Fear of God is a tricky issue. You can't be part of the frum-world [religious world] because most people there is have a schizoid personality problems. That is what makes them religious in the first place. But you can't ignore the importance of the Law of Moses.

My parents found some kind of balance that I have tried to emulate and also suggest to others.
That is in a nut shell, Gemara [Talmud], Musar {Ethics}, Physics, Music, Math and survival skills.
Though in those days there was no term survival skills. It was "outdoor skills," and for that reason they sent me and my brother Keith to be Boy Scouts.

The Physics and Math part of the day should be the first thing in the morning. If you can boil a fresh cup of coffee before you start that can help. And if you have the coffee mixed with  a raw egg that gets rid of cravings for unhealthy food all day.

Don't worry if you do not understand the hard aspects of Physics. Say the words in order quickly and go on as it says in the Talmud לעולם לגרס אינש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר Always one should jut say the words and go on even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying.

[That is for the first few times you read a text. After that I try to say the words forwards and backwards from the end of  section to the beginning, and I based that on the Mediaeval book called ספר היראה and I saw hints to this in the Arizal, and also Reb Moshe Chaim Lutzato.]


Tosphot however is a different story. With Tosphot the best thing is to take one and stay on it repeating it over every day and taking off from there with Tosphot as your starting point. That is you look up all the Gemaras he brings and also the sister Tosphot in other tractates that is parallel to the Tosphot you are doing.

feminism

The world today is different from the one I grew up in. My parents and teachers and friends were wholesome moral and amazing. Something about the world changed.Some shift or consciousness to make  everyone change in someway. It was perhaps more simple for me to see because for  period I had been isolated from the world. When I emerged everything about people and they way they thought had changed in significant ways. It must be like Carl Jung had said about the collective Consciousness.
Very weird and strange doctrines were accepted as normal  that a few years ago would have be dismissed as serve cases of schizophrenia.

I meant feminism and many of the modern ''mishagases''[insanities]. But also something more subtle. People in the USA were looking at many possible solutions to the question "What is Truth?" But the answers had some basis in reality of known experience. It was not common to say  some nice sounding principle and then everything else after that had to fit into that box. Feminism just postulates men and women are equal in everything. And after that everything else has to follow including nature. And if nature does not want to agree, "We will make her agree. We will show Mother Nature who is boss around here. And don't you forget it."

So we get the idea that the sexes are interchangeable. That is juts one area of insanity. Nowadays there are many more. Some religious in nature. Some political. When people have some kind of schizoid personality problem and cant focus their insanity in some religious sphere because of the nature of society they instead do it in regard to politics.

There are a lot of pitfalls in the "frum-world"[i.e., the religious world].

There are a lot of pitfalls in the "frum-world"[i.e., the religious world]. Sometimes it makes sense to mention them. Mainly it is the human cost of getting people to join in. This fanatic need to bring people in to be "frum" and then treat them like dirt is not an admirable trait. And it suggest the need to make people frum is more of a symptom of a schizoid personalty sickness.
That is just one problem. They might invite you into their kollel if they think you can give them money but never to be part of their group. It is a kind of גניבת דעת trickery.
But the further problem is that the frum world itself is clearly insane. That is it is filled with insane groups and the likelihood is anyone joining in will join in one of those groups.

It’s neofeudalists – good white businessmen willing to flood the country with more customers and cheaper labor if it’ll make them another buck.

Comment on Unz review: "Let’s be honest with ourselves: it ain’t just “neocons” (i.e., Jews interested in pulling all the strings). It’s neofeudalists – good white businessmen willing to flood the country with more customers and cheaper labor if it’ll make them another buck. Like ye olde Southern plantation owners, these men think they can control the consequences when whites become a minority. We see what those men ultimately did to the South, and what the modern neofeudalists are doing to the entire country – the entire West – will be just as awful."


This is the first comment that accurately describes my feelings. I grieved me when I saw the country being flooded by blacks. Then it grieved me even more when I saw it being overrun by Muslims. Then the last straw was to see the Jews being blamed for it all. The people that brought in the blacks were not Jewish; they were Southern Businessmen. And the people that flooded the country with Muslims were not Jewish. The Jews are simply the most convenient scapegoat for what White Anglo Saxon Protestants did to themselves.

[My family had to escape from Newark, NJ when it was overrun by blacks. We certainly did not invite them.]

r5 F Major 3-4 time    [r5 in midi format]

It hard for me to imagine the whole Yaakov Abuchatzeira thing disappeared into thin air.  While it is true we don't have anything anywhere near the Bava  Sali, still I recommend going to see his descendants and getting a blessing and also going to anyone descended from that family on the festival days and Shabat. During the week I recommend learning Gemara and Musar at home or in a local Beit Midrash {study hall for Gemara  only.}

I had a close friendship with a grandson of Bava Sali, Shimon Buso who was a teacher in the Ponovitch branch in Jerusalem for a number  of years and I knew the whole Buso family pretty well. It is a good idea to get a blessing from any of them.


Of course if you are in the vicinity of an authentic, Litvak yeshiva then by all means learn there and support it--if it is the real thing and not just an excuse to ask secular Jews for for money.

I might make a list of the good yeshivas--Ponovitch, the Litvak yeshivas in NY, Brisk and their branches.[The NY ones are Mir, Torah VeDaat, and Chaim Berlin.] {I did not mention Tifrach because as far as I know it stems from Ponovitch, so it is included automatically.]
If you are not in the area of any of these then make your own yeshiva at home. Get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach, the Chidushei HaRambam of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and learn them on your own.

Some have brought up the subject of Zionism as a form of nationalism. Also "Self determination."
But self determination does not seem like nationalism. Nationalism is defensible with Hegel. But self determination is incoherent. What is the group? This was noticed right away when Wilson proposed self determination as a principle. It automatically leads to conflict. However nationalism is  perfectly legitimate and can be defended by Hegel.  [But then you would have to defend Hegel, which I think is possible and even desirable. ]


I believe the point was raised right away after Wilson stated this principle. Self Determination has not lower limit, and no upper limit. It is a simply a principle that gives a way for people to make trouble when they don't like the way things are going. Serbia is one good example. Nationalism however is something that is defended by Hegel. So one would have to see exactly what kind of nationalism he is defending and why. Certainly he is not saying self determination for everyone. He means a kind of nationalism that has associated with it an upward vector. It is not stationary.

Reb Aaron Kotler and Zionism

 I was in Israel and at the time identified with the Ultra Religious.  And then I saw a book of Aaron Kotler and saw  that he said דינא דמלכותא דינא "the law of the country is the law." So I realized then that my anti Zionist stance was mistaken. Reb Moshe Feinstein also said the same thing. Since then I have been supportive of the State of Israel.

ADL Anti defamation League  I have seen them defend things I thought were not very good. I forget exactly but I seem to recall they wanted to ban celebrations of Christmas and the Ten Commandments and such things. I would assume they might have something to do with the banning of the Confederate Battle Flag in the South. That suggests to me they must be Democrats. They seem to be on some kind of crusade to wipe out morality and values.

Notes

Reb Aaron Kotler was a very great Torah sage who had learned I think in Kletzk and wrote a very good book on Shas and a book of Ethics. The book on Ethics is where I saw this opinion of his.

I really can't tell who was greater, but Reb Aaron is considered to have been as great as Reb Moshe Feinstein or perhaps greater. My own experience with Litvish gedolim was confined to Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. That is Reb Naphtali Yeager and Reb Shmuel Brudny, Reb Shmuel Berenbaum, the author of the Sukat David and Reb Shraga Moshe Kalmanovitch. My impression of all of them is very high. I think Reb Shmuel Berenabum was the deepest thinker and I think Naftapli Yaeger is the most rigorous.

The person that probably was the greatest of that generation was Rav Shach in Ponovitch.[He wrote the Avi Ezri which is an amazing book.]

Nowadays there is not much left. For guidance, the best people around are probably the descendants of Reb Yaakov Abuchazteira and Bava Sali. [Though I admit I am not  aware of who is who. I know Shimon Buso -a grandson of Bava Sali, but that is about all.]

s20 A major    s-20 in midi format

vindictive ex-wives

Here is an amazing comment I saw on blog called judgybitch.com in answer to a feminist.



" I've thought long and hard on your remarks before composing this reply. Unfortunately you are right that a growing number of children are growing up fatherless here in the US and in the UK, innocent casualties of the divorces imposed on them by their mothers and fathers.
I will only speak as a divorced father and no one else. During the divorce process (in the mid 1980s, not recently) I was told by my attorney that in 98% of the cases, the mother was automatically awarded primary custody; my wanting to fight her in court over custody for my kids was an almost sure loss for me. He was right.

Being the stubborn bastard that I can be sometimes, I STILL wanted to fight for my children regardless of what the lawyer said. Ah, then during a very brief meeting with one of my soon to be ex-brother-in-laws it was told to me that if I persisted in contesting for custody of my children, I would be accused to sexually abusing them to ensure I would remain in the justice system until bankrupted. This was not a veiled threat, but plainly spoken to let me know the cost. So to answer part of your remarks; I would have dearly LOVED and cherished the opportunity to raise my own children.


" Why not make a father raise the child if the mother is financially unable to." I only wish to god that I could have had the chance to raise them myself, no one would have had to twist my arm to provide for my own little ones.

Please, before thinking that men can easily walk away from their kids, consider that they might be forcibly driven away by the vindictive ex-wives, and not of their own choice."

abuse of authority under the guise of holiness

I think that in fact people got fed up with abuse of authority. They said it is better for people to be open sinners than sinners under the guise of holiness.

women lie about rape

I had an amazing childhood

I had an amazing childhood and teen age years with my parents. The only real pain I had was being dumped by my girlfriend, Wendy, for another friend. Sex was  unheard of in those days, though in high school one girl was thought to be in that regard. But  she was the only one. And she was limited to her own boyfriend. For that reason I wonder why I felt the need to rebel against my parents except for the fact that that was the social thing to do in those days. I suppose it still is. I was vaguely aware of American culture going downhill in that way. Still I am shocked by some of the stories of people I read about.

I can see why people thought being part of the religious world would provide insulation against the secular trends. The truth though is the opposite. [People should learn Torah, but not assume that those that claim to teach it are holy. The opposite is  the case. There seems to be an overflow in the religious world of vicious, cruel, and stupid people that you would generally not except to find there.
The religious world provides an illusion of being  immune. In fact, I believe it is more corrupt--though more hidden.

[I also had a great deal of pain and frustration that I was not very good in math, though later I developed  a taste for it. I did not get smarter, I just developed  a taste for it.] Now that I think of it  my frustration at my lack of abilities was probably more painful than being dumped by Wendy. But both things were the most painful things I had ever gone through.

Don't think that I wrote some decent books on the Talmud,  that makes me smart. I had amazing teachers and a really great learning partner that showed me the way.

Marriage in secular USA

Marriage in secular USA and the West has been a bad deal for a long time. It can be assumed that this fact  has been a major factor in in rise of yeshivas that pretend to promote family values.
It  is a simply case of push and pull. The secular world is obviously sick. That is a force to push out. The force to pull in is the way Lithuanian yeshivas used to be in Europe when the stress on family values was real. But transplanting that has not worked.

Thus what I recommend is not to depend on the system anymore. Rather learn Torah and a vocation at the same time and serve in the IDF and do not make excuses.

Avi Preder suggested to me the idea of a "Beit Midrash" (study hall) as opposed to a yeshiva.
That is to say I am not the only one to see that while the yeshivas were idealistic at one time, they were ruined by success.

[I think the Torah alone approach is simply not the best approach from several angles. Though it worked for great people like Rav Shach and Reb Aaron Kotler, it does not seem to produce the high kind of individual you would hope for.

People feel the need for a holy man, a shaman, to intercede. This need people try to use for their advantage for themselves and their yeshivas. They want people to feel good about themselves when they give money that worthy cause. In most cases it is not a worthy cause, but a scam.

"family values."

Yeshiva did have an element of shiduch --finding a good marriage partner involved with it. That was an unspoken incentive. The trouble is the same that caused the downfall of the power of religious authority in the secular world. Abuse of power. It got to be just another scheme to get power of over people by the pretense of "family values." Yeah, right. "Family values" for the head of the dog pack and his buddies. "Eat dirt" for everyone else.
You can see why people  [including me] think they are better off not having religious maniacs telling them what to do.

Muslims to the USA.

Americans were not aware of the problems involved in bringing Muslims to the USA. Most people had visited, "Its a small world after all," [which I have to mention is a song made by Mozart, but not the words.] Americans including myself were very naive about what Muslims are all about. And once a person is in that mind set, it is very difficult to get free of it. (It took a good deal of attacks on my person for me to start getting the message. And even then it took time for the message to start sinking in.)

Ideas in Talmud

I might mention that I never learned Hebrew except a small amount in Hebrew school and Temple Israel in Hollywood when I was a kid. In yeshiva I did not spend any time on Hebrew at all. So some of my writing is the usual Talmudic kind of Hebrew you see in the Rishonim. Other parts are what I learned from the Old Testament which differs from the Hebrew of the Rishonim. And some of it comes from being in Israel. That is just a warning - since you might notice my style of writing varies. It is not two people writing. It is one person --that is I.

[The most obvious example is I take things like שנה to be feminine because of the Old Testament. שדה I take to be masculine. ]
Here is the link to the book  on Talmud and also to the book I wrote before that on Bava Metzia

Ideas in Talmud

Ideas in Bava Metzia


My main focus is as you can see in trying to understand Tosphot.
Rav Shach has a focus on Maimonides  and that kind of focus started with Reb Haim HaLevi [The Brisker Rav].

an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva

Therefore I should explain what yeshiva was when it was idealistic. The basic idea was you would sit and learn Talmud from about 18 years old until some father of a daughter would come into the yeshiva and ask the rosh yeshiva [teacher] who would be a good match for his daughter. Then 6 dates would be set up between the two on Saturday night. After 6 dates  an announcement was made.
After the marriage the son in law would be supported by his parents and then her parents alternatively.
He would continue to learn Torah.
The community would be surrounding the yeshiva and it would be isolated from the outside would by invisible barriers, mental barriers,- rules that were eagerly accepted and loved. The rules were voluntarily accepted by all and followed by all. The rules were the Torah-the oral and written law of God. And the ideal was to learn Torah all one's life. Learning Torah was the life goal.

After some years the young man would begin to work at some job.


What happened to change all this? Success.  When an organization is successful and there is money and power, then the people at the top tend to be the most materialist in direct opposition to the kinds of people that started the whole thing. Greed and corruption got to be the norm. It is like the Olympic committee that gets all the perks. The country that hosts it looses money. So Norway simply turned down the opportunity to host the Olympics.



Though in its pristine form the system should work well. It did not for me. So I am hesitant to recommend a return to it. For me no one helped find my wife. She came running to NY to get me. The only thing people at the top did was to try to ruin my marriage when they got the chance.
So the yeshiva world certainly has gone down in quality. Thus my present day recommendation is the Beit Midrash--an informal place to learn Talmud with no official aspects at all. Simply a place for learning Gemara for whom so ever wishes to learn Gemara. I was hoping to do this on my own but that did not work very well. I can not seem to even make my own small a place into a place of Torah. Still I can hope to encourage others.
That is all I am saying is this. Even if the whole world has turned  Torah into a business, still one can by himself learn Torah for its own sake.

[What I am saying here is a lot really depends on your own situation. If you have an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva in your area that as far as you can tell are learning Torah for its own sake and not for money then by all means join in. But if there is nothing like that are perhaps the places that are near you seems to be either all about using Torah to make money or perhaps are insane asylums as many yeshivas are, then it is best to learn Torah at home. Learning at home should at least in theory be easy. All you need is a Gemara  and a book of Musar.]