Learning Gemara opened the door into transcendence.

Reading Cleaving by Albert the Great just reconfirms what i already said   that the basic idea of the Middle Ages is to be attached to Hashem directly. The whole goal and orientation is completely different from the later Reformation.  


Personally, I have to say that I found learning Gemara opened the door into transcendence. It was just that that transcendence did not come to fruition until I got to Israel. I never really could put my finger, on it but there was some aspect of Gemara got me connected with the Divine.

What I mean to say is this:  at first learning Gemara was just that. Learning Gemara. The only thing different about it was my tremendous desire to learn Gemara. But there never was any thought about transcendence at all. It was just that while at the Mir in NY, I could feel the Divine presence. But that was all. It was only in Israel that the Light hit me with full power. But clearly it was because of the door that the Gemara opened. [Though I admit it might have been  learning Gemara in the Mir Yeshiva specifically or some kind Litvak yeshiva.]

The temporary romance has to precede the permanent one.

I have have not even heard of situations where this was not the case.

That is how love works. You have an intense love early in life, but for some reason it does not last, and then you find the next one which does last. In Litvak yeshivas they say every shiduch [date] that does not work  is one step towards the right one the "beshert." [The destined one.]

 Going through this  means one is one step towards finding the right one.

That is to say often people would go on endless shiduchim and never find the right one and the attitude was that each failed shiduch was one step toward the right one

The first one however must be real. It does not count if it is only immature love. Still there is something about it that makes it temporary.

Can virtue be taught?

The thing is that traditional American values were a delicate balance of values. It was known to be hard to keep stable. I believe high school education was actually geared towards instilling those values. This all goes back to the conclusion of Socrates at the very end of Protagoras where he decided that virtue can be taught. Probably a lot of people in programs that are directly towards special ends [goal directed programs] do not see this. But when I was in high school I definitely got this impression. That was before the Frankfurt school [that came to the USA and changed education in the USA to become socialist] changed the very essence of USA education. To me it seems that there is a lot of value in what could be called classical education.  There also were Bible based organizations in the USA that explicitly had this as their goal [but combined these goals along with outdoor skills--being aware that virtue is best achieved in an indirect fashion.] Can virtue be taught? Apparently not so easily. There is no question that the traditional Litvak yeshiva with its balance between Gemara Rashi and Tosphot with Musar/Ethics strove to achieve exactly that purpose. To me it seems clear that the gedolai Litva [sages of Torah in Lithuania] thought this balance was the best way to achieve this. Heads of the yeshivas in Lithuania definitely did not think hours of Musar {books of Ethics} would bring to virtue. But neither did they think ignoring Musar was right. So they also sought this balance. The Silverman yeshivas I think do the best job since their approach is modeled on the path of the  Gra which has in it an implicit balance of values.[I do not mean just Silverman. There are other yeshivas which have adopted the Silverman approach]
 I think it is clear that wickedness can be taught. I can see lots of systems out there that definitely instill evil in people. Does it makes sense to say the virtue can be instilled? Maybe. In any case my impression is that the general Litvak yeshiva approach ought to be modified into the Silverman approach which goes with the Gra and a great deal of Tenach [Old Testament] and Mishna. This is based on the Gra and from what I can see, the results are excellent. [I might mention that I did try to do Mishna on my own time in yeshiva--mainly Taharot with the commentaries.] So it seems the general conclusion is that virtue can be taught but not directly but as a by product of some other process. Why should this be so? The idea and proof of Socrates at first was that virtue cannot be taught because if it would be so then why are the children of great men not great? Pericles was the example he used, but modern-day examples are many. Just take a look at corporations when the founder puts their son or other relatives in charge.

time itself is a creation

Causality I think is more fundamental than time. This comes from Bell's inequality which shows that things do not have values in time or space until they are measured.
The fact that nature violates Bell's inequality shows that one of two things needs to be thrown out: (1) Reality, or (1) Causality (Also known as locality). We know causality from GPS satellites which would be off by 11 kilometers !!! every day if either special Relativity or General Relativity were wrong. [The have to be calibrated to account for the effect of GR that is to go faster than clocks on earth by 45 micro seconds and to go slower by 7 microseconds. Thus to be made to go slower each day by 38 micro seconds in order to correspond with clocks in Earth] Therefore it is the assumption of Reality which has to be thrown out--that is that things have objective time or space before being measured. But they do exist --because otherwise there would be nothing to measure. [Not like Bohr.][Thanks to Dr Kelley Ross for bringing this fact up about Bohr.]]
[This treatment of the subject I owe to Motl Reference Frame and a a book on Quantum Mechanics from Beer Sheva University by  דורון כהן

[All popular science books claim locality is the thing which needs to be thrown out which does not speak well for their level of understanding.]






This fits in well with the idea that time itself is a creation. [Reb Nachman brings this in Sefer Hamidot, but it comes from Augustine of Hippo.]
This also fits well with the idea that God is the First Cause and He created time. Human reason has a hard time imagining how there can be causality without time, but there are plenty of other things   people can not picture. [A 4-d sphere]

The Sexual Revolution was begun by pseudo science

A great deal of the problems arise when pseudo sciences are substituted for actual science.
My own feeling is that this was inevitable after the Enlightenment when "Science" gained some kind of godlike status. The Sexual Revolution was begun by pseudo science. See this link
and here Judith Reisman

It just takes time until it gets into people's minds.

 Political "Science"? Social "Science"?  Thrown in a few equations and people get fooled by the simple word "science". What a joke.

[All of these stupid sciences are just a simple result of Physics -Envy. People too stupid to do the real thing.]


In other words, when the Rambam picks out Physics and Metaphysics to learn, I think he was being exact and very particular. He could easily have picked out other subjects in Aristotle. Why did he pick those two? I suggest he was being as exact and careful as much (and even more so) than he was being in the Mishne Torah as Rav Shach and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik constantly point out.

My feeling about the problem with the sexual revolution is that since it permeates society it gets into one's head--  just because one is automatically drawn after the opinions of people around him.

A synthesis balance between Reason and the Revelation at Sinai.

It is well known that the Rishonim (Medieval authorities)  had an approach based on a synthesis and balance between Reason and the Revelation at Sinai. This you see in Saadia Gaon also.
I did not pay much attention to this while in yeshiva- even though I definitely saw this in most of  the Medieval Musar books. This forms the basis for my approach about the importance of learning Physics and Metaphysics as the Rambam put it so bluntly.
The problem is obviously that these subjects tend to be hard. For that reason use the approach (I also saw in Musar books) of learning דרך גירסה just saying the words and going on with faith that eventually I will understand.
[Though I had seen this in only one Musar book [אורחות צדיקים] in California, later in NY I saw a book about learning [בניין עולם] from Bnei Brak that brought down a lot of Musar books that said the same thing. ]


The direction of the Rambam and Saadia Gaon was changed almost immediately after the Zohar was published. From then on this Rambam approach was relegated to the periphery, while mysticism took first place. My own approach is to accept the Ari and the Remak [Rav Moshe of Cordoba] but not to the degree of ignoring Saadia Gaon and the Rambam.
The main thing about the Ari is that whole thing has basically fallen into the Sitra Achra (Dark Side). It is almost impossible to get to the Ari without getting a fatal dose of the Dark Side along with him. It is for that reason I mention that anyone wanting to learn the Ari should only go to a descendant of Rav Yaakov Abuchatzaeira in order to avoid the Dark Side. [Or Rav Shalom Sharabi.]


The reasons are more or less because I saw plenty of people that took the mystic approach and was never impressed. I can't even think of one person I knew that was into mystic stuff that was not filled with religious delusions.

Music for the Glory of God t91

t91 C major t95 G Major  t91 midi  t95 in midi

Music for the glory of God

T90 E Flat Major mp3 T95 mp3 T90 in midi  t95 in midi [t90 in nwc t95 in nwc]

The Six Days of Creation. The Revolt against Reason.

The idea of six eons I saw in the Ari and heard in the name Isaac of Aco. The Ari say the the six eons is not even time but rather higher realities that are above time. This really all goes back to Plato who postulates two levels of reality the unchanging world of forms and the changing world of phenomena. This scheme I see also in Kant.




I am however not taking this idea of Kant to its ultimate end. I more or less agree with Hegel that even the realm of the Dinge An Sich ["the things in themselves"] is accessible to reason by means of some kind of process of dialectics.
[The idea of raising Torah truths beyond reason to make it immune to critique seems to backfire. In any case, this is a debate between Kant and Hegel and until I have gone through the three critiques and the published works of Hegel in their original language I do not feel qualified to put myself between tall and high mountains.

And as one great person put it:

Now the result of this line of defense is not really to save  morality, but to throw all morality into confusion.  No common obligation will any more be binding.  The obligations of man to man, of father to son, of trying to produce the greatest good, of obeying conscience—were pronounced unreliable and flouted.  And that means moral nihilism.  Natural men, that is the great majority of us, are asked to believe this about ourselves: that the very ideals we have always followed are condemnable; that the better way of life is being deliberately withheld from us, but we shall be condemned nevertheless if we do not find it; and that it is our duty to hold such an arrangement in reverence as perfectly just.  If this is true, our appropriate attitude is not only one of despair, as Kierkegaard noted, but one of moral skepticism, as he did not.  We can rely neither on reason, for that is corrupted, nor on divine direction, for that is beyond our reach.  The right inference from this is that nothing open to us is certainly better or worse than anything else.  Once the compass of natural reason is discredited, what is left?  Inspiration from omniscience?  But with the appeal to reason and sanity no longer available, how are we to tell true prophets from false?  What, one wonders, would be the ground rules in a debate between Kierkegaard and Dr. Leary?

[The way of protecting faith by attacking reason has a long history going back as far as you could want to take it.  This appears in the Middle Ages with the arguments against the Rambam.

In Hegel a process of reasoning through things leads to knowledge about areas that Kant says are inaccessible to reason. And it seems that is in fact exactly the case.

[Judging by the amount of modifications that Dr Kelley Ross makes to Kant, I wonder how close he is actually getting to the same things that Hegel was. How far is Numinous value from Absolute Spirit? Are these really all that different? Why make disagreement where perhaps none really exists? I think it all comes from Popper's unwillingness to see anything original or of value in Hegel-or simply his justified hatred of totalitarian systems that were using Hegel as justification. Popper was wrong about the Nazis but he was right that the Left was certainly using Hegel for their own un-Hegelian purposes.

But in essence I just do not see Hegel to blame for all that. And some of the critiques are just as much applicable in the reverse direction.  Hegel like Kant believed Reason generates self contradictions when it gets into the area of the Dinge An Sich. Hegel uses this idea as way that an idea sublimates itself. Dr Kelley Ross also has the idea of Ur Contingency [Ultra Contingency in the area of the Divine where two opposites can both be true.]

Divine protection and light

I broke my leg. I went to the nearby park to go to the mikveh [at night] and on the way out of the park the dogs attacked me and as I was fending them off with a stick, I feel on something.  could not see very well what I was doing because I lost my glasses in the deep water of the river.

It seems I have lost a large degree of the protection and grace of God but I fear to make future commitments to improve myself -- because past commitments I have not kept. And even when I do make some commitment to improve in some area of sin or personal character flaw, I find it never seems to work.

The whole idea really comes from Musar: אין יסורים בלי עוון. ''There are no problems without sin.'' [This brought by Rabbainu Yona in the Shaari Tehuva from the Gemara in tractate Shabat.]
Of course, that does not mean sins are the causes of the problems as Job, and King David and Schopenhauer noticed. But rather it means that when one is truly keeping the holy Torah like Rav Yaakov Abuchatzaira or the Gra there is a special level of Divine protection.

I actually believe sincerely that I had this Divine protection and light for all the years I was in Safed but now it is quite lost.

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תוספות says the argument between רב and שמואל on בבא מציעא י''ד is the same as their argument on page ק''א.
The גמרא on page ק''א there is no argument. One is talking about a field that usually planted and the other is a field that is not usually planted.
Though the simple way to understand this is that רב that say the לוקח gets back both the קרן ושבח that means for a field that is usually planted.
However it could be that תוספות means to take this even further. That is he might mean that רב and שמואל do not disagree even about the fundamental law. They both agree when the לוקח is the one that did the work and the improvements , then the owner pays him. And that is the law of רב. And when the גנב did the improvements the owner pays the גנב and not the buyer. The לוקח in any case is getting back what he paid for the property because the improvements the גנב did are included in קרן and that he gets back from the גנב.


תוספות אומר הטיעון בין רב לבין שמואל בבבא מציעא י''ד זהה הטיעון שלהם בעמוד ק''א. הגמרא בעמוד ק''א אומרת אין ויכוח. אחד  מדבר על שדה שבדרך כלל נוטעים והשני הוא שדה אשר בדרך כלל לא נטוע. למרות הדרך הפשוטה ביותר להבין זאת היא כי רב כי אומר ללוקח חוזר הן הקרן והשבח זה עבור שדה נטוע בדרך כלל. עם זאת זה יכול להיות כי תוספות רוצה לקחת את זה עוד יותר. כלומר הוא מכווין לכך שרב ושמואל  מסכימים אפילו על החוק הבסיסי. שניהם מסכימים כאשר לוקח הוא זה עשה את העבודה ואת השיפורים, אז הבעלים משלמים לו. וזה החוק של רב. וכאשר הגנב עשה השיפור, הבעלים משלמים לגנב ולא לקונה. לוקח בכל מקרה הוא מקבל בחזרה את מה שהוא שילם עבור הנכס משום שהשיפורים שעשה הגנב כלולים בקרן והקרן חוזר מן ללוקח.

I broke my leg last night going to the mikve. On the way there and now as I lay in the hospital waiting for an operation the doctor here says I need I am wondering about this last new idea. I would not have said anything before and I think just to leave it, but still I think it is important to take note that this does not seem like the simple explanation of the argument on page 14 and furthermore it is not how I explained it before!  up until yesterday I was saying the argument is exactly like that on page 101 where the entire difference between Rav and Shmuel is what kind of field it is עשוי לנטוע or not. And before that I was saying it depends on who did the work the thief or the buyer from the thief.  Right now I have to admit that Tosphot here is hard to firgure out.

the argument between Rav and Shmuel on Bava Metzia 14b

Tosphot says the argument between Rav and Shmuel on Bava Metzia 14b is the same as their argument on page 101.
The gemara on page 101 there is no argument. One is talking about a field that usually planted and the other is a field that is not usually planted.
Though the simple way to understand this is that Rav that say the buyer gets back both the קרן ושבח that means for a field that is usually planted.
However it could be that Tosphot mean to take this even further. That is he might mean that Rav and Shmuel do not disagree even about the fundamental law. They both agree when the buyer is the one that did the work and the improvements , then the owner pays him. And that is the law of Rav. And when the thief did the improvements the owner pays the thief  and not the buyer. The buyer in any case is getting back what he paid for the property because the improvements the thief did are included in the price that he paid for the field and that he gets back from the thief.


But who did the work on the field can not be the difference between the higher or lower price on page 101 (ידו על העליונה) That was a thought I had that I put into the my little book on Shas but I realized while sitting here in the hospital that that can not be right because the gemara itself states the difference is only dependent on one thing,-if the field is usually planted or not. 

Trust without effort

Trust without effort is my conclusion of the right approach. That is to say I do not want to leave this question as being simply  a debate between the Obligations of the Heart as opposed to the Ramban and the Gra. Rather drawing upon my own experience I believe that the Gra an the Ramban were right. That is there is no need to learn a vocation or to do a vocation until that very day when it I needed. Until then it is best to sit and learn Torah.
Though I do not claim the ability to decide between the rishonim that argued on this question, still I see the point of the Ramban and the Gra.

First I should mention that this was also more or less manifested in the Mir Yeshiva in NY. There it was the rule that the students would learn Torah all day and going to university was not an option.

I was in Safed for seven years and did not do much learning,  but still I was doing some learning, and God provided. It was when I decided to go out and find work everything fell apart. Without going into the gory details, it ought to be clear that as long as I could manage to sit and learn Torah I ought to have done so.

The problem is that the Ramban states this idea of trust without effort in only one place --where he says this in reference to doctors.  And there are plenty of routine procedures that are well known.
[This issue I do not hope to resolve, but I have heard from people that left the kollel system regrets about doing so. When I left it and consciously went about trying to find work people consistently complained about me that I was not working. The very same people who never put in an honest day's work in their lives. So if you simply look at the facts-the truth is cloudy. Lots of unworthy and insincere people take advantage of the kollel system. But does that take away all its positive aspects? I guess not. Where is any system that can't be abused?

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The Ramban [Nachmanides ] Trust in God is without effort.

The Ramban [Nachmanides ] explains that though there is permission for the doctor to cure oneself, but people should not go to doctors. He writes one that goes to a doctor has no portion  the next world. אין לו חלק בארץ החיים. My impression of this is it has to refer to non standard procedures.
[He brings this from the verse about the king of Israel that got sick and did not go ask God כי אם ברופאים rather he went to inquire from doctors.]



Whether you agree with this or not is not the issue. The point is we have found a source for  Israel Salanter that says the trust in God is without effort [בטחון בלי השתדלות].
This has long been a mystery from where  Israel Salanter got this from. It later formed the entire basis of Navardok [Joseph Jozel Horvitz]. But Navardok just quotes  Israel Salanter from the Tvuna [a magazine he published ]article. The fact is Navardok quotes the Gra also and that is clearly what the Gra is saying. But the Rambam was  a mystery. David Bronson discovered this fact. He was learning the Ramban and saw the whole treatment of the Rambam on the issue of כאן ניתן רשות לרופא לרפאת. Everyone just reads that first line and thinks the Ramban is saying to do effort is OK. Only if you read the whole piece in detail do you see otherwise.

[The Obligations of the Heart however does have trust with effort.]

Accepting the yoke of Torah and Trust in God were the two pillars of the Mir Yeshiva in NY when I was learning there. These two lessons I never absorbed very well but I hope to get back to them.
Litvak yeshiva represent Torah in it purest most unadulterated form. But they have to walk a fine thin line. They need to keep out bad influences. This leads often to too much caution on the side of error to throw out sincere good people. Often they let in people by mistake that are bad influences. They are human institutions that have plenty of failings. But at least in principle they are advocating a truth and important set of ideals--to learn and keep Torah and trust in God.

Kelley Ross as a philosopher has a thoroughness that surprised me. I had been aware of problems in Torah for a long while. One major problem was: "The difference has to make  a difference." If this one system is true and holy, and everything else is completely false and evil, then that ought to be seen in the traits and nature of people following the true system. If good and evil are simply divided along the normal bell curve, then that is a question. There were personal reasons also. I had encountered enough evil in many religious  people, and their leaders in particular, to raise doubts.
There were also intellectual questions, but these did not seem as serious as the others.
It was right at that time I discovered Kelley Ross's essay on Spinoza. 
That was a shock when I saw the depth. I never saw a modern writer on philosophy come anywhere near it.
But then I saw his major four essays on value, and that was enough to answer all my questions.
[There are other very good philosophers nowadays, but none that get anywhere near Kelley Ross.]
The only thing that bothers me is that he does not seem to have much of  a liking for Hegel.
That never bothered me as long as I never really read Hegel. [I did a drop in NY, but I did not know then what Hegel was talking about. Later with a little more background, I could read Hegel, and see what he was getting at,- and then I started to realize he has a lot that is really amazing ideas. ]
In a nutshell, Kelley Ross is a continuation of Plato, and Hegel is a continuation and deepening of Aristotle.

Even very good philosophers like Edward Feser and Michael Huemer tend to have a certain weakness when it comes to Physics. And that makes a lot of difference.

The most simple way to justify Torah in two words is objective morality. Moral principles are universals that can be known by reason. The Torah simply reveals what objective morality is. It does not claim to make people moral. And Objective Morality has a lot to do with midot (-character). Though it goes into areas of service of God also. But the starting point is midot (-character). If people have bad midot/character, that is a question on them and on human nature. not on Torah.

The main thing in terms of Reb Nachman is to decide what was a reaction as opposed to what was an essential principle.

The path of reaction is not a bad path. That is to identify one's own faults and to strive to correct them. In the absence of some tzadik  that could guide people, this seems like the closest one can get to figuring out in what areas he of she needs to do the most work

You use your best judgement to see what kinds of actions seem to be the direct and immediate causes of bad things to happen to you and you try to work on those areas.

This is I admit a kind of בדיעבד ad hoc [after the fact] kind of scheme. It is not a Pro-Active Approach. But it seems the best thing to do in the absence of any other kind of reliable guide.
Reb Nachman seems to have taken this approach in his being against doctors. It is clear that he was reacting to the dismal state of medicine in his days [though it is arguable if there really has been much progress since then.] Reacting to  a bad situation and making some kind of corrective measure is clearly the idea behind measures taken by the sages to make laws to safeguard the Torah.

The Rambam in the Guide says many of the Laws of the Torah are in fact Divine safeguards against flaws in human nature.

The main thing in terms of Reb Nachman is to decide what was a reaction  as opposed to what was an essential principle.