Reform and Conservative are basically right [because of the most important aspects of Torah are Monotheism and בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man].The general religious world has either zero fulfillment of obligations between man and his fellow man or at a level much lower than gentiles.

I have thought a lot about the proper path in life.

Maybe too much because after all I grew up in my parents home which was  an absolutely amazing experience. The love that was between my parents for each other and for us kids was palpable. You could almost touch it in the air.
Still I was interested in philosophical questions from about as early an age as I can remember.

We were mainly Reform Jews but obviously my parents had a lot more to them than the Reform secular doctrines.

So I got interested in what formed the basis of my parents home --that is the Oral and Written Law of Moses. [The Oral Law most people think of as the Talmud but there are actually a whole set of books that compromise the actual Oral tradition: two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra Sifrei and few others.]

But to defend this tradition in an intellectual way I have to rely on Kant . Maimonides and Saadia Gaon do provide some justification, but because of the onslaught of philosophy and also archaeology I found it necessary to provide for myself  a deeper justification.

Reform itself  got way too much into the "social justice" thing--which is just another word for socialism. The  religious generally follow con men and so are not following Torah at all, and make up rituals in order to seem like they are keeping Torah, and ignore the things the Torah really does require. The religious world is in general made up of mentally ill people.

So I am thinking that Reform and Conservative are basically right [because of the most important aspects of Torah are Monotheism and בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man] but need more learning and keeping of of Torah but not like the people that make a show of religiosity to get money and power. The religious world -it's leaders are simply mad men. [That is all but the few pockets surrounding Litvak yeshivas where Torah is learned and practiced sincerely.] The general religious world has either zero fulfillment of obligations between man and his fellow man, or at a level much lower than gentiles. Honesty, working hard for a living, keeping your word, and general human decency are almost impossible to find in the religious world.


To defend the Torah, I however basically have to depend on the Rambam. That means that Torah is  to bring to objective morality. So in some way I use the Kant  school of thought imply to patch up the gaps.


Appendix. To prove that בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man is the most important part of Torah you would need the basic set of Musar books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. My first awareness of this really began my first year in Yeshiva when I was learning the Sefer HaChinuch. It was somewhat of  a shock to me to discover a lot of obligations between man and his fellow man are a major part of the Torah.

Israel Salanter tried to correct this flaw but with little success. The Musar movement itself became a kind of "frumkeit" religiosity. Not that this is desirable. The best thing is to keep all the Torah--obligations between man and his fellow man and between man and God. But if there is a choice one or the other obviously according to the Torah itself the obligations between man and his fellowman come first.

This of course goes entirely against the basic tenet of the religious that only they are kosher. To me it seems the truth is exactly the opposite.

S33 B Flat Major

People go through all kinds of problems,

People go through all kinds of problems, psychological or relationships etc. Depressions, OCD etc. I do not know why. I can imagine a bad childhood may have something to do with some of it. 



Still whatever the reasons are there must be a way to break out of it. 
The best way I can figure out  at this point is to develop a connection with some Lithuanian kind of yeshiva where Torah is learned for its pwn sake and to join in as much as possible and also to learn Musar.  That is to say I think there is "numinous " power in Torah learning that can correct many problems   But it has to be authentic Torah from the side of holiness for this to work. Therefore it seems to me best to learn a little Gemara and a little Musar every day either by yourself or in some kind of Litvak Yeshiva situation. I hope this will in itself solve your other problems. 

"Learn how to learn.The problem nowadays is-- in Torah, very evil people claim to be experts. Therefore you have to have someone either from the Ponovitch Yeshiva in Bnei Brak itself, or some authentic Litvak yeshiva.

At some point you ought to "learn how to learn." I am not all sure how this could work in your preset situation and schedule [i.e. most people need to learn a vocation or are already involved in their vocation]. The best thing I would imagine would be to start a kind of "iyun shiur"[in depth session] as it is called on your own. Maybe with just one essay from Rav Shach or just one page of Gemara and working on it on your own.  But the way this would work I think would be you would need one Gemara [like Bava Metzia or Ketubot] and a few Rishonim and Achronim like R. Akiva Eiger. With the proper materials and books you could probably do it on your own. 

The problem seems to be that most people are not in walking distance from any kind of authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. So the only way most people will ever be able to learn Torah is by doing it on their own [and staying away from people that are pretending to teach Torah, but are actually demons as Reb Nachman mentioned in the Lekutai Moharan Volume I:12] [The trouble is the vast majority of people that claim to be teaching Torah - are teaching the Torah of the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side).]


Maybe it is a matter of taste but in yeshiva, I was not ready for Reb Chaim Soloveitchik kind of things, and instead did a lot of Pnei Yehoshua and Maharsha. The issues the later achronim and the achronim starting with Reb Chaim and going up until Rav Shach are very different and deal with very very different kinds of issues. I feel both are important.
Today I would have to say the Reb Chaim et al. up until Rav Shach are more important. But I can not explain why. The main thing is that Reb Chaim deals with more fundamental issues.

In a lot of places I have seen a tendency to skip what is called "לחשבן את הסוגיא" "to calculate the sugia (subject)." --to work out in exact detail what Topphot is saying  before jumping into lamdanut ("global issues " that is how the sugia relates to other places in Shas). This is something that is ignored nowadays, but it is something that Reb Chaim and all the achronim assumed people were doing on their own. Nowadays it is almost completely skipped.

[The first thing you show up to yeshiva is they tell you to get your own copy of the basic rishonim, the Tosphot HaRosh, the Rashba, the Ritva, and the Chidushei HaRamban [Nachmanides] and also the Tur, Beit Yoseph. I can't say if this is all that helpful. Maybe for some it is.But for me learning from great roshei Yeshiva like Naphtali Yeager and Reb Shmuel Berenbaum  was probably more helpful. It is like learning the violin. You can pick up something by reading books, but to actually be able to do it you need someone that is an expert.  The problem nowadays is-- in Torah, very evil people claim to be experts. Therefore you have to have someone either from the Ponovitch in Bnei Brak itself or some authentic Litvak yeshiva.


 But I am just trying to give you an idea of what is involved in knowing how to learn.

Rav Shach,

Rav Shach, the Rosh yeshiva of Ponovitch, [who wrote the Avi Ezri] obviously held from the basic Litvak yeshiva path along with Musar. Though my idea of education is a drop wider but the basic approach of Rav Shach I have to admit is probably the best. I mean for sure one needs at least a good four years of straight Torah learning all day in order to get anywhere.

[For me four years was not enough. I only barely began to skim the surface after three years in Shar Yashuv and then another three in the Mirrer in NY. All I mean is at least four years.



And though I am critical of  places that use the name "yeshiva" that are really just club houses and have nothing to do with Torah, still the great yeshivas like Ponovitch and the great New York Litvak yeshivas are really amazing places. [i.e. Torah VeDaat, Mirrer, Chaim Berlin.]


My parent's approach however was more along the lines of  a balance between Torah and Derech Eretz [Derech Eretz has a dual meaning of being a mensch (being just and acting right in all circumstances) and also doing honest work for a living and not depending on charity.] [I really liked the Litvak Yeshiva World, but it was too close to other groups that are Sitra Achra סיטרא אחרא [the Dark Side]. And the boundary is porous. Not only that, but the divisions are not well defined. [I mean the Sitra Achra penetrated the boundary.]

If you do not have a yeshiva in your area the simple thing to do is to get one Tractate of Gemara [if you need English then the Soncino is best]  and one book of Musar {Ethics. The Obligations of the Heart is best.} If possible then one of the basic books that go into Gemara in depth like Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or Reb Chaim Solovietchik's Chidushei HaRambam.

A good reason to learn Torah is that people need help from problems.  Instead of going to people that can not help, the best thing is to go to God's word.

I also can not recommend any yeshiva  a such but rather to learn Gemara, Musar, Math, and Physics.


For some people yeshiva might be a workable option. For others nor. So I can not recommend yeshiva , but rather learning Torah and keeping Torah, jogging and survival skills.


Yeshiva is a stave of reed. It looks sturdy, but if you lean on it, it breaks.  They claim to be there to help the public but they are in fact there to help themselves. What makes this upsetting is people think they represent Torah values.

s34 in mp3 and midi and nwc

s34 G Major

ditto in midi format ditto in nwc format

What should be one's education?

The kind of Seven Wisdoms (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) that were mentioned by the Gra. In the introduction to the translation of Euclid by Rav Baruch of Shkolev a disciple of the Gra he quotes the Gra as saying "To the degree one lacks knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree there will be  a lack of knowledge of Torah."
Then  there is the Rambam's view of Physics and Metaphysics as being part of Torah itself.

[It was in fact awareness of the view of the Rambam and the Gra that encouraged me to take the step to start this kind of learning after I had  been against it as I was part of the religious world.] See also the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות in the Introduction where he brings the seven wisdoms and also the second chapter.

Here I am dealing just with logistics. But having dealt with that then the question comes up, what is the effect of  a liberal education, or what should be the results? What effect does it have on one's soul?
Why is simply sitting and learning Torah not enough? Or is it enough?


Appendix: I mentioned before that my basic approach is Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music Survival skills. [As you can see I have left out a lot of the liberal arts and included a few things. Also I did not include what the Rambam meant by Metaphysics-- that is the set of books of Aristotle by that name. The reason is I am not so thrilled about philosophy.]

Reb Nachman called religious teachers "Jewish demons"

Even though I am critical of most yeshivas nowadays, there were two great yeshivas that I was at in NY, Shar Yashuv and the Mir. At Shar Yashuv I was there sometime and the Rosh Yeshiva [Rav Freifeld] probably saw that I was frustrated in not making much progress. He made a promise to me that after a year and a half I would be able to learn. It occurred to me today that (if I do not have the time-line mixed up) that his promise came true. I think the first year we were doing Chulin. The next year, I think, was Ketubot. If this time line is correct, then  it was when doing Ketubot that I started asking questions from his son-in-law, Rav Naphtali Yeager,  and that is when I discovered what it means "to learn."
I think I must have described this elsewhere,- but mainly the idea was that I would come up to him with a question, and instead of answering it, he would have me recite the whole Tosphot. Within that context he would not accept the adding or subtracting words from Tosphot to make it make sense. And there would be no whitewashing problems in Tosphot. Nor would he accept making up principles. These thing that most yeshivas do were considered completely "traif"--pseudo intellectualism, and simply dishonest. Then he would how Tosphot by some turn of  phrase was attempting to answer some deep question. It is hard to explain but in the two books I have links to in this blog I have tried to show what it means to learn Torah.


But the yeshivas in Israel and in other places in the USA were pretty bad. The  Lakewood Kollel in LA did their best to break up my marriage after returning to the US from Israel. The other religious people there were if anything even worse. I discovered that when Reb Nachman called religious teachers "Jewish demons" he was not exaggerating. [LM Volume I: 8, 12, 28.] [That however, might be considered as "lashon hara"[disparagement ] and an insult to demons.]
These were the same people making a whole song and dance around me as if we were all one big happy family when they were trying to get a donation from my parents.




[No offence intended towards the great gaon, Reb Aaron Kotler.] I would rather not go into this in detail, but I did mention a few times that the signature of the Gra on the second excommunication ought to be considered valid, and if I had accepted it in that way, I would not have gone through this problem.

In any case, I have said it before, and I will say it again. In LA the only kosher places I know about are Temple Israel in Hollywood [Reform] and Mount Sinai Synagogue [conservative]. I think the religious mainly use rituals to cover up un-kosher insides [like the sages of the Talmud said about the pig. It shows itself to be kosher by stretching out its split hooves, but covers the fact that it does not chew the cud.]
The most basic assumption of the religious is that only their version is Kosher. I think it can be shown from the Oral and Written Law that only their version is treif (not kosher). little of what they do or say has any connection to the holy Torah at all except in appearances. It is all one big act to get money from secular Jews.

Monotheism of the Torah

Rav Shick [of Breslov] spent a great deal of effort and he must have printed  more than several million pamphlets trying to change the paradigm [world view] of Torah from Monotheism to pantheism.

I wrote an essay on this a few years ago that brought up the basic points, but was a little too sharp {I admit.} Since Rav Shick was claiming this as if Rav Nachman had supported this, I included critiques on Breslov.

But in that essay I brought some  of the relevant points: Spinoza, the Upanishads, where pantheism is held by. And I showed it has no support from the Ari''zal based on a least four of five references I brought there from beginning of the Eitz Chaim.

I did not bring up possible places of support like the Remak [Moshe of  Cardavaro] or the Shelah. Some suggested also the Ibn Ezra.

I discussed this once with Israel Rozen a friend mine in Jerusalem, and he pointed out that the Nefesh HaChaim does not actually support pantheism,-- even though some people understand it in that way.


All I wanted to say now was the clarify the basic idea of Monotheism of the Torah as understood by the Rambam and Saadia Gaon. That is that God is one and not a composite. And he made the world something from nothing. יש מאין. [ex-nihilo]. That is to say,-- that even from God's point of view nothing exists without him making it exist every second --but not that it is Him. He made everything from nothing. The world is not Divine. [Causality does not imply identity though Buddhism and Hume both conflate these issues. Buddhism has to do this because of the fact that there is no substance that continues in time. So they have to adhere to some form of causality to get identity. But I can make a tuna fish sandwich, but that does not mean that I am a tuna fish sandwich.

As Dr. Kelley Ross wrote on this issue : "Since the approach of Buddhism to the world is to break attachments, so that one does not suffer because of relationships to things, a simple way to do that is to say, in effect, that there are no things. If nothing is substantial or has any essence, this will do that job. What we get instead are the doctrines of "momentariness," "no self nature," and "relative existence." If everything exists only momentarily, then nothing is durable, and we lose that characteristic of substances. If there is no self nature, then there is nothing in things that makes them what they are, and we lose the existence of essences. If things only exist relative to other things, then (1) nothing exists independently and we lose that characteristic of substance, and (2) nothing has its own character, so we lose that characteristic of essence. So what is actually there? Well, what we see is the "form" of things, the external appearance. Since there is no self nature and things only have relative existence, what are things in themselves when we take away everything else? Well, Emptiness. This is not nothingness (a major heresy), but neither existence nor non-existence nor both nor neither. In other words, we can't say or comprehend what is there. Later, in Mahâyâna Budddhism, we get the doctrine of the Heart Sutra that "Emptiness is Form, and Form is Emptiness."

Unfortunately, Buddhism always had difficulty with the implications of all this fundamental metaphysics. The loss of substance and essence takes with it identity, so that it becomes difficult to say that an individual, like the Buddha, achieves Enlightenment and Salvation. The individual, in fact, does not survive beyond the moment, and so it is a different being who achieves Enlightenment from the one who existed previously, and a different being in turn who achieves Salvation. Buddhism attempts to substitute causality for substance, so that what I am now is simply caused by what I was before. Unfortunately, this does not restore identity. If I make a tuna sandwich, and so cause its existence, this does not mean I am the tuna sandwich. Causal connections can be within substances or pass between them, and the identity relation is contributed by the substance, not by the causality. In the end, Buddhism seems to settle into the notion of "provisional existence," which is durable and identical, and then, with some other expedients, ceases to worry about the matter. The popular belief, indeed, is that Buddhism is about finding one's true self, not about finding that there is no self at all (anatma or anatta, "No Self"). "

The Rambam thought this principle was important enough to spend the second volume of the Guide on it.

Yeshivas have fallen as institutions

Yeshivas have fallen as institutions for the sake of learning Torah. Most are more likely to cause damage than to help one grow. Therefore the best thing is to  learn Torah at home  That is to go through (word for word) every last word of the Oral and Written Law.
Most yeshiva s have become self serving bureaucracies.

It is in truth hard to tell exactly how they changed or when or why. I am pretty sure my experience was not limited to me alone. The basic story line seems to be consistent. They started out in Israel and the USA very much "for the sake of Heaven." Then it seems they became more alone the lines of private clubs for the head macho man and his goons.

The best approach is that of Reb Israel Salanter learn Musar [Mediaeval Ethics] and do what it says. That is very different than the yeshiva thing.  The Musar movement has become a kind of  "frumkeit" movement. The leaders of Musar and the Yeshivas are Baali OCD [masters of the Obsessive compulsive disorders.]

In short the frum world certainly  a different religion than Torah. But even the Torah World got the "frumkeit" virus (religious nonsense virus).

Part of the trouble is the song and dance they make to pretend "We are all one big happy family." This is a sin of "You must not place a stumbling block in front of  a blind man,"אל תתן מכשול because later when these same students they made the show and dance for actually come into a time of need, there is no question all these fair weather friends will turn their backs on them.  And I would be transgressing the sin of "Thou shalt not stand by the blood of your neighbor"  אל תעמוד על דם רעיך'if I did not warn people about this.

The belief system of the Torah is not pantheism but rather Monotheism.

The disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin brings in his book (the Nefesh HaChaim), the verse  אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו "You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him," to mean that not only is God the only god, but also the only independent power in the world.   This verse is commonly used to support pantheism. I wrote an essay showing that the belief system of the Torah is not pantheism, but rather Monotheism. But for now I wanted to show what the verse really does mean. It means there is no independent power in the world. But there is a world that is not God. But it is not separate from God. No one can help or hurt you without the permission and will of God.   Reb Chaim himself goes into this in this way:  from the perspective of God nothing can exist without Him. But from our perspective, the world is not God.
But he also says it is  a סגולה, a help, to keep this in mind, that no one can help or hurt you without God's permission and will. This whole thing is  reflected in Quantum Mechanics which shows that the world is radically subjective. It does not exist until it is observed. So it all depends on one's perspective. That is to say we know locality and  causality from Relativity. And with Quantum Mechanics, reality can be either non-local or subjective. Therefore we know that the second choice is true. Reality is local and subjective.[I was critical at one time of this point of Reb Chaim and I thought it should not matter one' perspective. It is thus and thus or it is not by the law of the excluded middle. I am pretty sure I was  not the first to voice this critique on the Nefeh Hachaim. It is common for people to think that this is pantheism but it is not. The Rambam and all the rishonim have made a point that God is not matter, and has no matter or form. He &;utterly simple. He is not a composite. He has no ingredients Thus most of the books in the religious world nowadays are explaining the Torah in a way contrary to the way the Rishonim understood the Torah.
[We know QM is true from the double slit experiment. One slit, the electron acts as a particle. Two slits, it acts like  a wave. We know Relativity is true from GPS. The satellite moves with respect to you so you have its goes slower by  some microseconds.You are closer to the centre of the Earth so you go slower by some microseconds. So you adjust the clock on the satellite accordingly. If you would not correct for these two effects the GPS in your taxi would be off every day by a few kilometers.] התלמיד של הגר''א, רב חיים מביא בספרו פש החיים , הפסוק אתה הראית לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו לומר כי לא רק שהוא האלוהים האל היחיד, אלא גם את הכח היחיד בעולם. פסוק זה משמש בדרך כלל כדי לתמוך הפנתאיזם. כתבתי מאמר מראה כי מערכת האמונות של התורה היא לא הפנתאיזם, אלא מונותאיזם. אבל לעת עתה רציתי להראות מה הפסוק באמת אומר. זה אומר שאין כוח עצמאי בעולם. אבל יש עולם, וכי הוא לא אלוהים. אבל זה העולם אינו נפרד מאלוהים. אף אחד לא יכול לעזור או לפגוע בך בלי רשות ורצון האל.ר 'חיים עצמו נכנס בזה בדרך זו: מנקודת המבט של אלוהים אין דבר יכול להתקיים בלעדיו. אבל מנקודת המבט שלנו, העולם הוא לא אלוהים. אבל הוא גם אומר שזה הוא סגולה(לעזר) כדי לשמור את זה בחשבון, כי אף אחד לא יכול לעזור או לפגוע בך בלי הרשות של אלוהים. כל העניין הזה משתקף במכניקה הקוונטית אשר מראה כי העולם הוא סובייקטיבי לחלוטין. הדבר לא קיים עד הוא נמדד, כמו שאמר בוהר. אז זה הכל תלוי בנקודת המבט של המתבונן. כלומר אנחנו יודעים סיבתיות מהיחסות. ועם מכניקה הקוונטית, יודעים שהמציאות יכולה להיות או לא מקומית וסובייקטיבי. לכן אנו יודעים כי הבחירה השנייה היא נכונה. המציאות היא מקומית וסובייקטיבי. הרמב''ם וכל הראשונים החזיקו שיטהשאלוהים אין בו חומר, ואין לו שום חומר או צורה. הוא לגמרי פשוט. הוא אינו מורכב. אין לו מרכיבים. אנחנו יודעים שמכניקת הקוונטים נכונה מן ניסוי שני הסדקים. חריץ אחד, האלקטרון מתנהג כחלקיק. שני חריצים, הוא מתנהג כמו גל. אנחנו יודעים שיחסות נכונה מלווין מיקום הגלובלי. הלווין נע ביחס אליך וכך זה ממשיך איטי ידי שבעה מיקרו שניות ממה שאתה. אתה קרוב יותר למרכז של כדור הארץ וכך הלווין ממשיך יותר מהר ממה שאתה ידי ארבעים וחמישה מיקרו שניות. אז לך להתאים את השעון על הלווין להיות איטי שלשים ושמנה מיקרו שניות.

Uman Rosh Hashanah.I am pretty impressed with Reb Nachman

Uman Rosh Hashanah. The main reason yeshiva students come to Uman is for the Russian girls. I can't disapprove. After all Russian girls are pretty. But no one should have an idea as if this is some kind of mitzvah, And though Reb Nachman was a great tzadik, still no one of the groups that worships him can be considered to be keeping the Torah in any sense.

The trouble is the whole thing seems ambiguous. No one gets involved with it without getting some kind of state of delusions along with it.


I am pretty impressed with Reb Nachman himself I admit. But the people in Breslov are nightmares.

Dr Kelley Ross "Chief among the limits imposed on war is the principle that civilians are to be separated from combatants. This serves to limit the suffering to be endured by those, the non-combatants, who have not overtly been engaged and prepared to participate in war. A strong motivation for such provisions came from the experience of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), when armies not only lived off the land, taking the food and fodder they needed for the armies to survive and function, but they actively looted the land, even torturing and murdering peasants and tradesmen in the hope of finding hidden money and other valuables. To separate civilians from combatants, three things are essential:  (1) combatants must be easily recognizable, which means they are in distinctively military uniforms, in obviously military conveyances (including naval warships), or otherwise wear something to distinguish them as soldiers; (2) combatants target only other combatants and not civilians; and (3) combatants do not hide or mix themselves among civilians while continuing to fight, which would require that the enemy, to fight back, cannot avoid injuring the civilians" The problem in Israel is none of these conditions apply. Arabs militants wear nothing that distinguishes them from Arab civilians. Arabs target Israeli civilian populations. Arabs hide and mix among civilians while continuing to fight. "Like spies, irregular combatants, out of uniform, who cannot be distinguished from civilians, cannot expect any protection from the privileges afforded to proper prisoners of war. They can be shot.  "So, when civilians enter combat, they can neither expect to be treated as civilians, which they no longer are, nor to be treated as proper soldiers, which they have not become. If civilians wish to be separated from combat and be treated accordingly, they must behave as civilians. Otherwise, they warrant the fate of those who seek to evade the laws of war or seek advantage through deception." Added to this is an optimistic argument that the idea of nationalism is gaining ascendancy nowadays. This seems to be a good thing as Howard Bloom makes clear in his book, the Lucifer Principle. If so then this provides a strong argument for Israel, and for the idea that Muslims do not belong there. It is not their land. Never was and never will be.

Simply learning and keeping Torah

1.) According to Kant there are areas of reality that human reason can not venture into, and if it does, it gets caught in self contradictions. This area he calls unconditioned reality.
2) But we do have access to unconditioned reality by ways other than reason. That is through a kind of knowledge that is not reason and it is not felt or sensed.
3) My story has to do with how I came into contact with this kind of knowledge.
4) I was reading a little about Wyatt Earp and realized that 30 seconds of his life defined his entire life--everything leading up to it and everything afterwards. That was the gun fight at the OK Corral.

And I realized that it is not always up to a person to choose his life's meaning. All you can do is accept it and try to be worthy. I saw this also when I was reading the trial of Joan of Arc.

5) So I thought to put down briefly the basic story.It seems to me that it really started with yeshiva in NY. I felt some kind of force drawing me there to the degree that even though my parents were against it (and I loved my parents dearly), I simply had to go and learn in a Litvak yeshiva. I think today that those years of intense study of Gemara helped to prepare me.
6) I got married while still in the Mir Yeshiva in NY.
7) After some years I decided to go to Israel
8) Right when I got off the plane and breathed my first breath of the air of Israel I could feel it.
9) When we got to Safed the next day everything started lighting up.
10) Then there was some kind of cleansing process for  a few months and then the Divine Presence hit me like  tidal wave.-that both my wife and I felt, and I think my children also.
11) What I think this means is that: simply  learning and keeping Torah in the most simple way leads to the Divine Presence. No intermediates are necessary, No mystic intentions. Just simple Torah and being in Israel.
12) After about seven years I simply could not take it anymore and decided like Yona the Prophet to escape the Presence of God.
13) And would have been that,-- if not that the daughter of Bava Sali, Avigail Buso reminded me of my destiny. [She was thinking mainly about the path of Musar of Reb Israel Salanter and the Tur, Beit Yoseph and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and his students like Reb Shimon Shkop and Rav Shach and  the other gedolai Lita. That is it in a nutshell.
14) Therefore, I have mentioned on this blog the importance of learning Torah in a Litvak (Lithuanian) yeshiva where Torah is learned for its own sake along the lines of simply learning and keeping the Law of Moses -the Oral and Written Law. Nothing more or less.

There are issues in my life that are inherently ambiguous. After high school I went directly to a great yeshiva in NY of Reb Freifeld. Without that I highly doubt if I ever would have "been able to learn," or to reach any understanding of authentic Torah. Still my parents wanted me to learn a vocation along with Torah and thus this move did not please them. This issue still underscores my ambiguity about this issue until this very day. [It is not that in principle I could not have attended Brooklyn College at the same time--as people were doing anyway in Chaim Berlin. It is rather that Shar Yashuv was very far from Brooklyn College and also I can see today I needed a few years of Torah alone in order to get anywhere. Divided attention would have I am afraid to admit that I would not have gotten anywhere in anything,

Still there are many issues that are related and hard for me today to figure out.Being far from my parents I think was bad for me and for them. I think I lost a lot I could have learned from them, Still as I read in the Torah right after I got to yeshiva that God placed the fiery angels to guard the path to the Tree of Life--that one has to go through hell to get to Torah. And later I saw that also in the two books on Talmud that God granted to me to write. It was with an enormous amount of pain and difficulties that it seems I needed to go through in order to merit to write anything decent in Torah thought. 

do it yourself kind of guy

I have always been a do it yourself kind of guy and thus I recommend to others. If you want a place to learn Torah and the local synagogue is too politicized, then get yourself an Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and take a piece and work on it at home. Get Gemara and Musar, and do not depend on the local place which is likely to have too many bad influences. 

The result of "Torah alone" studies is usually bad.

Keeping out secular studies was the major factor in most yeshivas and it still is in the ultra religious world. To some degree this is very justified because of social studies and the humanities which are mainly garbage. Especially that mentally sick demon, Psychology.

But the result of "Torah alone" studies is usually just as bad,- or worse. It tends to creates sanctimonious, jerk offs. [That is "holier than thou" people. You know the type.] For this reason, I just have not been able to recommend "Torah alone" as a legitimate program.

My ideas is to have balanced program Math, Physics, Music, Gemara, Musar, Survival skills.


Though I realize the great importance of learning Torah, I just can not recommend it by itself, but only in balance.
[I had seen the Torah alone approach in Israel among the ultra religious. This did exist in NY also to some degree in the Mir. But I rarely saw any good in this approach and it certainly was not what the books of Musar from the middle ages were saying. Later  Musar itself become anti secular studies but that were definitely against the original set of Musar books like the חובות לבבות and the מעלות המידות.]

I fail to see in "holier than thou" people anything worthy of admiration.

[I suspect part of the motivation to be so much against learning things like Math and Physics stems from the fact that they tend to show that many of  those that may know some aspects of Torah are not smart. Knowing some aspects of Torah is relatively easy, while Math and Physics are basically hard. If the natural sciences were part of  Torah education then many people could not pull off the scam they they do by seeming to be smart and spreading the word around  that- if you know Torah well somehow that makes you the top of the pack and from the top shelf..]

female empowerment. Every society that has tried female empowerment has died. Tellingly no society with empowered women has lasted more than 3 generations.

from this link

The reality is that female empowerment has reared it’s head throughout human history (most notably at the end of the Roman empire). Empowering women is one of the cycles of human existence, and it always follows the same pattern;

1) a society becomes wealthy and importantly, safe.
2) the men, unchallenged, become weak.
3) the women’s hypergamous instinct is triggered. The women start to doubt their men’s ability to protect them.
4) women initiate a society wide shit-test – pushing for economic, political and societal freedoms.
5) the men, anesthetized by decades (or more) of women behaving decently grant women their freedoms.
6) the women, free of boundaries, behave in an ever more feral manner, desperately trying to provoke the men to push back, to reset the boundaries, to prove their strength, to lay to rest the hypergamous doubt.
7) the men, ever more disgusted by their women’s behavior disengage from women, and in so doing disengage from society, working less, producing less, offering less protection.
8) societal collapse or reset, usually precipitated by a trigger event – maybe a natural disaster, economic collapse, foreign invasion etc.

Sometimes these resets are mild, sometimes they are severe. And they are technology agnostic. Whatever technology of the time is co-oped by the women as a force multiplier. But there is a case to be made that this instinctive hypergamous instinct in women is what keeps humans moving forward, never resting on our laurels, continually de- stabilizing human societies when we get a bit lazy.

How many generations does it take to tear it down. Back in the 1930's a professor at Oxford and Cambridge – J D Ulwin – set out to prove how female equality would benefit society. He didn't find what he expected to find and to his credit he published his findings. He studied 85 societies and  found that whilst not every society that has died has had female empowerment, every society that has tried female empowerment has died.

Tellingly no society with empowered women has lasted more than 3 generations. The young women entering the smp today are, broadly, the third generation. The whole cluster.. of feminism will implode on their watch. Plan accordingly

Every woman has a lifetime allotment of NO.

Each time she says it or implies a no via rudeness or cruelty uses up her store.
Then one day she hits the last No and the MAN flips the switch.
 She is beyond her quota. She is of no importance.

And its not retrievable by being nice. It is a paradigm shift. a solid impression.
Just as the wife goggles gave her the bank of NO, that made him put up waiting for the nice girl inside he knew was there.

Once the bank is dry the goggles are smashed replaced by a new set. A cast iron impression on one thing and one thing only. SELFISH BITCH.

A man is programmed to sacrifice, to endure for others. What can be the ultimate unforgivable in that mindset….Selfishness.

So one that selfishness arises once past the last NO, he then sees all she has done, all the NOs in a new light, of selfishness. And forever more she is a SELFISH BITCH.

Thus not worth his time. In fact not worth even looking at. and so
SHE CEASES TO EXIST….FOREVER.

 Its not a slow slide or a NO gauge winding down.
It is sudden. Immediate. Irretrievable.

How many generations does it take to tear it down. Back in the 1930s a professor at oxford and cambridge – J D Ulwin – set out to prove how female equality would benefit society. He didnt find what he expected to find and to his credit he published his findings. He studied 85 societies and (to summerise) found that whilst not every society that has died has had female empowerment, every society that has tried female empowerment has died.

Tellingly no society with empowered women has lasted more than 3 generations. The young women entering the smp today are, broadly, the third generation. The whole clusterfuck of feminism will implode on their watch. Plan accordingly

from this link