The Musar [Ethics] Movement 2.01

תנועת המוסר 2.01

The Musar [Ethics] Movement 2.01

This would be slightly different than the Musar Movement 1.01

The set of books the first Musar [Ethics] Movement was based on was three, חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart, מסילת ישרים ואורחות צדיקים. [I do not know the common English translation. I think perhaps Paths of the Righteous, The Path of the Just.] This basic canon was added onto and so the actual books that people were concentrating on were about 30 and even more if you count the Maharal from Prague. In any case the literature was a lot.

But to launch another Musar movement with the purpose in mind as Reb Israel Salanter, I think would have to include the אור ישראל by one of the major disciples of Reb Israel Salanter, Isaac Blasser. And the מדרגת האדם by Joseph Josel Horowitz a later disciple of Israel Salanter after the original three.
Plus it would have to include Jewish philosophy which I think has been ignored at terrible consequence. That would be the אמונות ודעות by Saadia Gaon, the Guide of the Rambam, Ibn Gavirol, Crescas, Joseph Albo, Abravenal.



There are still details to work out. The First Musar Movement somehow got absorbed in yeshivas and is almost zero in effect today. It gets at best lip service, and some "mashgiach" [the person that in theory in charge of the spiritual welfare of the students] talks once a week. Yet it is well known that mashgiachs are just the people too stupid to be rosh yeshivas. They don't even know much about what is going on in Musar itself, much less Gemara. A mashgiach is a person talking about virtue who know nothing about it. How could it not be damaging? Why not get a football couch that knows nothing about football?

So it is hard to see where this might go. Still it is important, and without which nothing else can begin of much worth.

[Plus outdoor skills and physical fitness. Outdoor skills is for character development, plus survival skills.] Outdoor skills and physical fitness have to be a part and parcel of any Ethical movement. Ethics does not exist in a vacuum.

[Outside of all the above I wanted to say that things in Ethics you need to work on, it is a good idea to memorize them and say the paragraph right when you wake up in the morning. Like if you need to work on some trait,you find some statement in a Musar book that deals with that trait and say it over right when you wake up.]

The cult that the Gra signed the excommunication on change their story depending on whom they are talking to

There are several reason that I think you should get a set of  Avi Ezri.
One reason is that fact that it shows how to learn Torah in a very simple and understandable way.

But also there is the fact that he (Rav Elazar Menachem Shach) was the only one to stand up and oppose the false god of the the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on.

That already says a lot about the quality of his character and intelligence.


I should mention that the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on change their story depending on whom they are talking to. They definitively serve a false god, not the God of Israel, but they get away with it because they are extraordinarily excellent in doing rituals. And to other groups that have obsessive compulsive needs to be doing ritual all day long this is  a big plus. So they get a pass at serving a phony deity.


Of course there are levels of how bad things can be. This we see in the Eitz Chaim of Rabainu the Ari. The problem with the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on is they worship the crown of darkness, the crown of the Sitra Achra. So their evil is not apparent. It is the higher root of evil.
The way I see things based on the Ari is there are planes of evil. Not all evil is the same. The root --or from where evil comes from is not the same as the evil itself. And I do see it as a metaphysical reality. See the part of the Eitz Chaim after Shar HaNukva and you will see what I mean.



Appendix: Just to get back to Rav Shach. The point of the whole school of the Litvak Gedolim was global. It was to understand how the subject in front of you fits with the rest of Shas and with the Rambam. The trouble is that most of that school is hard to understand. It is easy to finish an essay of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and think you still do not get it. With Rav Shach, that never happens. He makes the deepest concepts crystal clear.

The book Ideas in Shas and a piece of Music

Ideas in Talmud updated   R38 G major I think this piece is OK but I am not really sure.
Ideas in Bava Metzia

Wisdom of crowds=Wisdom of the mob.

Wisdom of crowds. This was an issue addressed by  my Dad. After a career in science, he went into the stock market. He told me once the best way to lose money in the stock market is to listen to advice of the experts or the crowd. That was pretty much in accord with the general world view of Californians  in those days of the importance of  finding your own path and not listening to the wisdom of crowds.

He was in those days working with the best stock brokers of Merrill-Lynch. But that was what my Dad said even abut the top experts--not to listen to their advice about what to invest in.

Today I would have to temper (modify) this advice. Sometimes. Sapolsky mentioned on one of his utube videos  [#22. min. 45 ]that if you take a lot of experts and take the average of all their estimates about the thing they are expert in then the medium turns out to be very close to the true value more than any one expert. But the caveat [condition] is they have to be experts in that field. For example given to Navy geologist temperature and some other variable the question was asked, "Where in the world would this be?" Take the collective answer of all and take the average. It came out within 300 meters of the right spot.

So you really have to be expert enough to be able to tell who is a real expert and who really has just assumed expertise.


[Mainly the reason my Dad went into business instead of continuing in science was as far as I understood was the his project of creating satellite communication by lasers was completed for NASA and he no longer wanted to be under the thumb of an any employer. He wanted to be self employed. He was tired I think of taking orders and thought he could do better n his own.

pantheism means making the whole world into an idol.

The major problem with pantheism is that you do not want to turn the whole world into an idol.

While God is beyond this world and also since he made place and time so the world is not empty of Him. Still that does not mean the world is a god or godliness.
he is infinity close and infinity far but that does not mean pantheism. You can understand this by ontological undecidability.

The Rambam dealt with this problem in several ways First he wrote the whole second volume of the Guide  to show God made the world something from nothing--not from Himself. The world is not godliness, nor condensed godliness according to the Torah. (But it is according to Advaita Hinduism.) Thus the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on teach Advaita Hinduism.


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הבעיה העיקרית עם פנתאיזם היא שאתה לא רוצה להפוך את העולם כולו לאליל. בעוד שהאלוהים הוא מעבר לעולם הזה וגם מאז הוא עשה המקום וזמן, כך שהעולם הוא לא ריק ממנו. עדיין זה לא אומר שהעולם הוא אלוהים או אלוהות. הוא קרוב ורחוק  אבל זה לא אומר פנתאיזם. רמב''ם התמודד עם בעיה זו במספר דרכים. הוא כתב את הכרך השני כולו של המורה  להראות אלוהים ברא את העולם יש מאין, לא מעצמו. העולם אינו אלוהות ולא אלוהות מתומצתת על פי התורה.

But as far as left wing politics goes I think there is one unifying principle: the desire to feel moral at other people's expense.

Michael Huemer holds that people are irrational about politics  and religion and decide their beliefs based on group affiliation and other principle that have nothing to do with reason. But as far as left wing politics goes I think there is one unifying principle: the desire to feel moral at other people's expense.

political power in the hands of the unjust

Socrates once had a chance to debate a person of great political power in Athens. Socrates thought that political power in the hands of people that do not know the difference between justice and injustice is a bad thing. He brought an example of Cleon an orator that had convinced the Athenians to execute all the males of some city that had rebelled. The decree was recalled when the Athenians came to their senses and sent a ship to overtake the first ship that had the first set of orders.

Religious teachers are stupid. It is possible to generalize about groups of people. To say one can't is absurd. You might as well say you can't generalize about child pornographers. Or you can't generalize about pedophiles. How can you say they are all bad. No. I can say they are all bad.

Religious teachers claim to be able to understand the Talmud.That is clearly false to anyone who has ever asked them a question about anyplace in the Talmud.

They always lie about what the Torah says because they are trying to change Torah into a recipe for making people give them money. They will claim whatever clams people like to hear about anything besides this one basic point.

It is possible to generalize about groups of people. To say one can't is absurd. You might as well say you can't generalize about child pornographers. Or you can't generalize about pedophiles. How can you say they are all bad. No. I can say they are all bad.


People in Litvak (Lithuanian) yeshivas certainly do know the material well, but all practicing religious teacher not only are stupid when it comes to the Talmud but also do not care what it says. They just want to continue their pretense in order to preserve their status quo in which they get all the perks and the working people have to bow to them. They make good money off of rituals.
{See Animal Farm in detail by George Orwell.}



There are two reasons for saying this. One is Rabainu Yona. That is his is the opinion that Lashon HaRa (slander) does not apply to truth unless the damage caused by it would not be according to the din (law) of the Torah. That is in plain English Lashon Hara (slander) to him is specifically on lies. Truth (true slander) is only forbidden because of collateral damage. [See the Chafetz Chaim Vol I chapter 4 and Vol I chapter 7.] In this case, the damage the religious teachers cause is so vast and encompassing of every single Jewish home, that there is no choice but to make this public. And the Chafez Chaim decided like Rabainu Yona.[That is in chapter 7 he makes this clear even though he uses the language of the Rambam in the beginning of chapter one. For some reason I do not understand the Chafetz Chaim did not mention this argument between the Rambam and Rabainu Yona openly. This is very curious to me.]

But I think that even the Rambam would agree here. Even though to him Lashon Hara is on truth still to warn people about a danger that they otherwise would not be aware of I think he would agree is permissible and even praiseworthy. [Otherwise the only time you could even warn someone would be in Bet Din. You could not even warn your own teenage children about avoiding some bad cult. What the Rambam might do is go a completely different route than Rabainu Yona. That is he might say מומר לדבר אחד אינו מומר לכל התורה כולה a person that does not keep one mitzvah is not a person that keeps no mitzvot. But he is still a "mumar,"  and thus lashon hara on him is allowed. It is allowed not because it is true but because the prohibition of lashon hara does not apply.]

That is to say: You have trusted the religious teachers until now. How did that work out for you? If you think they ruined your life, you are not alone. And they get this power from the pretense of knowing the Talmud.


Stupid is not the same as dumb. Dumb is just Dumb. But Stupid implies a kind of damage that they do. Stupid jerks telling others about Morality and ethics just can not have a good end to it.

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There are two reasons for saying this. One is רבינו יונה. That is his is the opinion that  לשון הרע does not apply to אמת unless the damage caused by it would not be according to the din (law) of the Torah. That is in plain English לשון הרע  to him is specifically on lies.  אמת true slander is only forbidden because of collateral damage. See the חפץ חיים חלק א' פרק ד'  ופרק ז. In this case, the damage the religious teachers cause is so vast and encompassing of every single Jewish home, that there is no choice but to make this public. And the חפץ חיים decided like רבינו יונה. That is in chapter שבע he makes this clear even though he uses the language of the רמב''ם in the beginning of chapter one. For some reason I do not understand the חפץ חיים did not mention this argument between the רמב''ם and רבינו יונה openly. This is very curious to me.

But I think that even the רמב''ם would agree here. Even though to him  לשון הרע is on truth still to warn people about a danger that they otherwise would not be aware of I think he would agree is permissible and even praiseworthy. Otherwise the only time you could even warn someone would be in בית דין. You could not even warn your own teenage children about avoiding some bad cult. What the רמב''ם might do is go a completely different route than רבינו יונה. That is he might say מומר לדבר אחד אינו מומר לכל התורה כולה a person that does not keep one מצווה is not a person that keeps no מצוות But he is still a מומר  and thus  לשון הרע on him is allowed. It is allowed not because it is true but because the prohibition of  לשון הרע does not apply.


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And  you could ask but he is still בכלל עמיתיך? So לשון הרע still applies to him? Answer Yes לשון הרע still applies to him but not on that one מצווה that he is not doing. 

But after a while I saw many of the cult's (that the Gra signed the excommunication on) obsessions with rituals was not coming from Torah, but from psychological defects that manifested themselves in many other ways.

There is a kind of schizo personality that is overly interested in religious matters

I tried to judge people that showed this tendency on the scales of merit. After all, the Torah is by its very nature all encompassing. But after a while I saw many people's obsessions with rituals was not coming from Torah, but from psychological defects that manifested themselves in many other ways.

So like Sapolsky I ask, "What does this mean?"  Even if there was one case in history of someone considered a tazdik who was merely suffering from some chemical problem, what does this mean?

"Religious leaders tend to be the most fervent and the most accomplished at carrying out the rituals."


If it is real, then there has to be some connection with menschliechkeit human decency. If that connection is not there, that is a sure sign the rituals are coming from a schizo personality.
And since, by and large, the relationship between rituals and human decency is inverse, therefore the majority of ritual-people are coming from either following a schizo personality, or they themselves are schizo.

The Schizo ritual obsessed  I think is an evolutionary strategy of nature. It has amazing reproductive advantages. It is the schizoid leaders of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on that have the most reproductive success.

My Dad and the path of Torah and Science. He would not have put it in that way. He would have said "menschlichkeit"--"Be a decent human being." But much more. To be a mensch is to be honest loyal trustworthy hard working etc. All things that my father and mother were.

My Dad as a rule showed me his places of work. I went to visit the factory where he was producing his invention, a super sharp copying machine called the "copymate." Then we moved to Beverly Hills and his new place of work was very far away. (We were there for the high school. And was  a great school. My friends were super achievers, and I was a distant second place in everything I did.)
But I still managed to visit his place of work once. It was on an upper floor in the TRW building where he was working on a laser beam for the sake of satellite communication for the SDI project. I showed interest in science myself when I was young and also in elementary school. But in high school that interest went out the window. My interests were at that point in other directions like Philosophy and Music. Here is a piece I wrote then



But today I think the problem was that I did not have a good method for learning science. Still for me to have gone into science would have taken a lot of time. Nor was I aware of the Rambam's opinion about science at the time. I do not have pictures but here is a link to the Life Magazine article about my Dad

In high school I had a continuing interest in science but it was hard to do well in anything because of time constraints. I felt pulled in lots of directions. Not just philosophy and Music, but I found all my classes interesting and worthwhile. I wanted to do well in all of them. But there was the same old problem of time. I tried to solve it by applying to a private school, and  a college, and UCLA where I could concentrate on one thing alone. But nothing came of it. 

[I was accepted in all three places but did not have the guts to actually leave home.]

 By the time it came time to chose a career, I thought going to Mir in N.Y. made the most sense-- because it appealed to my philosophical side.  In other words, I was able to concentrate on one thing, and in fact the one thing that I really loved--learning Torah. 


My father and mother represented Torah with Derech Erez.
But I admit there are some people that sit and learn Torah all day and succeed. Rav Shach clearly held from the basic Litvak yeshiva model: learn  Torah and everything else will work out.


I never mention my mother because my Mom and Dad functioned as one unit. There was never a case where one or the other said I have to ask what the other one would say about this. Their coordination was extremely fine tuned. They always knew and agreed with what the other would say on any issue. They never argued. They never disagreed. And they loved each other and us kids with intense self sacrificing lobe as parents ought to be.


Appendix:

He entered active duty on July 20, 1944, and was an aircraft engineering officer 4823. His medals were the American Campaign Medal, Army of Occupation Medal and World War II Victory Medal. He served 1 ½ years in the US and almost 8 months in Europe. He left active duty on September 29, 1946. His serial number was 0 872 281. He was promoted to captain just before he left the US Army, and served in the US Army, Headquarters and Base Service Squadron 413th Air Service Group 40th Bomb Wing United States Air Forces European Theater. In the US, he served at Great Bend , Kansas and was in charge of maintaining 6 B-29 aircraft for the unit. He supervised the work of 75 enlisted men. In Europe, he was a civilian personnel officer. He served 8 months in the European Theater of Operations (France, Germany and Switzerland ) with the 413th Air Service Group and was in charge of 1500 German civilians, supervising 1 officer and 20 civilians. He spoke German fluently at the time.

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I terms of Torah what I suggest are the books of Rav Shach.

I terms of Torah what I suggest are the books of Rav Shach and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. And  the basic Musar books I think you should know. There is a set of the classical Musar books the are the Chovot Levavot, אורחות צדיקים ספר הישר של רבינו תם. There are also a few books from the direct disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. מדרגת האדם אור ישראל. That is Reb Israel had one disciple Joseph Horvitz from Navardok and Isaac Blasser. 

Not everything the people say that sounds like Musar (Ethics) should be accepted as Musar. 


You see Musar itself is based on certain world views that the rishonim [mediaeval authorities] had. So even if you do not see them discussing their world views in their Musar (Ethics) books, still there is a strong connection between their world view and the Musar they wrote. So learning only the Musar means often people pick up world views from other sources without knowing it. So I see learning the Emunot VeDeot of Saadia Gaon and the Guide of the Rambam as being very important. 

I think the main reason people support Trump is they are thinking of the kind of freedoms that had before the Federal Government began intruding in every single aspect of private life.

What Donald Trump has done is launch a full-scale anti-Federalist counter-revolution. Many of his backers reject the idea that the Federal government has any power at the State or local level. They call for the repeal of Constitutional amendments that have increased the power of the Federal government, like the 14th, 16th and 17th. What they ultimately want is to recreate a free world. To paraphrase Michael Moore's documentary, "Dude, Where's My Country?" The Donald Trump answer is "The people you took it from are taking it back."

"physics envy,"

The harder the science you do, the more you look down on anyone not on that level. If you are in math, you think physicists are stupid. If you are a physicist, you have "math envy," and think biologists are stupid. If you are a biologist, you have "physics envy," and think psychologists are frauds and idiots, along with being insane themselves, and their motivation in going into psychology was to project their defects on everyone they do not like. 
Also, the scale of jargon is reversed. The more of a pseudo science it is, the more they have to invent jargon for simple things- so that they can sound profound and call what they do "science." Thus, "social sciences," which are at the bottom, have jargon invented for things that there are commonplace terms for. It is a scam in order to be able to call what they do "science." [I feel nauseous just writing the two words together.]


The result of envy is to try to de-legitimize whatever anyone on a higher level is doing and make yourself sound as if you were at the top. 

There is a lot to go into here but this will have to do for now.
in every vector of value there is a hierarchy. 

So what I m suggesting is a hierarchy in each area of value.
So you get a string a values. E.g. the one I started with in the above essay. Math --Physics-Chem-Biology etc.. Up there in (8) Beauty will be Bach-Mozart-Beethoven-etc. Politics also will have its own string. Another string will be in the Holy-"Pietative" Old Testament-Talmud-Rishonim-etc. 


So what you need here are different kinds of awareness or knowledge of universals. That is some universals are "It must be." The next level is "It can be" and the next is "one ought to do such and such a thing." That is for the different modes of necessity and possibility there will be a different kind of non intuitive immediate knowledge.

Mir Yeshiva in New York

The Mir Yeshiva in New York was a unique kind of place in that every day was a new class that was along the lines of something you would see in the book from Reb Chaim Soloveitchik or Shimon Shkop. That is:- the classes consisted of expanding the approach of Reb Chaim to every single page of Gemara.

So this gives me an idea of how to explain simply what it means to learn Gemara on a small scale. To get the basic idea you really do not need to go through the whole four year program. If you just would have one tractate of Talmud and one essay from Reb Chaim Soloveitchik or Rav Shach and go though that one essay along with the Gemara it was written on, then you would already know what it means "to know how to learn."
You might not yourself at that point "know how to learn" but you would have understood the basic idea.

Now I do not claim this deep knowledge myself. In fact, in the two books I wrote on Bava Metzia and Shas I sometimes see the kinds of trivial concerns like are like Freshman Level. Like "Why did the Maharasha write such and such a thing."  That might be slightly interesting, but it is not called "knowing how to learn." Knowing how to learn is global.  It means knowing how to calculate the sugia [subject] in front of you--so you know thoroughly the Tosphot. And then the crucial step is to know how it connects with the rest of Shas.
There are not a lot of places on that level. Mainly they are in NY (Mir Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat) or they are offshoots of Ponovitch in Bnei Brak.

This gives you a general idea of how education should be pursued. You should look for the highest quality. For some reason God directly my steps to almost always have teachers of the highest quality--even when I was not looking for this. If it is worth doing it is worth doing right.

[Sometimes people jump towards the global thing and are missing the first step in knowing the sugia. So I think my two books are important because they tend to combine both things. I deal at first with knowing the sugia in its place and then see how it connects with the global concerns of the rest of Shas.



If you want an equal of a Litvak Yeshiva in your home, then you only need one Shas, plus the books of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and Rav Shach and the basic Musar books. If you also want to more mystic side of Torah after you have finished Shas twice, then what I recommend is simply to plow through the writings of the Ari (Isaac Luria) straight from beginning to end-or at least the Eitz Chaim which gives you the basic idea. But I should mention I think the Eitz Chaim goes with the idea of direct mystical awareness at least as far as the Ari was concerned. That fits with Hegel but not Kant.

Music r32 a minor

r32 a minor   [r32 in midi]

religious teachers have found way to mislead the public about Torah

I was naively optimistic about what most religious teachers are. I thought they were sincere and wanted everyone to learn and keep Torah.


Why is a good question which I do not have an answer for. But the fact is there are three main characteristics of most religious teachers. In these three things they are the exact opposite of what they claim. They are anti-Shalom Bait, Anti-Family values, anti-learning Torah. They do everything they can to break up homes and make sure the children are taken from their parents, and they hate it when they see Jews learning Torah. It rubs them the wrong way. They claim to make yeshivas as a public service but all they are in chat rooms for them and their buddies. If anyone actually tries to sit in one and learn Torah they make sure to throw him out.

I know they are extremely dangerous to ones mental and spiritual health. The worst mistake one can make is trust in anything they say.


They are failures when it comes to human decency and sincerity. How can they teach that to others?


However Torah is important. It is not a reflection on Torah the fact that it can be misused. There is no system that is immune to abuse. And it there is any way to abuse a system people will find it.

The problem is that religious teacher have found way to mislead the public about what the Torah says and means. They are enemies of Torah.

I will forever be their enemy because they are enemies of the Torah.
To them Torah is a set of rituals and as long as they are the center of worship they don't care what people do outside of the rituals that have little or nothing to do with Torah. They found some schizo persons that were addicted to rituals and found way and making everyone else do them.

It is not that they are buffoons. It is that they are outright damaging and dangerous.

I already dislike word play. Ordination from Sinai stopped during the middle of the period of the Talmud.

Religious teachers are the equivalent of the Sophists in ancient Athens claimed to be able to impart moral virtue to youth.  Moral education is their  venture. Now, I might say “Please spare me. I am not impressed. You oafs wouldn’t know virtue if it bit you.” But I would say it, or think it, partly because I already mistrust religious teachers .
But the question still remains - education of youth and also education of  adults that still have not yet acquired thorough knowledge of the Oral and Written Law. They too are like youth in that they are vulnerable because of their lack of knowledge and experience.
Almost anyone can come along and like the sophists claim to teach Torah and make  a nice bundle off of it.
I already dislike word play. Ordination from Sinai stopped during the middle of the period of the Talmud. So why do they play this word game? Could I just start to call myself and my friends "Doctor"? Why not? Is it not just a word?
I do not think these are innocent word games. They openly declare their intention that everyone has to listen to them.

They think they are the wisest of all men and  are also thought to be so by very many men—and  the only thing that prevents them from having a good reputation among everyone is natural science and those who study it. They believe that if they ruin the  reputation of Physics and Math, they will then be awarded celebrations as the undisputed champions of wisdom. They believe that they are truly the most wise, but whenever in private conversations they come up short they are shielded by their followers. These men, who think they are superior to all, are in fact inferior to all. They may pose greater dangers to Torah than  buffoons who do not go with Torah at all. These  are ambitious men who would like to discredit natural science by reducing it to its lowest common denominator: clever words and weaponry.

They gain power by being supposedly pro family and family values. They in fact highly hostile to any families but their own, and use their authority to dismantle families of people they do not like-- if anyone is stupid enough to listen to them. Mainly what they want to to weed out the smart so that they -the religious teachers- will be the smartest kids on the block. Religious teachers are inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when they are trying to disguise and deny their vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious religious teacher who jumps at such a chance to show off his holiness.