בבא מציעא קד.  The question was that the רמב''ם ignores רב פפא. The answer I would like to suggest is this. The  רמב''ם when he says one does lessen the what is owed by a שוכר and  a מקבל in a year drought he means what he always means in that chapter, in reference to the מקבל it is the work that is owed by the מקבל.  But when רב פפא say all the משניות after the first two in chapter תשעה refer to either the serf מקבל or the חוכר שוכר but not both,  and thus when the later משנה says one lessens the obligation in a year of drought, that means the חוכר but the מקבל still give his percentage. As רש''י says over there. What ever the field gives out he gives from those crops the agreed upon percentage.

בבא מציעא קד. השאלה היתה כי רמב''ם מתעלם מרב ​​פפא. התשובה שאני רוצה להציע היא זו. הרמב''ם כשהוא אומר להפחית את מה שחייבים  השוכר וגם המקבל בתוך שנת בצורת, לגבי המקבל הוא מתכוון למה שהוא אומר תמיד בפרק זה, את העבודה שהוא מחוייב.  אבל כאשר רב פפא אומר כל משניות אחרי שתי הראשונות בפרק תשעה מתייחסות  לצמית (מקבל) או חוכר (שוכר) אך לא את שניהם, ולכן כאשר מאוחר יותר המשנה אומרת אחד מפחית את המחויבות  בגין שנת בצורת, כי פירושו חוכר אבל המקבל עדיין מחוייב לתת את האחוזים שלו. זה פי שרש''י אומר שם מה שהשדה נותן הוא נותן האחוז המוסכם.

I think the Rambam probably saw this in the words of Rav Papa himself. That is the fact that I pointed out that Rav Papa says in terms the Mishna on page 103 that the one can bring with a bucket means to the Rambam that one statement of Rav Papa was referring to the work that is required to be done on teh field by the serf and the other  statement of Rav Papa concerning the difference between the first two mishnas and the later one refer to the percentage that the serf has to pay from his labor.

Bava Metzia page 104. Rambam laws of renting, chapter 8.

I do not have any Gemara nor Rambam. So my comments here need rechecking. But it occurred to me vaguely yesterday and became more crystallized today an idea I had to answer a problem in the Rambam. The question was that the Rambam ignores Rav Papa in Bava Metzia page 104. The answer I would like to suggest is this. The Rambam when he says one does lessen what is owed by a renter and  a serf in a year drought he means what he always means in that chapter. In reference to the serf it means the work that is owed by the serf.  But when Rav Papa says, "All the mishnas after the first two in chapter 9 refer to either the serf or the renter but not both," and thus when the later mishna says one lessens the obligation in a year of drought, that means the renter but the serf still give his percentage. As Rashi says over there. "What ever the field gives out, he gives from those crops the agreed upon percentage."



[This whole is based on the idea that when the Rambam talks about what one lessens for the מקבל he always talks about work, not %. ]




I owe credit to David Bronson who pointed out this remarkably fact about this fact  about the what the Rambam means by lessening what the serf is obligated. But to use that fact to answer this question on the Rambam only occurred to me in a vague way yesterday and the day before, and today became more clear.

Hegel locates a kind of step between the state and the family where one becomes an ethical individual.

(1) Hegel locates a kind of step between the state and the family where one becomes an ethical individual. To me it seems this is in its best sense what a genuine Litvak Yeshiva is supposed to be.

(2) To Hegel to middle step is important because it mediates between the state and the individual. For to Hegel the state can only work if made up of ethical people, and these come about by mean of that middle step.

That is to Hegel freedom can only exist in a ethical state. But an ethical state can only exist if it i made of ethical individuals. So the state is important to him but not like it is to Plato, for Hegel requires freedom of the individual. --Unlike what most people think Hegel was about.

The left used Hegel and thus his name got mixed up with them. And individuals like Schopenhauer, Leonard Nelson, and Nietzsche did nothing to improve his reputation. But in my mind Hegel is of as great importance as Kant
  

learning fast

I have been recommending learning fast  for quite some time already.

This comes from the Talmud itself.


This was mentioned  by Reb Nahman often and is brought in Sichot HaRan chapter 76.

And I have mentioned a few times that this method has been helpful for me..
But there are places in Reb Nachman' Magnum Opus that also hint to this idea without stating it openly. על ידי אמצעות הדיבור יכולים לבא להבנת התורה לעומקה Volume I:12
בעבר הנהר ישבו אבותיך מעולם יהודיים נקראים עבריים על שם עבר הנהר ש קופצים על הקושיות לבא לאמונה
To skip over the difficulties in understanding and just to go on--go וייטר.




[Jews are called "Hebrew" because they skip over the difficulties to come to faith. That Reb Nachman derives from the verse "Your forefathers lived across {בעבר} from the Jordan River "
Also in Vol. II he talks about the idea of "כסדר" "in order" as being from the side of kindness and not in order being from judgment.
From all that one can see him hinting to this idea of just saying the words in order and going on.

However I did add to this a kind of way of review in which after about 100 page or so, I go back and review in reverse order. That is: let's say I got to chapter 10. Then I do chapter 9 and then 8 and then 7. etc. Feynman also I think advised some kind of approach like this to one person asking him advice on learning.

[Clearly Reb Nachman was referring to learning Torah but I also applied this to Physics and Math. This is based a reading of the Rambam in the Guide but also in Mishne Torah.]

In terms of Gemara I think the best thing is to be in a genuine Litvak Yeshiva (not copy cat yeshivas that are there just for the government stipend). It is hard (impossible) to come to understand the Gemara without that basic Litvak background. But in any case, I also think that just saying the words and going on makes sense. That is this: to do a 1/2 page of Gemara per day with Rashi and Tosphot and Maharaha.[That is about 40 minutes.]
[One could also just learn at home and to  learn "how to learn" he should learn the tremendous book the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach]

The unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy, and the unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics.

(1) It is important to have a set of values one strives for and also to be reasonable sure that that set in fact leads to good results. One might hear a promise from people he respects that "If you do such and such a practice on a constant basis, such and such good things will be the result". Often these are false promises.

(2) In terms of areas of study  also, it is important to identify areas of study that deliver what they promise. As Steven Weinberg [theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles,] has pointed out on the unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy, and the unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics. Here he suggested that certain fields deliver much more than what they promise and other fields deliver considerably less that what they promise.


(3) Though the Rambam did emphasize learning the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics, my feeling is that philosophy today is much worse than a waste of time. It positively ruins one' common sense. [Of course the Rambam was anyway only referring to the Metaphysics of Aristotle, not just to any book that talk about that subject.]

(4) I used to think that at least Enlightenment Philosophy did bring about a remarkable change --representative government until it became clear to me that it did no such thing. Enlightenment philosophers did intend to take power from kings and princes and give it to the the pseudo intellectuals intellectuals like psychologists. But they did not come up with any good idea about representative government. On the contrary they came up with a  host of really bad ideas the ruined Western society the more they took root. You can blame the Islamic invasion of England and Europe to the pernicious lie about the "noble savage." that was thought u by Enlightenment philosopher.

(5) Musar also seems to promise much more than it is able to deliver. That is the study of Medieval books of Ethics. This was made into a mass movement by Reb Israel Salanter, but it does not seem that it deliver the promised result--good midot (good character).

(6) Calvin was the one that thought up and institute representative government, not any philosopher.

attachment with God is the highest value

 For you might say that attachment with God is the highest value, so once one has come to any level of that (even just a drop of the Infinite Light), that that should be that. He has come to the goal. But apparently things do not work like that. One can have that highest value, but without balance, it seems inevitable that one (or at least I) will lose it.

To anyone familiar with the book of Reb Chaim From Voloshin,[נפש החיים] this will come  as no surprise. He already stated this fact long ago about the importance of learning Torah. He puts it slightly differently.

The way he puts it is based on the Gemara Yerushalmi  where it says that all the mitzvot do not equal the value of just one single word of learning Torah.[That in turn is based on the Mishna over there in Peah]. The way Reb Chaim puts it is this that even if one fulfills all the other mitzvot with the highest level of Love and Fear of God and Attachment with God and true Devekut.--that does not equal the value of learning one single word of Torah. At first glance it is hard to understand this, but now I get the idea. The devekut only comes through learning Torah.


[The challenge now would be to see if there is any possible integration of Dr Ross's Kantian system with Hegel? ]

I am not suggesting anything that would fix things at this point. Rather I take the basic balanced approach of the Rambam of learning the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics as being the ideal to strive for.

T 62   t62 in midi This is called Bflat but that is because of how it starts but the actual key is F

restrictions that are not obligated according to the Torah

There is a  major thing -- an idea of Reb Nachman about not being מחמיר שום חומרא כלל (i.e. not being strict about anything). This sounds like a trivial idea until you realize that the basic framework of the Jewish religious world is completely made up of חומרות ( restrictions  that are not obligated according to the Torah).

They pretend as if those prohibitions are obligations, and yet prohibitions that are actually forbidden they ignore.

The trouble with this is it is אבן מכשול, a stumbling block in front of the blind. People think they have to be part of the religious world in order to keep the Torah. The opposite is true. The entire religious world in made up restrictions that are  made up out of thin air, or sometimes have some basis in one posek [medieval authority] but most other poskim (medieval authorities) allow it.

[This idea come in Reb Nachman's Magnum Opus in Volume 2, chapter 44 and in one other place that I forget [I think it is Volume 2, chapter 87]. It also is in Sichot HaRan.] [Though Breslov is insane, it is still permitted and  a good thing to learn from Reb Nachman. Rav Isaac Hutner did so and Bava Sali also. But without the context of the Gra, people latch onto misleading statements in his writings.]

This idea is related to another very important idea I wanted to mention,the fact that a cartel of unscrupulous charlatans have taken over the title of ordination and this is a problem from several angles. One is the obvious fact that it is fraud. There is no authentic ordination. That is why only very early Talmudic sages are referred to a having ordination. After R. Yochanan it is rare. And it disappeared completely in the middle of the Talmud period--though Hillel II did have it.

Personally, I do not appreciate being victimized by someone who while posing as an authority disseminates error, however trivial it may seem. And it i not just myself and others that I know who have been victimized. The real number no one knows. And the damage they cause is horrific and yet no one can talk about it because they are fearful of the prohibition against lashon hara. These religious teachers are the most destructive force on earth against Jewish families.
It is not that Reform or Conservative Jews are doing everything right. Rather that they have discovered the rot that lies underneath the facade of holiness of the religious world


So people that make their money by mean of this kind of fraud have to come up with fraudulent restrictions. The most obvious example is in food preparation,-- which is one big scam. But there are many other areas. In short, if you would take out the restrictions that are made up out of thin air, nothing would be left of the entire edifice.--And maybe then you would have time to figure out what the Torah actually requires of you. [To know what the Torah does in fact require, I found the basic set of Musar books from the Middle Ages to be extremely helpful, i.e. חובות לבבות, אורחות צדיקים, שערי תשובה, מסילת ישרים (שהוא אחרי ימי הביניים), שמנה פרקים לרמב''ם










The trouble is this. Ruler-ship, authority, is not something that one ought to grab. The reason being  that it is the same as stealing. Since ruler-ship is שווה כסף--worth money. Thus if it is offered one can accept it, but to take it without it being offered is theft.

The simpler belief system wins.

Steven Dutch suggested that the simpler belief system wins.
The more convoluted it gets,-- the less people go for it. This seems to me to make sense. After all, in Rome when there was competition between Christianity and the Roman gods, the simplest thing was to go with Christianity. Later on there was much effort put into showing how Christianity is reasonable --or at least defensible by some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages. Later on Luther's ideas were also on the side of making things simple. Sola Scriptura is certainly on the side of making things reasonable and simple.

So what weakens Christianity today--if you go by this argument of Steven Dutch -is that it got to be too convoluted.

 

You need not that things should be easy. You also do not need to water things down. But you do need the belief system should make sense and not be self contradictory. It also should make moral sense.

It should not demand things that are prima facie [on the face of it] not moral. [In its origin Christianity succeeded, not because it was easy but because it was hard and demanding.]

Some of the weak points are the Trinity. If you hold by Sola Scriptura, then that is one thing that would have to be let go of. Paul himself is another example of a weak link in the whole chain. The prime opponent  of Peter and James all of a sudden becomes an authority? That is like having Karl Marx give lectures on the benefits of Capitalism.

Some of the positive points are Anselm and Aquinas and Hegel. That is to simplify the belief system does not mean it has to be without depth. Just that it should not be convoluted.

God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world.

"Thou shalt remember the Lord your God because it is He who gives you strength." (Deuteronomy)
The basic idea here is this: God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world. Thus space- time is also His creation.Thus he is not absent from space. But he is not in space either. The entire concept of space simply does not apply to Him. Trying to apply the concept of space to God is like mixing apple and oranges.

There is lot to go into about this but to be short I wanted to bring from the very important commentary with no named author on the first four chapters of the Mishne Torah. There he brings the contradiction in the verses. One says, "Do the commandments in order to fear and love God." The other says, "Fear and love God in order to do his commandments." He answers: There are two kind of fear. One is fear of punishment. The other is awe. Thus the verse intend to tell us to come to the lower fear in order to do His commandments;-- and to do his commandments in order to come to the higher awe of God. Thus the purpose of the commandments are to fear and love God.

This is a great Title D Minor This was written in my parent's home. As you can tell there is something otherworldly about it.


T61 D major [This piece is more recent]

T63

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders to whom there is no obligation of obedience. In other times and places, people that taught Torah deserved respect, but today they are all liars and thieves..
Today, whatever any teacher of Torah says in the name of Torah, it is most likely that the opposite is the case. The  "kollels" are not different. Dens of thieves. [They lie about Torah to gain money people's obedience.]

There are I should mention a few islands of Torah like Ponovitch and the great NY Litvak yeshivas, but these kinds of places are rare, and they do no ask or require any kind of authority. The "prime directive" is  simply this: "Whatever the Torah says, that is what we try to do." That is- there is no attempt to usurp authority from the Torah to themselves.


[This is relevant to the issue of representative government. That is the people in power ought to be people that have been elected by the people, not those who by other means have seized power. ]

In an ethical society it is simple to say what a man ought to do--obey the rules. This is how I thought of the religious world during my yeshiva days. Then it became clear that the religious world is highly unethical. In an unethical society it is also simple to say what a man ought to do--disobey the rules,  and to break the rules, to leave it, and to leave as much destruction in his wake as possible.

In an effort to live an ethical life, one has to take into account the society he lives in. Therefore once it is clear that the religious world is highly unethical (as is well known to everyone that exists inside it) it becomes an obligation to leave it. And to make known that their facade of keeping Torah is a ruse and a scam.

What would a society look like that actually kept Torah? I am not sure, but my impression is it would be close to what the Religious Zionist groups are like. Maybe that is not perfect, but the basic approach of the "Bnei Akiva" is about as good an approximation to Torah as I can tell.

What is the essential problem in the Jewish religious world? Reb Nachman, as is well known, attributed the problem to Torah scholars that are demonic. That is they are possessed by the forces of evil. That  is one possibility. Another is more concrete--the usurpation of power. The ruling mafia who pretend to know Torah simply have grabbed power. They award each other credentials--none of which have any validity. Not only is their "ordination" a complete scam and against halacha in which the only authentic ordination ceased to exist in the middle of the Talmud period. But they do not even know what they pretend to know.

t59 music file

T59 D Major

In a deeper sense what you see is that the realm of the "dinge an sich" (the thing in itself) (non phenomenal reality. Reality beyond appearance.) is as hidden as Kant thought it was. Thus what parades as holiness is often the opposite and what looks to be from the Dark Side is sometimes from the Realm of the Divine. Outward appearances not withstanding. Doctrines as also no indication at all. Purity of doctrine and depth of teachings can disguise evil and wicked hearts as we see in the Jewish religious world so often.

If things would have gone  according to plan, I would be finding arguments to support the idea of simply trusting in God and learning Torah. The reason I am not avidly advocating this is I found a surprising thing. (I still advocate trusting in God and learning Torah, but with the reservation and knowledge that this does not always seem to be on the inside what it is on the outside.) It was this. When I was in the Mir yeshiva in NY, every day came a different person from Israel asking for charity to support his yeshiva in Israel where he was doing all he could so that anyone who wants to learn Torah would have a place to do so. But not just there. The Lakewood Kollel in Los Angeles were asking me the exact same thing when I was living in Beverly Hills.
Much to my chagrin  and dismay, when I returned to Los Angeles--but this time without money, they did everything they could to convince my wife to leave me. So I figured at that point maybe Lakewood is just not so great. So I returned to Israel. And there I figured I would just sit an learn Torah in any Beith Midrash without asking for anything. That was after all exactly what every single person from Israel was saying anyone could do--just walk in and learn Torah and that was the entire purpose according to them for the very existence of their yeshivas. To my utter amazement every single yeshiva that had made this claim of being open for the public for anyone who wanted to learn Torah threw me out from the top of the staircase down into the alley.

It is not that I disagree with the importance of sitting and learning. After all God did not abandon me and even granted to me to learn Torah even after all that. But one thing I did see. The religious world is highly anti-Torah and wicked.

I did also have to make some modifications in my world view after seeing the astounding hypocrisy of the religious world and frankly straight forward sadistic people dressed in religious garb claiming to be keeping Torah.

But since this blog is about world view issues I do not have a lot to add, but just for public information in what ways have I changed my world view to correspond to the facts and reality?
The main difference is I have had to go with the explicit opinion of the Rambam and the implicit opinion of my parents concerning the importance of  Physics, and Metaphysics.  These bring to fear and love of God to the Rambam, and are in themselves the fulfillment of those commandments so  I think without those two aspects of Torah, people go astray.
In any case, there is some deep seated wickedness in the religious world which causes them some kind of evil inclination to hurt others and then to look for excuses to blame the people they hurt.
The major source of wickedness however I did not see in Litvak place but rather the cults that the Gra put into cherem excommunication. It is just the sickness of those cults seems to have deeply infected the Litvak world also
As bad as the Lakewood group was, it still did not come anywhere near the shear sadistic wickedness I saw the the groups the Gra excommunicated. Little in the world can compare to the shear amount of Sadism I saw in those groups. All in the meantime making a song and dance about how they keep Torah. Frankly I think there are few groups in the world that present the astounding amount of sadism that I saw in the religious world. Hurting people from the shear delight of doing so.
So in short, despite their claims, I do not think they are keeping the holy Torah.

I believe this problem was actually seen by the Rambam himself who also wrote that using Torah to make money or as a means to making a living causes one to lose his portion in the next world and in Heaven, plus he was not shy about his advocacy of Physics and Metaphysics. I can not help but wonder if perhaps he linked these two issues in the same way I have here--that is in seeing the learning of Physics and Metaphysics as a kind of cure for the problem of people using Torah for money and thus losing their menschlichkeit human decency?



In any case I do not see the religious world as keeping the Torah at all. Rather I think Reform and Conservative Judaism are much closer to the path of Torah. Fanatic rituals do not make one righteous in the eyes of God.

Pagan religions

The basic difference between the belief system of the Torah and pagan religion is not just in the
number of gods. The basic differences in world view is what caused the Gra to see groups slipping pagan religion into the Torah world, and to put them into excommunication.

These group might be called "pagan Judaism," since they make a show of their Jewish rituals, but their practice and beliefs are pagan. They worship others gods (i.e.  men that they believe control theworld).
Pagan religions contain theogonies, birth of a god, "theogony", accounts of the births of gods. Thus in Pagan Judaism there are also celebrations of the birth of their gods. In Torah, God controls the world but is separate from it. In pagan Judaism, their views change according to whom they are talking to but mainly their views go according to the Bhagavad Gita and Hindu religion.

But the way people get hooked is that they are fed droplets of the belief system. Only small amounts. So by the time they see the abuse  and get abused themselves they are already hooked.

t60 D Minor  This is an edited version with a final part in 6/8 time. The idea to end with 6/8 time  is an idea of Mozart in one of his B flat symphonies or serenades. [I forget which.] 

the amazing amount of destruction of the mind that seems to come along with learning Jewish mystics

Based on the amazing amount of destruction of the mind that seems to come along with learning Jewish mystics (mainly in the area of delusions of vast knowledge and self assumed holiness and pride) and based on the problem that the Zohar was not presented accurately, but put into writing as being from R. Shimon ben Yochai, I wonder if perhaps it would be  a good idea just to delete everything based on that from the Jewish canon of books that relate to the concept of  "learning Torah."

Compromise and tolerance seems in the end to bring to acceptance and to me it seems that most of this mystic stuff brings to terrible  things.

[Still there are some people I have much respect for like the Ari and Reb Nachman. Still the thing to do is simply to learn them on the side for those people that feel a need but not as part of the program of learning Torah]

The point is if one wants to accept on himself the yoke of Torah it is important to know what counts as legitimate torah