that lots of time you find yourself learning in a shul and just because some jerk decides he wants to daven Mincha, he expects you to interrupt your learning to answer Amen and stand up for Kedusha. Not only is this rude, but it is specifically against the Halacha. One who is doing one mitzvah even a small one does not have to interrupt in order to do another mitzvah.

We do find that one that is learning is allowed to interrupt to do another mitzvah, but he does not have to. That is as the Gra explains that Mishna in Peach "תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם"

This sugia also comes up in Suka where it brings that the newly married person does not have to say the Shema. I think I might have brought this up before hand with the Baal HaMeor and the Ramban in some blog entry. In any case what you find at the Kotel or in many other places that people expect one to interrupt his learning to say Kedusha is  just a power play to get control over other people.


But it does not end there. The truth is this is symptomatic of  a larger problem. People just don't care about learning Torah. Not those that learn and not those that don't.  To those that learn it is a job they are getting paid for. So they don't care because, כל דאשתמש בתגא חלף ["Anyone that uses the Torah as a means to make money loses their portion in the next world--that is how the Rambam explains that Mishna.] Those that don't learn as we can see just do not think it does anything. They might think many other things are important--maybe supporting some movement or going to some tzadik, or maybe even learning Kabalah. But straight Oral and written law not.

[There is a kind of permission to accept charity if you are learning Torah. But once there are conditions when and where you have to learn, then is devolves into learning for money. ]


In any case I would like to write more about this subject but I feel it would be better to wait and see if perhaps Rav Shach wrote something about this.[My learning partner is not interested in this subject. And without Rav Shach I doubt if I can find much clarity in it. There are too many loose ends. and principles flying around.]

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 The question of conflict between מצוות is brought up in יבמות and in בבא מציעא כ''ט  and פ''ב ע''א. עשה דוחה לא תעשה אבל אין עשה דוחה לא תעשה שיש בו כרת ואין עשה דוחה לא תעשה ועשה.
That is a long סוגיא in the beginning of יבמות. Also העוסק המצווה פטור מן המצווה. That is the פרוטה של רב יוסף in ב''מ. There you see even if one is involved in a small מצווה, he does not have to interrupt in order to do a great מצווה. For example one has found a lost object. Since he has a category of a שומר he does not have to give charity even if a poor person walks up to him and asks for charity. And רבה does not disagree that if it would be the case that a poor person asks that he is not obligated and in fact should not interrupt. It is just that רבה says we don't say he is making a profit because a poor person might ask for charity. זה לפי תוספות

One of the issues that come up from this are the fact that lots of time you find yourself learning in a  and just because someone  decides he wants to להתפלל מנחה he expects you to interrupt your learning to answer אמן and stand up for קדושה. Not only is this rude, but it is specifically against כלל, העוסק במצווה פטור מן המצווה

We do find that one that is learning is allowed to interrupt to do another mitzvah, but he does not have to. That is as the גר''א explains that משנה in פאה "תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם"

This סוגיא also comes up in סוכה where it brings that the newly married person does not have to say the שמע.

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יבמות פרק א' ובבא מציעא כ''ט ופ''ב ע''א. עשה דוחה לא יעשה אבל אין עשה דוחה לא תעשה שיש בו כרת ואין עשה דוחה לא תעשה ועשה. זה סוגיא ארוכה בתחילת יבמות. גם עוסק מצווה פטורה מן המצווה. זה פרוטה של רב יוסף ב''מ. יש לך לראות אפילו אם בן אדם מעורב במצווה קטנה, הוא לא צריך להפסיק כדי לעשות מצווה גדולה. לדוגמא אחד מצא אבדה. מאז יש לו קטגוריה של שומר הוא לא צריך לתת צדקה אפילו אם אדם עני ניגש אליו ושואל לצדקה. ורבה מסכים שאם זה יהיה המקרה שאדם עני שואל כי הוא אינו מחויב, ולמעשה לא צריך להפסיק.   רבה אמר שאנחנו לא אומרים ששומר אבדה עושה רווח, כי אדם עני עלול לבקש צדקה. זה לפי תוספות. העולה מזה הוא כשאתה מוצא את עצמך לומד  ומישהו מחליט שהוא רוצה להתפלל המנחה והוא מצפה ממך להפסיק את הלמידה שלך לענות אמן ולעמוד לקדושה . זה נגד כלל העוסק במצווה פטור מן המצווה. אנו מוצאים שאחד שלומד מותר להפסיק לעשות מצווה אחרת, אבל הוא לא צריך. זה כמו הגר''א מסביר את המשנה בפאה "תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם"