However to know any single halacha properly one needs to know the Talmud from where that halacha comes from.

As for Halacha in fact the only valid source is the Talmud. But because not everyone has the time it is perfectly fine to go by the Rambam or the Tur Beit Yoseph. The only Achron in Halacha I have much respect for is the Aruch HaShulchan. There are people that go by the Gra in every detail like Rav Zilverman in the Old City. These are all very good approaches. However to know any single halacha properly one needs to know the Talmud from where that halacha comes from.

As for the other issues like problems with all religious teachers  being creeps that I brought up in my essay. I would not say what I say if I did not know it to be true.  And like I mentioned before there is such a thing as group behavior.  There are plenty of examples of this in the Gemara. See the end of kidushin "Where it says stay away from that group that are from such and such a city because they are all liars."  In any case my essay was really meant to address a public problem which is very real and everyone knows it except the people that want everyone else to be blind. 

And there are the obvious exceptions of people that are sitting and learning Torah all day who can be trusted and in Israel there is in fact is pretty good rigorous system in place. But these are side issues and tend to detract attention away from the widespread catastrophe that surrounds us.

It is for good reason I have mentioned the importance of  a legitimate Lithuanian yeshiva. If you do not have one there, then at least  get the book of Rav Shach so you can be yourself a walking Litvak Yeshiva, keeping the whole Written and Oral Law. Get to you also the books of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik and the other great sages of Lita.
[For example, the Even HaAzelof Rav Isar Meltzer, the rav of Rav Shach.] My learning partner, Dadvid Bronson, had a mind that could go deeply into Tosphot , but I know of no achron with that capability. So I confine myself to recommending the great sages of Lithuania that had a more global approach.
[What people call halacha nowadays is a joke. They take the majority of the frauds and liars that are as crooked as snakes and go by the majority opinion. That is what they call Halacha.]

why is there evil,

  I think the issue of "why is there evil," is confused with existence of God. Also I think in the West, a metaphysical structure of the world was denied beginning in the Middle Ages with the idea that universals do not exist  and getting up to the British empiricists. Both of these issues I think tend to obscure the central issue.\

FrankNorman

The people most likely to use the "problem of evil" as an argument against Christianity tend to have a very blurry conception of evil.
And also often to be the same people who reject the very idea of there being any transcendent standards of right or wrong.



\Frank: you brought up a good point that both points used against existence are contrary one to the other. If they hold no objective metaphysical structure of the world exists, then there is no objective evil, and so the problem of evil does not exist.

In any case, the first cause idea was already used by Aristotle himself.  People for some reason think it began with the Rambam and Aquinas based on Aristotle's' idea of a First Mover.  But in fact Aristotle does bring the idea of the first cause also in his Physics.

Here is the idea of the first cause in my own words:
Belief  in God is rational.
 Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED. (You could prove the first step a priori that everything has a cause by noting that nothing can come from nothing. This makes it a priori, not just an empirical observation).

I love Avraham's Music!

r31 D Major 3-4 time   r35

I love Avraham's Music!

religious teachers always lie

I wrote a rather sharp essay about the Mishna "עשה לך רב", "Make for yourself a rav." And I did mean to be sharp because it is misused. Even so the issue is relevant and should be addressed in a more calm fashion. The actual issue is: to whom (if anyone) must one listen?  Perhaps anyone that claims to speak in the name of Torah? Perhaps to any group that have decided to claim the title of "Rav" for themselves and their associates?
Or perhaps (as, in fact, the Torah does say) to one's parents?  Should perhaps they be given consideration? Perhaps the Torah is just making a suggestion: "It is  a good idea to listen to your parents, when you happen to agree with them"?!!

Furthermore then what place does the Oral Law --the actual tradition written down by the Tenaim and Amoraim have?

One of the "Gedolai Lita", the sages of Lithuania, Naphtali Troup addressed this issue. The name might not be familiar to you, but he has a stature close to that of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. You can find his book in yeshivas called Chidushei HaGarnat. His ideas became widespread in yeshivas even more that Reb Chaim's. But, for some reason, his reputation was eclipsed by Reb Chaim.
The idea is the command of listening to your parents is a Mitzvat Ase, מצוות עשה- positive command.
[What I mean is: It pushes off a negative command, but not a negative command that is also a positive command, nor a command that has "כרת" (being cut off from one's people) attached to it.]



As for the cult of religious teachers --they should be trashed.



As for the Oral Law --it should be learned and kept. And never trust any rabbi about what it says. They always lie.
religious teachers  always lie because the very title shows they  do not know or care what the Torah says. Ordination from Sinai  stopped during the period of the sages of the Talmud, thus anyone with ordination today is a fraud, a cheat, and  a liar.

r33 

Avraham's Music

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r33 c major edited    r33 in midi

The cult that the Gra signed the excommunication on always lie about everything,- especially Torah. They use true things to promote lies. They mix a little truth with the lies so it all sounds plausible.

.The cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on

The reason they lie about everything is because they are schizo personality types  and their leaders have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. hyper-graphia, hatred of sex, obsessive compulsion disorders, and are malicious. That is they intend to do harm. But they get the appearance of ‘doing good.’This  has a seductive appeal because it gives the ‘moral high ground.’ This moral high ground is then exploited to shame and barrage anyone who disagrees into oblivion

I do not think one should have a rav because they do not teach Torah. The Mishna (that one should have a rav) was referring to a rav at the time of the Mishna when there was ordination from Sinai. And furthermore there are further problems with ravs nowadays. I am not sure how to explain what is the problem but these are well known. Everyone besides themselves knows that everything they say has some agenda. You can't trust them to tell you what the Torah says

They think they are doing a favor for Reb Nachman by worshiping him

Reb Natan his disciple was a classical case of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Obsession with hared of sex, hyper-graphia. Obsession with religion. In any case, there was one person that was asked how he managed to stay married for a long time, when nowadays that is uncommon. He answered,I made sure my wife never talked with any religious teacher. Religious teachers today are extremely dangerous when it comes to keeping ones family together and to raise a healthy, wholesome family. I have been around the block enough times to know this in my own experience and many many other people's. Especially the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on . You think to gain something by their blessing? It is all an illusion only to vanish after some time

The closest you can get to the idea of a real rav is if there is a person that is actively teaching Talmud daily in a Litvak yeshiva. That kind of rav is OK. The cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on are bad people and we need to take back the Torah. The real, Torah. Religious teachers are as corrupt and crooked as a snakes, but much more dangerous. Because when one follows them he or she think he or she is doing a mitzvah. It is true that a mishna in Pirkei Avot can be used in a false way to support this conspiracy to divert Judaism into a cult of worship of the great leader. All one needs to do is get together with a few other criminals  and agree to start giving each other ordination. Then you have a mishna that tells everyone that they have to listen to a rav about all important matters in life. Even if none of these people know anything about Torah, they still get the immense authority given by this mishna over everyoneAuthentic ordination ended in the middle of the age of the amoraim (sages of the Talmud).] So the only people that get the title are only those that do not know the Torah even at the most minimal level, or are false and devious enough to know the fact and yet ignore them.Temporal lobe epilepsy is an important model of behavioral change that accounts for the overarching  increased religious interests, hypergraphia (obsesive need to write), increased moral and philosophical concerns,  and lack of humor. Hate of sexuality. Norman Geschwind. Many of Geschwind’s observations and formulations regarding this topic were highly developed in 1974, reflecting his long-standing interest in behavioral changes in epilepsy
Appendix bout Halacha. Halacha.  It is hard to give a good idea of what Halacha is. Clearly the first problem is the charlatans that claim to know it. But even if we could clear away all the trash it still is hard to get to Halacha because it has to come from the Gemara. Without knowing from where it comes inside the Gemara itself there is no halacha that comes out right. Context is everything. The way I approached Shabat was to learn masechta itself with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharasha. And besides that I had a learning partner with whom I did the Gemara, Rif, Rosh and the Shiltei Giborim on the Rif and the Tur Beit Yoseph. To my way of thinking this is the only way to do Halacha. And I am not alone in this opinion. The Maharshal wrote that it is better to poskin from the Gemara itself rather than any compilation of halacha even if one get the halacha wrong. And he wrote that specifically on the Rambam. The Maharsha wrote in a similar vein about those that poskin from the Shulchan Aruch (The large Shulchan Aruch with all the commentaries) even with knowledge of the commentaries. He wrote that it is proper to rebuke them and they are causing many people to sin. The disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin wrote a response disagreeing with a pesak of some famous religious teacher and added "We only go by the law of the Gemara.There are no shortcuts to Halacha. No one has a right to an opinion in Halachah unless they have done the work. Everyone has the right to an opinion but no one has the right to an uninformed opinion.

If you want to have an opinion in the Laws of Shabat, then go through tractate Shabat with Rashi Tosphot Mahrasha Maharam from Lublin and the the Rif, Rosh, Tur, Beit Yoseph from start to finish. Every last word. Ah you say you don't have time? Then cancel your TV programs and make time. You don't have the right to an uninformed opinion

talmud ideas

Ideas in Tractate Bava Metzia 

Ideas in Shas I have to say that a good deal of credit goes to my learning partner for these two books. He asked that his name not be mentioned publicly.. But it is not just his ideas that I mention but also the motivation for writing. The most rigorous type of learning Talmud I saw in NY in Shar Yashuv and the Mir and had almost forgotten about this kind of learning until I encountered it again in my learning partner.
Seeing that most people do not even know this kind of learning exists I decided to write these two books showing how it is done.
[Not that I am so great at this. I learned from people that know how to learn a  million times better than me.]

Where is the path of Torah? 

learn word by word

One way I have found helpful in learning is to learn word by word as I have mentioned. But sometimes after I have finished a book and am in the process of review I find it helpful to hold my place with a place marker. Then the next day to go back over the previous page and then to go further after that.

I love to learn Torah

There was a process that I used when there was a very limited amount of material that I absolutely had to understand then and there,- and there was not time for my usual relaxed way of learning of saying, "When I come around the whole book the second time I will get it."
That is;- I would say every paragraph forwards and backwards. I based this on Yehuda, a mediaeval mystic, and the Ari (Isaac Luria) and Moshe Chaim Lutzatto. In all of their books I found some hint to this kind of idea.

I hesitate to mention this idea because it might be that some people do not need it, and others it might not work so well for.  Still for myself I have found it effective in some cases.


I used this saying the paragraph forwards and backwards when I was Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Without it I could not have succeeded. The reason is I needed to pass exams. The fast method of learning that I use t give me an overview of  a subject simply did not could not have given me the understanding I needed to pass those exams.
But that was because I was doing a very limited amount of material.
So in short what i recommend is two sessions for every subject. A fast session in which you read the words as fast as possible and do not think at all whether you understand or not. The other is this approach of saying every paragraph forwards and backwards. And even many times util you get it.

The first time I saw the idea of learning fast was in a secular context. Speed reading. But the idea did not include saying the words. In the Jewish context I saw this in a Musar book the Ways of the Righteous.

If people would learn in Litvak yeshivas they would already know this. The regular way of any Litvak Yeshiva is slow and in depth learning in the morning and fast in the afternoon.

the cult that the Gra signed the excommunication on

The problem I see with cults [Hindu, the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on, etc.] is that the leader can absorb people into his archetype.
Especially in the West. This is because the West has been emptied of meaning by David Hume and the British  Empiricists. That is if one holds by Nominalism and or empiricism the world has been emptied of meaning. This is what gives secular society the empty feelings that people feel but can not express. Thus youth are prey for archetypes that can absorb their energies and spit them out.

I can not go into all the details, here but you can easily on your own find examples of this type of thing and even see it in your own lives when you saw someone get involved in some cult.

Cults are the reincarnation of the ancient idols. Joining a cult one becomes a servant to some archetype. This at least gives me an idea of why the Gra saw fit to put the entire movement  into excommunication. Not just that he saw it as kelipat noga, but rather that he singled it out as the most destructive force coming into the world at the time that would result in other cults like communism and other assorted idolatries.

Learning Musar [Ethics] has made me a better person.

Learning Musar [Ethics] has made me a better person. There was an implicit message in the Ethics movement of Reb Israel Salanter;.

It was not that it is good idea to learn Musar [Mediaeval Ethics]. That was not news. The unstated message was that Fear of God is contained in the classical Musar book.
I do not think anyone ever expressed the idea in that way but it seems to me after I spent time reading the books of his disciples that this is what they were thinking.
That means they were thinking like this: If you want fear of God, then go through the entire set of Musar from beginning to end. That is a good deal of reading.

Why this is interesting is this. The more one fears God they he fears people or anything else. Nor does he have any reason to fear anything else. People I noticed can have fears that they are not happy with. Sometimes they know their fears are irrational. Other times they do have something real to be afraid of. Sometimes they can not tell the difference. It seems to me the best way to deal with this is to learn Musar.

generation gap

generation gap

How does a culture unwittingly sow the seeds of inter-generational mistrust? When does youth begin to suspect that adult camaraderie may be deeply flawed? Revolutions begin in the younger generation, rather than the seasoned adults. Something in the cultural soil goes bad.

One variety of these seeds of mistrust and reveals that they usually begin to sprout informally, even playfully, in arenas like the Beit Midrash or Synagogue   where young men mixed as freely with adult men. The young are always watching and wondering what makes adults tick. Their natural inclination to imitate the ways of adults is a deep source of cultural stability because it tends to ensure that what an adult does today will be emulated by a youth tomorrow.

I have had people ask me questions in Halacha because they knew they could not get an honest answer anywhere else. Everyone seems to have an agenda. Halacha means what they want it to mean.

The hard thing about halacha is that one needs to know the source before he can understand it at all. But in essence that simply means to sit and learn Gemara like Lithuanian Yeshivas do anyway.


The issue is not adults verses teens. It is young married adults that still need guidance for older people. They need to know whom they can trust.
This is hard to know. Usually you need to know a subject really well to be able to tell who else knows it really well.

I any case for the sake of the record there were people I knew that really did know Torah well. mainly they were in NY. Some are today Roshei Yeshiva in the Mir and Chaim Berlin. Rav Nelkenbaum in the Mir. Shelomo Haliua in Chaim Berlin. Shimon Buso in Netivot in Israel. Clearly Rav Elezar Menachem Shach was the greatest Torah scholar of the last generation.

music

r29 a minor

I love Avraham's Music

When the world I knew was caving in around me I needed a basic rule for living. That is to say the truth at all cost.

What determines what a human being is one thing that is really three. Commitment --long term-- short term; and if these two correspond one with the other. The inner self is hidden from view. We think we know it, but we know only the surface like the surface of a ball. We know what we are thinking. The stream of conscious. But what is motivating us is hidden. But we can know to what basic rules for living we are committed to. Alexander the Great was asked how he accomplished so much. He gave a rule of living. What needed doing he did right away without delay. That is he had a short term commitment that corresponded with his long term commitment to take over the entire world. When the world I knew was caving in around me I needed a basic rule for living. That is to say the truth at all cost. These kinds of rules we choice for how we live determine in the long run who we really are.

The problem is Islam is the greatest threat to the survival of the human race.

There are many verses in the Q'ran calling for violence against unbelievers, the jihadists quote as they behead and enslave. There is a long tradition of scholarly interpretation and military implementation of those verses over centuries - not only by 20 year-olds but by imams, mullahs, sheikhs, and great Islamic empires. 

Those who persist in claiming that Islam is a religion of peace at the least have a lot of explaining to do. They have a huge weight of evidence, textual and historical, to contend with. 


Good luck to those who seek to persuade other Muslims of their "religion of peace" view! I pray for their safety and success. Those Muslims that really believe in the golden rule, I wish them well and pray for their health and success. But they are not following Islam, they are following Western ideals.

The problem is Islam is the greatest threat to the survival of the human race since that volcano eruption 75000 years ago almost wiped out our entire species. That was just one volcano. Imagine what the Islamic Atom Bomb could do to us. People that do not realize this simply have their heads in the sand, teh sands of Saudi Arabia money buying off our politicians.
 Believe me when i tell you the reason Germany has let in the new Islamic invasion, the reason George Bush claimed after the deadliest attack on American soil that Islam is a religion of peace--believe me when I tell you is is all about the Billions of dollars that Saudi Arabia buys our politicians with. Follow the money trail.

Girls, be smart and get a Litvak!

Girls, be smart and get a Litvak! A man who has learned in Ponovitch.

In the Jewish world, the Middle Ages have a different reputation than in the Christian world. In the Jewish world the Middle Ages are looked upon as the peak of Enlightenment. That is to say the "rishonim" are considered unsurpassed and also un-surpass-able.  The best thing we can say about the Gra is he qualified as a rishon. It is considered that rishonim cant be wrong--at least in Torah subjects. But we admit they can be wrong about scientific issues.

This relates to Christians because it has become customary in Christian circles to look at the Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages." Nothing in Christianity has come anywhere near the quality of thought of Aquinas nor Anselm. Not within a million light years. And yet Christians still insist on thinking that they have somehow out-grown the Middle Ages. If only they were smart enough to see the brilliance of the Middle Ages. That would already be a step up.


I should add the the "rishonim" well deserve their reputation. But to see this takes years in yeshiva. Mainly the problem with achronim is fuzzy logic. This is mirrored in the Christian world where the best of philosophical thinkers after the middle ages  show circular logic consistently.







David Hume wrote: The order in nature could equally well result from the intrinsic properties of matter itself. This he thought was an argument against intelligent design. The issue to be decided is whether the order in nature is the result of intelligent design. If it is, then the properties of matter (e.g the bonding properties of carbon and hydrogen) are also the result of intelligent design. Postulating a dichotomy between intelligent design and the properties of matter therefore amounts to postulating a priori that there is no design in nature. Hume (and all who follow him) essentially follow a grand circularity. That is called circular logic and proves nothing since anything can be proved if one is clever enough to conceal the circular nature of his arguments 

Kant

The greatest consideration should be given to the possibility of  graded levels of reason. I mean to say that we have different levels of unconditioned realities. Modes of necessity. So in knowledge of these modes we ought to considered different levels of non intuitive immediate knowledge.
In short: How is a priori synthetic knowledge possible? you could say like the intutionists [Prichard G.E. Moore, Huemer, Bryan Caplan] that it is by reason. They are expanding the areas that reason knows for good cause. They look at Hume's argument that reason has only one function--to `perceive  contradictions.They know that that is wrong. But we do have to admit the kind of reasoning we use to advance a mathematical series is different than the other kinds of intellectual perception that they suggest. That is they ignore Kant's arguments, not just Hume. So Plato could have answered the question how the forms participate with individuals; -he could have answered the representation makes the object possible, and the object makes the representation possible.

Making and keeping friends. Getting married and staying married and having good children. How to do this?

Marriage is great 

marriage and friends is what life is about. 

Making friends, finding acceptance, falling in love, and becoming lovable  present  real and lifelong challenges for human beings in every culture.  Friendship is a philosophic problem because  a man or a woman without friends, real friends, is incapable of the fullest flourishing. Such people will always just miss capturing the deepest sort of happiness. The time to address youthful eroticism is before the wounds of rejection and insecurity become lasting scars. 
How to make and keep friends and a spouse. Two problems everyone thinks about but no one addresses.

Adults are too busy to take a hand in such matters. The youth suffer. They  grow up, reenact the same ineptitude with their own kids, and spend their time browsing the self-help stacks of bookstores.  Where are adults who should care about youths and their ability to channel love and eros to its proper end: making friends and a wife and kids?

So people know they need help but have no where to go. The question is under the surface of consciousness. So it can never be expressed.

To answer this question people get attracted to cults that claim to answer these concerns. They pour their time efforts and money into false leaders that pretend to be able to answer these concerns. 

So the problem of cults is a deeper problem that relates to the very essence of what a human being is.

People in Lithuanian yeshivas will recognize immediately what I am talking about. They know that the Litvak yeshiva is probably the best forum and environment for making and keeping friends and getting married and staying married and having good children. They know it is not a cult. It is the exact opposite. But what bothers me is that sometimes it does not do this function very well.
This fact seems not to be addressed at all anywhere. I found that the effect can be the opposite of what you would except.