The fundamental problem with yeshivas

The fundamental problem with yeshivas involves the difference between them and let's say for example medical school. The difference is one trains doctors and thus asks government funding. The other asks for public money for what reason? To enable people to learn Torah.

Therefore for yeshivas there is no excuse to throw out people that are there to learn Torah. The fact that they do throw out people shows they are not in fact existing to provide a place for people who want to learn Torah, but rather to make money by providing a show of learning Torah. 


You could throw out all modern day yeshivas and not lose a thing. They are mostly all scams using the show of Torah to make money. But still there are places that are magnets for sincere people like Ponovitch and the great NY yeshivas, Chaim Berlin, Mir, Torah VeDaat. 


Since the religious are using Torah to make money, the Torah has no effect on their character except to make them worse and then when people see them acting like jerks (as is their custom), that gives people a bad impression about the holy Torah itself. That is called in Hebrew a חילול השם "a desecration of the Divine Name."


[For the sake of being fair there are offshoots of Ponovicth that are admirable. That is people that learned there and then went on to start their own Beit Midrash elsewhere. Same with the NY yeshivas. Just for one example of a yeshiva I was impressed with is the place of Rav Montag in Netivot which definitely had the real spirit of Torah as far as I could tell. 


 I should mention Rav Freifeld's place in Far Rockaway which I felt had the spirit of Torah very strongly and the level of learning was very high. It starts with beginners but reaches into very high levels of learning.
I should mention that I am allowed to write this because:

Shaming people is a permissible tactic. In the book on laws of slander by Israel Meir Hakohen he makes a distinction if it is for obligations between man and his fellow man and obligations towards God. See chapter 4 and the difference between there and ch 7.
מפרסמים את הרשעים מפני חילול השם There seems to be some difference between shaming for sins that are between man and fellow man an sin between God and man. The later case has clear permission from the book on slander by Israel Meir HaKohen in ch 4 as long as the sin is not just a one time event but done on purpose on a constant basis and private rebuke has done nothing.

USA

The USA is the result of a kind of ideological movement started by Hobbes and John Locke. It had a basis in Aquinas and Maimonides in terms of natural law. The very essence of American identity is bound up and tied with these thinkers.

What people are complaining about on this blog is the kind of Leftism based on Rousseau.

The difference is vast. But one thing that does stand out is Rousseau does not have any human rights. He has only the General Will. That is his center of gravity. To John Lock the beginning point is the rights of the individual.
But these rights are not more than the Ten Commandments translated from what one  person can not do to another to being right that the individual has not to be stolen from. 

But the difference between rights to get free stuff and rights to be left alone has been obliterated in the USA.

s70 G major  [s70 in midi]

To marry a virgin

The world has changed. It used to be known that being a virgin was very important. The Ketubah [marriage contract] is 100 (zuz) for a girl that is not a virgin, and 200 for a virgin. Also If he was tricked into thinking she is a virgin the marriage is null to some opinions. And at least she loses her Ketubah. [Either the whole thing or just 100. That is also an object of debate. See Ketubot pages 9 and 13.] From the first act of sex there is always something left inside according to the Ari [Isaac Luria]. However I heard that the Ben Ish Hai said that is only when the first act is after marriage. [That is not from the actual book the Ben Ish Hai, but from some other book that he wrote on the Ari. I assume he must have some source for that opinion. Maybe he saw it somewhere in Reb Hayim Vital?]
I forgot all the details. But, at any rate, this is a very big deal.

"Western Civilization."

"Christendom" used to be the term for it. Now it is called "Western Civilization." The problem is the weight of intellectual evidence weighed on the side of Christianity during the Middle Ages with heavy hitters like Aquinas et al.
The after that period the weight of Reason and Evidence did not go in that direction. This was not the fault of the Enlightenment philosophers. It was just the way things were. You certainty can not accuse John Locke of having a bad heart or evil intentions.  There was and still is a crisis of faith that no one has been able to mend.

To a great degree this had a parallel in the Jewish world also. And the advice there by Israel Salanter was to learn the books of Mediaeval Ethics. This to me seems highly applicable to the Christian world. That is to learn the books of classical Christianity, Augustine, Anslem etc. The reason is because everything starts in the mind. All deeds and all words and all attitudes start there. If you cultivate a good mind then you cultivate good deeds and good words. So learning the right kinds of things is the beginning of the correction.
Neo Reaction from Amerika: “They’ve essentially thrown out centuries of Christian tradition, practice, and scholarship in order to assert that here in the 21st Century, we’ve finally discovered the true doctrine, and it just so happens to be the one pushed by Christianity’s ideological enemies.”

Though not Christian myself, I have long thought that Christians have ignored Aquinas, Anselm, and Augustine at great loss to themselves and to everyone else. [I do not mean they ought to be Catholic.]

introspection can be bad for the health:

The trouble with psychology is that it makes people insane. 

"Indeed, introspection can be bad for the health: it is a road to “mental illness” (‘Illuminism and Terrorism’, 1798, [Immanuel Kant]

That means that talking about your problems with a psychologist or anyone in the related professions is the best way to go insane. Kant goes into great detail why this is the case.


People like to talk about their problems and about sex and all one needed to do to make money from this was to create the impression that doing this is good for them and then set yourself up  as one  whom to talk to. The terrible thing about this is that the real effect is just the opposite.

commitments

The reason I think making commitments to change one's deeds is a good things is this. It is based on something I learning with my telescope looking at the stars. I noticed that if u look directly that it gets out of focus. But if you look slightly to the side then the star is clear. Thus I see the idea of making commitments as a way of solving personal problems. That is: I see there are lots of problems in my life that I cannot solve. And I also see if I take the direct approach that usually backfires, or at least does nothing to solve the problem. Therefore I say like Rabbainu Yona in the Musar Book Shaari Teshuva that אין יסורים בלי עוון "there are no problems without sin." So it must be that the problems are coming from something that I am doing that I ought not to do, or from lack of doing something that I ought to do.

The study of Musar {Mediaeval Ethics} has helped me understand certain areas of improvement that I have needed to face. But as a general rule it is certain that Reb Israel Salanter would have said that if you are going to make any commitment to do anything it should be to learn Musar every day  for a certain length of time.
I have a lot of faith in this idea of Reb Israel Salanter and my older brother agreed with me when I mentioned it to him. Still I do not want to put too much into it. We do not want a scenario in which people are learning Musar and acting badly --  which would discredit the whole idea. Rather Musar is a simply a way of recognizing your own personal faults and working on them if you want to. It is no guarantee to have or to acquire  good character.  


It is a map but it is not the destination.

In any case commitments can not be things you pick out of a hat. They have to be things you anyway believe to your best knowledge that these are God's Will for you, but you just have not had the will power to do them. 

Leftism

I am no expert but a great deal of Leftism was attractive to people because they thought that it made sense. They had a few minor philosophers to go with and then some heavy hitters like Hegel. The only reason I am not a leftist myself is because of my own intellectual background which is more along the lines of the Talmud, Maimonides, Aristotle and then of utmost importance--Kant.  That is to say place Hegel on a lower level than Kant and also take the general approach of the people that developed Kant in a certain direction. That is not Hegel and not the Neo Kantians who took Kant in what I think is  a wrong direction. In any case in the long run I am saying Hegel did not prove his point and Leftism is based very much on Hegel. See for example the writings of Lenin on Hegel and also see Marx's Capital which is very much based on the labor theory of value -that something's value depends on how much work went into it.
In any case the Left used to have a case. But the judge of time and experience and Reason has thrown their case out of court.

Family history in California

The idea of my Dad in moving to California was to work for a company called Ford Aerospace. He had gotten there after work in NJ at an US Army base in Monmouth NJ where he was the head of the team that made the first Infra Red Camera. That got him into Life Magazine. Then McCarthy came there and started his anti communistic thing right there at that base  on Friday. The next Monday My Dad came in with Bernard Marcus and they were the only two people left on the team. Everyone else had been fired. That was about fifty engineers who were all Jewish plus one German fellow whose wife was Jewish. 

They were all rehired after the heat was off. But my Dad and Marcus were put off by the whole thing, and so accepted a job offer in CA. 

At that time he also worked on the U-2 camera.

  

After three years he invented in the garage a kind of copy machine that was super sharp based on x-rays and marketed it. After some time he sold the company and moved to Beverly Hills and worked on Laser Satellite Communication for Star Wars [SDI] at TRW.
That was the same time the KGB had a mole there. My Dad left that after about 5 years and right after that the mole was discovered and the company went under, and a major motion picture was made about the incident. [''The Falcon and the Snowman'' named after the two criminals that stole and old man Dad's inventions and other technology at TRW to the KGB.]

[After that I went to two great Litvak yeshivot in NY, Shar Yashuv and the Mir.--Both great but their approach to learning differed. Shar Yashuv was more into in depth understanding of Tosphot and the depths on the page--like you can see in the Pnei Yehoshua. The Mir was definitely along the lines of Rav Chaim of Brisk--global issues like between Tosphot, Rambam and how the subject on the page relates to related issues throughout the Talmud.   

"No excuses."

There was a great comment on Dalrock one fellow describing father and his his experience in Medical school. His father had been a DI (drill instructor) and his favorite motto was, "No excuses."
So this guy in Medical school aced his first test. Then the professor decided grade on a bell curve and the next test he got was graded 30 out of 100. He called home expecting his mother to pick up the phone and give him some word of comfort. Instead his father picked up the phone. He said, ''I am never going to be a M.D. at this rate,'' and sobbed on for a minute of two; and then his father told him to buckle down and do the work and stop making excuses.

s68 D major  S65 D minor 6-8 time

[s68 in midi]  [s65 in midi]

Religious and secular cults

Going Clear was a book that my brother brought to the breakfast table and that reminded me of  a great thing about Scientology--that it is a secular cult.  So by study of Scientology one can come to grasp the characteristics of  cult without any religious overtones. But to get a clear view of what a cult is, I also found a certain Hindu religious cult to be helpful - that was Adi Da. 

I have mentioned before that to see what a cult is (and especially to see if the religious group one is involved with is really a cult), the best thing is to study these two groups, and the writings of people that were brave enough to leave the cult after being enslaved for many years.

[An important factor for me is that I can stomach them to some degree. Other cults are so bad that I simply can't read about them. Other cults also have religious overtones for me that are too close to my own beliefs, so I can't look at them objectively.]


 In Torah. there is  are  some mystic things going on. The best parts of that aspect also seem to be in the Middle Ages with  Avraham Abulafia. and later  on around the 1500's with Isaac Luria. Those two seem the best. There were two pretty great people after Isaac Luria which developed that tradition Shalom Sharabi and Yaakov Abuchatzaira. That is the basic outline of the best parts of those two traditions. 

The trouble with the mystic tradition is it fell into the Dark Side; and thus the world of Orthodox has a great deal of trouble because it mainly consists of cults that are claiming some exclusive access and knowledge of Isaac Luria. 

I do not know how to deal with these problems except by private prayer towards God--to pray and ask help in one's on language t be save from what one needs to be saved from. And to learn Musar. That is Torah books from the Middle Ages before the Dark Side gt to be  a part and almost the whole of Orthodox. 
 
I have to mention that God does not seem to answer prayer unless it comes with a change in deeds. Therefore I believe if you see God is far, then you need to try to determine what it is in your life not as God wills it, and to make a commitment to change.  

Not to take some good thing and accept it, but rather something that you already have good reason to believe is Gods will for you personally.
Personal failings you think you need to correct-the best thing is to make a commitment (without an oath) to correct.


That is there are things which are good to do as a general rule: learning Musar of Reb Israel Salanter, learning the books of the Gra, learning the Av Ezri of Rav Shach. But when I say to make commitments to act right I am referring to things you already know you need to improve but are simply lacking the will power. I believe doing this can make a breakthrough in you life and brings you wishes and needs before God. Commitments have to be possible to keep. The only thing in the way is lack of desire or willpower.
Still there are general things which are important to do even without making a specific commitment. That is to learn Musar. The reason is that Musar [books of Torah ethics written during the Middle Ages] give the most straight and simple way of keeping the holy Torah. That is why all teh cults ignore Musar. They are afraid people will read Musar and discover what the Torah really requires of men and women. And that is not what thy cults say.

I was in Odessa for two days and saw that I can force myself to do more learning on a bus and in a hotel than I do in my normal living situation. God had granted to me  a book on Spectral Theory (from this link) [Richard. Laugesen] [a really great book--It helps understand a lot of what i going on in QM and other areas involving PDEs](It really opened my eyes to a lot of intereting stuff.) which I had been saving up in case I had to take a trip anywhere. And God granted to me to get through the entire book 1.5 times along with lots of review. This reminds me of a story I heard about Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira. He was once asked by the ruler of his area in Morocco to pray for his son who was very sick. Rav Yaakov prayed  and the boy was cured.  When the ruler asked Rav Yaakov, "Why does God hear your prayers?" Rav Yaakov  answered him, "I nullify my desires before the desire of God, and so He listens to me,"
I see in my own situation I do not work on doing God's will. I rather have found a kind of comfort zone. But now I realize I could do a lot more, and a lot better if I really wanted to.

What would that entail? I am not sure. I can see that given the right situation and emphasis I can learn Torah, Physics and Metaphysics as per the course study that the Rambam [Maimonides] prescribed.  But I clearly am not in such a situation, and I also do not know in practical vein how to in fact turn my will to God's will.


How do you know what good character is? [] You go by prima facie the way things seem before you apply reasons. Then if there is overwhelming evidence your original assumption is wrong, then you change it. But morality is not a subject that is so hard to figure out. We know it is not right to torture people for the fun of it, that we should pay our bills, we should be compassionate and honest in our dealings with all people. It would take a lot of evidence to overturn these beliefs. And, in fact, no evidence can ever be brought against them-- since you can not derive an "ought" from an "is."
 Philosophers usually make it their business to make up nice sounding principles that would imply the negative of the above mentioned moral principles. Marx for example decided  "All property is theft," and thus that would imply it is OK to steal. But think how the logic works. If you have a principle A by which B is implied, but B is counter intuitive. Then you have to see if "A" is more likely or "not B." If "not B" is more clear than "A," then "A" must be discarded.

But outside of basic principles, it is often impossible to tell what God's will really is even if one is sincerely interested in doing it. I have had that problem for as long as I remember.  [I could perhaps go into some of the issues but mainly my feeling is that since God's will is so hidden, the best thing I suggest is to learn Musar [books of Ethics from the Middle Ages like the Obligations of the Heart by Rabbainu Bechayee Ben Pakuda.]


The main thing I liked about that book on Spectral theory was the first four chapters but also the clarity it brings to how eigenvalues help solve PDEs. What I mean is if you are into Quantum Mechanics you should see that book. It is a real eye opener.

health

One of the advantages of having a learning partner is Talmud is you get to discuss side issues. I learned a lot about health from my learning partner.
These are some lessons I learned from him.

So you need a good night's rest. Maybe get "Gaba" which is a natural supplement which helps to go to sleep at night. You should be able to find it in heath food stores. They also have something here [Ukraine] called Donormyl which I find helps me go to sleep at night even when there is noise outside my bedroom. Getting enough sleep is important for your health.
[The Donormyl idea I got from a pharmacist  in Uman--not from my learning partner].









 Headaches are probably from lack of good diet. For one thing you need to concentrate mainly on raw vegetables and black bread and try to avoid anything with chemical additives. Also you need fresh air and exercise every day. I feel confident that if you do this you will see your health improve.   Walking is great exercise but you might try jogging also. 


I have no idea who looks at this blog or why. In any case I will be away for a few days. Maybe I will be able to access some computer-I do not know.

s67 g major  s67 midi

[s67 nwc]

.Resistance starts now!

Concerning the election, resistance is very important. That is not to bend or break but to uphold one's own moral integrity.
It does not matter who wins. The main thing is to learn and keep the Torah, the Oral and Written Law of Moses that transcends human law and human government

Resistance starts now! One must uphold the holy Torah in-spite of the government.

repent on our sins and to start to learn Torah,

No matter who wins, my recommendation is to repent on our sins and to start to learn Torah, the Oral and Written Law of Moses. In particular to begin a session in Gemara and another session in Musar every day. [Musar is ethics from the Middle Ages.]

Torah will survive.

It does look like Socialism will win. The Ghost of Marx has now come to the USA. Still Torah will go on.

I should mention I also hold like the Rambam like physics and metaphysics are important. I also believe that Physics should be done first thing in the morning when one wakes up based on the importance the Rambam gives to it. [Also as one gets older it is harder to spend as much time learning. I find if I can get an hour in that is already about as good as it gets for me. So the morning when one is fresh is the important time to do Physics. 

I should mention also that Yeshivas can be  a help for learning but since they are  institutions they can be an hindrance also. The best bet is to do one's Torah study at home where one is not dependent on how he will be treated in a public place with lots of people around like yeshivas.

New Music

S66 G major  I was very busy this month so I wrote very little. Still this piece seems alright. But it does look like I reused an older theme at the end. In any case I present it here and hope that people get inspired and uplifted from it.

I know I do not have open comments here, but I want thank people for their time and attention to what I write.   I hope people will be inspired to learn the Oral and Written Law and lead moral decent lives.