There is kind of Achilles heel in yeshivas. Some trip wire that people fall for. I am not sure what it is exactly but it perhaps is  a kind of superiority complex.

It is hard for me to recommend yeshivas.The reason is they purposely try to recruit people from university and say to come to the yeshiva to learn Torah all day. Then when one does this, and things are not working out for him as well as he expected, they treat him like dirt.
It is like the just want to recruit the beautiful people [college students with rich parents] because it gives them a good image, so as to be able to con and scam more people in giving them charity. Because after all is said and done, that is all it is about. They pretend it is a living, but all it really is is charity.


The idea of learning Torah is to come to two things objective morality and numinosity. But this does not happen if on learns for money. That is why the yeshivas are not effective any more in creating good character.

Torah is only effective in bringing to objective morality when it is learned for its own sake--not as a means to make money.

When people learn Torah for money that creates a kind of vicious personality. They have a need to show that somehow they are more deserving of people's charity than others. So if others are also learning Torah, the first groups has to show they are somehow superior. And if someone comes along that also wants to learn Torah that creates a situation where the first groups feels the need to put down and be rid of the second guy. It is rare to find much god in this system.

The only yeshivas I can truly recommend and think they are learning Torah for its own sake are the well known Litvak yeshivas Ponovitch, Mir, Brisk,Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat.

I also got the idea that there has been a great effort to bring people from 3rd world countries into the USA and to keep out white people. I also ran into a lot of people from first world countries that would have loved to come to the USA but getting any kind of visa was virtually impossible. Someone has been trying hard to change the racial makeup of the USA.

s25 D minor  s25 midi format   s25 nwc format

OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) has nothing to do with Fear of God, but to the religious world it is the same thing. The more one focuses on rituals, is the more holy they seem..

A lot of religious motivation has more to do with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder more than with any kind of holiness. But not all.

And the system of the Ultra Religious encourages and nourishes this kind of disorder.

This happens when nothing else seems to work. A time of anxiety brings this on.

The obsessions in the Ultra Religious world are the exact same things as classic OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) , [i.e. cleanliness, food preparation, obsession with sex, holy places. numerology and gematriot.

The leaders are people that have an exaggerated version of this OCD.

And this is the basic reason why the Ultra Religious world is insane.

OCD has nothing to do with Fear of God, but to the religious world it is the same thing. The more they focus on rituals,  the more  holy they think they are.

So, in spite of the great thing that Reb Israel Salanter did in emphasizing Musar and Fear of God, still there is this troubling side of things in which fear of God can't be discerned or told apart from a diseased imagination.


For this reason Reb Israel Salanter himself focused on the more rational books of Musar Ethics from the Middle Ages more than the later Musar books which were all fused with kabalah and probably were written by people with this disorder. The obsession with religion is not the sign of a healthy personality, even though being true to the word of God in the Oral and Written Law is important.

[After spending time with the religious, you will start noticing this just as I did. A lot the people there simply have diseased imaginations.]

You can see why in Lithuanian kinds of Yeshivas obsessive religious behavior was rigorously  excluded in order to prevent these kinds of crazy people from joining. Thus in the ultra Religious world you have people at the heads of the cults have different levels of OCD, but that is rare in the Litvak world which  excludes this kind of insanity.

However to avoid people with this kind of disorder it is safer to simply join a Reform Temple. I myself went to Temple Israel and also to a Conservative place in Southern California.

Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music, Survival Skills.

I mentioned a few times that my basic approach is Torah with Derech Eretz [manners and a vocation.]. That is Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music, Survival Skills. But also I wanted to add the learning these things does not depend on understanding. There is such a thing as a mitzvah to learn Torah even though you do not understand. This is not just because it is assumed that with lots of review one will eventually understand. There is also the idea that in the next world one will be reminded and understand everything he tried to understand in this world but was not able to do so.
This forms the basis of the type of fast learning that all authentic Litvak yeshivas do in the afternoon and I showed how this comes from the Talmud itself. לעולם לגרס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר

I mentioned this in reference to Tosphot --just to say it over day after day, even for months until you understand.[Unless you are learning with a learning partner. In that case you do this kind of learning on your own time.]

But also this applies to learning Gemara, and Tur, Beit Joseph. To put a place marker in the book and every day do one whole page in order, and the next day to go on from where you left off.

I wanted to add the idea of learning standing. This is also a great help to understanding. I remember that this was how I did a lot of the writings of the Ari(zal),  Isaac Luria. I did not have "Stender" at home so I pulled out the shelf of one cabinet and stood up learning the Ari. [Not during "seder" or regular yeshiva hours 10:00-2:00 4:00-8:00]

This should not be taken as a kind of agreement with the Ultra Religious who are insane. This should only be taken as agreement with Lithuanian yeshivas  where Torah is learned for its own sake. Nothing else in the religious world do I consider kosher at all. [In fact the Gra knew exactly what he was doing when he signed the Cherem and it is wrong for people to ignore it, because it relates to objective reality.] This affected the entire frum world including the yeshivas. Even the yeshivas have gotten a share of the kelipot that penetrated into them. They will make a song and dance around secular Jews that have money but treat other people like dirt.

s24 A major

ditto in midi ditto in nwc

 Muslims  purposely target Jews on campus with insults and many other ways of making them feel no wanted.


Sephardim picked this up technique of subtle harassment from Muslims. They do it to Ashkenazim pretty consistently. But then you have some Sephardim that are appalled at this behavior, but they can't do anything about it. There is always at least one that makes life intolerable for the Ashkenazi until he is forced to leave town. [Unless the area is Ashkenazi and the sephardim are the guests.]

Musar-Ethics has a promise that goes with it from Isaac Blazzer (the disciple of Reb Israel Salanter) of being a cure for all bodily, and mental, and spiritual diseases.

, The way I  decided on what to say when I get up in the morning took time and thought to develop. It is a long and involved story. At the Mir in NY my interest was kindled in Musar (Ethics) one Rosh Hashanah. Then I lost interest. And then recently I asked a fellow  from Bnei Brak to bring some books of straight, normal Musar. The first one was I think the Obligations of the Heart. After that I asked for a book of Musar that is well known in yeshivas called Even Sh'lema and the Nefesh HaChaim  by the disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin and another well know Musar book called Madrgat HaAdam [by Joseph Yozel Horwitz, a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter].

Then while reading these books I noticed at certain time areas of character development that I seemed to be lacking.

Then I wrote down one long paragraph and I would say it to my self right away when I got up in the morning. I forget which one it was but it might be the same one that I still say to myself when I get up: "When a person gets up in the morning and accepts upon himself that day to be mekababel [accept on himself] the yoke of Torah in truth –that is he decides in his heart that he will listen to no one and nothing will prevent him then on that day he will have success in Torah. And according to the deep of his commitment and strength of his conviction to that degree from Heaven he will receive help and he distractions and obstacles will be taken away from him."

After that I decided I needed help to judge people on the scales of merit and thus started saying to myself: "It is a known tested fact that when one has enemies –G-d forbid,- and he judges them on the scale of merit, that is, he decides in his heart that they are true and perfect saints, then immediately their heart will be turned to be his friends." {From Reb Chaim from Voloshin the disciple of the Gra}

A long time after that it occurred to me that I had ceased trusting in God at all and that this had been an important factor in my upward development. So I decided to start saying over a paragraph about trust in God that I had seen in the book the Madragat HaAdam during the middle of the day. But then at some point I started  saying it also in the morning.


The whole paragraph is this: “Trust in God with all your heart and do not depend on your intellect.” (Mishlei Proverbs 3)  That is your heart should be perfect and whole in trust in God and not with just part of your heart and do not depend on your intellect that is You should not say I will trust in God but I am also obligated  to do actions and to depend on my intellect. There it says do not depend even as a staff or support you should not depend on your intellect.

Someone heard in the name of the Gra that this is the explanation of what it says in Rosh HaShanah 25B

The students at the Beit Midrash did not understand the word Yehavka יהבך in psalms [Cast on God your yehavka and he will take care of your burden יהבך]. Then one day they heard a gentile merchant tell Raba Bar Bar Chana “Take your Yehavka (burden) and put it on my camel.”  The Gra said it does not mean the students did not understand the word. Rather it means they thought one should trust in Go an also do effort. Therefore they had a question on that verse. It should say your needs. Then they saw the merchant tell Raba Bar Bar Chana to take his burden and out it on his camel and then they understood that when something is supposed to come to one from Heaven then it will come no matter what and one does not need to do any effort to get it.



Musar Ethics has a promise that goes with it from Isaac Blazzer the disciple of Israel Salanter of being a cure for all bodily and mental and spiritual diseases.

While in my present situation I can't learn Musar [no books available] , I hope at least to encourage others to do so. While the best kind of approach is the Litvak Musar Yeshiva , still if that is not possible at least at home.

Christianity and the Mystic Rav Avraham Abulafia

Christianity I think is mainly based on Paul, and not Jesus at all.  Jesus himself I see as simply a Jewish saint. And one could go further based on the medieval Mystic Rav Avraham Abulafia and claim he was משיח בן יוסף (messiah son of Joseph) foretold in the Talmud tractate Sukka.

That still would not provide any reason to worship him, as the Rambam makes clear.

[I mean to say that the Rambam made Monotheism clearer by going with Aristotle. In that case the idea of the First Cause is absolutely simple and consistent with Divine Simplicity.]

Appendix

Note (1) I mean to say that Neo-Platonic thought up until the Rambam had enough problems  to cause the Rambam to switch to Aristotle, and Aquinas followed him. I used to think perhaps the reason was Divine Simplicity, but now that I am thinking of it, I realize you can have just as much Divine Simplicity with Neo Platonic thought.

Note (2) Avraham Abulafia's books have been printed in Mea Shearim Jerusalem-or you can buy the whole set on line. When I was researching this topic I had to go through the microfilms with that insane medieval script to see what Rav Abulafia was saying. I should mention Avraham Abulafia was the subject of professor Moshe Idel's (at H.U.) Ph.D thesis and later books. }

Note (3) The subject of Messiah son of Joseph comes up a little in the Zohar, but mainly in Moshe Chaim Lutzatto's Tikunim and the קול התור of the Gra and a drop in the Ari {Isaac Luria}. The Gra's book, Kol HaTor deals mainly with the topic of messiah son of Joseph. Maybe there are more sources that I did not run into.

Note (4) I am not saying this is a topic to spend time on. Mainly it looks to me to be "Bitul Torah" wasting time that could be better spent on learning Torah. But still, in any case, I had I think good reason to get to the bottom of this topic.

Note (5) Sorry. I forgot to mention that Rav Avraham Abulafia was respected by Reb Chaim Vital and the Chida.

Note (6) Rav Abulafia went to debate the pope. He was not happy with the Catholic Church. There were orders to arrest him. No one could lay a hand on him.

Note (7) Rav Abulfia's ideas are brought down in the Remak and also Reb Chaim Vital in detail [in שערי קדושה חלק רביעי].

Note (8) The reason I say that Christianity is based on Paul is that if your take Jesus in his own context there is no claim of Divinity nor nullification of the commandments. These are strictly Pauline doctrines.  That is to say major doctrines of the church have no textual support from the New Testament. The said doctrines contradict what Jesus said openly. They depend only on Paul and yet Paul was writing things that contradicted what the disciples of Jesus had written openly in his name.

I should mention:I grew up in John Birch society area. It was basically WASP and very nice. I kind of had a glimpse of Old American Values, and it was a really nice world.

a Litvak yeshiva

Ideas in Tractate Bava Metzia edited Ch 8 and ch 9.

The best place to learn Torah, if possible, is a Litvak yeshiva [called Litvak because "Litva" is the proper name of Lithuania] It is where yeshivas were real and authentic

That is they were made in order to learn and keep Torah --not schools to turn out people that use Torah for money. This was an argument I had with my parents. They thought yeshivas were really meant as means to make money. I tried to convince them that, "No. Rather their pursuit is to learn and keep Torah." Which of us was right I still do not know.
I would say that Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY and Ponovitch in Israel are  in fact for Torah "Lishma" (for its own sake.)

The best idea as far as I can tell is to learn a vocation, and not be in a position in which the only way one can make it is by using  Torah.

It is considered that Ponovitch is the best of the Litvak yeshivas, and Rav Elazar Menachem Shach was Rosh Yeshiva there for some time. From what I can tell this is accurate. Brisk also has a great reputation which is probably well deserved. But the best is probably Ponovitch [which includes "off shoots" (branches) like yeshivas founded by people that went to Ponovitch, e.g. Tifrach.]

S23 G Minor

Old Testament

DNA+ Old Testament+ Athens+ Sparta+ Rome = Western Civilization. So the "white thing" is one important factor. Genes and DNA do matter.

Even among Sephardim it was well known that DNA makes a difference. After the Muslim invaded and took Jewish women for wives it was the custom in all Middle East areas to write Samech Tet (Sephardi Tahor) after one's name to indicate that one could trace his ancestry to Jewish fathers before the Arabs invaded. That is one is "pure Spanish" and not mixed with the Jews of North Africa that all had Muslim parentage mixed in.

[I see the Talmud and the as an important part of Western Civilization.


New Testament itself I consider to have some good points and some bad points. The good ones are obvious--that it emphasis important aspects of the holy Torah--compassion. Compassion is something that people like to give lip service to but when in need people know the only place you can go to get help in an emergency is to a Christian. I have experienced this myself and I know I am not alone. [Other people as a rule talk about kindness, but Christians tend to be the ones to do it.]

The Talmud emphasizes the more obvious aspects of the Law of Moses--the actual nitty gritty about how to understand and keep each particular commandment. That is the the Talmud deal with the specifics of the Torah --how to what doe each mitzvah mean in a practical sense. This is also an important aspect of Torah and it is one that Christians ignore completely.

There are people that make a very big deal about keeping rituals that think that because of that they are close to God and the Law of Moses. They are about as from from God and the Law of Moses as it is possible to get.

Nowadays however everything that people look for as a system has to fail. It is something that is part of some Divine plan that the more one believes in some doctrine or in some group that that group will disappoint him and show itself to be the exact opposite of human decency and everything good.

It is called "the Twilight of the gods". So it does not matter what system you believe in. The more you believe in it the more it will disappoint you.


So DNA is one factor but not determinate. People still have free will and there are plenty of memes an paradigms to choose from. And even if one has made a choice to choose a good meme {Like the Bible} there are still plenty of ways of fouling it up.

Best approach that I know of--to be self sufficient and learn math Physics, Gemara, Musar, and survival skills. And the purpose of this learning is all in order to understand and keep the Law of Moses.

I figure the reason two people developed two eyes instead of one is the classical double split experiment. That is: with two slits you get interference patterns. This gives a better idea of distance than one slit where the particles act as particles, not as waves.

The distance between the eyes in proportion to the distance to the object is a trig function. 

What we are seeing I think is the death of the gods all the "ism"s, capitalism, communism,  and all the cults.
I am looking at this in a global way, but you could take almost any of the ism's. For example the Catholics are headed by a communist pope, and the Protestants have become a kind of Churchianity.
Church now is entertainment of the most superficial type. It is mainly to give sexual stimulus to the alpha male who has all the women listening to his every word. It is mainly geared towards the weakening of the men in the congregation.
The Torah world is no exception. The gods and the yeshivas there died also. It is a global phenomenon.
The main thing that characterizes the world today is disappointment in what ever they believed in.

Family and Home?

There is no incentive for a man to marry anymore. A wife to be proud of? Odds are that she’s in open competition with you for status and won’t submit. Kids? Odds are she’s going to take them away. Sex? When she’s in the mood *maybe*.

Throw in the fact that she’s likely to start the process of taking everything away from you including future earnings, time with your kids and beat you in mental submission through counseling and the like? Why would you want to?

Self sufficiency as the most fundamental principle of my Dad.

This manifested itself in many ways. Mainly it was in showing us how to do things ourselves. And also in not accepting help for anything that you can do on your own. In those days there were no computers so I was only allowed to use a slide rule when I could do the calculations by hand. When we went skiing as a family I was allowed to use the ski lift until I could climb the mountain and ski down on my own with no help. This meant mastering outdoor skills and also plain house keeping skills like sewing. Maybe he called this "self reliance." In any case this must have been the most important principle which he tried to instill in me and my brothers.

It was the exact opposite of communities that teach their children to rely on charity.

Thus while learning Torah is important, he did not agree with being in a situation in which one would end up having to relay on people's charity and be using the holy Torah to make a living as in done in kollels.

He held strongly of learning a vocation.

[I do not hold support of kollel's is a good thing because it is doing kindness for people that would never reciprocate. I do not know why this is but the facts are the facts. Te Sages said one that does kindness for one that does not recognize it is as if he worshiped idolatry.]

s21 F Minor  s21 midi  s21 nwc

trust in God

I have tried to deal with the issue of trust in God  a few times in this blog without much success because it is unclear in my own mind. You can divide the issue into several parts in order to make what is clear and where the problems are.
The simple part is what was going on in the Mir Yeshiva in NY. Learn Torah and God will do the rest. Don't worry about making a living because when you learn Torah for its own sake God will provide.

That part is the simple unambiguous part.

Then there come the later confusing issues when this structure seems to break down.You get to Israel when people "talk the talk" about trust, but in fact spend all their time and effort trying to get charity from rich secular Jews and the State of Israel and then call that "trust in God". Hypocrisy at the highest level.

Then you get to kollel's in the USA when they don't even bother to "talk the talk." There it is all about using "supporting Torah" as if they are geniuses at the RAND Corporation  Think Tank, and are getting paid for their work and services.

To add to the confusion is the history itself of Navardok which made trust their central meme and theme.

This  is a statement of the basic ambiguity that surrounds this issue. The difference between what the Torah says and what people do. People that present themselves as authorities in Torah that are insincere, scum bags that darken the name of Torah.

See Cult behavior:
Kollels certainly are cults.
You are not supposed to make  a living by learning Torah, nor teaching it. And you are not supposed to ask for charity because you are learning Torah. [See the Mordechai in Bava Batra dealing with the problem of even having teachers for children!!! I kid you not. מה אני בחינם אף אתם בחינם

Being unscrupulous is a trait of kollels. Lying to get money.


But the issue still remains how to come to authentic trust in God and to learn and keep Torah for real?

The trouble that I see is very rarely is any religious group anything but a cult. So to be Kosher Yid one really just has to learn Torah on one's own and give up the idea of being part of any group.

My suggestion is to support the places that I recognize as being "LeShem Shamaim" לשם שמים --for the sake of Heaven. I mean there are a few yeshivas that I was very impressed with that I thought were teaching people good values. Those are the Litvak Yeshivas in NY. Chaim Berlin Mir Torah Vedaat Shar Yashuv. I know little about Ponovitch in Israel, but just seeing the book Avi Ezri of Rav Shach shows me that that place must be the Mount Everest of the Torah world.

Jewish people involved in civil rights movements Jewish people involved in civil rights movements

. I also noticed Jewish people involved in civil rights movements and such things that seemed ignore the fact that they were  hurting the white working people (the basic WASP backbone and strength of the USA). I had no idea why the human consequences of such actions were ignored and I still don't. But I simply meant to bring attention that there are Jews  that did not and do not agree. These people are usually not taken as spokesmen for Jews as group. These people are ignored.