Here is my note on Dalrock:
There can be good parents. My Mom and Dad were prime examples. I tried to describe this a few times on my blog but most people know intuitively what good parents are. So I do not see any reason to elaborate on it here. I just mean to point out there were such people in the world.
But here I think it makes sense to go into the idea of being good parents in some detail. Mainly it means being a mensch and teaching that to your children. That is to act "right." And no one needs to be taught what acting "right" is. Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule

r84mp3  r84 in midi  r84 in nwc

r86 g minor  r86 G minor in midi   r86 in g minor in nwc

 r83mp3  r83 in d major r83 d major nwc

the meaning of the Law of Moses.

It is a great privilege to be able to get on the Internet and speak about the greatness of the law of Moses. I would like to take this undeserved opportunity to discuss it. I see there is some confusion about the meaning of the Law of Moses.

Shimshon Refael Hirsh I think did the best job of putting the basic ideas into modern understandable form. The Musar Movement of Reb Israel Salanter was working  in the same vein but I think Rav Hirsh did a little better job simply because his approach does not lend itself so easily to be misused. Musar can be sidetracked easily.

Mainly what I would like to defend here  is (1) the idea that the Talmud is connected with the Law of Moses. Also  I would like to defend the idea that  (2) it has not been nullified. And third that (3) it should not be used as  prop for idol worship. That might be too much for one short blog entry.
 The best living examples I saw of how to live according to the Law of Moses were my own parents.
And they were not as strict in ritual observance as in the more important parts of the Law. But they did not deny the importance of all aspects of the holy Law of Moses. So while admitting that there were certain aspects of the Law that they might not have been doing with ultimate perfection still I think it makes sense to describe their approach.
My parents were Reform Jews, so they did see religious fanaticism as a bad thing and in most cases a kind of mental illness. But also they were quite aware that keeping the Torah as it was given, not more nor less, is very very important.

So they saw the Ten Commandments as the core. Not to lie and not to steal and to worship only God alone.

The validity of the Talmud depends on Reason. While at the core there is a basic assumption of the meaning of the Law of Moses, but in deriving the details there is no claimed authority except logical rigor. Who ever thinks more logically wins the debate

Reform Judaism has gotten off track with the adoption of social justice as a goal instead of the law of Moses. But at least they are Jewish. No Jew would every join the religious world thar worships human beings.

Musar of Reb Israel Salanter

At least I would like to take the opportunity to mention the Musar of Reb Israel Salanter. I found this very helpful in understanding the basic approach of the Torah. I mean one could learn the Tenach [Old Testament] and the whole Oral law and still not have very clear idea of the basic values of Torah. One thing you see in Torah that is important is Fear of God. "What does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear HIM?" That is pretty open and plain. And what way is there to come to fear God except by Musar--that is the books of ethics written during the Middle Ages that explain the basic approach of the Torah.without musar people put in their own value structures that they pick up from psychology or other garbage they pick up from the street and impose it on the torah structure, thus they appear frum religious but with values opposite from the Torah. An they do this without knowing that they are doing it.

I grew up in an area that was John Birch Society and never encountered any problem. I see American Nationalism and wholesome Judaic - Christian values as important. There is much I disagree with in Christianity but I do not see it as a threat. I see the Left however as a very serious threat to me to the USA and to mankind. It is my impression the Left does whatever possible to hurt the Jewish people while pretending to be freinds and to turn the USA into an African 3rd world country

I deleted that blog entry about religious teachers. I would rather not talk about such things. It is really because I am trying to warn  about a truth that I know to be true and have never seen an exception to that I decided to write about it. But I still am upset because I know there are people that learn Torah for its own sake in Litvak yeshivas and I do not want to be critical of them. religious teachers when ever they could cause damage to me and my family never hesitated. All the while claiming to be pro family. religious teachers here means people that are paid to do rabbinical duties. It does not refer to a different class of people that are occupied with learning Torah for its own sake.

Introduction: You have a lender and a borrower. The borrower had a field at the time of the loan and bought another field later. There are two buyers of the fields. The lender does not pay. He defaults.
The lender gets his loan paid by the first field and the buyer of the first field gets his קרן (the amount he paid) paid back by the second field. Tosphot asks: Why is there a second field? The second answer of Tosphot is the first was made a guarantee for the loan. The old Tosphot answered because the lender already collected his שיעבוד ("Obligation.)" That is to say at the time the loan was collected there was no second field. The borrower bought it after part of the loan was collected. The old Tosphot holds the lender at that point can not keep on collecting any and all property until the loan is paid


The idea here is that the lender gets paid back by property that the borrower owns at the time of the loan. That is even if the borrower sold the property. This has an equivalent in modern day law. You look when you buy a home to make sure there are no previous obligations on the home. You hire someone to do a background check.

But furthermore in the document of the loan usually it is written "all property that I will buy in the future will be subject to this loan---to pay it back in a case of default." [What if this was not written? That a different subject.]

Why I bring up this subject here is simply because the first answer of Tosphot holds the lender must go after the first field. So in terms of this law we have a מחלקת ראשונים and argument--which field must the lender go after? [In my notes  I wrote the possibility that this is related to an issue of when one borrows and then borrows again from someone else and then buys a field]
The older version of Tosphot is brought in the Maharsha. It comes from something called "תוספות ישנים" which is an older version of Tosphot before the editing process began the the 1200's. We do not have  a lot of these. You can find them mainly in Yevamot. But the Maharasha found one that applies to our case.


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 בבא מציעא י''ד ע''ב.  There is a difference between the answer of תוספות about אפותיקי and the version of the תוספות ישנים that says there is a second field because the lender already took his שיעבוד. The answer of  תוספות ישנים is that there is a second field because there was only one field at the time the loan was collected. Then the lender bought another field. Then the first buyer collects from the second field. According to this if there had been a second field that was bought later the lender would have had to have gone after it. That is the exact same idea as the second answer of תוספות about the אפותיקי. There also the only reason the lender went after the first field was because it was made a guarantee for the loan.
Therefore in terms of law about which field the lender must go after the second answer of  תוספות and the  תוספות ישנים hold the lender must go after the second field, if he can. But the second answer of תוספות and the  תוספות ישנים will differ in the case that the lender has already collected part of his loan. The  תוספות ישנים holds once he has collected any part of his loan according to the circumstances at the time, then he can not collect again. The second answer of תוספות about the אפותיקי holds he could continue to collect.


 בבא מציעא י''ד ע''ב. יש הבדל בין התשובה של תוספות על אפותיקי ואת הגרסה של התוספות הישנות שאומרת יש שדה שני כי המלווה כבר לקח את השיעבוד שלו. התשובה של תוספות הישנות היא כי יש שדה שני כי לא היה רק שדה אחד בזמן ההלוואה נאספה. אז מלווה רכש עוד שדה. ואז הקונה הראשון אוסף מהשדה השני. לפי זה אם היה שדה שני אשר נרכש מאוחר יותר המלווה היה צריך ללכת אחריו. זהו הרעיון בדיוק כמו התשובה השנייה של תוספות על אפותיקי. שם הסיבה היחידה שהמלווה הלך אחרי השדה הראשון היה כי הוא בוצע ערבות להלוואה. לכן מבחינת החוק, התשובה השנייה של תוספות ואת התוספות הישנות מחזיקות  שהמלווה חייב ללכת לאחר השדה השני, אם הוא יכול. אבל התשובה השנייה של תוספות ואת התוספות הישנות תהיינה שונות במקרה שהמלווה אסף כבר חלק ההלוואה שלו. התוספות הישנות מחזיקות שאם  פעם אחת המלווה אסף  חלק של ההלוואה שלו בהתאם לנסיבות באותה העת, ואז הוא לא יכול לאסוף שוב. התשובה השנייה של תוספות על אפותיקי מחזיקה שיוכל להמשיך לאסוף.

r84 edited in mp3 [r84 in midi]

The Mediaeval approach

The Mediaeval approach was to see the glory of God in his creation. This at least I saw a lot in the mediaeval books of Musar like the Obligations of the Heart.

To me it sounded like they were saying to learn Natural Science but did not want to actually come out and say so. But it was close enough to bother me. I was in yeshiva when I was seeing this and that was not a message I wanted to see. It would have meant that my parents were right all along that wanted me to go into Math and Physics.[Of course they never said anything even remotely like that.They were not about to try to use their influence in that way. But when they saw my interest in those areas they were very encouraging.]

events events in Uman

I do not have a lot to say about events events in Uman. Mainly my idea is that the excommunication that the Gra signed is still valid. People ignore it at their own risk.

The main thing about it --if you want to get a better idea of what it [ a חרם (excommunication)] means is to look in the laws of shavuot [oaths] of the Rambam in the commentaries there is brought the debate about what kind of force a חרם has. It ends up being a מחלוקת ראשונים[debate among mediaeval authorities]. No surprise there. The basic idea that comes out that is relevant for us is that it is a kind of איסר נדר (prohibition due to a vow). That is when one says "This loaf of bread is a קרבן (sacrifice) to me" that makes the loaf of bread forbidden to him to eat or even to sell and use the money.

I know this might seem silly to people and I admit to me also it would not make much sense if not for the falsification in the pudding. Not the proof in the pudding but the disproof. An increase in bad character traits indicates not only no spiritual benefit but even a negative effect.
 Did you ever see a pigeon beat up another pigeon because the poor pigeon was getting more pizza crumbs than the aggressor? I saw this in Uman. You would not see such a thing in Uman years ago. On the contrary, even the cats and dogs and chickens got along fine. Something changed. 

I was asked about Numinous reality. Or Holy reality


 The major idea comes from Kant. Kant was trying to answer a few problems. Mainly the problem that both the empiricist and the rationalist both had good points. Thus he came up with the Gothic Structure of the Critique.

The problems in the critique were noted by later people. One approach to iron out the difficulties was this idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge. Things we know not by reason and not by senses.
What is known by kind of thought we can call non intuitive immediate knowledge but it really is a kind of Reason that recognizes .

axioms that are reasonable. it does not just pick out random axioms. but it is not pure sensibility (or pure intuition) that knows things immediately. So this idea is in some way expanding the areas that reason perceives. One area is numinous reality. Pure content and no form.

Part of the idea comes from Socrates. When he questioned the slave if he knew the answer to a certain problem in geometry. The slave said no. Socrates then asked him a series of questions until at the end the slave came up with the right answer. There are therefore things we know but we do not know that we know. Another aspect of Socrates was to ask people questions about things they thought they knew. There was a series of question until the person contradicted himself and thus showing there are things we think we now that we do not know.

The way I approach Numinous Reality: The Giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) was a beginning of a new kind of thing. That is there have been times when God wanted to bring something important and special into the world, and one such time was  Matan Torah. I really would need to go into this in more detail based on the Rambam in his Guide for the Perplexed.

So to come to Torah"-- an Iyun (in depth session) Shiur in Torah should be in one of several books Avi Ezri, Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam, Baruch Ber a disciple of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik, Shimon Shkop another disciple of Reb Chaim. Or you can take one Tosphot and just do it every day until it becomes clear, The fast session should be to get through the entire Oral Law with Rashi and Tosphot.


That is to say I recognize the Law of Moses as a kind of wake up call for humanity. Thus one should go though the Oral and Written Law. That is simple.The most one needs to do a entire half page of Gemara Rashi and Tosphot [an Amud] is 30 minutes.Add the Maharsha and Maharam with that and you have 40 minutes. So to get through the whole Oral and written Law is simple and short. Ten minutes of the Old Testament and 40 on the Talmud.That is easy as apple pie.


[I am aware of different levels. I know some people have not gone through the whole Old Testament yet in Hebrew so for them it might be a good idea to spend more than ten minutes on this. The best thing is for beginners is to get a Hebrew English Dictionary, Forget the commentaries. They are not worth the time and mostly are very unhelpful.

To tell the difference between numinous reality from the realm of holiness and as opposed to the Dark Side is by character traits. This was an idea of Hegel and it makes sense to me. That there is a strong correlation between holiness and good character.

You see this idea also in Dante. And it comes up in Musar of Reb Israel Salanter very often.

That is in the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter the idea of "midot" character as being primary comes up often. You see in in the Rambam also in the Guide concerning the reasons for the commandments of the Torah

Islam promotes violence against non-Muslims and subversion in non-Islamic countries. Muslims should never have been allowed access to any Western nation. It might be impractical – not to say illegal under American law – to round up all known Muslims within our borders and deport them.

Once a nation admits Muslims, they will proliferate like cockroaches. Shortly after that, the violent fraction among them will use the numbers of those otherwise inclined for shelter, concealment, and support, as their religion dictates. And every terrorist act will be swiftly followed by pleas for “tolerance” and demands for concessions to their creed, by both private and public institutions.

There have been times in my life when I have “pushed my luck” and eventually suffered the consequences. Life has a way of giving you a painful “reality check”. A friend of mine used to call it the “cosmic NO”, when the universe tells you that you need to rethink your approach.

The thirty-year-old graduate student with no prospect of tenure; the thirty-year-old unmarried woman whose youth is starting to leave her; the worker whose career is a string of angry confrontations: there are plenty of people who will likely hit the wall one day. Or, as we used to say, they are “riding for a fall”.

I should mention I was in NY during times when there was extreme pressure and criticism on the police there. If this kind of pressure has expanded into other areas in the USA, then the caution of the police becomes understandable. If the atmosphere  has become  anti police, then there is little motivation for an officer to stick his neck out.

to learn Talmud

The way I found best to learn Talmud was to get the large picture by going through the whole set word for word from beginning to end. But also to be in a Litvak Yeshiva at the same time when you can hear classes on in depth learning to understand how to go into any given subject in depth with Tosphot and Rav Akiva Eigger and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik.
But then after you get the big picture, it is the proper way to concentrate on one Tosphot for as long as it takes.

Similarly in Physics I found this same process. It helps to get the big picture, and also at the same time to hear classes from the professors that know the material well. But then after that, to concentrate on one small subject at a time. When I had only a text I would take one small subject let's say generalized coordinates, or the Beta Function and just keep on going through it word for word for forty days in a row. 

Kabalah as a negative thing

I see some people see Kabalah as a negative thing. They seem to 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 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.



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  עם כל דא [even though] which comes up all the time in the Zohar is a translation of Im Kal Ze עם כל זה [even though in Hebrew]. It was a phrase invented by the Ibn Tibon family during the Middle Ages.. Therefore not one word of the Zohar can be from R. Shimon Ben Yochai. QED.
In the time of Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai for although one said אף על פי or אף על גב

r80 A Minor 4-4 time   r79 C Minor 6-8 time

Interest on loans

In Bava Metzia there is the היתר עיסקא. I forget the exact arrangement.From what I recall in Bava Metzia ch 8 it is you give  a fellow a certain amount of money to buy goods and to sell at a profit. Half is a loan that must be paid back.The other half is a partnership. if a loss is incurred both share the loss. If profit then both share the profit.