There is a lot of resistance to the idea that Jesus was  a regular "Jewish Tzadik." Part of the reason is group identity. In order to be Jewish one must not have a good opinion of Jesus. The slightest positive statement about Jesus is enough to nullify one's credibility once and for all and to be labeled the worst of all terms "a missionary".

Another reason is the history of the crusades. That is in fact a good reason even if not sufficient.

Another reason is misunderstanding. Even though Paul did have this idea of nullification of the commandments that is clearly the exact opposite of open statements of Jesus himself.
There is also the mistaken idea that people worship Jesus and identify him with God which is all one big misunderstanding of what he was saying. The Trinity is not anything that he would subscribe to as gone into detail in the Trinities blog    

The white race is on a race towards mass suicide. Sometimes self defense is the only defense.

It occurred to me that WWII was also a kind of attempt to stamp out the USA and Democracy. I mean to say that the USA was smack in the middle between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. So I am thinking that Japan and Germany must have been planning on coming in from both sides and taking over.

So now it seems there is a similar attempt to take over. But this time the enemies are in the gates, not at the gates.
How did the situation get so dire? One one hand there seems to be the lemming effect, the white race is on a race towards mass suicide.

While on one hand I was always profoundly grateful for being born in the USA. Yet right in the USA itself I noticed there were lots of people that had a profound hatred of everything American. Whatever the USA has done in history or today to them was always wrong. And they will side with any enemy of the USA.

So what is a possibility?

The answer I think can be seen in the American War of Independence, when Americans took up arms to protect themselves and their homes. Sometimes self defense is the only defense. [Especially now that the police simply find a place to park outside the local donut shop and wait out their shift.]

So if Antifa stand in front of your car to stop you, step on the gas and accelerate.  

Link to Kelley Ross's ideas about the present day situation in the USA

So let me ask why is he the only modern day philosopher that has an inkling on common sense? Is it like Sandra Lehman told me that Philosophy removes common sense from people?
Or like Elon Musk that it is simply German philosophy? Who knows?
In any case, at one point when I realized I was going to have to spend some time in university and try to do something about making a living I decided to go into Physics,-- and not Philosophy.
The actual reason was the Rav Nahman actually warned against philosophy I I took that to heart and choose something else.

An employee has no law of getting less that what his labor is worth. [Rambam Laws of Acquisition 13]. That is on most things you buy, if they are marked up from their market value there is a law of אונאה That is if a 1/5 the money goes back to the buyer. If more than 1/5 the whole deal is off.
 But with an employee there is no such law because an employee is bought for the time. [That is he is a slave for the time period that he is being hired for.
This goes to show that there is nothing particularly different from being a slave and being an employee. The only difference is the employee when the term of his employment is over he is no longer owned.

So was the Civil War really worth going into for this. Any employee has a similar dilemma as a slave. work or do not eat. Children are also in a similar situation. They must listen to their parents. They have no choice in the matter.

I saw something interesting about Elon Musk --that a good deal of his motivation for making Space X and the Tesla car was his question in college when he asked himself what can I do to help humanity.

Well that sort of lit a light for me in that I also have a few ideas that I believe would be great for humanity. 

One is learning fast. That is too many people shy away from Math and Physics because they think they are too hard. They lack the confidence that by just saying the words and going on that they will understand. So I want to bring this idea to the attention of people. [That would also have a side benefit that when people would know what real science is they will throw out all the pseudo sciences like the Social Studies and humanities departments of the universities.

This idea is from the gemara Shabat  [I think around page 63] and brought in books of Musar. [e.g. אורחות צדיקים]

Another great idea is talking with God in one's own language. 

Another idea is saying the truth always which also people do not know how this provides a kind of protective shield around one.



[As for the political situation I have little to say but Trust in God.] 

I should add that I see the coming civil war as the end of civilization so I have to explain that Trust in God does not mean to do nothing. Rather it means not to do "over efforts" "ריבוי השתדלות". It simply mean to trust and God and take the basic necessary steps to protect yourself. So for example if Antifa stand in the way of your car to stop you, step on the gas and accelerate. That is a simple basic logical step of self preservation. Also get gun skills.

w99 G Minor edited   It usually takes me a lot of time to get the instruments right, after I have gotten the basic music line down. Plus corrections as to the music line often come only after I have thought about it for a while. So there still might be more corrections that need to be done.  [w99 in midi format]

The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

Idolatry is worship of some being other than the one First Cause [סיבה ראשונה]. And that includes people. It even includes people who have souls from Emanation [אצילות]. So for example when we say that Abraham the Patriarch's soul was from Kindness of Emanation [חסד של אצילות] we do not worship Abraham. Nor do we pray to him. That is in spite of the fact that souls from Emanation are Divine אלקות.

So worship of people that is the basic essence of the religious world should not be considered to be OK.  And from this it is easy to see why the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication to make this point clear. [And the letter of excommunication I believe has halachic validity in spite of its being ignored. In fact it is hard to understand why anyone would imagine that a letter signed and sealed by the Gra would not be valid in Halacha. Such a thing seems absurd on the face of it.]

[And though you can argue on this point, but my looking at a book that collected all the testimonies in Villna  and letters of excommunication I decided that Rav Nahman was OK. This seems to be a gray area.]

I thought to add the fact that once I got to Tenach [Old Testament] I noticed the central issue pf idolatry. I mean when critique of kings comes up it is always about this one issue. The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

There is a kind of work that is forbidden on Shabat called בורר seperating. The idea is to separate what you do not want to eat now from what you want to eat now. Or to separate what you want for later.

This process can be understood in a  sense to apply to the fact that there is an array of good values that one ought to hold onto. Good points. These have their root in Divine traits [Sepherot]. And there is also a process of combining these good traits. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them. This can apply in science also. Newton and Maxwell could not be combined until Einstein came along. Einstein and Heisenberg could not be combined until Dirac and Richard Feynman came along. [Dirac was OK with one or two particles but once you got more it could not work until Feymann showed the way to QFT. Quantum Field Theory.]

Similar to good traits. There are several areas of positive value. To say the truth, trust in God, learning Torah. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them.
This is a kind of process which you see in Kant and then later Hegel. 

So there is a process of finding the good traits and good points one needs to stick with. And to separate out what is mixed in of the poison of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side). And then to combince the good traits.

Sometimes a tzadik comes into the world to reveal one particular trait or more and sometimes another may come to combine traits.
So for example you will find that Avraham Avinu was united with the Divine Trait of Kindness. That would mean not just that his soul was from Emanation but also that he came to reveal that trait in the world.

Rav Nahman [of Uman] explained what was the problem with a country where the taste and scent and beauty had all gone down. He said the problem was the slaves of a foreign king who had been sent in and ruined everything by means of ugly language, sexual promiscuity, and addiction to bringing lawsuits.
The solution in the story of Rav Nahman was to make a separation.

he did not openly say he was referring to the USA but it seems clearly the implication. That is he was predicting already 200 years ago exactly what is happening today.

The original idea of the Litvak yeshiva was to be  a four year program which would go through the three bava's [Bava Metzia, Bava Kama, Bava Batra] and four nashim [Gitin, Kidushin, Ketuboth, Yevamot]. This I see as very important even though it is not really the same thing as the commandment of learning Torah itself which applies all through life and is required of every man.
So the main greatness of the idea of the Litvak Yeshiva is that those are the ages 18-22 that a world view is formed. One generally accepts at that point the social meme of his environment at those crucial ages,- and this meme becomes hard wired. [So the idea in short is that you learn good morals at those few first years and that sticks.]

[This was the original idea of Rav Haim of Voloshin. Before that there was no such thing as a yeshiva in modern sense, but rather it was the local hall where people would pray in the morning, and then go off to their work. The younger people  stayed there and learned. Then Rav Haim came to his teacher the Gra and suggested creating a yeshiva as an independent institution. It is not clear what the answer of the Gra was. There are different versions of the events. At any rate, I must add that I had a great time at the Mir in N.Y.  And besides the my learning during the regular hours I also was privileged to spend time with Rav Shmuel Berenbaum (the rosh yeshiva that gave the highest class). He was  a very deep and creative thinker along the lines of Rav Shach. But for some reason, he never wrote a word, and so most of his ideas were lost with time. Still you can get the basic approach from Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or Rav Haim of Brisk's books.]

w98   [w98 in midi format] [these were written in a format called nwc but i assume most people do not have that so i post the midi format so that people have access to the notes--which they would not have with only the mp3 version.][I want to add that I do not know why some music files were posted while others not. I just can't recall,  --nor did I think it mattered at the time. [w98 nwc]

socialist takeover of the USA

The issue of a socialist takeover of the USA is on one hand upsetting, but on the other it might very well be a cause for people to take up arms and defend American values? I mean, until now there no one has stepped on the brakes of a socialist revolution. Maybe now people might begin to see the ugly face of socialism?


Also I am wondering about the fact that Allan Bloom suggested that universities are the centre of the issues. So what I suggest is to learn the Federalist Papers, John Locke, and Daniel Defoe's  political writings of the 1700's.

But since it might be a bit late for this, the best idea would be for Republicans to protect their homes and business's at all cost. Not to give in an inch.

"There is something about philosophy that deprives people of common sense."

There is some aspect of Philosophy that is odd as Sandra Lehman [a student of philosophy from Germany] once told me: "There is something about philosophy that deprives people of common sense."[However, I doubt if she would include Thomas Reid-the philosopher of common sense

That in fact goes along with Rav Nahman of Breslov who also has a particular warning even about "hashkafa" books even written by the great sages of Israel.
There might be something to this. He in particular was not very thrilled with the Guide for the Perplexed.

Steven Weinberg [once of the discovers of the connection between the weak force and electro-magnetism] had a really insightful comment about philosophy. He said it like nation states before the advent of the post office. The main purpose of nation states was simply to save one from other nation states. Same with philosophy, it only purpose is to save one from other philosophies.

Rav Nahman [of Uman and Breslov] emphasized saying the words and going on.  But his approach was towards the Oral and Written Law. In fact he gave  a list of what one ought to finish every years in such a fashion, the two Talmuds, Rif, Rosh, all the Midrashim etc.
But based on some Rishonim [medieval authorities] I expand that to include Physics and Mathematics.[Not all Rishonim agree].
Now one one hand R. Natan the disciple of Rav Nahman held one ought not to learn these subjects at all. To him they were all in the category of "outside wisdoms". In Sanhedrin   there is a list of things for which one loses his or her portion in the next world. One of them is he who reads "outside books".

The way I usually deal with this was to apply what Rav Nahman had said about doctors to the issue. Rav Nahman strongly turned people to avoid doctors. However when a true vaccine came out in those days he said one must take it. So avoiding doctors did not refer to true medicine. In those days oxygen had not even been discovered. Doctors were still going with the four humors of the ancient Greeks and blood letting.[ the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm].

So my feeling about this is his objection against outside wisdoms was pseudo man made wisdoms. Not true Physics in which the Glory of God is revealed.

In the laws concerning a "Herem" excommunication there a very relevant point that one who ignore the excommunication is also comes automatically under the terms of the excommunication.

This would show why the religious world is so corrupt. Because they universally ignore the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.

That unfortunately includes the Litvak yeshivas.

[What I mean here is that Herem is different from Nidui. In Nidui one can learn Torah and teach. But in Herem no one can learn nor from the one under herem and nor can he learn himself. One of the major halacha books of the litvak yeshiva world brings constantly sources that were under the herem so that sort of excludes the entire Litvak world
Sp the proper approach is to start to be alert to the fact that one must have nothing to do with the Sitra Achra. [Dark Side.]

However I must add that the actual language of the herem was not on the Baal Shem Tov himself nor most of his disciples. So Rav Nahman would clearly be in the clear, See the actual language and you will see what  mean.

So yeshivas might learn Halacha in the morning, and that makes sense; but the not the way they are doing it. Rather the Shulchan Aruch with the Beer Hetaiv or the Tur with the Beit Yoseph.

In short, the Gra must be taken seriously. The facy of his being ignored is what has caused the most of religious world to be absorbed into the Sitra Achra Dark Side, as anyone who has tasted of it can already testify without my help.
And there is an added degree of responsibility of the Litvak yeshivas because all Israel looks to them to set the standard of what is really kosher and what is not. Even of many people do not follow this their example strictly still they look towards the Litvak would to tell the rest of us what really is ok and what is not. So when they ignore the Gra about this most essential issue they are really messing up.

The next world war I can imagine could start between India and China, and only from there spread to everyone else. [or Japan and Taiwan].

I have thought about what would be a benefit for the many {זיכוי הרבים} and it occurred to me today that building yeshivas on the name of the Gra would be the best idea. However for me personally that does not seem like a possibility. So instead perhaps I could recommend to others that do in fact have the ability to do so.

But to be more specific let me just say that the name of the Gra would be great because that name implies a certain way of learning Torah and a certain path which is pure authentic Torah. So even if someone like myself or others do not merit to walk in the straight and narrow path of true Torah at least the message would be clear.

And perhaps even the great Litvak yeshivas this would be a good idea i.e. to be more careful about the path of the Gra since that is (after all) exactly what they were founded on (but without the name).

[But I do have to add that  learning the "seven wisdoms" was definitely a part of the path of the Gra but this for some reason is not well known. ]

President Trump: Do not give in on any issue. Support the police. The coming election makes no difference. Do what is right now. Support the police and do not give in an inch.

But to call slavery wrong would be saying that the Old Testament is evil.

There is nothing wrong with slavery. The main issue is how you treat a slave. [It is after all better that freeing them and then having them destroy Western Civilization.] In its essence however there is nothing wrong with it. And not only that but the fact that many people accept the idea that slavery is wrong. So they have already given up on the Bible.
So making war on the South was a mistake that has come back to haunt us.
\
[It occurred to me that Rav Nahman hinted to this situation in his 13 stories.--about the country that life had lost its flavour. The food had its its taste. The smells did not smell right. Everything was empty. In that story it turned out the cause was imported slaves. The advice that worked to save that country was to deport them. It does not seem clear how that might work today.]

Some Christians claim that Slavery is wrong. So the the Bible when you have slavery according to them  is evil? (This is not to mention the letter of Peter [first letter second chapter] which says slaves should obey their masters.) Clearly Catholic doctrine is that the commandments of God are good, not evil. [Of course I am referring to the institution in the Bible of slavery of both Israelis and gentiles but also I am thinking of Jesus who held everything in God's Law is good and will never pass away. Paul also stated the Law of God is good but he held that after Jesus came people no longer have to keep some aspects of it. Aquinas goes into that in detail. [That is where the Natural Law aspect of Torah gets into Aquinas. That eventually became natural rights with John Locke.]]
Besides that I have never heard that Protestant doctrine holds that the commandments of God are evil. Rather that they hold after Jesus some are not obligated. But to call them wrong would be saying that the Old Testament is evil.

My basic impression is that when it comes to political theory, nothing is anywhere near the amazing Federalist Papers by Madison, Hamilton and John Jay. And that system of government would still work fine today if not for the race issue.The Achilles Heel of the USA. So what do do now? Well I see the world getting divided into two parts. One part is Mad Max and Seattle chaos. The other is a small remnant of where Western Civilization will continue to grow and proper like Space X.
Clearly the seeds of the destruction of the USA were sown by communist infiltration of the Western universities.  [Now from Communist China.]

And furthermore I think that the best idea for Trump would be not to give in on any issue. No compromise.

Kant Friesian School

Besides Dr Kelley Ross there is also Robert Hanna who has a lot of respect for Leonard Nelson [that is the Kant Friesian School]. It is interesting that Springer Verlag  publishing has in fact published one of Nelson's books. [philosophical fallacies]

[Though as usual R Hanna did notice a some difference between Nelson's personal philosophy [Kant Fries] and the philosophical method that he was advocating. [In his book about philosophical fallacies].

This still does not help much when it comes to figuring how Hegel fits in to all this?
The trouble is the are just too many completely opposite interpretations of Hegel.
Cunningham versus McTaggart. But with Kant that is also a problem.
At least one thing we can all agree to is to throw out all twentieth century philosophy as being long overdue for the trash bin.


I did notice that some of the complaints about Hegel have to do with complaints about Communism that seeks for support from him. Another source of complaint comes from complaints about Germany in WWI. I have no idea what to think about that. Walter Kaufman saw Hegel more almost as a good American patriot. I would have to draw a blank about all this. To me it seemed clear that Hegel just wanted a middle path between freedom and law and order. That is freedom without the craziness of the French Revolution. And he did support the Prussian Monarchy--which was the source of reforms and constitutional laws as opposed to the previous sources of law in Prussia which was mainly the whim of princes. So there are some areas where Hegel was right. Other areas where Kant and Leonard Nelson were right. So in some way there ought to be some kind of way of finding a middle path.]

My basic impression is that when it comes to political theory, nothing is anywhere near the amazing Federalist Papers by Madison, Hamilton and John Jay. And that system of government would still work fine today if not for the race issue.The Achilles Heel of the USA. So what do do now? Well I see the world getting divided into two parts. One part is Mad Max and Seattle chaos. The other is a small remnant of where Western Civilization will continue to grow and proper like Space X.
Clearly the seeds of the destruction of the USA were sown by communist infiltration of the Western universities.  [Now from Communist China.]

One great thing about Rav Israel Salanter was to see how "midot" good character is the essence of Torah. This can easily be missed. But further than that he provided a way to gain good character.
In my own development I got the first part, but not the second.
That is,-- I saw how "midot tovot" [good character traits] is an essential part of Torah, and also got an idea of how to define good character. But the second part of working on one's own character by means of learning Musar -- I missed that part. And I think it almost does not even thought by many to be very effective. Still you have to wonder if this is possible resurrect. That is to learn Musar more than the fifteen minutes that is done in Litvak Yeshivas. But to get back to the original idea of learning lots of Musar--with the intention of improving one's character.

[Musar is based on the original Musar books of the Middle Ages. Then there were plenty more later like that Maharal from Prague. Then the books authored by the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter.]

w97 G Minor  [w97 in midi]

w98 in mp3 format  [w98 in midi]

So the fact that the religious world is now idolatry, it makes more sense to pray at home or in a Reform Temple [or Conservative.]

I noticed in the Old Testament that the major complaint is always idolatry. Rarely is any other commandment mentioned.  Go and check yourself. When there is a complaint about the kings of Israel or Yehudah and Benyamin it is always about idolatry and almost never is anything else even mentioned.
Even with King Solomon the complaint is not the women, but idolatry. The problem in fact with the women is that they turned his heart from God to serve idols. You see this clearly when God comes to him a third time to tell him that because he turned to other gods therefore his kingdom with be torn from him [all except one tribe] (Benyamin was no included in that promise even though they later in fact sided with the tribe of Yehuda) the complaint stated there is that he worshiped other gods. Not the foreign women.
So the fact that the religious world is now idolatry, it makes more sense to pray at home or in a Reform Temple [or Conservative.] [Nowadays there really is nowhere safe. Even the great Litvak yeshivas which one supposes go by the Gra have also been infiltrated by the Dark Side.]

[That is because the Dark Side is always trying to infiltrate into the would of holiness. So this is no surprise. But after the fact, it still means that to learn Torah one has to do so alone and avoid the religious world.]

Here is the longer Bezmenov Video

Bezmenov [What is going on in the USA.] This is the short Bezmenov Video

I have to add here that like he says here that a lot of the demoralization only started from the KGB but once the ball got going, it simply is done by Americans to Americans.


No one knows if he engineered his fictitious death in order to get the KGB off his tail, or if they actually got to him. I knew the KGB agent who discovered his whereabouts in Canada by monitoring the broadcasts from the West. But if they actually ever got to him I have no idea. [Needless to say the KGB lost no love on defectors.]

The religious world is mainly idolatry even though there are some areas that are true to Torah. The areas of true authentic Torah would be the Lithuanian yeshivas.

The religious world is mainly idolatry even though there are some areas that are true to Torah. The areas of true authentic Torah would be the Lithuanian yeshivas that are based on the Gra.
That is the three great NY yeshivas Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat. In Israel that means Ponovitch and Brisk.

However this is not meant to exclude Rav Nahman of Breslov. The reason is simple even though I would rather not go into it here. There was a book that collected all the letters of excommunication pus the testimonies in Villna that I went through and that led to my conclusion that Rav Nahman should be thought of as outside the excommunication and in fact a great tzadik. But to see the subject in detail, you have to see the actual language of the letter of excommunication that the Gra signed.

But the issue is more severe than simple idolatry. This is even though in Torah the most severe thing is idolatry. Still there is an aspect that is adds confusion to what is already a mess. The problem is label. Lets say you would take an idol of Krishna or some other Hindu idol and put a stamp of approval on that. Would that make it OK? Well clearly not. But in the religious world that is exactly what has happened. The label does not make it so.
So it would have been better in the first place to accept the approach of the Gra and Rav Shach before it had to be shown the hard way.

We see a lot of idolatry in the religious world. Thus Gra signed the letter of excommunication. But the result is that anything dedicated to idolatry is forbidden.

The prohibition of idolatry is a bit subtle. On one hand like my learning partner David Bronson explained to me that one can not be  guilty of the death penalty unless he worships a physical object.
But even not of the side of legal guilt, clearly there is guilt if one worships in the abstract.
You can see this in the Rambam in the 13 principles of faith [and also in Mishne Torah] that idolatry is worship of anything in heaven or earth, any of the four elements, any angels etc. That is anything other that the First Cause.

But what is worship exactly? Well there are the regular four services [sacrifice, bowing, burning pouring] that one is guilty, but then there is included the specific type of worship that is done for that idolatry even if it is not one of the four services.
And Rav Shach explains the basic essence of idolatry is the fact that someone believes that idol can save. That is how he explains the argument between R Yochanan and Reish Lakish about an idol that fell apart by itself. So people would say, "If it can not help itself, how can it help me?"

We see a lot of idolatry in the religious world. And there is in particular a commandment to get rid of it whether in Israel or outside of Israel. [Outside of Israel one is still required to get rid of idolatry but not required to pursue it.] Clearly this was the reason the Gra signed the letter of excommunication, and it seems to me to be a good idea to take that letter seriously,--even to the degree of considering it valid according to the letter of the law.

Plus there is a further result: Idolatry is not just forbidden to do, but any objects that are set aside for use of idolatry are also forbidden.

w96 G Minor   w96 midi   w96 nwc

The Kennedy approach to communism was to not let it come anywhere near the USA. He was willing to risk nuclear war to keep the Soviets away as the Cuban missile crisis showed. 


The same approach today would make sense. Keep Communism out of the USA. But how when already it saturates all schools and universities? There is not a front to fight at since it is everywhere.

[Allan Bloom already pointed out the problem years ago in his Closing of the American Mind. His said openly that the Social Studies and Humanities departments of universities are the problem. The implication is to get them on track or close them.]

Elon Musk is planning on settling on Mars.  The way to do that is to have a moon base that can serve as a launch site. It is easier to go to Mars and bring supplies from the moon than from Earth. My feeling about this is I would rather not have mankind confined to the Solar System. So my idea of how to get to space at this point is simply to study String Theory and General Relativity to see how a worm hole might be constructed.
The stars are there. There must be some way how to get there.

Now on one hand space is hard to bend. You need lots of gravity to do so. But there is something odd about electricity that does effect space. Like the Aaronov-Bohm Effect that changes the mathematical structure of space easily. So it does not bend, but it changes its basic structure. So there must be ways of changing spacetime that does not require gravity.

w95  w95 midi

 w95 nwc

Balance of Values.

One needs a balance of values.

From my parents home I learned the importance of self sufficiency and that was said and emphasized quite openly. But there were other unspoken lessons like Menschlichkeit, [to be a decent human being with good character], common sense, balance, family values, and by example my dad was an inventor of things for the USA part time and other times he went into business for himself. He made the Infra Red telescope in space that is not being used by NASA. (See Life magazine in 1954 July pages 24-26 showing that my dad was the inventor of the Infra Red Telescope--i.e.  Philip Rosenbloom) [The James Webb Space Telescope is an orbiting infrared observatory] Also Laser communication between satellites that is now being used by Space X.
So besides his example, there was a definite kind of appreciation for Math and Physics. [So this emphasis I saw in two places. First my parents home. Later I saw this in the Guide and Mishne Torah of the Rambam.


Later I went to Shar Yashuv in NY and learned also some important lessons. Learning Torah, gratitude, to avoid bitul Torah [i.e. the sin of not learning Torah when one has the opportunity to do so,], and also the emphasis on deep "iyun" [learning in depth] of Tosphot and not just to quickly skip to "Lumdut". [learning  in depth along the lines of Rav Haim of Brisk]This kind of learning I never saw afterwards until I met David Bronson in Uman.

In the Mir in NY,   is where I did in fact begin to appreciate the importance of "Lumdut" [Lumdut means learning in depth in a certain way--in a global fashion as you can see in Rav Haim of Brish or Rav Shach's Avi Ezri] also, plus Musar and Rav Israel Salanter, and great caution in laws that deal with monetary issues. [That is not to touch that which does not belong to you.] Plus there was a great emphasis on not speaking lashon hara [slander.]

In Israel I began to see in fact the importance of the Math and Physics thing again. Plus seeing the importance of the state of Israel,  and the land of Israel.

So all together I learned a lot of very important lessons. But how to combine them and fulfill them is not so simple. Still I am grateful for the great lessons I have learned and still hope to fulfill.

[I forgot to add that I learned some great lessons from the books of Rav Nahman of Breslov and Uman, Speaking with God as I would speak with  a friend. That is kind of like prayer in some ways but different in that one connects with God directly by speaking from the deepest truth that is in one's heart. Also the path of learning fast, not just fast but very fast--saying the words and going on.]

[Socrates at first held that virtue and knowledge are different and his opponent said it can be learned. Then through debate they changed their positions. Socrates held that Knowledge and virtue are one and in that context that meant it can be learned.]

So there is little doubt about what the good and true values one ought to stick with, The only question is the proper balance-how much to emphasize each one and which have priority and how to apply\ them in any given situation

A disciple of the Gra wrote a translation of Euclid into Hebrew. In the introduction he quotes the Gra ''When one lacks knowledge of the seven wisdom one will lack understanding Torah 100 times more." לפי החסרון בשבעת החכמות כן יחסר לאדם בידיעת התורה מאה פעמים יותר.

The Rambam that held learning Physics and Metaphysics are higher than Talmud.
That is from the Guide in the parable of the king in his country. The "Talmudiim" are outside the palace of the king. The physicists and philosophers are inside the palace. The Rambam could not have been clearer if had even tried.

[But I have to add here that I do not hold from watered down versions of things. (Popular introductions). Either learn the real thing, or do not learn it at all. While popular introductions can be useful to a small degree, but not as the main area of effort].

[You do not need to understand every word. Say the words and go on. See the Conversations of Rav Nahman 76 where this is explained in detail. But it is brought in the Gemara itself. And you do not need talent. You can discover more and great things even without talent. Wernher von Braun (the builder of the Saturn V that got man to the moon) failed at both Mathematics and Physics. Not did poorly. He failed. So you see you can excel.]

   

I noticed that someone is saying that the whole Covid thing is in order to get people to agree to accept the vaccine which will have a gene sequence that will affect and sabotage one's own DNA..

My feeling is this is probable. Covid is a hoax

I noticed a few years ago that the author of the Mishna [Yehuda the Prince] that he never said, "No".
[That I saw in the Yerushalmi, but I forgot the place.]

How nice it would be to have a wormhole which does not drag you into the center and connects to a different universe and does not even pull you towards the sides but gives you a nice easy trip to another universe or galaxy. Would that not be really convenient?

I just saw yesterday an interesting article. https://inspirehep.net/conferences/968592 Or the PDF is here: https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-e/ef8e5a89fc3d6bda1793928980f70abd It is authored by someone in Russia and part of a conference on the name of Alexander Friedman about Gravity. A non flat metric leads to a different kind of wormhole. Could this be a hint for the far distant future about how to transverse a wormhole?

This is his conclusion: "Now, we can see that our solution contains a traversible wormhole [5] at r = -r0 connecting two infinite space - times r > -r0 and r < -r0 • It consist of two asymptotically Lobachevskyan spaces. The scalar curvature takes different asymptotical values on these sheets. Moreover, while on the sheet with the biggest curvature we have attraction by the central source, but on the sheet with the lower curvature we have repulsion! Concluding, this solution seems to be interesting since it is spherically symmetric and free from singularity."

How nice it would be to have a wormhole which does not drag you into the center and connects to a different universe and does not even pull you towards the sides but gives you a nice easy trip to another universe or galaxy. Would that not be really convenient?
[Or see the other papers from that conference

The Gra predicted the Holocaust. He said the book of Deuteronomy is divided into ten sections. Each section correspond to 100 years of the the 6th thousand year period. That starts at 1240. So 1939 is the very end of the section called "Ki Tavo" כי תבוא". The end of the section are the curses.
When he was explaining this to his disciple Rav Haim of Voloshin Rav Haim asked him where is the Gra himself hinted at in the Torah. He said אבן שלמה יהיה לך a perfect stone will be to you. [That is a stone use as a weight for measuring. "A perfect stone" is the letters Eliyahu ben Shelomo.  Taking this a bit further one can see that it is  a command of the Torah to walk in the path of the Gra since it says " a perfect Stone (the Gra) will be to you."

[This ends at 2240 AD. Then a new cycle will begin, I assume on Mars. But it could be that will be to the stars.]

mankind to the stars

SLS  and Starship are two kinds of starships that are now being used to bring men to the moon and Mars. But I have to say that I can see the importance of settling on Mars, but I would rather if mankind could go to the stars. In any way is that possible? Well, there is no way of knowing until the Physics is clear. Faster than light is out. So what is left is a Einstein-Rosen bridge [Worm Hole].
How could you get this? The only way is through string theory--branes.  String theory needs to be clearer in order to see if branes can do something like that. Branes are funny kinds of things because they are in fact like strings, but in other ways not like strings. That is they are not under space time. They are in space time just like strings. But things in space time can effect space time. For example Gravity. Another example is the Aahronov Bohm effect that effects easily the nature of empty space easily and simply.  [Just put a solenoid near the path of a charged particle. It effects the very nature of empty space.]
See this paper by Tentyukov printed in Russia which discusses a worm hole that is possible to transverse. That is when the metric is not flat.

B Minor w93

The debate between Kant and Hegel seems to have come down to a debate between McTaggart and Leonard Nelson with Dr Kelley Ross.
Most of philosophy of the 20th was trash as Robert Hana shows in excruciating painstaking rigorous detail.  In his book THE FATE OF ANALYSIS: Analytic Philosophy From Frege To The Ash-Heap of History,
So what is left after all others are gone? Hegel and and Nelson.

There are plenty of problems however with both. I can see why people like Ed Feser simply want to get back to philosophy of the Middle Ages--Aquinas's approach to Aristotle in particular.
But that does not seem like the best idea. See Thomas Reid's discussion of Berkeley. Though he disagrees it also seems clear he would not get back to Aristotle.

R.Yochanan said an idol that broke by itself is forbidden for use. Reish Lakish said it is allowed [to use. [e.g. to sell.]
The Gemara [avoda zara 41b] asks on R.L. from a mishna that a ground up idol is forbidden. Answer: a decree from the scribes since it might be found and used. Rather it must be thrown into the sea.
Ritva: the same question of the Gemara applies to R Yohanan. [meaning the case RY allows it i.e. when the idolater  himself nullifies it. Answer: יאוש שלא מדעת אינו יאוש giving up without knowledge is not giving up.
Rav Shach notes that this causes the original question of the Gemara to revert to RL without the benefit of the answer of the gemara.
He answers that both RL and RY agree that in fact an idol that broke by itself is no longer an idol from the Torah. All one can do is perhaps have a decree to forbid it.
My question here is that the original question of the Gemara assumes if a ground up idol is still forbidden then all the more so with the pieces still in tact. I simply am not sure how this was answered.

For some reason people do not take the problem with idolatry seriously. Clearly this was the reason the Gra signed the famous letter of excommunication and yet that fact is universally ignored.