The basic path of Torah is pretty well defined by the Litvak yeshiva [which concentrates on learning Torah] where mainly Gemara Rashi Tosphot are learned along with the idea of trust in God to provide. What some yeshivas added was the idea of learning in depth. That path was once unsure and not written down but nowadays it is pretty well contained in the חידושי הרמב''ם by Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and the Avi Ezri by Rav Shach.

The idea of Parnasah making a living is really well defined.It is to trust God for a living. And if after one is married, paranasa does not just how up, than it is permissible to go and find work. There is no allowance for using Torah to  make money. But the kollel system where the State of Israel gives money to the Rosh Yeshiva according to the number of people in his kollel; and he divides it up has been accepted for some time already by almost all Torah scholars. This has some support from the fact that that seems to be the way the yeshivas in Babylonia were run during the time of the geonim.

The geonim themselves were were supported by the community.

t80 midi format   t80 d major mp3 format

We already know the respect the Rambam had for Aristotle. [It shows up in the commentary on Avot but is mainly in the Guide.]

We already know the respect the Rambam had for Aristotle. [It shows up in the commentary on Avot but is mainly in the Guide.] That is no secret and it caused alarm and disgust in his contemporaries as much as it does today.
This comes from two directions One is his high respect for Physics and the Metaphysics of Aristotle and Plato and Plotinus, and this learning being the fulfillment of the mitzvahs to love and fear God.

But also what dismayed people was the Natural Law concept of the Rambam, which he in fact does not spell out, but which hearkens back to Aristotle and Plato's discussion about justice and human good.
 If anything, the Rambam had to be thinking of Aristotle's' political system of Aristocracy as natural law, not democracy nor Sparta's system.




HOWEVER-it is easy to confabulate and confuse this with the actual political systems of Athens and Sparta. In fact, just the opposite. The Rambam places the Nomoi (laws) of the Greeks in the same category as the raving mad speculations of the Sabians.

As Sunwall puts it: "Although the ancient republics, on the whole, ended rather badly, as indeed modern studies of public choice would tend to predict, modern interpretation persists in seeing deliberative legislation as completely different from, and qualitatively superior to oracular law, judicial astrology, and the political use of divination.
It is precisely this distinction which Maimonides, in linking the "nomoi of the Greeks" with the "ravings of the Sabians" refuses to admit. Although as a rationalist, Maimonides makes a clear psychological distinction between reason and the imaginative faculty, he calls into question, by linking the Greeks and the Sabians, whether deliberative acts of legislation (nomoi) are entirely rational. For Maimonides, an essential attribute of rationality is its transhuman quality. Unlike mathematics, but rather similar to poetry and other imaginative productions, legislation is clearly the result of the exercise of human will. Thus in a broad sense, idolatry and legislation can both be seen as works of the human imagination. Therefore the Greeks and their nomoi can be grouped together with less obviously rationalistic cultures, not on the superficial basis that the Greeks used an elaborate iconography to represent the divine, but because their institutions like those of other pre-monotheistic cultures, were the result of arbitrary human innovation."

The Rambam does not respect any system of law that is anything other than straight Torah. He is not thinking of the Democracy of Athens or the Republic of Rome as being a fulfillment of natural law.

Appendix: The idea of the Rambam of the Physics and Metaphysics is in a few places  in the Guide and Mishne Torah, but the most famous is the parable of the king. In this parable, there are many levels of closeness with the "king". The lowest level is people outside of his country. The next level is people in the country. Then people in the capital city. Then people near the palace. Then people in the palace. Then people in the inner parts of the palace. This is a parable concerning God. People outside the country are the barbarians. People in the country and in the capital city have natural law. People around the palace are people that keep and learn the Oral and Written Law. People inside the palace are the Physicists.    People in the inner corridors of the King are the prophets and Philosophers.
You can see how this parable would have bothered many people

Chafetz Chaim made known the problem of slander,

ואם לא יגיד ונשא עוונו if he does not tell then he will bear his sin. That is there is an obligation to give testimony that one saw whether he is asked to testify or not.
[I should mention a curious fact-that the Rambam says the obligation to testify is only if the plaintiff or defendant ask him to come to court when the issue is דיני ממונות- an issue of money. But when it is an issue of דיני נפשות human life, then he must testify whether he is asked to or not. That is what the Kesef Mishna says right there on the Rambam himself--that in issues of human life he has to testify whether asked to or not. The trouble with all this is ספר המצוות מצוות לא תעשה רצ''ז where the Rambam says even in issues of money one must testify  if he saw the events whether asked to testify of not because of the verse לא תעמוד על דם רעיך. This looks like  a problem since in Mishne Torah the Rambam says in הלכות עדות that one must testify only if asked to.



The Chafetz Chaim made known the problem of slander, but this is emphasized in the religious world mainly to give them a blank check to do their abuses and crime and then when an innocent baal teshuva speaks up he is accused of lashon hara,
People that know that teachers of Torah are fraudsters need to speak up because they know testimony that others need to hear.
The astonishing amount of damage the supposed teachers of Torah do is so out of proportion to the expected normal bell curve that I suspect that Reb Nachman was right that they are demons. [LM vol I ch 12: Torah scholars that are demons etc.] [According to the normal distribution, you would expect some to be good, some to be bad and the vast majority around average. But what you actually find Torah scholars do an astounding amount of evil and damage. The curve it tilted far by far towards evil. Perhaps it is because they are not Torah scholars at all but demons using the Torah to make money? That would seem to have been the Rambam's view.]
It does no good to do like Na Nach to just simply complain about them in general. People need to make known specific events of abuse and to shout it from the rooftops.
Because of this problem I simply avoid the religious world and stay away from them as far as possible.

Is there any correction for this problem? Not that I know of. The Litvak world which is by far the best is also infected. The supposed solutions I tend to believe actually aggravate the problem.
The best thing thus is to learn Torah and Musar  on your own and forget about the organizations that claim Torah. Something of the Dark Side has taken control of the religious world.
One thing that lends itself is the occult. Though the Ari and his system is very impressive, still it lends itself to empower these teachers  by their claims to secret knowledge. It is just a perfect trap for naive people that want a taste of the supernatural.

I was not very happy with the Left even  before they became Anti-Semites. The reason was simply because their values were against Torah.  Good examples are private property, abortion. Dr. Kelley Ross thinks the Left is Satanic. See this essay: http://www.friesian.com/satan.htm. I would not go so far because i think Leftists were at first idealist and as Nietzsche did they saw the abuses in religion and of princes and kings. Maybe not all. But a lot were simply interested in Justice and were upset with the abuses they saw in the System [in Russia and the USA.] And as Bezmenov pointed out, the KGB did not need to create Leftists in the USA. They were already there. They just needed to give them a little extra help. {I can not go into this here. See his long lecture on Utube}

(1)It takes some kind of merit to be worthy of learning the Gemara [The Two Talmuds] that apparently I do not have. Thus it can happen that one [e.g. I] learns Gemara for a while, and then drifts off into other things that seem more spiritual.
I wanted to deal with this problem from the standpoint of Maimonides and Rosenzweig.

(2) If possible I would like also to go into the problem of זה לעמת זה עשה אלהים. That in every area of value there is an equal and opposite area of value that is its exact opposite, and yet externally looks exactly the same as the original authentic thing. This opposite is not just a lower level of the first, but rather the exact opposite. [That is: It looks like Torah and dresses up in clothing which seem Torah'dick, but the inner essence is of the Devil (Sitra Achra)--which is most of the  religious world. The Gra already pointed out this problem but for some strange reason he was ignored and still is.]

(3) As for the first issue I would like to mention the Maimonian concept of the Giving of the Torah as being a one time event in history with no second upcoming event to supplant it, or take its place.
The Rambam (Maimonides) concept here is  contained in the Guide for the Perplexed.

As Sunwall puts it: "Historically there is only one revelation defining absolute and transhistorical standards of human behavior and opinion, that of Moses from Sinai. Everything else throughout history which is not imitative of it is the product of reason, imagination, or madness."
So we learn Gemara to understand the the laws of the Holy Torah. What cults do is to give lip service to the Law of Moses, but to claim priority status for their leader's book where are written his delusions.

(4) As for the second issue , the best thing is to make an authentic Litvak yeshiva in one's neighborhood in order to have a place to learn genuine Torah -the Oral and Written Law in depth with Rav Shach's Avi Ezri,  and Musar. 

President Trump offered a concise, powerful statement of western achievements and why they are worth defending. “We write symphonies,” he said. “We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers. . . . We cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything.”-
Reminds me of Pericles. On the other hand the basic things I think are important about the West are actually more limited. The Law of Moses, Aristotle, Plato, Physics and Music. Most of the literature I am not happy with. Music sadlly fell after Beethoven. Philosophy after Hegel and Schopenhauer is vacuous.
Even in terms Attic Greek literature  am not sure of how much is of value. I think the West does best when it looks back towards Attic Greece, Rome, the scholastics of the  Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. That gives it direction and stability.

To the Rambam and the Gra there is a limit to how much is of value. The Rambam has Physics and Metaphysics and the Gra the Seven wisdoms (Trivium and Quadrivium). Outside of that it is all pretty much "Bitul Torah"  wasting time from Torah.
Myself I would have to add survival skills and the Boy Scouts as being important.
Learning a vocation was very low on Rav Shach's list. Not that he forbade it but rather he said people ought to learn Torah and after they get married of they need to to just to do any kind of vocation that presents itself. Not to waste years of bitul Torah in university learning nonsense just to get a piece of worthless paper.

[A great deal of what is taught in high school and 90% of what is in universities is all bitul Torah--wasting time from learning Torah, plus the obvious fact that most of it is positively destructive.]

The truth  told -the Musar movement needs repair.It has basically gone into high gear into fanaticism. And that is not what Torah is about. The basic idea was to come to good character and fear of God. Not extra doses of religious insanity.
There were a few great disciples of Reb Israel Salanter that managed to get the high ideals of Musar into the great Litvak yeshivas but nowadays the work on character has fallen off and been replaced by Anti-Israelism.

t80 D major unedited. [t80 midi]

I can not tell how this sounds until I get headphones.

One of the difficulties in Israel are the Trojan Horses.

One of the difficulties in Israel are the Trojan Horses. It seemed to me that when I was there, everyone was more or less on a crusade to get rid of me. Sefardim certainly did their utmost to get rid of me as I certainly am not one of them. The religious certainly did their utmost to get me as  I was not one of their sick cults.  Arabs never tired of trying to kill me whenever they got a chance.  The few friends I had were mainly useless.in terms of any help. [Not that all Sefardim are like that. The trouble is there always is at least one like that in every group, and none of the others does anything to stop them. ]

My advice to Zionists: If you want to build a state, don't invite your enemies. And if your enemies are already there, then ask them politely to leave. Otherwise they will make it impossible for people that really want to help to be there. Get rid of the sick religious cults and the Arabs, and you will be swamped by millions of people making aliyah that really appreciate the State of Israel.

The Gra identified idolatry inside the Jewish world

 Idolatry is equivalent  the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side.] This simple thesis I have thought for a long time but have not been able to bring much in the way of proof. But going by this simple identification much becomes clear as to why the Torah makes such a huge issue out of it.   And this has more practical consequence nowadays than people realize. For many of the mitzvot have a purpose to keep one away from idolatry and to in fact do everything just the opposite of what idolaters do.
There are numerous instantiations of this in the "reasons for the statutes" portion of the Guide. These all involve turning some idol custom around to its opposite. For example, the idolaters are clean-shaven, the Jewish men are to wear beards (Guide III, 37); the idolaters practice hybrid aboriculture, the Jews are forbidden to graft certain trees onto one another (ibid. III, 37); the idolaters pray to the morning sun in the east, the Jews are to set the Holy of Holies in the west and pray in that direction (ibid. III, 45); the tolemistic animals of the idolaters become the sacrificial animals of the Mosaic covenant (ibid. III, 46).
So while idolatry per se  nowadays can be hard to identify, the Dark Side is a lot easier.

The Gra helped a lot in this subject by identifying idolatry inside the Jewish world that was pretending to be keeping Torah. The verse in Proverbs also helps אוהב מוסר אוהב דעת ושונא תוכחת בער. People that hate Musar are from the Sitra Achra.
I should mention a few years ago there was a great edition of all the major works of Musar from the Publishing House Eshkol. They had all five books in one set. חובות לבבות, מסילת ישרים, שערי תשובה אורחות צדיקים ספר היראה המיוחס לרבינו תם. [I managed to get through them in my spare time and that added  a lot to character I think.]

I was looking at my notes on bava metzia page 101 and I realized my treatment of the subject there was incomplete. here is a new link Ideas in bava metzia.

I added a drop but in truth I realized there are a lot of issues I did not deal with over there that really need to be addressed. Besides that even my explanation was not written out completely.

here is one thing I added:סנהדרין לג. המשנה בסנהדרין אומרת כשדיין טועה בדין, הדין חוזר. הגמרא שואלת על זה מן המשנה בבכורות שאומרת שהדין קיים והדיין משלם הכיסו. אם אנחנו הולכים לפי גירסת רש''י, הוא מובן שההלכה לרב יוסף הוא שלגבי מומחה הדין חוזר, ולגבי אינו מומחה הוא משלם מביתו.
So the whole few paragraphs are these:) ב''מ קא. אחד נכנס לשדה של חברו ונטע אילנות- מה הדין? רב אמר, בעל השדה משלם את המחיר הכי נמוך של השוק. שמואל אמר, בעל השדה משלם את המחיר הרגיל (לפי הפירוש של בעל המאור). (הגמרא אומרת שאין חילוק בין רב לשמואל. אם השדה עשוי  לטעת, הוא משלם את המחיר הרגיל. ואם אינו עשוי לטעת, הוא משלם את המחיר הנמוך.) רב פפא אמר שהמימרא של רב לא נאמר בפירוש רק מובן מסיפור. מי שהוא בא לרב ואמר, "מי שהוא נטע בשדה שלי בלי רשותי." רב אמר, "תשלם לו." הוא ענה, "אני לא רוצה." רב אמר, "תשלם את המחיר הכי נמוך." הוא ענה, "איני רוצה." רב שתק. איזה זמן אחר זה, רב ראה אותו בן אדם שהוא בונה גדר סביב שדהו. רב אמר לו, "גילית דעתך שזה בסדר לדעתך, ולכן תשלם את המחיר הרגיל ויד העובד על העליונה." לפי המשנה פה, נראה שאחד יכול להמתין עד זמן נטיעת אילנות או עבודות אחרות כגון לתקן גג, ואז לטעת אילנות או לתקן גג בלי רשות,-- ואז להזמין את בעל הבית לבית דין, והם יחייבו את בעל הבית לשלם את המחיר השוק. איך זה יתכן? הרמב''ם ושאר הראשונים מתרצים שלא כן הוא. הבעל הבית יכול להגיד לבן אדם לקחת האילנות שלו ולצאת. (ומה קורה אם עשה עבודה כמו נקיון?)
אבל עדיין לפי פירוש הרמב''ן, הגמרא הזאת מייצגת קושיא. זה נשמע כמו שאנחנו נותנים קנס בגלל השערה ונתונים שלא נוגעים לגוף השאלה.
למה זה משנה אם הבעל הבית בנה גדר? תגיד למשל שהבעל הבית היה משלם מה שרב אמר לו--המחיר הנמוך. וביום המחרת יצא וראה אותו בונה גדר. מה היה קורה? שום דבר. למה? בשביל שרב היה אומר, "עכשיו הוא שינה את דעתו ורוצה לקיים את האילנות." אז שיגיד אותו דבר בדיוק הגם שאתמול הוא לא שילם!

תירוץ: סנהדרין לג. המשנה בסנהדרין אומרת כשדיין טועה בדין, הדין חוזר. הגמרא שואלת על זה מן המשנה בבכורות שאומרת שהדין קיים והדיין משלם מכיסו. אם אנחנו הולכים לפי גירסת רש''י, הוא מובן שההלכה לרב יוסף הוא שלגבי מומחה הדין חוזר, ולגבי אינו מומחה הוא משלם מביתו. היינו אם בעל השדה היה משלם אחר כך רב היה רואה אותו בונה גדר, רב היה אומר שהוא בעצמו טעה בדין והדין היה חוזר.




The other issues are these: to the Rivam there is no such thing as changing one's mind. This comes from the idea that an owner of crops of grain that finishes work on the sheaves in order to sell them is not obligated to give a tithe. The obligation of tithes is only if he finishes the work for his own use, not to sell. But if he did in fact sell them, we say he did not change his mind. rather we say that was his original intention. OK so maybe the source for the Rivam is this Gemara in Bava Metzia? That is one point.
Another point is the beginning on Yoma about sudden change. And in out case was there in fact sudden change or did the owner simply lie?  This is relevant to the subject of: a person that admits  a debt outside a court of law can he deny it in court? plus another important thing is חזקת השתא. We see he is now building a fence. Does that mean yesterday his intention was to build a fence?
[Of course the beginning of Yoma is based on three words in one verse. It might not be that in general we think a sudden unexpected change is worth preparing for. It might be there only that there are three wors that tell us to separate the cohen gadol before Yom kippur and before burning the Red heifer (calf).]



The issues seem to be endless. I do not know where I could even begin to deal with them.
At any rate just for the sake of the couple  of people that might not know Hebrew very well let me just say over the basic gemara in English. A person went into someone else's field and planted trees.They went to the court of Rav. The owner complained. Rav said to the owner "Pay the person that planted." The owner said, "I do not want to." Rav said pay the lowest price. The owner said "I don't want to." The next day Rav went and saw him building a fence around his property. Rav said You have revealed you want the trees. Go and pay the planter the highest price.

(Maybe the owner did not want the trees? Maybe he was just making a fence so that no one else would come in a and plant more trees and then later plans to uproot the trees?)


This whole story is brought by the Gemara as being relevant to what looks like an argument between Rav and Shmuel. The original discussion was this: A person plants in someone else's field. what is the law? Rav said he pays the lowest price. Shmuel said he pays the higher regular price that is available in the market place. The Gemara says there is no argument. One is a case of a field that is meant to be planted. The other is a case in which the field is not meant to be planted. [That is the explanation of the Baal ha'Meor.]

So what was Rav thinking? That is the question. I think he must have been thinking along the lines of Tosphot in Nida page 2 side b. There Tosphot says חזקת השתא and  חזקה מעיקרא have equal strength. [others hold חזקה מעיקרא is stronger. Perhaps Rav was thinking further-that חזקת השתא עדיף? so if we see him building a fence now we say that was his intention yesterday even to take out of חזקת ממון

Just a side note; in the above essay my basic answer for the gemara is that the planter and the owner both have some percentage in the trees. That is the source of the difference between whether the field is meant to plant or not. In any case the issues are just too many to go into right now

The way I understood Paul even before I read the some of the Recognitions and Homilies of Clement of Rome {the first pope, the direct disciple Peter) was the aspect of circumcision that is a part of the process of conversion. My later reading of Clement of Rome {not Alexandria} merely confirmed this reading. In any case, it does seem there was a serious debate about circumcision between Paul as opposed to Peter and James.

This debate is almost reduced to nothing in the minds of modern day Christians. it is so to speak "papered over."
That is to put it simply modern day Christianity is Pauline, not Peterine.
[This seems to me to be a serious matter and why it is ignored by all Christians is a mystery to me. The idea of getting back to the core values of the original Christians seems like a worthy goal, but in that case wold it not make more sense to go back to Peterine Christianity? What seems more authentic Paul's version that he knew from hearsay, never from the mouth of Jesus, or Peter and James who knew him personally and heard directly what he had to say? If just hearing in the spirit is enough then why bother to come in the flesh at all?

There is a lot of time and effort in the Christian based on getting back to the original church. This comes a lot from the Protestant side but it is also a general tendency. Still for some reason no one considers the fact that the original church did not include Paul and that he never saw it. The original church only include Jesus, James, Peter, John and the other first disciples.

To get a good description of the original church one would have to go to the actual witnesses.

The direct contractions between Jesus and Paul are numerous. Too many to count. But for the sake of consistency Christians ignore them, and consider Paul to be authoritative and then try to get the words of Jesus to fit with Paul. The place you see this approach is flawed in in the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions where the differences between Peter, James and Paul are not edited out but spelled out.

The basic difference is this: to Peter and James there is only one revelation defining absolute and unchanging standards of human behavior and opinion, that of Moses from Sinai. Everything else throughout history which is not of it is the product of reason, imagination, or madness. To Paul, the Torah was a stumbling block. Anti-nomianism it is called-anti Law.
UNDOUBTEDLY the opinion of Peter was based on Jesus, and this opinion you can see in the Sermon on the Mount and in the letters of the apostles.

אוהב מוסר אוהב דעת ושונא תוכחת בער One who loves Musar [rebuke with force] loves common sense, and one who hates rebuke is a jerk. Proverbs of Solomon.
בער does not mean stupid. It comes from the verb לבער to destroy. It means someone who is stupid and malicious. It is what is referred to nowadays as criminally insane. That means people that hate Musar (and they are many) are criminally insane.

The path of Musar is almost unknown nowadays. So at first I would like to say what is.
The common idea is that Musar is good for orientation like on your first day of university. People assume it is good to help you find yourself around in the value system of the Torah. That might in fact be one good use of it. But it was not the idea of Reb Israel Salanter.

The idea of Musar --learning medieval books of Ethics-is in the view of Reb Israel Salanter a way of coming to human perfection. He advocated learning it many hours every day for that purpose. Before I got married I took that idea very seriously and after I was married also. The responsibility of having and raising children weighed heavily on me to the degree that I felt I needed  some kind of help from Heaven that came with making progress in Fear of God and good character.

Eventually this became connected with Litvak yeshivas. But the original idea of Reb Chaim of Voloshin the institution of a independent yeshiva as an institution in itself had only begun 60 years before the Musar Movement got started.The second such institution to come into existence was the Mir. And there was resistance to accepting Musar as part of the curriculum.
Eventually Musar became accepted in almost all Litvak yeshivas but not to the degree that Reb Israel Salanter was advocating.

My own experience with Musar was powerful. But I also can see the dangers of getting off track that happens to many. But at least for me Musar seemed to be a catalyst  for the Divine Light אור אין סוף. So in spite of my misgivings about the whole thing, I think I would have to go along with Reb Israel Salanter on this issue. The benefits seem to outweigh the potential dangers.
I also heard from Eli Spoduk that he was unsure of what Torah was all about until he got to the Musar books of  Rav Moshe Haim Luttzato. That is just one example of how important Musar is. Besides that it seems clear that people that get involve with Torah without Musar inevitably get very anti Torah world views.

What seems clear is that a good dose of Musar every day is indispensable and its value is independent of yeshiva. Authentic Litvak yeshivas are in any case rare. Most yeshivas are country clubs for chatting and blowing the breeze.

There is a common element of disappointment with the religious world. It is as if many baali teshuva (newly religious) feel they have been taken advantage of

There is a common element of disappointment with the religious world. It is as if many baali teshuva (newly religious) feel they have been taken advantage of and been led down a sophisticated maze of deceit. This is generally true. That makes it hard to defend Torah when it is obviously used as a  device of deception to gain power and money. I have tried to deal with this issue in two ways. One is  abusus non tolit usum. That is a Latin phrase for "Abuse does not cancel use." {Thank you my Latin teacher in high school.} I also used The Guide for the Perplexed and the idea of Natural law of the Rambam and Saadia Gaon an the Obligations of the Heart to defend Torah. There was some essays I wrote a long time ago, but in essence I simply used the idea that there is objective morality based on Michael Huemer, Kelley Ross, and John Searle, and then the idea that this objective morality is recognizable or known to reason. For that I borrowed from Fichte and the Intuitionists--and also Dr Kelley Ross. (In that, I ignored the differences between knowing and recognizing.) (I probably could have used Hegel also if I was more familiar with his four books.) At that point, I really depend of the Rambam for the idea of the Law given at Sinai which is a step up from natural law. [Reb Nachman is also helpful in this area since he points out the abuses and does not paper over them like most try to do.]



But that is not at all the issue I wanted to deal with today. I went into a tangent but the actual idea I anted to mention is the Rivam [one of the baali Tosphot.] concerning the tithe. We know there is a rule that if the owner of the crop of grain finishes the work of tying up the stalks to sell them that he is not obligated to take the tithe. The obligation is only if he finishes the work with it in mind to use the crops for himself, not to sell. The Rivam hold that if he did indeed sell the grain that that reveals that that in fact was his original intention. We do not say he changed his mind. So it seems to me that when I or others drift away from learning Torah that must reveal something about our original state of mind. You do not say some bad things happened to make us change our mind but rather our original state of commitment was not as strong as we thought it was. We were learning Torah because we could. Everything seemed to be prepared to a make it easy. When the religious world turned out not to be all rosy and pink and fluffy, it was simple to go away.

But the further related point I wanted to bring out is מגלגלים זכות על ידי זכאי merit comes about through meritorious people and חובה על ידי חייב. I forgot the actual subject but in essence the idea is that sometimes one tends towards some sin or is destined for it in some way. But still the way it is brought about is through bad people. If baali teshuva who are basically innocent and intending good,are exposed to the negative side of the religious world then that is from negative people. That means their complaints are justified.--But it is not the whole picture. There is a another side of Torah which is precious and holy.

Generally I think of transcendence in Kantian terms and Schopenhauer. I am not sure what the American idea is. I never really got that straight. [This was not something treated in high school. My vague impression was the American approach  was tending towards empiricism--not rationalism. Most people did not talk about this much, and to the degree people were interested in that they went into Eastern religions. I though I was impressed with Chinese philosophy I did not see much in Eastern religions.--That is their taste for transcendence was with no limit. There was plain materialism one one side, and if that was not enough, then kids had to find the most exotic religion they could. The more weird, the better.]

[Hegel agreed but though the window into the transcendent was through dialectics which seems to be reason but also takes into account spirit.]


I think perhaps you could say that people were confused. The traditional Judaic-Christian  values did not seem to hold any water. Philosophy, whether European or British-American, was simply all about words and their meanings. If words had any meaning at all was thought to be untrue.
But people would not know their own motivations. They would hide the truth even from themselves.

The major thing was to go into "weird-kite" (weird-ism) as much as possible, and to be sure along the way to get ones needs met. If possible to use the weird-kite as a means to get those physical and spiritual needs met. The main religion was "Weird-ism". It did not matter to which major denominations or world religions it was. As long as it was weird, it was OK and even praiseworthy.

There is not enough time to go into the many variations this unquenchable thirst for weirdness takes even today. I'm sure my readers can supply their own examples in abundance. The trouble with all this is it rarely leads in the realm of holiness. In fact, it seems often to lead into the Sitra Achra (the Dark Realm) disguised as holiness. The more holy they claim to be the more you can be sure of just the opposite.
This would be the perfect spot to write down my solution to this problem--if only I had one! But I do have a workable approach based on my parents which is the Ten Commandments. That is the idea that good character leads to true transcendence in the realm of Holiness. [I really do not know how to put this any clearer. It was a very well known idea during the Middle Ages but since then was forgotten.]

T78 B flat major Not edited and I have no way of really telling how this sounds because of no earphones so I am just presenting it as is and hoping it is satisfactory.
I looked at it again and decided too much bass in the beginning and too high for violins in the end so I put there a piccolo. Still I assume it probably needs more editing.

yoke of Torah

I have been contemplating the problem of repentance  on sin which has this problem. You did a sin and then for some reason you became aware because of events in your life that that was a sin. At that point how can you repent? The problem is you are no longer in your initial position with a similar lack of knowledge. Now you know, and before you did not know. And repentance requires you to be in the original position and then not to make the same mistake.

I think this is is applicable to עול תורה (yoke of Torah). I have myself and heard of others that went out for various reasons from a context of sitting and learning Torah. In most cases I know about, the common feeling is that of regret, and thinking that if one had just sat and learned Torah that things would have worked out better. But how does one repent on something like that? The only reason מקבל עול תורה (accepting the yoke of Torah) ever works in the first place is because it is done from a standpoint of ignorance of whether it really works or not. Once one knows, then he is no longer approaching the issue from the same standpoint of innocence. Thus coming back to it does not really work since it is not done with the same purity of spirit.


[The general approach to yoke of Torah is to sit and learn Torah as much as possible, but it does not mean to use the Torah to make money. The basic assumption is actually very simple. It is this: If one sits and learns Torah, his needs will be taken care of with not effort. But if his needs are not in fact taken care of for some unknown reasons, then he should go out and find  job and not use Torah for money. That is the idea in a nutshell. This differs significantly from the religious world in which the primary goal in life is to use the appearance of Torah get secular Jews to give them money.]

{I consider Physics to be included in learning Torah based on the Rambam in Mishne Torah and the Guide where he spells out this idea. In fact, I think the general lack of physics in a normal yeshiva education is  alack that causes many other lacks and problems.]