The way of marriage was rather well defined in yeshiva. At least in Litvak yeshivas. You studied well and the local homeowners when they saw a good guy would offer a date with their daughter.

This was how it was supposed to work in theory. And in the USA in NY that was how things were. The best guys got offers from the Rosh Yeshiva himself. Lesser guys were offered shiduchim from lesser status people.

And how marriage was, it's obligations and responsibilities, was all spelling out in excruciating detail.

In fact it really was humanly impossible to prepare for marriage. You simply could not go through Kidushin, Ketubot, Nida with the Tosphot, Rif, Rambam, Tur, Shulchan Aruch. Maybe superman could have but no normal person could. I had a great advantage that someone in Torah DeDaat had written a short book with the basic information with some easy Lumdut. So you could get a basic idea of the arguments between the Shach and Taz without having to go through the whole third volume of the Shulchan Aruch By Joseph Karo.

The general amount of dating was six dates before a decision was reached. These were often planned for Motzai Shabat [the night after Shabat.]

Along with this was a fervent desire on the side of the guys and the girls to follow the Law of Moses and the Oral Law and to make it work. [The Oral Law was not looked on as a burden by rather as the Background information needed to make sense of the Law of Moses. It was understood that without background information and  a context one can make any text mean whatever she wants.

Why is this relevant? Because today few people have any idea of what marriage is.

Along with this was the understanding the wife would work during the first year and the husband would continue learning Torah for at least a few years. In theory this was supposed to go on forever but in NY guys often began to work about five or ten years after marriage. The main idea was based on the will of the wife. She was in theory a girl who respected Torah and thus would want her husband to learn Torah as she made ends meet with the kollel check and he own work and support from both sets of parents.

So far I am trying not to let any value judgments get in the way. I just want to explain the system. You don't have to agree with it. You just have to understand the mechanics.
This is all just marriage 1.01. Nothing new here.
My purpose in writing this concerns the next step. What went wrong? This next step is really why I began this essay. But now I want to take  a break and think about what went haywire?
After some thought I have to say the problems began when the Stra Achra [dark side =the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on ] go in the door. Instead of the basic meme of Torah idol worship was placed at the center. That took the focus off of God and the Law of God

 Dr Kelley Ross asked some questions on Kant in his PhD thesis to show unity of consciousness can not be by synthesis. I am wondering then. It seems to me he must be meaning that consciousness is an epi-phenomenon of the ding an sich. Or something like that. I can not tell. 

Jewish achievement in the hard sciences has gone done drastically.
The reason is that for Jews coming over from Europe, there was a kind of synergy between Reason and Revelation.  This was based to a large degree on European Jew's respect for  Maimonides and the general Mediaeval approach which saw a strong connection between faith and reason. So there was plenty of motivation to see great good in STEM. 

Psychology is pseudo science. It is best to take what they say about others as projection of their own nature.
It is a religion that is used to replace lack of faith in traditional religion.
Just for a simple example: what observation would disprove it? Nothing. There is no conceivable observation that could disprove psychology. Therefore it is not falsifiable and therefor pseudo science. QED.
It is mainly for confused people that are searching for answers, or people looking for a way to hurt others. That is,- psychologists are mentally unstable sadists.

Psychology is for people that want the aura of real science to hurt others.
It is attractive for stupid people that are not smart enough to do real science. 

Ideas in Talmud

Ideas in Talmud updated

I added in Hebrew an idea on how to answer a question in Tosphot in Bava Metzia page 14.
It is simply that Tosphot must be comparing the case of  improvements with teh priceof the field.
Clearly if the first buyer is getting from the borrower then there is something that prevented the lender from getting it. Otherwise how could the lender have collected anything from the first buyer? That is what causes Tosphot to think there is something also that prevents the lender from collecting from the second field

r93 r93 in midi  needs editing I am presenting it because it is basically acceptable, and I do not know how to edit it  right now. I hope for God's inspiration.
I borrowed an idea from Mozart to switch to 6/8 time for the final part as Mozart did in a B flat major piece. Mozart did this at least twice.. Once when I was a teenager and was listening on the radio I heard him do this in a D major suite. Also he did this in one symphony. 

I think you have to say in Bava Metzia page 14B that Tosphot is thinking like this: The Gemara says the first buyer collects his  improvement from the borrower and his main price from the second buyer.
There is no way the lender got a field from the first buyer if the borrower had a field that was available. So something has stopped the lender from being able to collect this field of the borrower that the first buyer can collect from. Therefore when the Gemara says the first buyer collects his main price even from a second buyer it must mean the same thing. That is there is something preventing the original lender from collecting from that second field.

______________________________________________________________

Still this is no proof. You could say simply the lender got his own loan repaid by taking the old field from the buyer and then the borrower bought some new property. Then the first buyer gets that property for his main price and improvements and if there is not enough to cover the main price then he goes to the second buyer.
______________________________________________________________________


Back ground information. You have a lender borrower and a buyer from the borrower after the loan was made. The borrower defaults. The lender collects from the borrower and from field sold by the borrower after the loan was made. Then the first buyer collects his main price and his improvement to the field from the borrower and his main price from the second buyer.
Tosphot asks, "Why is there a second field?" That is why did the lender not collect from the second buyer? My question is why is there a question? Maybe he got his whole loan repaid by what he already collected from the borrower and the first buyer? The above paragraph is my answer to this question

.בבא מציעא דף יד '' ע''ב אני חושב שאתה צריך להגיד  כי תוספות חושב ככה. הגמרא אומרת הקונה הראשון  אוסף שבח שלו מהלווה והקרן שלו מהקונה השני. אין דרך שהמלווה יקבל שדה מהקונה הראשון אם ללווה היה שדה שהיה זמין. אז משהו מפסיק את המלווה מלהיות מסוגל לאסוף בתחום זה של לווה כי הקונה הראשון יכול לגבות. לכן כאשר הגמרא אומרת הקונה הראשון אוסף המחיר העיקרי שלו אפילו מקונה השני אז זה בוודאי אומר את אותו הדבר. כלומר יש משהו שמונע את המלווה המקורי מגבייה מאותו השדה שני.
רקע: יש לך לווה מלווה וקונה מהלווה לאחר ההלוואה נעשתה. יש ברירת המחדל של הלווה. המלווה אוסף מהלווה ומשדה הנמכרים על ידי לווה לאחר ההלוואה נעשתה. ואז הקונה הראשון אוספת המחיר העיקרי שלו והשיפור שלו לשדה מהלווה והמחיר העיקרי שלו מהקונה השני. תוספות שואלת, "מדוע יש בשדה שני?" כלומר מדוע המלווה לא לגבות מהקונה השני? השאלה שלי היא למה יש לך שאלה? אולי הוא קיבל ההלוואה כולה שלו נפרעו על ידי מה שהוא כבר לגביה מאותו לווה לבין הקונה הראשון? הפיסקה לעיל הוא תשובתי לשאלה זו.

Physics and Jewish people

 I saw in high school the drive to succeed in the hard sciences for Jewish people was absent. The recognition that the natural sciences is good thing had disappeared.
It is no wonder the absence of Jewish names in the authentic sciences. With no will or desire to succeed, failure is guaranteed..
 The attitude towards the hard sciences that I saw was a surprise to me. With my Dad and his friends working on SDI Star Wars and the U-2, and the kind of success the USA had had in WWII, I thought it was clear  that the authentic sciences were understood to be good things.
Little did I know. Among Jewish people it was the phony sciences of psychology and other delusions that had all the prestige. Whatever recognition of the importance of the real sciences the immigrants from Eastern Europe had brought with them, had disappeared.

People had lost their direction. It took me some time until I discovered the opinion of the Rambam in the Guide about Physics. I had seen hints to this in the works of Musar but I never really got the idea until one day I opened the Obligations of the Heart by Ibn Pakuda.

Why did people lose their bearings?
 The best idea I can come up with is ignorance of Maimonides. The Middle Ages had a kind of balance between Reason and Faith. When that balance was rejected people lost their bearings. But that is my off hand answer right now. This is an interesting question that requires more thought. 

 I saw in high school the drive to succeed in the hard sciences for Jewish people was absent. The recognition that the natural sciences is good thing had disappeared.
It is no wonder the absence of Jewish names in the authentic sciences. With no will or desire to succeed, failure is guaranteed..
I was kind of a newcomer to Beverly Hills. I had grown up in Newport Beach CA. But the attitude towards the hard sciences that I saw was a surprise to me. With my Dad and his friends working on SDI Star Wars and the U-2, and the kind of success the USA had had in WWII, I thought it was clear  that the authentic sciences were understood to be good things.
Little did I know. Among Jewish people it was the phony sciences of psychology and other delusions that had all the prestige. Whatever recognition of the importance of the real sciences the immigrants from Eastern Europe had brought with them, had disappeared.

The basic structure of an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva is two sessions. The morning for what is called in depth learning of the Talmud --"iyun." That means you sit with a learning partner from 10 until 1200 preparing the material. Then at 1200 noon you go to one of the four classes that goes into the material in depth. The afternoon is for fast learning.

In both yeshivas in NY, Chaim Berlin and the Mir, many of the students in the afternoon went to Brooklyn College. The reason is that the main thing in yeshiva is the morning seder (session.)
This is a very good system except it has been largely taken over by people that use it to develop personality cults around themselves and is no longer about learning Torah.

If you are not in the vicinity of an authentic Litvak yeshiva, do not go to a phony yeshiva. Rather at home get one volume of Talmud and one book of Musar [mediaeval Ethics], and have make you own space a "Makom Torah" place of Torah.

The best choice of Musar is to have one book from the actual middle ages, like the Obligations of the Heart, and one like the Level of Man of Navardok in which there is a discussion about trust in God without effort. בטחון בלי השתדלות 

[One is however required to learn a vocation. Learning Torah does not count as learning a vocation.] [I did not want to hear this while in yeshiva. I was happy learning Torah. But I have to admit that my approach was probably a little too much based on lack of awareness of the Rambam's opinion that learning Physics and Metaphysics is a part of the Oral Law. If I had known that I would not have considered learning Physics as "Bitul Torah,"  wasting time that could be used for learning Torah

[If you have not gone through the entire Old Testament and two Talmuds at least once then you should have set aside each day about an hour for going through them page by page word for word. Do not worry if you do not understand. What you think you do not understand goes in subconsciously anyway.]

If you are not near a Litvak yeshiva then at least get Rav Shach's Avi Ezri which is the most easy to understand approach to learning in depth. You could try to do it on your own  learning Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam.  That book is an important classic.   

The basic structure of an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva is two sessions. The morning for what is called in depth learning of the Talmud --"iyun." That means you sit with a learning partner from 10 until 1200 preparing the material. Then at 1200 noon you go to one of the four classes that goes into the material in depth. The afternoon is for fast learning.

In both yeshivas in NY, Chaim Berlin and the Mir, many of the students in the afternoon went to Brooklyn College. The reason is that the main thing in yeshiva is the morning seder (session.)
This is a very good system except it has been largely taken over by people that use it to develop personality cults around themselves and is no longer about learning Torah.

If you are not in the vicinity of an authentic Litvak yeshiva, do not go to a phony yeshiva. Rather at home get one volume of Talmud and one book of Musar [mediaeval Ethics], and have make you own space a "Makom Torah" place of Torah.

The best choice of Musar is to have one book from the actual middle ages, like the Obligations of the Heart, and one like the Level of Man of Navardok in which there is a discussion about trust in God without effort. בטחון בלי השתדלות 

That is a concept I was never able to act on except twice. Once when I went to yeshiva in NY in the first place. The only other time was when I went to Israel. Besides that I have found it hard to trust in God without any effort.

r89 G Minor 6-8 time  r89 in midi  r89 nwc

Art at its best in to capture something transcendent in Nature.

Art at its best in to capture something transcendent in Nature. It is not to copy it, but to capture its essence. Schopenhauer went into this in . 



The idea is that the transcendent numinous reality has existence that depends not on the subject nor object. But it can be perceived by intention. [I do not know if that is how Dr Ross would put it.

Early medieval Europe.

Early medieval Europe. There was something definitely special going on then. The question then is how to deal with the problem that such an society entailed. How to combine it with the better aspects of the Enlightenment? My suggestion is at least a re-emphasis on the great books of the time.

 Also classical education which was the basic books of Aristotle on Logic plus the few others books from late Rome--plotinus.

Personally I feel there is a lot to gain from both the Mediaeval period and the Renaissance.

Jewish people are already aware of the importance of the Rishonim, the Rambam and Tosphot in particular.
For Jewish people education was already spelled out by the Rambam: Torah, Physics, Metaphysics. By the last two he was referring to two large sets of books by Aristotle. Today I would have to say modern Physics would have to be in place of Aristotle's Physics.


I should mention that this kind of education is not too far away from what I was doing anyway in high school. I was certainly interested in the mediaeval period though my time was limited because of school work.

r91 F minor  r91 in midi r91 nwc

Authentic Lithuanian Yeshiva.

A healthy yeshiva operates through no universal methods, but several general principles, and these become adapted in many specific ways. One way is culling. Any successful yeshiva has internal gatekeepers who drive out the people of lower moral standards, ability and behavior or those who are merely genetically incompatible. The sane form of this is exile; the insane form is  not doing it.

There is a side idea: Don't join a group of crazy people even if their doctrines sound nice.

r90 slightly edited. This probably needs a lot of editing but  if I do not put it here I can easily just forget about it. And unless God grants to me some kind of inspiration I have no idea how to edit it.

Musar is the glue

I realize my life and the meaning of my life is fragmented. If I look at all the pieces of the puzzle some are more well put together than others. But the whole thing is like pieces of a puzzle when you open the box. It looks like one big mess.
It is like when I was following the path of Musar of Reb Israel Salanter which in a nut shell is the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule then all the pieces fit together. That is Fear of God and working on having good character (as the Torah defines good character) --as like the mortar for the bricks, the cement, the glue.


The problem was accepting a different "meme" unit of social information. The Torah is explicit about what matters and what does not. The trouble is that as long as I was part of the Mir Yeshiva in NY there was a kind of glue that held things together. Learn Gemara and Musar. Though I think Reb Nachman was a great tzadik, but getting involved in the group that supposedly follows him was exchanging the meme of the Torah for an alternative meme.
Besides that it had the problem of ignoring the signature of the Gra on the second excommunication.


What this means for people that are not in the Mir yeshiva is simple. No matter where you are you can work on the exact same things: (1) Fear of God (2) Good Character. These are available at all times to everyone.

The best ways to go about however is not clear to me. But the goal is clear.

I am not saying the books of Musar are perfect. Rather what I am saying is that without Musar it is all too easy to get the meaning of life and of Torah mixed up.