There seems to be a difference in approach between Rav Shach and Steven Dutch.

Here is Steven Dutch:
"If you believe there is a problem, it is your responsibility to fix it

Most "activism" is glorified freeloading. The activist says, in effect, "Hey everybody, drop what you're doing and solve my problem for me. Divert funds from your programs to pay for mine."

If you think child care is a problem, you study economics and business and figure out a way to provide it economically.
If you think drug company profits are exorbitant, you study biochemistry and business and start a company to develop low-cost drugs.
If you want free health care, you raise the necessary capital and start an HMO that charges low premiums and pays bills with no questions asked.
If you think oil company profits are excessive, you study geology and engineering, start your own drilling company, and find and sell oil for less.
If you think alternative energy sources are the answer, you study physics and engineering and develop them.
You may be the victim of a bad home and past injustice, but if you wait for someone else to set it right, your life will suck. Nobody else's."
Rav Shach on  the other hand seems to hold with the idea  of simply learning Torah and that by means of the light of Torah, much darkness will be dispelled. That seems to have been in fact the general approach of the Mir yeshiva and Shar Yashuv in NY.
But what would that imply then for me? In my case I tend to think that the accepting the yoke of Torah includes  the approach of the Rambam who put Physics and Metaphysics right along side of learning Torah as essentials.
I also wonder what is the bare minimum requirement. To learn the Oral Torah seems to be  a bit much. I have trouble myself with understanding Tosphot. On occasion I was blessed with great teachers in Shar Yashuv and the Mir who understood how to go into Tosphot deeply. And more recently I had a learning partner whose head was perfectly fit for the kind of reasoning that is required to be able to understand Tosphot, that is David Bronson. But on my own I have a great deal of trouble with Tosphot.
Ideally going through the Oral Law would mean doing all Shas with Rashi Tosphot and the Maharsha, in order with no skipping. But to get at least more swiftly into the essence of Torah it seems to me the best thing to learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.

הרמב''ם ה' מלווה ולווה א:י''ד-ט''ו

 אין שמין לגנב
רב שך  say that the רמב''ם Laws of loans א:י''ד-ט''ו holds by the רשב''ם that the thief can pay back מטלטלים.
 But it occurred to me  that there is no need to have the רמב''ם go with the רשב''ם in terms of the time of the evaluation.אין שמין לגנב is limited to simply mean that the thief can not say הרי שלך לפניך
Now today it occurred to me even more so that while the רמב''ם holds from the רשב''ם it must be the case that he does not hold by him that אין שמין לגנב tells the court to evaluate at the time of העמדה בדין. There are two reason for this. The first reason is the simple language of the רמב''ם shows this in הלכה ט''ו . There he says the court evaluates the object according to how much it was worth. Not how much it is worth. This shows clearly that the רמב''ם hold the court looks at the amount the object was worth at the time of the theft if the object has gone down in value. or was broken. Not the time of העמדה בדין. But if it went up in value the court does not look at the object in terms of the time of העמדה בדין either but rather at the time it was broken which also was in the past. In both cases the language of the רמב''ם is past tense. How much the object was worth. Not how much it is worth
The other reason is the גמרא in בבא קמא ס''ה ע''א where זולא ויוקרא are considered on the same plane as שבירה. So if it goes down in value that is the same as if it was broken. That is the thief has to pay back the amount it was worth at the time of the theft and if the object is still whole then to return the object. If the object went up in value and then was broken then the thief has to pay back the amount according the the later higher value.



רב שך אומר כי  הרמב''ם ה' מלווה ולווה א:י''ד-ט''ו מחזיק בשיטת הרשב''ם כי הגנב יכול להחזיר מטלטלים.  עלה בדעתי כי אין צורך לומר שהרמב''ם הולך עם הרשב''ם מבחינת הזמן של הערכה. אין שמין לגנב מוגבל פשוט לומר כי הגנב לא יכול לומר הרי שלך לפניך. עכשיו  עלה בדעתי אפילו יותר, כך שבעוד שהרמב''ם מחזיק עם הרשב''ם, זה חייב להיות כך שהוא אינו מחזיק על ידו לגבי הדין "אין שמין לגנב" שאומר שבית המשפט צריך להעריך החפץ לפי ערך של חפץ כזה בעת העמדה בדין . ישנן שתי סיבות לכך. הסיבה הראשונה היא השפה הפשוטה של הרמב''ם מציג את זו בהלכה ט''ו. שם הוא אומר בית המשפט מעריך את האובייקט על  פי כמה שהיה שווה. לא כמה שזה שווה. זה מראה בבירור כי הרמב''ם מחזיק שבית המשפט בוחן את  השוויות בזמנו של הגניבה אם אובייקט ירד ערך, או נשבר. לא בזמן ההעמדה בדין. אבל אם זה עלה בערך, בית המשפט אינו מסתכל האובייקט במונחים של הזמן של עמדה בדין  אלא בזמן שהוא נשבר שגם זה היה בעבר. בשני המקרים השפה של רמב''ם הוא עבר. הסיבה השנייה היא הגמרא בבבא קמא ס''ה ע''א שבו זולא ויוקרא נחשבים על אותו המישור של שבירה. אז אם זה ירד למטה בערך שזה זהה אם זה היה שבור. כלומר הגנב צריך לשלם בחזרה את הסכום שהיה שווה בזמנו של הגניבה. (אם האובייקט הוא עדיין שלם, מחזיר את האובייקט ומשלים את הנותר). אם האובייקט עלה ערך ולאחר מכן נשבר אז הגנב צריך לשלם בחזרה את הסכום על פי הערך המאוחר הגבוה.

There are many ways for the Sitra Achra to take one from Torah.

I think that in Pirkei Avot it is possible that there is an argument about which path is preferable to learn Torah along with working or learning Torah alone. No one suggests that one can use Torah as a means for making money but there is this idea that, "When one accepts the yoke of Torah, then the yoke of work is removed." That is the Mishna of Nechunia ben Hakanah.
  But then there are the other mishnas that seem to indicate that it is preferable to work and learn. "All Torah that does not have work with it is in the end worthless." So this seems to be an argument between the sages of the Mishna.
This issue seems to get mixed up with other issues concerning the using of Torah to make money which is commonly called "Kollel". That seems to be  forbidden. However there is a different issue in which one is passive. That is he does not actively go around trying to make money off of the Torah, but rather sits and learns and hopes that parnasa [money] will be sent to him from heaven.


What is possible to tell from the Gra is apparently this later approach. That it is preferable to sit and learn Torah and hope that money will come.  I myself basically did this while in the Mir yeshiva in NY and then in Israel also. I lapsed from this however and no longer am able to recommend this path as fervently as I ought to because of what is called "קושיות" (questions). But in reality there is something about this path that does break through the veil of perception and gain one entrance into the Beyond. It is just that I do not seem to have the kind of merit that is required to be able to learn Torah and trust in God. I mean to say this: that even though learning Torah and trusting in God are merits in themselves but apparently one needs some kind of elementary kind of merit to gain entrance into that higher kind of merit. Otherwise the Dark Side comes along and causes one to always find something better to do rather than learn Torah. Or it replaces the authentic Torah with Torah of the Dark Side.
This might have something to do with some kind of set of personality flaws inside of me that cause me not to be able to learn or recommend learning for others. I mean it might not just be some kind of sin but also even more likely it has to do with character flaws in me.

In any case, what ever are my flaws, it seems to late to be able to correct them.

[In case it is not clear what I mean here, let me try to explain. There are two aspects of learning Torah. One is setting aside time for learning the Oral and Written Law of Moses, that is the Tenach,  the Two Talmuds all the halachic and agadic midrashim. But there is a higher level of learning all the time and with as much energy and determination as humanly possible because Torah is the purpose of Life and the source of all good in the universe. That kind of learning is in a whole other ball park than the first kind. It is this second kind of learning that I can not do, and even the first kind is about as easy as pulling out teeth without anesthesia.] I really could not even venture a guess as to why I can not learn. I imagine it has something to do with my walking away from it once.

[When one does not merit to learn Torah, the whole world become the agents of the Dark Side (Sitra Achra) to remove him from it--even other people that are learning. They will become to very first to try and convince him to stop learning. Then there will be everyone else. There are other techniques also. One most popular is to substitute the real authentic Torah with false Torah and Torah from the Sitra Achra. There are many ways for the Sitra Achra to take one from Torah. [I can imagine there are infinite ways for the Sitra Achra to take one from Torah. The most popular is: "Come and do a mitzvah."]

Music for the glory of God

T68mp3 t68 midi  t68 nwc

It occurred to me two valid reasons to pay attention to the "cherem."

For some reason, the religious teachers that pretend to teach and follow the holy Torah tend to be demonic. There are of course the exceptions of the genuine Litvak yeshivas in N.Y. and Bnei Brak, but the exceptions simply prove the rule,--that there is a problem. Most people would like to sweep it under the carpet, so they emphasize  the prohibition of lashon hara [slander. For the laws see the Chafetz Chaim, or the short version.] thinking that by doing so they will be immune from attack while at the same time continuing to attack baali teshuva [newly religious] and others they don't like.
[Maybe the problem has gotten worse. I am not sure. Clearly, in Europe there were rigorous standards; so the run of the mill religious teachers were in fact pretty good. Maybe it is just nowadays that people that their only qualification is that they are insane religious fanatics are the ones that get into positions of power.
In any case, because of this problem I avoid the religious world in toto.
The problem nowadays is the entire religious world. But I believe that if the excommunication of the Gra had been listened to, then this problem would not exist. 

  It occurred to me two valid reasons to pay attention to the "cherem." One reason is as Reb Chaim from Voloshin goes into in his book the נפש החיים about the problem of idolatry. (i.e. idolatry can apply to people, not just objects.) 

  Another reason is that a "cherem" has a valid halachic category of an isur neder," which means the object becomes a חפצא של איסור "forbidden object." I was in fact unaware of this last problem until I saw explained it thus in a commentary of the Rambam. (I want to mention that you can go through the entire tractate of Nedarim without being aware of this problem because the connection with cherem is never explained there openly. The commentary I saw this in is in the regular edition of the Rambam on the bottom of the page. I think it was  somewhere in the beginning of ה' שבועות or ה' נדרים.

One thing is certain. That the path of Torah is no where near the path of the insane religious world. These are two direct opposites.

music file t 67

t67 E minor

When people try to flee from the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] they often end up in some greater evil.
This happens because the great evil disguises itself in elaborate ritual observances in order to seem kosher. 

For this reason I have stressed the importance of learning the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach so as to have a good idea of what the Torah actually does require of you.

The Rambam[ה' ממרים] holds there is a difference between (1) גזרות תקנות ומנהגים [decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages] and (2) laws made as a fence for Torah.

The Rambam[ה' ממרים]  holds there is a difference between (1) גזרות תקנות ומנהגים [decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages] and (2) laws made as a fence for Torah. The prime example of the later are the 18 laws brought in the first chapter of Shabat. But the Rambam extends that to anything made as a fence.
Thus for the Rambam: laws judged by the 13 principles can be changed by  a later court of law even a small one.
Things that are תקנות גזירות ומנהגים ([decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages]) can be changed by a later court if that later court is greater in number and wisdom. Laws made  for a fence can not be changed by any court of law- ever. [The Rambam is obviously getting this last category from the first chapter of Shabat concerning the 18 decrees.]
The issue here is the Raavad who makes only two distinctions -if the law דרבנן is accepted by all Israel. If so no one can nullify it. If not, then even a small court can nullify it. So when does the גדול בחכמה ומניין become relevant to the Raavad?

The question here is אבות דר' נתן The commentary on Pirkei Avot from the amoraim [sages of the Talmud]. There it is clear that no one has the authority to make  a law as a fence for the Torah since it says doing so is like what Adam HaRishon  [the first man] did in adding to the command of God not to eat from the tree of knowledge. So what does this mean? Perhaps the Rambam saw this midrash and decided that we see from it a difference between decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages and things instituted for  a fence. However the Rambam  is saying the opposite of that braita [teaching] in so far as the laws made for  a fence are more strict.

The teaching in אבות דר' נתן is  very explicit about decrees that add laws to Torah  law. It says better a wall that is ten inches and stands, rather that a wall 100 yards and falls. This is obviously of great relevance today when people are constantly coming up with new things to add to the Law of the Torah.

The interesting thing is the fact that things learned by the 13 principles are the most lenient and can easily be changed. That is contrary to the usual way these things are understood. But it fits well with teh well known opinion of the Rambam that things derived from the 13 principles are דברי סופרים words of the scribes as he says in the ways a woman can be married.

importance of institutions.

In short I had two ideas today that intersect. One is the fact that no institution can take the place of learning Torah. You can not support some institution that you think is learning Torah. You have to do it yourself. It makes no difference where you do it. It could be on the beach. It could be at home. It could be while parachuting on the way down when you have nothing else to do before you get to the ground.

The other thing is I did want to emphasize the importance of institutions. If yeshivas today were in fact authentic Litvak yeshivas then in fact it would be a great thing to support them.
'When a father inquired about the best method of educating his son in ethical conduct, a Pythagorean replied: "Make him a citizen of a state with good laws."

This includes two levels. The state one lives in. The other is the local group one associates with.

So if one is in the area of a genuine Litvak yeshiva then great. If not then the best thing is to get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach, a Gemara [Vilna Shas edition ONLY.], and Musar and learn them at home.
[I say Rav Shach because he is the most logically rigorous and deep. However any of the disciples of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik from Brisk are also very good., I.e. "Gedolai Litva" 

Many students have a difficult time seeing a distinction between the following two statements: a. It's true. b. It's true for me.

"Well, it's true for me ...."
Many students have a difficult time seeing a distinction between the following two statements:

a. It's true.
b. It's true for me.

But there IS a difference, and it is important to see the difference, and most people see the difference when it comes to things like mathematics, science, accounting, engineering, law, etc.

Here's the question: What does "for me" add to "It's true"? What I mean is, why would anyone say "It's true for me"? Let's say, for example, your favorite physics teacher asks you to tell her what the rate of fall is for a body located approximately at the surface of the Earth. Let's say that you are a student of physics and know with certainty, that bodies fall at 9.4 meters per second per second. If you write on your exam that bodies fall at 9.4 m/sec^2, your instructor would put an annoying red "X" next to your answer. (It should be 9.81)

"But wait a darn minute, there, ma'am: it's true for me that bodies fall at 9.4 m/sec^2!"



Relativism and Tolerance
What is the matter with the following claim:
"Different groups have different moral beliefs.
[One glance would show the absurdity of the logical extension of this argument. Disagreements in questions of history or biology or cosmology do not show that there are no facts about these subjects.]

Do you understand the reasons why such statements as "well it's true for them…" are confused and mistaken (with exceptions)?
Do you understand why such statements as "no one can tell me what to believe (or what to do)" doesn't work as a response to moral criticism? And why it isn't a very respectable or sophisticated response to differences in opinion? [Let's say a cashier in a supermarket who takes money from the cash register is approached by her boss. She defends herself: "No one can tell me what to do."
Let's say a private in the army does not know how to clean and reassemble  a rifle.He is approached by his superior officer who tries to tell him how to do it. He answers: "No one can tell me what to think."]

Do you understand the reasons why such statements as "who needs morality?" are confused and mistaken (with exceptions)?
Do you understand the difference between the law and morality and why the law is an insufficient moral guide?
Do you understand how it is that humans get their views about morality? The various stages of development that many humans experience?


Morality is a social phenomenon. Think about this. If a person is alone on some deserted island would anything that person did be moral or immoral? That person may do things that increase or decrease the chance for survival or rescue but would those acts be moral or immoral? Most of what we are concerned with in Ethics is related to the situation in which humans are living with others. Humans are social animals. Society contributes to making humans what they are. For humans there arises the question of how are humans to behave toward one another. What are the rules to be? How are we to learn of them? Why do we need them?


Consider what the world would be like if there were no traffic rules at all. Would people be able to travel by automobiles, buses and other vehicles on the roadways if there were no traffic regulations? The answer should be obvious to all rational members of the human species. Without basic rules, no matter how much some would like to avoid them or break them, there would be chaos. The fact that some people break the rules is quite clearly and obviously not sufficient to do away with the rules. The rules are needed for transportation to take place.

Why are moral rules needed? For example, why do humans need rules about keeping promises, telling the truth and private property? This answer should be fairly obvious. Without such rules people would not be able to live amongst other humans. People could not make plans, could not leave their belongings behind them wherever they went. We would not know who to trust and what to expect from others. Civilized, social life would not be possible. So, the question is :

Why should humans care about being moral?

John Mackie calls ethical intuitions 'queer' and 'utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else'. '

Behind Mackie's distaste for intuition there no doubt lies some of the strong empiricist sentiment of twentieth-century philosophy. Empiricism--roughly, the idea that all 'informative' knowledge, or knowledge of the mind-independent, language-independent world, must derive from sense perception--has been fashionable for the last century, though less so, I think, in the past decade.


Here, I will give a  counter-example to empiricism.

First example: Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green. How do I know that? Note that the question is not how I came upon the concepts 'red' and 'green', nor how I came to understand this proposition. The question is why, having understood it, I am justified in affirming it, rather than denying it or withholding judgment. It seems to be justified intuitively, that is, simply because it seems obvious on reflection. How else might it be justified?

A naive empiricist might appeal to my experiences with colored objects: I have seen many colored objects, and none of them have ever been both red and green. One thing that makes this implausible as an explanation of how I know that nothing can be both red and green is the necessity of the judgment. Contrast the following two statements:

Nothing is both green and red.
Nothing is both green and a million miles long.

We have never observed a counter-example to either statement, so it would seem that the second is at least as well-supported by observation as the first. The second statement is probably true, since we have never observed a green object that is a million miles long, although there seems to be no reason why there couldn't be such a thing. We have a clear conception of what it would be like to observe such a thing, and it would not be senseless to look for one.But the first statement is different: we can see that there simply couldn't be a green object that is red, and it seems that no matter what our experience had been like, we would not have said that there was such an object; consequently, it would be senseless even to look for one.

I conclude with a final epistemological objection to intuitive morality. Even if moral properties are real, it does not seem that they could affect anything. They do not produce physical effects, so they do not affect our brain processes, so they probably do not affect our mental processes either.

Some philosophers maintain that knowledge of a thing requires some kind of interaction with it.
Now, this problem is not specific to moral knowledge. It is a general problem about a priori knowledge. Paul Benacerraf originally raised it as a problem about mathematics: since we have no interaction with the number 2--we do not bump into it on the street, and so on--how can we have knowledge of it?

Answer: Reason perceives universals

Universals exist necessarily. 'Universals' are abstract things (features, relationships, types) that two or more particular things or groups can have in common. For instance, yellow is a universal. It is something that lemons, the sun, and school buses, among other things, all have in common. Yellow is 'abstract' in the sense that it is not a particular object with a particular location; you will not bump into yellow, just sitting there by itself, on the street. Nevertheless, yellow certainly exists. Here is an argument for that:
1.
The following statement is true:
(Y) Yellow is a color.
2.
The truth of (Y) requires that yellow exist.
3.
Therefore, yellow exists.

Comment: Suppose I say, 'The King of Colorado is fluffy'. Since there is no king of Colorado, some would say the sentence is false; others would say it is neither true nor false. But no one thinks it would be true.

Some philosophers (the 'nominalists') say that the only thing multiple particulars have in common is that we apply the same word or idea to them. Here is an argument against that:

4.	Yellow is a color, and lemons have it.
5.	No word or idea is a color, nor do lemons 'have' words or ideas.
6.	Therefore, yellow is not a word or an idea.

Yellowness is something lemons, the sun, and so on have in common; so what they have in common is not (merely) a word or idea. Some philosophers will say I have oversimplified this issue. I say I have simplified but not oversimplified; the existence of universals is a trivial truth.

[The latter part of this essay is taken from Dr Michael Huemer.]]

The Torah's world view is Monotheism. That is: that God created the world something from nothing, and He is not the world, nor is the world Him.

The basic idea of the verse אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו (You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is no other besides Him.) is actually explained simply in the beginning of the Mishne Torah (of Maimonides). [הלכות יסודי התורה פרק א' הלכה א-ד] That is that God's existence is independent of anything else. The existence of everything else depends on the existence of God. It does not mean the way people commonly take it to mean nowadays as a support for the Bhagavad Gita. I mean to say that the Torah's world view is that of what is called Monotheism.That is that God created the world something from nothing, and He is not the world, nor is the world Him. This all goes to show how right Reb Israel Salanter was about Musar. For in Musar one gets the basic orientation of the Torah. [In Israel, in Rav Montag's yeshiva I had an opportunity to demonstrate this. I was talking with some of the "kollel-lite" guys that were learning in kollel, and this subject came up. I had two stones in my pockets. I asked them about one of them, "Is this stone godliness?" "האם האבן הזאת אלקות?" They remained uncommitted. They must have thought I had something up my sleeve. I then took out the other stone and put the first one on the floor and smashed it with the second one. It made such a noise that the entire beit midrash looked up-including Rav Montag. I asked them, "Did it just break godliness?"האם עכשיו שיברתי אלקות? [I do not recommend this demonstration because part of the first stone flew out and it could have hurt someone. That would have then brought up the question: "Is godliness is dangerous?"]

Most supposed Torah scholars are demons as Reb Nachman pointed out. Once they decide to use Torah for money they lose their holy soul and become possessed by forces from the dark side.]

Not enough credit is given to Kant when it come to his insight that when pure reason goes into an area of  "the thing in itself" (dinge an sich (plural)) it comes up with self contradictions. Kant intended this insight to be expanded. Not just to be understood in the limited philosophical form he put it in.
 Thus Kant himself applied it further. He said when a person looks into his own soul and psychology that creates in him mental illness because the "self" is in the realm of the dinge an sich. [That in itself was an important insight. It was by this awareness that one is only conscious of the surface of the self--not what is inside it that gave Kant the ability to overcome solipsism.

Thus it seems clear to me why learning Torah presents the kinds of problems that one generally encounters. The reason now seems simple. It is in the realm of the dinge an sich.
The only way to come to Torah is to be able to jump over the questions. To come to appreciate Torah is much more important than the amount of time spent learning it.
The question typically are sometimes contradictions in the issue of "parnasa" how much time to spend on a livelihood as opposed to how much time spent of learning Torah. There are also questions that arise from phony people that pretend to learn Torah and yet are not at all moral or decent.[Most supposed Torah scholars are demons as Reb Nachman pointed out. Once they decide to sue Torah for money they lose their holy soul and become possessed by forces from the dark side.]
The way you can see this in the Ari [Isaac Luria] and Rav Shalom Sharabi is  the צימצום applied to all the midot (sepherot). Thus when the צימצום occurred it happened even in wisdom. So there are areas where wisdom can not venture into. [That is how the Reshash explains  the צמצום at the beginning of the נהר שלום  based on a reading of the Ari.]

One trouble is also the very common problem of people being thrown out of yeshivas. There are many causes of this-sometimes justified and sometimes not. One thing that makes this disturbing is the fact that many yeshivas present themselves as "open door" places to the public. That is the face they present when trying to collect charity. But the big picture is more simple. It is hard to merit to Torah and to do so one has to overcomes the mental blocks, questions about, "Why should one learn Torah?" So if it would not be one kind of question or problem it would be another, because there is not way to merit to Torah without jumping over the questions and ignoring them and simply saying "people are people are primates" and simply decreeing on oneself to sit and learn Torah as much and even more than what is possible.

[What I meant to say here about Rav Shalom Sharabi is that he mentions the doubt of Reb Chaim Vital about if the צמצום  was only in כלליות or also in פרטיות. And the Reshash says there that this doubt of Rav Chaim Vital was only at the beginning of his learning from the Ari, but later it was clear to him that it also applied in פרטיות. Reb Nachman brings this same point also. He says like the Reshash that the צמצום contraction happened in all the traits -for example wisdom. So there is a limit to how far reason--even pure reason can extend.]

noble savage myth

I wanted to mention that I think the problem in England is the noble savage myth that was popularized by Rousseau. They think they have found the noble savage in Muslims. They hate their Christian past but can not shake it off, so instead they cater to Muslims and by they get the feeling of spiritual release from the constraints of the Bible. I know I am not stating this properly but they main idea is I think England and France's infatuation with Muslims is highly psychological and not at all based on reason but rather the deep "Id"--more or less discovered by Nietzsche.

rebellion against religious authority

The problem of religious and secular authority and abuse of authority has been around for as long as there has been any kind of human or even primate groups. [Jane Goodall noticed this in primates.]
In history the first time this problem is recorded is in Herodotus. There the question of Democracy versus Monarchy is always just under the surface. Democracy is not a modern option. It is been around for a while. Maybe not has long as monarchy but it has been around. Athens suffered under kings and thus choose democracy. Persia had suffered under Cambyses and the Magi and thus was almost about to choose democracy at the advice of Otanes. The modern approach to democracy began with Calvin. In him and in Luther the problem of abuse of religious authority and abuse of secular authority always looms on the horizon. Calvin is the beginning of the modern day version of representative government --but with a major difference. To him there is not a separation of church an state except in functions-- not as some hypothetical legal dividing line. All are under God's Law and God's Law encompasses all facets of life. But to Calvin the option of rebellion a against  authority when it abuses God's Law always exists. [This really began with Luther in terms of rebellion against religious authority when it is abusive. To Calvin the problem is more in the area of abuse of secular authority.



The ramifications of all this took a long time to get into the Jewish world. But in time also in the Jewish world the problem of authority became an issue. And it still is.
The major reaction of abuse of religious authority is Reform Judaism. The reaction of abuse of secular authority resulted in the State of Israel. Both are results of legitimate complaints about intolerable abuses of authority by religious leader and the anti Semitic government of the Czar and Europe's monarchs.

The result today of reaction to abuse of religious authority tends to be what is called חוזר בשאלה return to question.

But the big picture is not the problem in the Jewish world of abuse of authority but rather the larger question of abuse of authority in all human history--and what is possible to do about it?

My impression is that Luther was right about what to do concerning abuse of religious authority. Though for sure he was the polar opposite of a saint, still his basic idea is valid--get back to Torah.
In other words to learn and keep Torah is an individual responsibility. How better can I put it? Though Luther was including the New Testament in his approach I still feel there is a great message in what he says. But from my point of view the main thing would be instead of the NT one should learn the  Law of Moses [Written and Oral] and keep  it. That is this depends on the individual.
That is to learn the Old Testament and the two Talmuds in depth and with rigorous painstaking work on every page.
This in fact became the approach of the Litvak yeshivas--to simply learn Torah and do what it says. This was the Litvak solution to the problem of abuse of authority. To throw out the phonies and charlatans and get back to what the Torah in fact says.

[The trouble that I see is that it takes some kind of merit to learn Torah. Without some kind of specific merit, obstacles arise that are not surmountable. The evil inclination always comes into the mind telling one how much better it is to do other things. One always finds other things preferable. So what to do? To pray to learn and appreciate Torah. Even one word of Torah is in my eyes a great merit..]

music file T 65

T65 A flat major mp3    t65 in midi   t65 nwc  t60 mp3  t60 midi   t60 nwc

T 66 music file

t66 in mp3    [t66 in midi]  [t66 in nwc]As I said before I spent a lot of time trying to learn from the greats. like Mozart. One idea I borrow here is to go to the 6th instead of the expected 5th towards the end.
Another important idea of Mozart is to leave the tonic in the bass, while the higher goes to the dominant.  I have wanted to use this idea often but was never able to until this piece  right towards the end.

a conflict between good and evil

It is not so simple that there is a conflict between good and evil in this world. There is this conflict, but there is also a conflict between social memes. Certain memes-sets of social and moral information get into people and at a certain point these values become hardwired into the person. Not just that-- but also in groups that accept a certain meme of set of values--in the history of that group you can see that set of values coming to fruition--both the good and the bad values.

So it is not just important to use reason and common sense to identify the right set of values-but also the groups and their sets of values [which are often hidden from public view.]

The trouble is even when you think you have found the right set of objective values and a good group  that will lead you to the good in this world and the next,- the dark side has found a way to penetrate that very group. The trouble in not just the attacks on the Holy Torah from outside. These attack are serious enough. But the greater danger are the attacks on Torah from the inside--people that openly hold with Torah and yet are agents of the Devil.

Some of the principles I have found to be important are sometimes tied to one particular person that embodied that value. In any case I realized I have kind of a long list so for my own sake, I want to jot down some of the things I think are of crucial importance.

(1) The Avi Ezri of Rav Shach which contains the essence of what it means "to learn Torah."
(2) To speak the truth at all cost.
(3) At the Mir in NY I learned a very importance principle of not to steal--which means in a strict sense: not to touch that which does not belong to you. [Nor to acquire things by fraud or force etc,]
(4) From the Rambam and my parents I learned the importance of learning Physics and Mathematics.
(5) From the Gra and the two great Litvak NY yeshivas (that I was in) I learned the importance of learning Torah. [That is the Oral and Written Law--Tenach(Old Testament) and the two Talmuds.]
(6) From the book of Navardok I learned the importance of trust in God without doing any effort.

[These are not just picked at random out of  a hat, but a short list of things I have seen and found to be important and that lead to the good and the light. I know there are lot of competing memes- and principles that people say are important, but these are the ones I have seen work towards the good and the light. ]
 From experience and from just being around in the world I learned that many of the other so called great principles of life or other causes are mainly fraudulent.

Rambam laws of rent ch 8. Bava Metzia pages 103-105

I think the רמב''ם probably saw this difference in what is owed in the words of רב פפא himself. That is the fact that I pointed out that רב פפא says in terms the משנה on page ק''ג ע''ב that the one can bring with a bucket means to the רמב''ם that one statement of רב פפא was referring to the work that is required to be done on the field by the מקבל and the other  statement of רב פפא concerning the difference between the first two משניות and the later ones refer to the percentage that the serf has to pay from his labor.


אני חושב הרמב''ם כנראה  ראה את ההבדל זה בדין מה הוא נוגע להתחייבות המקבל בדברי רב פפא עצמו. רב פפא אמר לגבי המשנה בעמוד ק''ג ע''ב כי אפשר להביא עם דלי.  הרמב''ם ראה האמירה זו של רב פפא שהתכוון אל העבודה שנדרשת להיעשות על המגרש על ידי המקבל. את תמצית הדוח האחרת של רב פפא לגבי ההבדל בין שתי הראשונות אל המשניות המאוחרות מתייחס לאחוז  שהצמית יש לשלם מן העבודה שלו.