Faith, Reason, and the Constitution of the USA

I think the Constitution would work if faith had been strong. Faith and reason seems to have been the working formula of the Middle Ages and I think it worked well. Two things worked against this. The constant attacks on faith causes it to weaken, plus that fanatical faith which opened Protestants to the Dark Side. Also the Constitution was never meant to be workable except for a certain kind of people--people that believed in the Bible. Most of it was modeled on the  Fundamental Constitutions  of Carolina written by John Locke and there there was a requirement to be part of a church --any church. Plus, John Locke saw the danger of Islam and said openly not to let any of them in (in his Two Treaties).

I think this is a very significant election because it will determine if the American Republic can survive, or will be washed away by barbarian hordes.   And if America falls to the barbarians, that is the end of Western Civilization.


 I did not go much into John Locke but I do think his approach is right but with a kind of modification based on Kant. Kant and Locke have a lot in common but to defend Locke one would need the ideas of Kant.



Habermas  also noted that John Locke needs "retuning." But he did not suggest anything. My suggestion is to go with Kant. Habermas himself just mentioned this in his critique on Rawl's theory of justice.

  Still John Locke needs reworking from the standpoint of Kant. Kelley Ross has already done work in that direction. But for my part I just want to say that John Locke and Kant do have a point of agreement. That is to say: what is the main question on John Locke? It is that it looks like his political are ideas is based on his empirical viewpoint. The defense is that first of all John Locke's political ideas work even better in the framework of Kant--the self being the ding an sich. And besides that Kant defends empirical-ism from the aspect of phenomenon anyway. It is only wrong if you assume all knowledge has to come from empirical means

Sin

To some degree, I feel like I ought to repent on my sins. What brings me to that conclusion is the fact that things get more and more מצומצם constricted. That is at what the Talmud says "אין יסורים בלא עוון" [''There are no troubles without sin.'']
That is.--  sin might not be the cause of the trouble - but if there was not a sin, then the trouble could not reach the person.

So when I try to consider my own sins, it occurs to me the main thing seems be things along the lines of  not appreciating what I had. For example-- my parents, the Mirrer yeshiva in NY, Eretz Israel, the אור אין סוף, learning Gemara etc. I mean I do not think the lack of appreciation is as serious as the lack of continuing in the good things that I could have reasonably been expected to continue in.

This of course is not news. 

However the reason I bring this up is that this idea gives a way to judge others on the scales of merit. For after all what is a wicked person? It does not matter if their wickedness comes from their accepting a social meme from their parents or environment or free will. The fact of their being wicked comes from a simple thing--doing less than what they could reasonably have been expected to do and understand. Therefore even the most wicked people in the world are really not all that different from me.

I had an idea of repenting on my sins a few years back. I think it was, in fact, four years ago. The idea I came up with then was to learn Musar [Ethical books from the Middle Ages.] I am not sure if that helped much. And it did not last long. Still it seems to me to be the best thing that I can figure out. One advantage of Musar I think is that there are lots of things that at one time I considered to be great mitzvas and later understood they were terrible sins. The basic books of Musar from the middle ages are about as straight and simple as  possible in explaining simply what God does and does not require based on the Law of Moses. So there is less leeway for mistakes. It is straight Torah. It is different from what came later which tend to be not very well thought out religious fanaticism. 

miracles from the Dark Side.

Some people would object to  this but I have found it helpful for me to get perspective on cult goings on in the Jewish world by looking at parallel movements in the wider world. I think noticed someone mention this concerning people involved in Eastern cults.

Professor Moshe Idel coined the term ecstatic Kabalah but in essence this does not do justice the the phenomenon. Straight Torah can lead to genuine mystic experience I think. But mystics even from the middle ages do not seem to have powers any different than Hindu gurus. As I said it is helpful to do some comparing of the cult you are in with other cults that make the exact same claims and have the same miracles from the Dark Side.

to review forty days in a row

My basic approach to Torah has become a kind of forty days in a row kind of approach. That is to take one crucial area and to review it forty days in a row. This seems to work for me. I did this with difficult Tosphot and with a  few chapters of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam. 

But I do not think this takes the place of בקיאות (or fast learning) in which one just says the words and goes on.

It is a good idea to have a kind of Beit Midrash [[study hall]]kind of situation --a place where one can go to learn Torah without distractions in order to be able to get through the entire Written and Oral Law at least once during one's lifetime.
That is the Old Testament, the Gemara Rashi Tosphot Maharsha and Maharam from Lublin, and the Yerushalmi with the Pnei Moshe.  

This is what in fact was the functioning yeshiva in Eastern Europe. It was simply the local synagogue which after the prayers in the morning the teenagers would stay and learn Torah the whole day until they got married. [Reb Chaim from Voloshin changed that to make yeshivas into private institutions in order not to have them subject to the local authorities.]
The problems that Reb Chaim had to deal with are well known when a synagogue and beit midrash [study hall] are mixed. There is constant tension.  The trouble is the making of yeshivas as separate private institutions got its own set of problems. Instead of solving the problems it just created a new set.

My basic impression is that yeshivas of the type that I went to are great places--the is the normal Lithuanian type of Musar Yeshiva. The best examples are the NY's Mir and Chaim Berlin-- and Ponovitch in Bnei Brak. 

[I am not sure how this could for people far from authentic Lithuanian kinds of places. Most yeshivas sadly are pseudo yeshivas. I would not step foot in most of them. It is like, "If you don't have water to drink, would you drink poison instead?"]

Allen Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind.

Mirans • an hour ago

Take a step back, forget about the lurid details and look at the big picture. We are now living in the gray area between republic and tyranny. It could be defined as the tyranny of the masses, otherwise known as democracy. If more than 50% of the population does not care if their rulers are gangsters and pedophiles it means that the Constitution and more generally the rule of law is invalidated. If Hillary wins there's nothing to prevent her from purging the FBI, the NYPD and any other law enforcement agency that stands in her way. When the rule of law Is replaced by the "over 50%" rule any revelations, no matter how outrageous, get drowned in the general apathy, indifference and even downright hostility of people who don't want to be taken out of their comfort zone. When democracy self destructs it will be replaced either by a republic or by tyranny.

Avraham rosenblum  Mirans • 36 minutes ago

That was argued by Brett Stevens in his blog Amerika. I however still hold the Constitution of the USA is possible to salvage if Trump is elected.

Mirans to  Avraham rosenblum • 25 minutes ago

I agree, but only if there's a complete government overhaul, a radical change in the immigration process and the education system and a drastic reduction in the power of government agencies that are not bound by the Constitution. The problem is not just the Clintons, it is that there are too many people that have made compromises.

donnieboy64  Avraham rosenblum • an hour ago

we are way beyond that. within two years there won't even be a border between america and mexico. within eight years the two nations will most likely be one.

Avraham rosenblum  Mirans • 5 minutes ago

That was the point of Allen Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind. The thesis of the book was the conflict between the Enlightenment and Anti Enlightenment--concerning political systems and his answer focused on American education! It is a subtle point and easy to miss.

At the very end he was recommending the Republic of Plato. My own approach is based on the Oral and Written Law of Moses. But in any case to get education back to classics was I think his idea of a possible solution.

I still hold by this reason and faith approach from my end which means the Rambam's approach. [i.e the Oral and written Law plus Physics and Metaphysics] And Christians could try the same from their end with Aquinas. I still believe that good education and gaining good character can go a long way. That is if everyone does their part then the USA can be salvaged.

That is an approach I learned from Shmuel Berenbaum. When he encountered human problems his answer was to :"Learn Torah". In the context of Maimonides that means his four point method the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and Aristotle's Metaphysics.

The Dark Side is now accepted as a legitimate part of Torah.

I try to grade institutions on a % basis.  That is-- I do not think any of them are perfect. But if I think they are above the 60% level. then I say they are worth supporting. And in fact I try to support any institution that I think is doing good, even if I do not agree with their theology. And I have been doing that for a long time. 
But if I think the Dark Side is using an institution as a front (or as a disguise), then the fact that the core is evil makes the whole thing evil. 

Religious teachers that belittle husbands do not get a passing grade. In fact a good deal of the religious world I consider to be a deceptive front for the Dark Side Sitra Achra. The Dark Side is now accepted as a legitimate part of Torah. It got in by means of sincere mystics. But after the Ari (Isaac Luria) all mysticism is from the Sitra Achra.

So though Reform and Conservative Judaism are  more lenient about Halacha (Law) but at least they are Kosher; as opposed to the religious world which has been taken over by the Sitra Achra.

Advaita Vedanta versus Maimonides

My basic feeling about the Advaita Vedanta is that it does not start out with obvious first principles. It wants to claim a strong thesis without proof and that thesis is by no means obvious. On the contrary, in Math, people start out with certain given axioms, but which are not counter intuitive. Rather axioms that seem obvious and almost do not even need to be stated. Like the shortest distance between two point is  straight line.


Besides that there are idolatry and Sitra achra [Dark Side] problems with Eastern Religions and all mysticism.The only thing I see as being a valid set of values is the Torah  system with no mysticism mixed in.
Mysticism is how the Sitra Achra managed to penetrate the Torah world
_______________________________________________
To this Brett Stevens answered to me:

Brett Stevens says:

11/05/2016 at 7:53 pm

My basic feeling about the Advaita Vedanta is that its does not start out with obvious first principles.

It starts with a vision, from which first principles are later implied throughout the documents.

As far as its thesis, idealism is it; it supports this with metaphor instead of conventionally structured argument.

This is probably the best introduction for it I can imagine:

http://www.amerika.org/texts/the-perennial-philosophy-aldous-huxley/

That, and Evola, maybe a bit of Schopenhauer.

______________________________________






That was the version of the book that I read many times over. I still have to say that I was not convinced. The closest I saw as an argument was Spinoza and even there I was not convinced. [He assumes nothing can affect a substance. That stacks the deck for his approach. But it is not a obvious first principle.] [On the other hand it clear substances can affect each other.]

Brett Stevens says:

11/06/2016 at 8:20 am

You would probably more want to read The Upanishads, but the point Huxley makes is that these ideas are not presented in philosophical format. They are merely descriptions and metaphors, like most religious writing. I found Spinoza convincing with a few caveats, so detoured to Kant. From there, Schopenhauer and from that, the Bhagavad-Gita.

Avraham:
I did a bit of the Upanishads and Sutras. But took a different path than you. From Spinoza to Maimonides, Kant,  and Schopenhauer.  I have great respect for Spinoza and I can understand why you would think he is true. I think it was a combination of things that took me on a different track. (1) Leibniz (2) my own critique on him based on my understanding of Substance based on Aristotle. From my  side of things it find it hard to imagine taking either the rationalists or the empiricists based on Kant's Critique. To me it seems there simply is no choice for anyone except to go with some school of thought that takes Kant into account. That means some school of German Idealism.

So I settled on the Kant school which seemed to make the most sense to me. You really have to combine it with Schopenhauer. You also need to be able to read through the chatter of later 20th century philosophical pseudo intellectuals.]
If I try to explain what I like about Kant it would probably go like this. I hate when stupid philosophers talk about science. I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs. Even the really smart ones like Edward Feser. The only one that did his homework is Kelley Ross and he shows very well how Kant's system works well with Quantum Mechanics. 

Torah values

I hold from Torah values very highly, but not from the religious people that claim to be following these values. The "world" of the religious I do not think reflects Torah values very well.


For example there is a lot of effort to make secular Jews religious, but no loyalty to these same Jews. That is an attempt is made to show great friendship ["love bombing"] in order to acquire their friendship, but no real friendship really exists. It is important not to pretend friendship where none exists. Especially this is so since the point of pretending to be friends is to take people from their real family and friends whom they can depend on an replace them with false friends on whom they can not depend.
This is not a minor problem, but permeates the entire religious world. It is the elephant in the room that everyone tries so hard to ignore.






It is hard to know how to deal with this problem--especially since I do believe very strongly in Torah values the Oral  and Written Law.
It is hard to know why the word that apparently claims to be following the holy Torah suffers from this kind of moral blind spot.
And to me this seems like  a major failing-not some minor flaw. 

What I personally conclude years ago is the religious world in fact has nothing to do with Torah and it does not reflect Torah values at all but rather reflects rituals that are exaggerated and not from Torah. 

The only places that I saw were more or less adhering to Torah values were Lithuanian kinds of Yeshiva s with the surrounding communities--that is yeshivas built and run on the principles of the Gra and Rav Shach.

Wiki leaked email: the voting machines are rigged to change Republican votes to Democratic votes.

 The Wiki leaked email between John Podesta and the brass at Smartronic discussing the rigging of machines at the direction of Soros. There is no "may" about this. We have already had multiple reports from Illinois, Texas etc of machines changing GOP votes to Dem votes AS THE VOTER WATCHES. And of course all these reports are blown off as "glitches".....apparently that's the new term the DNC and Media whores use for CHEATING.

Weiner should be up for the saint of the year award.

Weiner should be up for the saint of the year award.


No wonder he called the file "Insurance policy." He was aware of the danger of the Clintons and wanted to make sure what happened to anyone that crossed them did not happen to him.


........all 30,000 of the "missing" Hillary emails are on Weiner's laptop, plus hundreds of thousands more that were deliberately ditched and we never knew existed in the first place, evidencing not only lying about the content of the 30,000 emails but the existence of hundreds of thousands more?

What if among the authenticated email traffic is John Podesta saying, just days before the Clinton campaign was compelled to produce said material they they had to "dump those emails", apparently proving intent to obstruct justice?

What if all of the emails that came from big public cloud providers are provably, to a near-forensic standard, to be exactly as WikiLeaks has presented them and could not have been tampered with because those providers digitally sign every email that comes from them and those signatures all validate back against those cloud providers, and those emails are thus in fact already known to be authentic?

s63 d minor  s62 G major

Sometimes you see in Mozart he will extend a theme from four measures to five  of or some odd number. That is not teh same a a minuet where he will go to six measures. The fact is when Mozart does this it makes sense. So I have some defense for doing the same thing in s62.

But the Torah is not about spiritual experience.

The so called ‘New Age’ movement has been around for a long time now. (To be accurate, since the Garden of Eden). I did not realize the extent. 

 I myself was drawn to mystic goings-on of various sorts.

As I began to learn Gemara [Talmud], I was astonished by how much had changed during my years in the wilderness. 

 I have seen 'new age beliefs' and 'spirituality' from the inside. 

 They believe that those seeking ‘spirituality’ at Eastern Religion psychic fairs are going to the wrong place and should be coming to Torah for spiritual experience.

But the Torah is not about spiritual experience.

The Occult just got to be too much a part of how Torah i presented. [It might be the best idea to simply avoid that aspect for it seems to lead people almost automatically into the Sitra Achra Dark Side.]


[With no offence intended towards the Ari himself, still I think the whole mystic trip is a bad LSD trip.] My concern is with intention to get in contact with the spiritual realm comes evil spirits that trick and deceive and give powers from the Dark Side.


The trouble seems to be השחתת המידות destruction of good character traits when one gets involved. If good character was not an essential part of Torah then this would not matter. But it is. You can see this in the Sefer HaChinuch which brings in easy to understand form all of the 613 commandments of the Torah and good character counts for a lot of them. For example there are two separate commandments about אונאת ממון and אונאת דברים. Not to defraud someone in money and another one not to hurt another person by means of words.

I think it is best to allow the pseudo Torah mystic stuff fall off into oblivion. [You could possibly go back to the Zohar itself to find the beginnings of the problem.]

In the Guide, the Rambam has an approach in which reason and revelation interact and inform each other and modify each other.

My approach is based on Maimonides (Rambam). That is the rules of the Torah are meant to be obeyed-literally. However, in the Guide (מורה נבוכים) (Guide for the Perplexed), the Rambam has an approach in which reason and revelation interact and inform each other and modify each other. 

There was also an approach developed by Saadia Geon that when the literal meaning is impossible (according to Reason) then we must understand it as an allegory.   

The Maimonides approach was of a first level of Natural Law, and then a higher level of Law that can only be known by revelation.


Reform Judaism I think was too much influenced by the Reformation in which the laws of the Torah were considered superfluous. Or perhaps Reform just decided the halacha is like R. Shimon Ben Yochai that we go by the reason for each law.  This come up in Bava Metzia at the end of ch 9 and in Yevamot. And though people think we do not poskin by R. Shimon still there is a contradiction in the Rambam concerning this. And there is a long Mishna Lamelech which I think tries to answer this problem.     

The amount of time and effort that have gone into my two little booklets on Bava Metzia and on Shas surprises me. I would not have thought that it would take the amount of time that it did. And even if I had spent that time, but not have had my learning partner David Bronson, I am certain nothing would have been written.
The whole project started around ten years ago which is when I started learning with David. I had been out of Gemara learning in depth for some period of time so when I sat down with him and started learning again it surprised me greatly the depth of his questions and answers. It reminded me of my first yeshiva Shar Yashuv when I was learning Ketuboth  and heard amazing depth from Naphtali Yeger.

This gave me an insight into Gemara learning and also has a side benefit that I realize how long and how much effort is needed to approach Physics and Math also.

People get the idea in school that if they do not get something right away that they are not fit for it. I realize now that that is wrong Some subjects simply take a long time and lots of effort.

It took a lot of trials also. You have to get through a lot to be able to see the truth and  value of the Torah.

Reb Nachman and Rav Shick's pamphlets

You find at the beginning of Rav Shick's pamphlets that they are "based on Reb Nachman's teachings and they are interspersed with statements from the Old Testament and the Sages."  What is that supposed to mean is a mystery to me.

More than that. The whole religious world holds all kinds of practices that are supposedly based on Torah.

IF YOU CHALLENGE THEM TO PROVIDE SUPPORT they say "it's totally from the Torah! It's one hundred percent from the Torah!". This avoids the real problem, which is that the teaching is merely BASED ON THE TORAH, and not actually Torah.

What's the difference, I hear you ask. Well, have you ever watched a movie that is "based on the novel by...." whoever. And if you have read the novel, you find to your disappointment that the movie that is BASED upon it misses out a lot that is stated, and implies a whole lot more that isn't in the book. It's drawn from the book, it's based on it, but it's NOT the book!

[I have a high opinion of Rav Shick in terms of sincerity. And as an approach to Reb Nachman, it is the only sane one out there. Still because of my respect for him I feel the right to critique him. I would not bother with him otherwise.] 

The trouble seems to be השחתת המידות destruction of good character traits when one gets involved.

the Law of Moses.

Socialism and Communism really are not from the Law of Moses. Not the Oral or Written Law. Someone  mentioned that when people lose their faith (God forbid) then they become socialists. That explanation made a lot of sense to me.  The right to private ownership is much embedded in the Law of Moses.

[Though I was raised as a Reform Jew, clearly there were aspect of Reform that my parents did not hold with like the social justice bit. One way to understand Reform is that Natural Law is a part of Torah.  But Natural Law is  a bit ambiguous --to say the least. When Kant and Hegel got on the scene things became I think even more obscure. I think it was natural to get blown away by Hegel and that is what I think cause a lot of people to go for Socialism. Hegel still is formidable.] In any case I think I would have naturally gravitated towards socialism if not for seeing that the Torah has a different point of view. 


My own view is that Hegel should really not be the focus of attention. Rather when it gets to be time to learn the subject of Metaphysics the best would be Aristotle Plato and Kant. But only after finishing Shas with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha, and Maharam from Lublin.

Oral and Written Law, Physics, and Metaphysics.

In math we have necessary and sufficient conditions for certain solutions to apply for some differential equation.  In a parallel vein I have the idea that the approach of Maimonides  is necessary and sufficient. That is the Oral and Written Law, Physics, and Metaphysics. [These last two are  necessary because the Rambam considers them to be what the Sages of the Talmud called מעשה בראשית ומעשה מרכבה the Work of Creation and the Work of the Divine Chariot that are both refereed to in the first mishna in the second chapter of tractate Hagiga. The Rambam is not thinking all secular knowledge is a good thing Rather he has a specific reason for emphasis these last two subjects.

His approach to this Physics and Metaphysics is scattered over many places in the Mishne Torah and the Guide and also in the commentary on the Mishna. The basic idea is that while most people think the Gemara is referring to kabalah the Rambam clearly disagrees. Saadia Geon wrote a commentary on Sefer Yetzira and the Rambam was familiar with everything that Saadia Geon wrote. Still niether him nor Saadia Geon thought the Kabalah was the Work of Creation and the Work of the Divine Chariot.

The problem I have is that the religious world seems to me to be "off the derech (path)." The fanatic religious people from Israel seem to me to be clinically insane. But even the more down to earth rational approach of New York seems a bit off. And I can not figure out what the problem is.  At best I have a workable solution for myself. I try to stick with this basic approach of the Rambam which was clearly also the approach of my parents. But in what way the religious world has gone wrong seems to me to be a mystery.

Some people seem to believe the Rambam gives a blank check to all secular disciples.-even those that are obviously pseudo science. Other think the only added things outside of the Oral and written Law are Kabalah. The Rambam clearly disagreed with both of these opinions.

[Incidentally I met a fellow  who had the entire Mishne Torah of the Rambam as one book. I do not remember if it was the Yemenite version of Rav Kapach. He also had with him the letters of the son of the Rambam  print by the Rav Kook Institute, However at this point in my learning the Oral Law I would prefer to learn the Gemara straight with Rashi Tosphot and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.]

Jewish religious teachers desire control.

Religious teachers desire control.

Their statements are subtle but the reality is to get you to accept their interpretation as a continual revelation from Hashem {God}  and the need for you to come under their control. The religious teachers present themselves as gurus to Jewish people. To people that are supposed by them, unable to know the truth and understand the times by the Law of Moses, but in need of intense and constant clarification by the religious  leadership of what God is saying to us by what He didn't say. 


The trouble is that people are afraid of calling these religious groups by their proper name: cults.


Besides that above mentioned thought I had a few more thing I wanted to say today that are kind of relevant. One is that cults vary by measures. So for example Litvak yeshivas might seems to exercise  some measure of control but that does not make them a cult but rather human institutions that do their best to teach and keep the Written and Oral Law of Moses. That is legitimate. In my first yeshiva Shar Yashuv there were even more aspects of control, but it was not a cult but rather an effective institution designed and built to further the learning and keeping of the Torah. I have to say I think the level of learning was at least as great as the Mir Yeshiva in NY.

The other thing I wanted to add is that sometimes even a rel cult can be a lot better than other cults. It is all a matter of perspective. So if someone is involved in some Buddhist group that does not bother me when I realize there are many much worse things.  

 So I am trying to defend the idea that the Torah was given by God to be necessary and sufficient. No need for frauds. No need for magic "sugulot." No need for Occult teachings.Using mitzvot as "segulot" magic means of getting God to do our will is just as much Occult as witchcraft.