To Hagai the prophet during the years of Darius came the word of God. He told Hagai that the people are saying, "It is not the right time to build the house of God." So God told Hagai to ask them, "You have time to sit in your houses and plant your vineyards, but you do not have time to build the house of God?"

You have to get the context right. The First Temple was ordered by God to be built while the Jewish people were still not even in the Land of Israel yet. You can see this in the later parts of Exodus. In those later parts of Exodus you can see God ordering the Jewish people to build a temple and bring daily offerings there. And later in Leviticus you can see many kinds of sacrifices that are to be brought there and the words are used חוקת עולם an everlasting law.

Later the Temple was destroyed by the King of Babylon. So what we have here in this later prophet is the idea that the Jewish people should rebuild the Temple in order to keep God's Law, the Law of Moses.

The house of God here is not a synagogue. It is the Temple in Jerusalem. And this is not personal nor subject to individual interpretation. It is a straight forward order by God to build the Temple.

Darius is famous in the Old Testament. He is also the King or Persia that had the famous run in with the Athenians.. The Athenians supported a rebellion of Ionian a Greek colony in Italy that was under Persian rule. The Athenians burnt the ships that Darius had sent to squelch the rebellion. When the messenger told him the Athenians had burnt his ships, he asked "Who are the Athenians?"
He swore to burnt Athens to the ground, and started the First of the Persian Grecian Wars
Presumably. by that time, he knew who the Athenians were. His expedition to conquer Greece included about a half a million men. It was the greatest armada the world had ever seen up until. Nothing stood between him and total conquest of ancient Greece except 300 Spartans.



His work to conquer Ancient Greece was stopped but his work to rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem earned him  honor and mention in the prophets.

One reason to go into the Navy is to learn how to be a man, a mensch. There is something about learning how to be a man that one does not get by books of Musar or even by learning Torah.

This does not apply to any armed forces, but rather to armed forces that are devoted towards righteous causes.
But people that learn what it is to be honest and reliable and upright and trustworthy from books alone never end up with these traits.

The last person you want watching your back in a survival situation is a religious teacher.  A religious teacher will be the first person to betray you to the enemy.Much less be trustworthy.


The main profession that the religious world learns is how to ask others for money. That is their main goal in life. How to get money from others.


The way they do this is sneaky. They pretend to be doing public service by getting people to  do meaningless rituals and then expect to get paid for that. They also make yeshivas that are frauds. They pretend we are all one big happy family but then when one is on board the ship and no longer is able to learn an independent livelihood they throw off the pretense and it becomes about being their slaves.

Kitzur Shulchan Aruch [Abridged Shulchan Aruch]

The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch [Abridged Shulchan Aruch] is a good book in many ways. It does give a basic synopsis of practical laws. But it has a flaw that it says to go to  religious teachers when in doubt.  Religious teachers are not honest. You can not trust them about anything. I do not know why this is but they can be trusted to do as much damage to you and to me given the slightest chance. And they have no idea of Torah law either. If in doubt about some particular case of Torah law, the only choice is to go to the Gemara directly. [Even going to the actual complete Shulchan Aruch of Yoseph Karo does not help, because you anyway have to go to the Gemara to see how the law is applied and understood.
There is no skipping of this step. However, when one has learned the subject in the  Gemara thoroughly, then the actual Shuclan Aruch with its commentaries is a useful tool.

r66 D minor

Definition of a religious teacher: an idiot that thinks he is smart and in fact smarter than anyone else and therefore people ought to give him money.

 Perhaps one of the most ugly and perfidious concepts is that somehow  religious teacher are righteous, loving and virtuous. 


They work  politically and economically  for  destruction of secular Jews and Baali Teshuva and the State of Israel.


You are told in a constant sensory assault that these religious teachers who cannot do for themselves and live off the charity of secular Jews, it is your duty to lug the ever burdensome dead weight across your own back until you are satisfactorily broken, beaten and demoralized.

Definition of an  religious teacher: an idiot that thinks he is smart and in fact smarter than anyone else and therefore people ought to give him money.


The farther you stay away from this class of creeps, the closer you will be to God and to the holy Torah.

Some people see Kabalah as a negative thing. They group it together with attempts of things like the New Age cults and such. This was never my impression, but I think this opinion should still be considered.  After all how is it that it got to be so widely and wildly  accepted the  religious world? I am not sure how to answer this? From what I can tell there might be some reason to think the entire acceptance of it as a legitimate part of Judaism might have been a mistake.

In any case it is hard to see any good that comes out of it.

However sometimes it seems  people that were good  did learn the Zohar and the Ari. And that does not seem like a bad thing. After all the Ari is just developing a modification of a neo- platonic system and using it to explain the Torah. Still you have to wonder is there perhaps some kind of bad energy mixed up with the whole thing? Based on what we have seen for the last centuries as Kabalah became popular we certainly did not see people improving in any way because of learning it.

What might be going on is that people are putting anything that smacks of the Dark Side all in one trash basket and throwing it all out without inspecting the particulars of each case. Thus they would be putting the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on and cabala and new age and hinduism all together and saying that it is underneath all the same dark side.



In other words some people are instead of focusing on the positive aspects of their beliefs system are focusing on avoiding the Dark Side in all and every manifestation of it. This is probably a good approach. The reason is that it is easy to be distracted and to swallow the bait. I think people are the most interested in avoiding the Dark Side are probably thinking correctly.The question is how to identify the dark side? But they are not concerned with that. They simply dismiss anything that smells even slightly off.

Now I have never done that myself and I am probably at fault for this. As I look over things I have read I see I have studied in great depth and detail systems that were pretty obviously from the Dark Side. Maybe I did not care, or maybe I thought it would not effect me. Maybe I thought I was immune?

I have talked about kabalah in particular is some other essay. But just for now let me mention that Im Kal Da [even though] which comes up all the time in the Zohar is a translation of Im Kal Ze [even though in Hebrew]. It was a phrase invented by the Ibn Tibon family during the Middle Ages. [There were  ways to say "even though" in Hebrew during the time of R Shimon Ben Yochai, like "af al pi" or "af al gav." But Ibn Tibon was looking for something that made more sense, so he came up with this "im kal ze."] Therefore not one word of the Zohar can be from R. Shimon Ben Yochai. QED.

r65 E Flat Major r65 in midi format r65nwc

Why American should not bow before the pressures of the Federal Government to enforce Queer agenda.

 Moral Principles are worth more than money.

A weakening of faith was the problem in Europe and it still is. Nationalism is not a substitute for numinous holy value. The complete rejection of the Middle Ages was a terrible mistake. In the Middle Ages it was the basic starting axiom that faith and reason are not at odds in any way.And the books written then in philosophy show a rigor that have never been excelled.
Later books of philosophy seems to excel in circular reasoning and often plain false principles that sound good at first.

How empty a man's life would be without a woman's touch

I hate feminists but I love women. I think that they are superior to men in many ways. I am in a college dorm and I can tell you there is a real difference when there are guys than when there are girls. How empty a man's life would be without a woman's touch and encouragement. He starts his first breath from a woman's touch. His pleasure and happiness in his life is from women. His comfort in his sadness is from a woman's love. Life would be empty and meaningless without women. That does not mean they are smarter or better at building bridges.

Girl Friends:

The Book of Chronicles, Volume One, chapter two [2:46] and four concerning Kalev ben Yefuna (כלב בן יפונה). He is the only person in the entire Bible that it says the unique phrase, וימלא אחרי השם "He walked completely after God." He had two girl friends.]

I have seen some different opinions about this. Christians seem to be unaware of the different between the Law of the Ten Commandments and having a girl friend. The Ten Commandments are referring to sex with a married woman. To show how this can be derived rigorously from the usage in the Torah is a good idea. But I do not have the books to be able to look it up.

Jewish people

 I see that the Jewish people are in a spiritual situation that is  serious . I have been hoping to emphasize the importance of learning the Avi Ezri  in the hope that learning that book would save our souls. 

Too many false prophets and demonic  religious teachers claim to represent Torah. 

The religious world is an scam pretending to represent Torah, while in fact seducing people into the Dark Side of worship of  religious teachers by means of using the appearance of Jewish rituals

So the book of Rav Shach I think is perhaps the only thing that can help. Everything else can be perverted. Even Musar and even Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot.

One should have a fast session in it and  an in depth one. The fast one should be just to say the words in order and go on until you have finished the whole book word for word. The slow one is more difficult to describe. To do a slow session in the Avi Ezri you will need to pick one chapter and get the sources associated with it like the Gemaras that it is written on and the Rambam also. 


[Appendix: The Avi Ezri is the book of Rav Elezar Menachem Shach on the Rambam. It is in essence close to the Chidusei HaRambam of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. But slightly different. There are few or no יסודות (foundational principles). That is he does not depend on finding some underlying principle to explain things, but rather takes a common sense approach to answering contradictions and problems in the Rambam and the Gemara. It is deep while at the same time being much more understandable than the Chidushei HaRambam.

In the past I have said to learn it because it is a good thing. Now I am trying to make my point a little clearer. The difference is a doctor who says, "Take this medicine because it is good for you," and the doctor who says the same thing but puts it in this way,"Take this medicine so you do not die."


A יסוד is foundational principle. Reb Chaim depends on these very much. He starts in the normal way of finding some contradiction in the Rambam, or between the Rambam and the Gemara. Then he introduces a axiom. Then tries to answer the problem based on the axiom. Rav Shach also begins the same way, but skips the idea of introducing some axiom though he might end up with one.


Instead of Torah and the Oral Law people get interested in Kabalah

 Kabalah might be a negative thing. It might be similar to New Age cults and such.  After all how is it that it got to be so widely and wildly  accepted in the religious world? I am not sure how to answer this? From what I can tell there might be some reason to think the entire acceptance of it as a legitimate part of Judaism might have been a mistake.

In any case it is hard to see any good that comes out of it.

However sometimes it seems  people that were good  did learn the Zohar and the Ari. And that does not seem like a bad thing. After all the Ari is just developing a modification of a neo- platonic system and using it to explain the Torah. Still you have to wonder is there perhaps some kind of bad energy mixed up with the whole thing? Based on what we have seen for the last centuries as Kabalah became popular we certainly did not see people improving in any way because of learning it.


What might be going on is that people are putting anything that smacks of the Dark Side all in one trash basket and throwing it all out without inspecting the particulars of each case. Thus they would be putting the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on and Cabala and New Age and Hinduism all together and saying that it is underneath all the same dark side. This might be the best approach.

Life would be empty and meaningless without women

I hate feminists but I love women. I think that they are superior to men in many ways. I am in a college dorm and I can tell you there is a real difference when there are guys than when there are girls. How empty a man's life would be without a woman's touch and encouragement. He starts his first breath from a woman's touch. His pleasure and happiness in his life is from women. His comfort in his sadness is from a woman's love. Life would be empty and meaningless without women. That does not mean they are smarter or better at building bridges.

Girl Friends: See the Book of Chronicles, Volume One, chapter two [2:46] and four concerning Kalev ben Yefuna (כלב בן יפונה). He is the only person in the entire Bible that it says the unique phrase, וימלא אחרי השם "He walked completely after God." He had two girl friends.]

What the religious world does is put all the emphasis on rituals and the worship of religious teachers.

The prophets end with זכרו תורת משה. Remember the Law of Moses.
The Law of Moses is composed of several areas of value. One important area that is largely forgotten is character traits and the whole area of what is called בין אדם לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man. This is the reason why Lithuanian Musar yeshivas are important.Because they strive for this balance.
What the religious world does is put all the emphasis on rituals and the worship of  religious teachers. That means it is really a different religion than Torah.
Still that is not to say the ritual part of Torah is not also essential. One needs a balance.

I believe in capitalism from a different aspect. That is from learning Torah and Talmud. In the Talmud, property is not considered to belong to the government, but to the individual. And not just taking it by theft or fraud is considered to transgress the command not to steal, but even if the court awards one money that does not really come to him by the law of the Torah (din Torah), that is also considered theft.  Reading Ann Rand later on reinforced this. But Ann Rand was really just emphasizing a point I had seen before, that Socialism is theft disguised as virtue.

But to get a really full fledged defense of capitalism I really had to wait until I read Kant. I do not know if I was trying on purpose to come out with a defense of private property.  I was after all interested in the argument against it. I read the Communist manifesto and Rousseau and approaches that defended the State as opposed to the individual. But these approaches never seemed to hold much water. Especially Marx. To me what he was saying seemed ridiculous. He had some concocted theory that things have as much value as much labor went into making them which is patently absurd. Things have as much value as people want them, not as much time and labor went into making them. You can work all year long on making a pin. It will not be worth more than if you spent less time.

There was  effort from the communists to get the collage curriculum in the USA to feature anti capitalist  thinkers. A lot depends on what he reads and digests in his or her college years. As for me even in my yeshiva years I continued reading left wing and right wing thinkers along with the Talmud. I read Lenin, Sartre, etc. Still the more I read the less they made sense. They would start out with some nice sounding principle and think they and proved it. And then by that dubious principle proceed to demolish normal moral values. You can see how reading the Talmud was for me a relief of logic and sanity from the inanities and absurdities of Lenin and Sartre. The contrast could not have been more stark.
[Sadly though I did not get to Kant until years later. That was a stupid mistake on my part. I had seen him in some private home and could have borrowed him if I had wanted. So instead it took me many years until I finally got to Kant.]

However there is a use for Marxism. It can harness the greed of people to gain power for central government. This is how it played out in the USSR and in China. But I do not think that is a good thing. It all depends if you think the state is more important or the individual.

Every mortal is born with a equal measure of good and evil.

The Ancient Greeks in order to gain allies when Xerxes was coming to invade  sent to potential allies this idea. They said, "Every mortal is born with a equal measure of good and evil. No exceptions." Thus Xerxes would not, and could not, have unlimited success.

Some people like Bava Sali [Israel Abuchatzeira] in their  own way applied this idea to their own lives.  They said there is a limit to how much good and pleasure they will have so they voluntarily limited it. It is well known that Bava Sali fasted most of his life from Shabat to Shabat.

marriage delay.

Women in the western world today are too comfortable, too spoiled, too pampered, too soft, too selfish. 

Getting to the nub of it,  women are willing to marry if, and only if, the man involved is absolutely perfect in every way. He has to be hot, fit, sexy, exciting, monogamous minded, with a good job and money in the bank, and his own living arrangements. He has to be ready made, off the shelf perfect, with no added input and no assembly required. He can’t be a diamond in the rough or a work in progress. He can’t be a young guy just starting out, he needs to be established and earning very good money, and he has to have all these things first, before he’ll be anywhere close to worthy of consideration.

That’s what’s driving the marriage delay.

Almost all Divorce Petitions are issued on the grounds of the husband’s Unreasonable Behavior, and what you may ask would such behavior comprise? Anything you like! but some of the most popular are, leaving the toothpaste-cap off, leaving the loo-seat up and forgetting the mother-in-law’s birthday. In other words, whim. No man ever complaines in a petition as to his wife’s behavior.

I wanted to suggest two types of sessions in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. One is just saying the words and going on and the other is in depth learning. The in depth learning depends on if you have  a learning partner or not. When I have found myself without a learning partner -which is more often than not- I suggest just to take one chapter and just run through it from start to finish. Then the next day do the same thing. And thus continue at least for forty days. I admit I did not do this myself with Rav Shach but rather other people like Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam. This idea of lots of review  I mainly picked up from my first rosh yeshiva and his son who were always talking about the importance of review.

Talmud Bava Metzia 98a. Tosphot first word משכחת. It occurred to me to ask what seems like a simple question. To Rabbainu Tam to take an oath of  a guard one needs כפירה הודאה ואונס. Why is not just כפירה or אונס enough? Is that not the same thing as מודה במקצת where we say מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? I guess because it is different than the case of a loan. By a loan we say he takes an oath because he really wanted to deny the whole thing but אין אדם מעיז פניו בפנע בעל חובו because the lender did him a favor by giving him  a loan. But here with a guard the person that gave the guard something to watch did him no favor.
The question on this is:
But then there would be more of a reason to have a person that denies the whole transaction to take an oath, not less.

What I mean to say is this we say מודה מקצת takes an oath because two things cancel. There is a reason to say he is denying only part when he could have denied the whole thing so let us believe him. To cancel this we say אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו. So then normally our starting position is there should be an oath, because 1-1 is the same as zero.







It also occurred to me a simple way to explain the question of Tosphot on Rabbainu Tam. Rava asks on Rav and Shmuel "if there is a migo then there would never be a case of a שומר taking and oath." The question of Tosphot on RT is that to RT the case of  a guard taking an oath is never a case where there is a migo.

________________________________________________________________________________
בבא מציעא צ''ח ע''א תוספות ד''ה משכחת. It occurred to me to ask what seems like a simple question. To רבינו תם to take an oath of  a שומר one needs כפירה הודאה ואונס. Why is not just כפירה or אונס enough? Is that not the same thing as מודה במקצת where we say מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? I guess because it is different than the case of a loan. By a loan we say he takes an oath because he really wanted to deny the whole thing but אין אדם מעיז פניו בפנע בעל חובו because the lender did him a favor by giving him  a loan. But here with a guard the person that gave the guard something to watch did him no favor.


השאלה על זה:
אבל אז  תהיה יותר סיבה לחייב אדם שמכחיש את העסקה כולה לקחת שבועה, לא פחות.


It also occurred to me a simple way to explain the question of תוספות on רבינו תם. In שבועות רבא  asks on רב and שמואל if there is a מיגו then there would never be a case of a שומר taking and oath." The question of תוספות on רבינו תם is that to רבינו תם the case of  a guard taking an oath is never a case where there is a מיגו because it is always מודה מקצת




בבא מציעא צ''ח ע''א תוספות ד''ה משכחת. עלה בדעתי לשאול מה שנראה כמו שאלה פשוטה. לרבינו תם, שומר כדי להישבע צריך כפירה הודאה ואונס. למה לא  כפירה לבדה או אונס מספיקים? האם זה לא אותו דבר כמו מודה במקצת שבו אנו אומרים מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? תרוץ: אני מניח כי זה שונה מאשר במקרה של הלוואה. על ידי הלוואה שאנו אומרים הוא לוקח שבועה כי הוא באמת רוצה להכחיש את העניין, אבל אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו כי המלווה עשה לו טוב על ידי שנתן לו הלוואה. אבל כאן עם שומר, האדם שנתן משהו לשמור לא עשה לו שום טובה.
גם עלה בדעתי דרך פשוטה להסביר את השאלה של תוספות על רבינו תם. בשבועות רבא שואל על רב ושמואל אם יש מיגו אז לעולם לא יהיה מקרה בשומר לקיחת השבועה ". שאלת תוספות על רבינו תם היא  לרבינו תם במקרה שהשומר לוקח שבועה הוא לא לעולם במקרה בו קיים מיגו כי זה תמיד מודה מקצת.


_