Peter Lloyd at the Daily Mail has an excellent article on men no longer marrying: “Why men won’t get married anymore: Women complain chaps today won’t settle down. Sorry, ladies, but it’s all your fault, argues a wickedly provocative new book.” He mentions Men on Strike and quotes me (though he states I am a lecturer at the University of Tennessee but I am not):

For an army of women, Mr Right is simply not there, no matter how hard they look for him. And the reason? When it comes to marriage, men are on strike.Why? Because the rewards are far less than they used to be, while the cost and dangers it presents are far greater.

‘Ultimately, men know there’s a good chance they’ll lose their friends, their respect, their space, their sex life, their money and — if it all goes wrong — their family,’ says Dr Helen Smith, a lecturer at the University of Tennessee and author of Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood And The American Dream.

‘They don’t want to enter into a legal contract with someone who could effectively take half their savings, pension and property when the honeymoon period is over.

‘Men aren’t wimping out by staying unmarried or being commitment phobes. They’re being smart.’

Read more: http://pjmedia.com/drhelen/2015/04/20/men-arent-wimping-out-by-staying-unmarried-or-being-commitment-phobes-theyre-being-smart/#ixzz3ZN8EbXek



My advice is to only marry the daughter of a true Torah scholar. This is known in the Talmud as a "Bat Talmid Chacham." It is the only way to come as close as you can to a guarantee your marriage will stay together and you will have good children. It does not help if you learn Torah. And it certainly does not help if she learns Torah. You need that her father learns Torah.

But not hasidim. There is specifically an excommunication of the Gra against marrying into the cult of hasidim. And from I have seen there is a good reason for  this. Maybe people were not aware of it for a long time but from what can tell the Gra was right on the money.

  I want to suggest that people think too much about understanding what they learn.
In school this can come across in a powerful way. Your whole grade depends on how well you know the material. And this gets transferred to some degree in the yeshiva world in Israel. Tests to see if you know the material are a part of the story there.

But what I want to suggest is that this is the wrong approach to learning.

Certainly we know that when it comes to learning Torah--that that is an obligation on every male Jew from young to old sick or well, and it makes no difference if they are smart as Einstein or a dumb as a door knob.

Not only that but there is a specific obligation to go through the entire Written and Oral Law. This we find in a few places and I don't remember where. But the basic thing that is brought is this:
When one gets to heaven and has to give an account of his deeds the first thing God asks him is on his learning and then after that on his deeds. [This is because deeds flow from what one thinks is right. If you learn Torah your deeds will get better. Rav Shach and Shmuel Berenbaum said today there is no advice but to sit and learn Torah.  Nothing else can help--and nothing else is necessary. If you learn everything thing else will fall into place.]

Did you learn the Old Testament?

Did you learn Mishna?

Did you learn Gemara?

Dito the Work of Creation (which the Rambam says is Physics)

Dito the Divine Chariot (which the Rambam says is Metaphysics)
[Nowadays people are inclined to say the last two mean Kabbalah. I would say that it is true that one should learn all the Ari [Isaac Luria] and Moshe Cordovero, the Rashash and the Ramchal and Yaakov Abuchatzeira. But I don't think that cancels what the Rambam says.

But here I want to bring the idea that in learning all one needs is simplicity and to say the words in order and go on.

And there souls from realms of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which are mixtures of good and evil. And there are four worlds of evil. And there are souls from those worlds.

Divinity of human beings. I have heard that this is a subject brought up concerning converts to Judaism. They ask if the convert thinks that Jesus was divine. If they answer "Yes," this is supposed to imply that they are not worthy converts.
That seems to be not the issue. See Avraham Abulafia and Professor Moshe Idel's academic treatment of his philosophy. The issue seems to be more along these lines, "Is one is allowed to worship any human being even if they are divine?" And the answer there is "No."
Sanhedrin 62.






According to Isaac Luria  any soul from Emanation of the side of holiness is Divine.
אלקות.


Divinity of human beings.
This is something you find a lot by Isaac Luria.

The entire Shaar HaGilgulim שער הגלגולים is devoted to the discussion the Ari had with Reb Chaim Vital about how important his soul is. It goes into great detail about the root of different souls and their source and in what spiritual world they are embedded in.
The whole subject really depends on knowledge of the book the Tree of Life of Isaac Luria.
The basic idea is that you have got four worlds, Emanation, Creation, Formation and the Physical world. And each soul is from some place in one of these worlds. And there souls from  realms  of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which are mixtures of good and evil.
And there are four would of evil. And there are souls from those worlds.

I recommend learning the tree of Life of the Ari and then the Shaar Hagilgulim to get a basic idea of what this is all about.

And this is not something that the Gra would disagree with. The Gra not just has a commentary on Sifra Deztniuta of the Zohar, but goes clearly with the system of the Ari.

Appendix: Emanation is Divine. That means the Divine light which entered into the Empty space came don undifferentiated until it reached the floor of Emanation. That is stated openly in the Zohar and the Ari. So anything lower than Emanation is not Divine.

It can happen that souls of evil get mixed up in the soul of a righteous person and visa versa.
Saying over your good desires to God in fact creates a kind of small soul that goes around in the world until it accomplishes that good desire. It might even enter into a bad person and cause him to think thought so repentance.

Islam is= Killing unbelievers and having sex with their women.

Islam is: Killing unbelievers; Fighting unbelievers; Beheading unbelievers; Terrorizing unbelievers; Extorting money from unbelievers: and Crucifying unbelievers if they criticize Islam.

Being anti-Islam is a good thing. Anti-Islam people are anti-killing, anti-fighting, anti-beheading, anti-terrorizing, anti-stealing, and anti-crucifying, anti rape.

No wonder Duke University Professor, David Schanzer thinks being against Islam is so hateful. Apparently we should all be pro-Islam and promote killing, fighting, beheading, terrorizing, stealing, and crucifying. So much more peaceful.

While there may be moderate Muslims, Islam is Islam. There is no moderate Islam. To be pro-Islam is to be pro-savage. To be anti-Islam is to be pro-civilization.

A very nice note from Joyce Willis ·


I detest Islam, NOT Muslims, just like I detest Nazism, NOT Germans and I detest Stalinism, NOT Russians.

In Islam, *all* non-Muslims are called *unbelievers*, *infidels* or *kafir*(derogatory).

The world is divided into the House of Islam and the House of War, the *Dar al-Islam* and the *Dar al-harb*. The Dar al-Islam is all those lands in which a Muslim government rules and the Holy Law of Islam prevails. Non-Muslims may live there on Muslim sufferance. *The outside world (non-Muslim), which has not yet been subjugated, is called the "House of War," and strictly speaking a perpetual state of *jihad*, or holy war, is imposed by the law*.

The treatment of the infidels in Islam is divided into two categories. The polytheists, pagans, idolaters and heathens have the choice of converting to Islam or suffer death. The Jews and Christians, whom the Koran calls people of the book, can retain their religion but on the sufferance of accepting humiliation and subjugation to Islam and payment of *Jizyah* (poll-tax/extortion) to the Islamic rulers [For more detail read this article: Unfettered Religious Freedom in Islam – A Fact or Fiction? - by Alamgir Hussain].

Now, let us have a closer look at what the Koran says about the infidels:

_Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them_ (2:191).

_Make war on the infidels living in your neighboorhood_ (9:123).

_When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them_ (9:5).

_Kill the Jews and the Christians if they do not convert to Islam or refuse to pay Jizya tax_ (9:29).

_Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable_ (3:85).

_The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them_ (9:30).

_Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticise Islam._ (5:33).

_The infidels are unclean; do not let them into a mosque_ (9:28).

_Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies_ (22:19).

_Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them_(47:4).

_The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them_ (8:65).

_Muslims must not take the infidels as friends_ (3:28).

_Terrorise and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an_ (8:12).

_Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorise the infidels_ (8:60).

The Qur’an certainly proclaims that when the time is appropriate, Muslims must use force to convert the unbelievers to Islam. For the non-Muslims, the alternative to this is to pay the humiliating protection money (Jizya tax) or be killed (by beheading, of course). A militarily dominant Islam, without doubt, precludes the peaceful co-existence with the unbelievers if the Muslims have to abide strictly by the unalterable stipulations of the Qur’an.

I would like to go through the entire Oral and Written Law along with the basic Rishonim and Achronim. But that takes a lot of time. So I thought to share the burden. That is if people would oblige me, I would like them to build a house that would be devoted just to learning Torah and Ethics.
Take for example Tennessee. Just simply put in town a simple building that would have only the Oral and written Torah and books of straight Torah Ethics.
That means the Old Testament, and the Two Talmuds. Torah ethics is what is called Musar, and it is a well known cannon.


There are so  many cults that use Torah to hide their devious and highly destructive intentions that makes this hard to understand why it is a good thing. But I know that it is possible to base a  good and wholesome community solely around this basic building that is devoted to learning Torah.

In Sanhedrin 63, the Talmud considered that "Don't eat on the blood" לא תאכלו על הדםis a general prohibition that includes lots of subcategories. One of the things is the rebellious son בן סורה ומורהץ.
[The reasoning here is that the rebellious son has a few conditions he has to fulfill  and one is a large amount of eating raw meat and drinking something like a gallon of wine.]
But the Talmud right there says we don't give lashes for any prohibition that includes more than one subcategory.

So the question my learning partner asked was. "Then what is the prohibition?"
I answered without thinking "Don't eat on the blood" לא תאכלו על הדם. But that is obviously wrong.
He said there is no prohibition. It is just one of those things that the Torah gives a punishment for without telling you why what he did is wrong or what warning to give to him.

But Tosphot does seem to think the prohibition does come from that verse and then asks on it but we don't give lashes for a prohibition that might lead to the death penalty.  So I was not going to write about this today because it is still unclear. In any case I changed my mind and thought that this still might be interesting to people.


appendix
the general rule is even if there is a verse in the torah which gives a punishment, yo cant punush unless it also says a verse to forbid.

I have thought for a long time if you are learning, you don't need to interrupt for kadish and Kedusha.
This was because I learned in (Tur טור ארח חיים laws of Suka תר''ם) the Beit Yosef who brings down this idea that one who is involved in one mitzvah does not have to interpret for another mitzvah even when he can easily do both.
I found some support for this idea in the Gra that when one is learning Torah he can interrupt to do a mitzvah that no one else can do--but he does not have to. [See the Mishna in Peah]


For the general public I want to explain what I mean here:
In general, a person that is involved in one mitzvah is not required to do another mitzvah.
For example if a person gets married, then he and the groups of friends that are there to make merry are not required to sit in a suka for the whole seven days of marriage festivity [according to the Rambam.]
Another principle is learning Torah is a mitzvah. Torah in this context means the Old Testament or the Talmud.When one is learning Torah, he is allowed to stop to do another mitzvah, but he does not have to.{Gra}. Thus in a synagogue when people get up to say kaddish or kedusha if you are learning, you don't have to answer. All the more so since this usually happens after the time for prayer which is from dawn until 4 hours later.  After that only if one had an unforeseen emergency can he pray until noon. Other than that the pray (blessings in vain) and one is not even allowed to answer Amen.

This came up because of my learning partner who often has to interrupt to answer, and I told him he does not have to answer.

The truth be told there is a much better support for this idea. It is in the Talmud Shavuot pg 43 and 43b with the whole idea there of the "penny of Rav Joseph". [Pruta shel Rav Joseph]. That is when one is in possession of  a lost object, he is not obligated to give a penny to a poor person because he has to watch the object. And Tosphot explains there that even Raba does not disagree with this. Rather he says that just because a poor person might come, we do not say that he is a guard that is paid. The reason is a poor person might not come. So we see everyone agrees העוסק המצווה פטור מן המצווה one involved in one mitzvah does not have to stop in order to do another mitzvah even if the second mitzvah is much more important and even if not doing it involves a prohibition of לא תתעלם

 Now I am Jewish and prefer the Oral and Written Law [the Old Testament and the Talmud] as a working system.

I should mention that a lot of the  work that goes into the Talmud is because we assume the Law of God is meant to be obeyed and that it is self consistent. So ironing out the difficulties is important--it is not just an intellectual exercise but it comes from the fact that we Jews are interested in obeying the word of God.

So what I have suggested is an idea based on Hobbes. You a  government that is allotted only certain powers [as the US Constitution was originally conceived] and within that context there is a voluntary  area of people that accept on themselves to keep the Law of God.]

Is "Don"t serve false gods" a prohibition that includes many sub categories? I mean take the verse לא תעבדם "Don't serve other gods." That seems very specific.

"Don't eat on the blood"לא תאכל על הדם is used for everything except the kitchen sink.
For example the rebellious son. We know the punishment is stoning but where is the prohibition? We use, "Don't eat on the blood." Prohibition on blood from a living animal? Dito. You have a whole list.

So the question raised by my learning partner is why in Sanhedrin 63 is "Don't serve idols" considered to contain many sub categories? It does not seem similar at all.



One thing to consider here is that Rashi says this particular "Don't serve" is not the same one as for regular idolatry. The regular one is in the Ten Commandments. The one the Talmud here is dealing with is in Mishpatim [circa Exodus 30] talking about when the Jewish people enter the Land of Canaan not to serve the gods they find there. This might help someway, but I am not sure of how.

The thing which makes it hard to stick up for the Talmud is Talmudic scholars that are demons. תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים The Talmud itself deals with this problem and it in fact even comes up in the Mishna. But after that it is largely forgotten. I imagine because it was not much of a problem during the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages  to get to be called a Talmudic scholar was so difficult that the process automatically weeded out the bad apples [sorry for the mixed metaphor.]


The best way around this problem is thus to go to any one of the basic set of straight Lithuanian  yeshivas--the three in Brooklyn, NY. (Mirrer, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat), or the ones in Israel Ponovitch, Brisk {and many others in Israel built along the same lines, e.g., Tifrach, Silverman's Yeshivat HaGra in the Old City, etc.}


One reason why it is important to avoid the Dark Side teachers of Torah is because they teach Torah  from the Dark Side.
In summary:  avoid Talmudic scholars that are demons and also the Torah of the Sitra Achra [Dark Side].

Power, money, politics should  to be considered as meaningless. And the more people get into his teachings the more these things lose their significance.

So what to take out of all this is that there is nothing wrong with loving heroes. Everyone love heroes and Jewish people are no different in this regard. The point is to choose your heroes wisely.

What is happening in Renaissance Music is you have the basic song. But what the author does is change the chord of as many notes as he can from what you would think the chord is supposed to be to something else. This is different from Bach. Bach many times makes it a point to change the actual key as often as possible and as soon as possible. That is why it is hard to sing along with Bach. But in the Renaissance, the author leaves the song intact, and changes only the chords. This idea started during the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages also had a few characteristic chords but that is a different topic.
Bach had a few ways to change the chord. Mainly to go to the dominant of the next key he is trying to get to. E.g. he is in C major and wants to go to D major. He will thus go  to A major and then to D.
[This does not work for half steps. But it does work for major or minor keys. I.e. in this way if he is in C major he can go to D Major or D minor.(But not D flat major or minor.)]

 He will also revolve around a certain note like they did in the Renaissance.
I have not really been able to use these ideas for myself, but I thought in case there are talented people out there that might find this useful I thought I should let them know.

[If I could I would share my own music with people, but I have not been very successful in finding a way to do that.]

The only proper sex is between a man and a woman. and that sex in that way is a good and holy thing. And in any other way is bad.

It is in some sense based on Isaac Luria. The idea is that there are letters of the Torah in everything. For the Torah is what gives life to everything that exists. So in the seed of a man is a high concentration of holy letters. And these letters need to be brought to the place that is right for them that can bring new life into the world. So when one brings these letters and holy sparks to the wrong place of an empty space that gives power to the dark side.
And then the Dark Side has power to cause terrible things in the world, death and destruction and war. So this needs to be corrected by the mikveh and the ten psalms.

 That when that happens one should go to the mikveh and say ten psalms. In particular if possible one should say the specific psalms that he said were a correction for this sin. 16,32,41,42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150.

You can see this in Leviticus 18:22 in which homosexuals are said to be the cause of the destruction of the Canaanites nations and that the Jewish people should be careful to stay away from such practices so that they also do not get destroyed. You can see that in this area of values the Torah is not making distinctions between Jews and Gentiles. If the Torah would make a distinction then what it says would make no sense. Rather it is saying that the Cannaties will be wiped out because of such practices --so obviously the Torah thinks there is some kind of inherent guilt in such actions. Nor does the Torah preach tolerance about such things.


 source material  Eitz Chaim of the Ari. the Mavo Shearim .Then the basic place in the Ari that talks about sins and corrections for sin is Shaar Ruach HaKodesh which gives a lot of unifications and a number of fasts for sins.

Is "joining" שיתוף (Joining something to G-d) more serious than idolatry or less?
This is an argument between R Meir of the Mishna and R Shimon Ben Yochai

But the Rambam says one must not join the name of God and something else in an oath because one who does this is uprooted from the world.[Thus going with R Shimon and confining the law of joining to oaths. Two things that need answers.]


The argument is in Sanhedrin 63.
R Meir said, "If not for the letter vav in 'These are your gods,'
(which was said to the Golden Calf) Israel would have been liable to be destroyed."

R. Shimon said, "But anyone who joins the name of God with something else is uprooted from this world as it says 'to God alone.' Rather the vav is to tell us they desired many gods." [In Avoda Zara it is explained that that means they accepted the Golden Calf but were open to accepting other god also. But they did not join God with the Golden Calf. And if they had that would have been worse.  ]

The Maharsha says that joining is what the Rambam describes at the beginning of the Laws of Idolatry. And there the Rambam says the main idea of idolatry was they saw that God put the stars in Heaven so it is his will that we should honor them just like he honors them, and by that they will be advocates for us. [The Rambam  goes into detail about this also in his commentary on the Mishna. This is known in the  as the problem of the אמצעי intermediate. That is people know God is the creator but they feel they can't approach Him directly so they go through a middle step like a person or anything else to serve as a middle step.]
Then the Rambam says  the actual idolatry that we know came after that. It seems the Rambam is saying the later step was worse. That is the אמצעי (emtzai) (using an  intermediate) is less serious.

But then when you look at the Rambam about actual שיתוף joining --in the only place he actual brings up our Gemara-he says one who swears by God and something else will be uprooted--that is the opinion of R Shimon. Not like R Meir!

So what we have here is what seems like a contradiction in the Rambam.

Joining is not necessarily the same problem as an intermediate. But it might be.

At any rate, I thought by mistake that the Rambam  thinks that an oath is a deed. It is the same as when one exchanges one animal for another in which there is a deed accomplished by his words "this is in place of that."
But my learning partner pointed out that this really does not help. The Rambam does not mention anything about lashes in laws of oaths 11 where her brings this law about "Shituf" שיתוף joining. It matters only in laws of idolatry where one who swears by a false god gets lashes.
And  a person could bring a sacrifice to God and an idol together. For example take a regular sacrifice a person is bringing to God in the Temple and the person bringing it has intention to serve some false god along with God. Either just intention of he could say something, or have originally sanctified the sacrifice to God and to his false god. Hasidim do this all the time. There is nothing unusual about it. Hasidim do everything as a kind of service to their false god. Not just sacrifice.

______________________________________________________________________________

Post Appendix: In any case my idea that the Rambam holds swearing seems to be incorrect. The actual issue is brought up in laws of idolatry.
Rambam: "One who swears by a false god gets lashes."

 Raavad: "Only to R Yehuda who holds lashes are given to one who does a prohibition even if there is no act. But we (and the Rambam) hold lashes are given only when there is an act except for swearing, replacing, and cursing."
And our case of swearing by a false god is not in the list of three exceptions.
_____________________________________________________________________

At any rate, I just wanted to say that my learning partner decided that we should not spend any more time on this Rambam. And I would not have said anything about it if I did not have this idea of an oath being an act which I think is wrong now. but when I had the idea I thought it might provide a hint to understanding the Rambam. [It is a fact that the Minchat Chinuch does say that that is how the Rambam holds but I don't think it could be right.]
See Rav Elazar Menachem Shach's Avi Ezri  on laws of idolatry  about teh halacha where teh rambam says one who swears by an idol gets lashes.

This idea is based on his general concept that the only proper sex is between a man and a woman. and that sex in that way is a good and holy thing. And in any other way is bad.

It is in some sense based on Isaac Luria

. The idea is that there are letters of the Torah in everything. For the Torah is what gives life to everything that exists. So in the seed of a man is a high concentration of holy letters. And these letters need to be brought to the place that is right for them that can bring new life into the world. So when one brings these letters and holy sparks to the wrong place of an empty space that gives power to the dark side.
And then the Dark Side has power to cause terrible things in the world, death and destruction and war. So this needs to be corrected by the mikveh and the ten psalms.


 nocturnal pollution. That when that happens one should go to the mikveh and say ten psalms. In particular if possible one should say teh specific psalms that he said were a correction for this sin. 16,32,41,42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150.

You can see this attitude reflected in Leviticus 18:22 in which homosexuals are said to be the cause of the destruction of the Canaanites nations and that the Jewsih people should be careful to stay away from such practices so that they also do not get destroyed. You can see that in this area of values the Torah is not making distinctions between Jews and Gentiles. If the Torah would make a distinction then what it says would make no sense. Rather it is saying that the Cannaties will be wiped out because of such practices --so obviously the Torah thinks there is some kind of inherent guilt in such actions. Nor does the Torah preach tolerance about such things.

What it seems  to me after looking at the Talmud and the Rambam is that worship of a tzadik is a problem.  This you can see in a most direct fashion in the 13 principles of Faith of the Rambam in principle 5. But what the Rambam is saying there seems to be accepted across the board. At least that is what it looks like to me from what I have seen in Sanhedrin 60b until 63a, and from what my learning partner has told me about Nachmanides' idea of what the Golden Calf was about.
And it is this approach of the Rambam, Nachmanides, and the Talmud itself that I think should be considered as the basic Torah approach.  And given the most weight. So when  closeness with a tzadik is important, we will have to take that in the general context of the world view of the Torah,--not as something that can outweigh the 'Rambam, Ramban' and the Gemara itself.

In other words--there is a fine line between closeness to a tzadik and the things above mentioned that one is not allowed to do, like praising him or asking him for help to come close to God.


Appendix :
1) Principle five: It is not proper to praise or ask help from or ask any created thing to bring one close to God.
[The Rambam lists there everything from the angels, constellations and stars to things created from the four elements.] [It is in his commentary on the Mishna. You can also see the the same basic idea in his Yad HaChazaka (Mishna Torah) in the beginning of the laws of idolatry.]

2) So Christianity has one good point-- it has a tzadik who said right things. And we know there is a great deal of importance in believing in a tzadik. But that does not mean to believe that that tzadik is divine.  Or to worship that tzadik, or even to praise him. While praise of humans is OK, but when Divinity is attributed to some person - then it becomes a problem.
Or at least that is the way it looks to me from Tosphot [Sanhedrin 63a]. But we find countless of tzadikim to whom divinity is attributed. When Bava Sali said that his son Meir is a soul from Emanation which we know is all Divine, no one objected. The Ari devotes to entire Shaar HaGilgulim to many tzadikim whose souls were from Atzilut. But then no one prays to them. So we seem to have hit a road block.
 It seems to me that the problem that Christianity ought to deal with is this: worship of a tzadik is not good, but belief in a tzadik is good. It seems this distinction ought to be be made, and even sharpened.
3) What I am assuming here is that the Torah has a point  of view. That is maybe a little hard to see. We know that people have points of view, but can you say a certain document has a point of view? I think you can. So when I look at the Talmud or the 'Rambam or the Ramban' I am looking not for their point of view, but I am looking for help in understanding what the Torah itself might be thinking about a certain issue. The worldview of the Torah or Daat of the Torah.
I know this sounds like cheating. When Christians want to understand what the Torah holds, they go to the C.S. Lewis or Chesterton.  Why is my going to the Rambam any different?  Mainly because the Middle Ages were more careful not to indulge in circular reasoning. So any modern author is not  valid as far as I am concerned, because it is just a matter of time until you find fatal flaws in their reasoning. So any debate about the OT or NT can't be based on post medieval authors. So we are left with the Rambam, and Nachmanides verses Aquinas.  Or you could go to the NT and OT yourself to figure out the one rigorous self consistent world view in each. But that is usually beyond the capability of every person. My feeling is that Aquinas is stemmed in by the fact he has to get the OT and NT to correspond.  So I feel free to say that the Rambam was the most accurate and won the debate.
Plus Dr Kelly Ross noticed that Aquinas did not get Aristotle and the NT to fit. Judging by that he would have had to have gone back to the Neo-platonists. And that would have left him in the same soup he was trying to get out of.
4) The Torah worldview is monotheism, not pantheism. But what kind of Monotheism? Rambam's Aristotle's? Or Nachmanides' Neo Platonic? And the Torah does have a world view about commandments. That is that they exist. They are not nullified as soon as someone keeps them. And such an idea seems absurd anyway. For example the Torah says to bring the daily burnt offering in the morning and one in the afternoon. [A male sheep]. Let's say in theory I would keep that commandment perfectly one day. Would that mean I don't have to keep it the next day?  Surely not because the Torah says explicitly to do this every day.

I think I must have written this on my blog before but I wanted to just restate the issue because of some added clarity I gained today.

This came up in Sanhedrin page 62 but the major sugia is in Shabat 69.

I was looking at the Rambam about the 39 types of work on Shabbat and I noticed that there is a lot of discussion about a problem that the son of the Rambam addresses and Rav Shach also.

R. Yochanan holds if one does an act of work on shabbat and knows it is forbidden but forgot the penalty it is considered an accident and so he can bring a sin offering. Reish Lakish holds that is considered that he did it on purpose--and so can't bring a sin offering.
R Yochanan asks why does the Mishna say 39 types of work are forbidden? It listed them all. What is the point of giving us the number? Answer: To tell us if he did all 39 in one span of forgetfulness he brings 39 sin offerings [goats or sheep.]
The Talmud asks, "But what could Reish Lakish do here? If he forgets all thirty nine, then in what way did he remember Shabbat?" [The idea is if he forgot about Shabbat completely, he brings only one, and if he never knew about Shabbat at all then he brings only one for all Shabats.]

My learning partner noticed that the reason the Gemara did not ask the same question on R. Yochanan is because with R.Y. we start with a case he remembered that one act of work is forbidden and forgot the penalty. So all we did was to expand the case to 39. And in that case we are dealing with the case he knew all 39 are forbidden, but forgot the penalty. It is only to R.L. alone that this can't work- because it would be considered doing the work on purpose.

But the Rambam seems to be saying if one forgot all 39 kinds of works and also their penalty, he brings 39 sin offerings. And so what worked for the Gemara, does not  work for the Rambam.
And that is the reason the son of the Rambam, and all the commentaries and even Rav Shach are looking for ways of answering for the Rambam.

That is all I have to say. But in case you are curious I might as well mention what the son of the Rambam answered and also Rav Shach. Reb Avraham [the Rambam's son] said that the Rambam does not mean he forgot both the 39 and their penalties, or he remembered the toldot [non principle types]. Rav Shach said he remembered 12 miles is teh boundary of Shabbat to all opinions from the Torah. [The Talmud answered the boundary of Shabbat  according to the opinion of Rabbi Akiva for Reish Lakish. Why the Talmud needed to do this I am not sure.]

I have a basic set of attitudes about current day issues. But I try to base my attitudes as much as possible on the Written and Oral Law (the Torah and Talmud).

So what I think about Islam, or discrimination or Christianity or personal issues or even the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is going to be predictably based on the Talmud.

So in essence I don't have to write anything. Just open up the Talmud and you will see what I think.

Of course the Talmud can be hard to understand so it is helpful to go to Rishonim medieaval authorities.  [Achronim are a waste of time, except for the few outstanding ones like R. Akiva Eiger and the school of Chaim Soloveitchik and Rav Shach on the Rambam.

But I realize that people are not learning Talmud very much. Especially Christians barely touch the book.  So I might as well say over a few of my opinions based as much as possible on how well I can grasp what the Talmud is saying.

1) Islam. The Talmud says one has aright to self defence.  הקם להרגך הקדם להרגו "When one person is getting up in the morning to kill you, get up earlier and kill him." Israel has a right to self defence. And it does not need to wait until it is attached. It can attack as long as the intentions of its neighbors are clear. And the intentions of the  Arab population living in Israel are clear. Israel does not need to wait until every Arab attempts to murder a Jew.

2) Blacks deserve to be treated with honor and respect as any human being. But when the intentions of whole communities becomes clear, the same above mentioned right to self defense applies to whites. Wasps (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) have a right to self defence.

3) Russia does not have a right to support the separatists. This is based on the Rambam who gets it from some place in the Talmud. In the Rambam there is a concept of a country מדינה, and one country is not allowed to invade another country. If this was just an issue of right and wrong it would be simple to tell the separatists to lay down their weapons and get back to everyday business.

4) Sex changes are not valid.  A woman remains a woman and a man a man.

5) Male Homosexuals. If the act is done in front of two witness. it is liable the death penalty. But you can bake a cake for them.  If the act is not done in front of two witness, but still done on purpose, there is not much anyone can do. If the act is done accidently, they both need to bring a sin offering to the Temple in Jerusalem,--a she goat or a female sheep. If there is no Temple, they need to build it, and then bring the offering. They can't depend on the death of any Tzadik to take their place. The Torah requires a sin offering and that is that.

6) Christianity has two things,  one is right and one is  wrong. One thing right is  a tzadik. One thing wrong is worship of a tzadik. You can look up Avraham Abulafia and Yaakov Emden who have the same opinion. [Professor Moshe Idel made a career of studying Avraham Abulafia, and his first PhD thesis brings this opinion of Avraham Abulafia.] Some people think that it is a mitzvah to fight Christianity and block it and stamp out every last remnant of it in the USA and the whole world. That is not my opinion. And for those that think this way I recommend learning the essay if Yaakov Emden and the books of Moshe Idel and Rav Abulafia. So when I see the Supreme Court and the  homosexuals and   Democrats and Muslims intend to wipe Christianity off the face of the Earth, my feeling is that Christians ought to fight back. Fight evil.  Don't let them win.

Sometimes people believe in a tzadik [righteous person] too much. That is they overdo it. And that I think is a problem.
We know from the Gemara that an intermediate is forbidden according to the Torah. As the Rambam puts it, we must not worship or praise or pray to any being besides God himself in order that that being should be an intercessor between us and God. But that is better than believing in a bad person.


We find people that are not strictly Monotheists in the sense of the Rambam and yet  believe in some tzadik  and that seems to be helpful. And we find other people that are monotheistic and yet believe in some bad person and that seems to affect them also to become wicked.

From what I can tell this idea of belief in  a tzadik [that is that it is important to find a true tzadik] is highly plausible. Even Litvaks try to find the most righteous Rosh Yeshiva to learn from.The truth is it is hard to argue with this premise.
That problem is -as many people already are aware- that once a person gets the idea that belief in a tzadik is important, he or she will most often attach themselves to some charlatan and plays the role of a tzadik with great expertise.

There are groups that I think are on the wrong path, and I am thinking it is usually because of some issue with their leader, rather that how monotheistic they are.
For example Muslims. It seems to me that the issue is that their false prophet was a bad man. Also I see people get involved in some charismatic leader that is teaching values that are highly questionable and that in fact seems to affect them to act in bad ways.

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai of the Mishna says you go by the reason for a mitzvah to see if the mitzvah applies. דורשים טעמה דקרא

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai of the Mishna says you go by the reason for a mitzvah to see if the mitzvah applies. דורשים טעמה דקרא

And the Sages say you don't.

It is known that there is a contradiction in the Rambam [Maimonides] if we go by R. Shimon or the Sages.
 And this came up in Bava Metzia but I never got there with my learning partner so I never learned that subject with any depth.
But I thought to at least lay out the basic subject for public information.
In Bava Metzia this comes up about the widow. לא תחבול בגד אלמנה"Thou shalt not take a garment of a widow as a pledge for a loan." R. Shimon] says if she is not poor you can take a pledge [because we go by the reason for the verse. Even though the verse don't take a pledge from a widow still we know the reason for this is because of compassion for her poor state. If she is not poor there is no reason not to take  a pledge.] [Notice we do not say there is any mystical reason for the mitzvah. Even the sages agree that we know the reason for all the mitzvot except for just one. The only argument is if we go by the reason or by what is written.]
Here the Rambam goes with the Sages. But by the prohibition of marrying a woman that serves idols the Rambam goes by the reason and not by what is written.
I thought the Rambam had an idea of the reason modifying how we apply the mitzvah because of what he wrote in the commentary on the Mishna.
But then I saw Rav Shach [of the Ponovitch Yeshiva in Bnei Brak] wrote about the law in the Rambam about a city of idolaters on the border of Israel, that even Rabbi Shimon agrees that the only question is if the mitzvah applies in a certain situation or not. We never use the reason to modify the rules.
The law in the Rambam is Laws of Idolatry 4:4. A עיר הנדחת  If a city of idolaters is on the border of Israel we don't destroy it so that the border should not be left open. That reason is to R Shimon. From this Rav Shach proves his point you don't modify the law based on the reason for the law.
The idea here is how you would apply the law here would be different if we went by the Sages--which we do. So the Rambam bringing the reason of RS is not meant to modify it.

[I have depended on RS even though he is not the halacha, because I consider my situation to be שעת הדחק  emergency. We use the same logic for other things like new produce  חדש. We say We can depend on R Eliezer in an emergency. This is even though clearly the halacha is not like him. This gives rise to the fact that I sometimes take any opinion mentioned in the Gemara as my rule. In fact I have used the Gemara as my personal code of law --ever since my entire situation became a state of extreme emergency. But because the world is messed up I thought I should tell others because there could be other people out there that also find themselves in situations that are hard and can't be as strict in law as perhaps we all should be. What makes my situation to be  what I think is a emergency is the group of people that normally I would try be fit in with--the group that tries to keep the Torah-had been taken over by the Dark Side, the Sitra Achra, as is well known. So if I or anyone else wants to keep the Torah we have to do it on our own and and say as far as possible from those that make a display of keeping Torah. Hasidim work for the exact opposite of what they claim. In this world nothing is what it seems.]

I should mention that there are people that do not consider going through an intermediate as a problem. There are groups that think this is OK. But I think the Torah is right that this is a problem. I dont know why people ignore the Torah in this detail, but to me it seems like a serious matter.With the vav they were joining G-d with the Golden Calf

Is "joining" שיתוף (Joining something to G-d) more serious than idolatry or less?
This is an argument between R Meir of the Mishna and R Shimon Ben Yochai

But the Rambam seems to make an amalgamation of the two opinions.
The argument is in Sanhedrin 63.
R Meir said, "If not for the letter vav in 'These are your gods,'
(which was said to the Golden Calf) Israel would have been liable to be destroyed."
[The vav makes it plural. Without it it would have been "This is your god" referring to teh Golden Calf. With the vav they were joining G-d with the Golden Calf]
R. Shimon said, "But anyone who joins the name of God with something else is uprooted from this world as it says 'to God alone.' Rather the vav is to tell us they desired many gods." [In Avoda Zara it is explained that that means they accepted the Golden Calf but were open to accepting other god also. But they did not join God with the Golden Calf. And if they had that would have been worse.  ]

The Maharsha says that joining is what the Rambam describes at the beginning of the Laws of Idolatry. And there the Rambam says the main idea of idolatry was they saw that God put the stars in Heaven so it is his will that we should honor them just like he honors them, and by that they will be advocates for us. [The Rambam  goes into detail about this also in his commentary on the Mishna. This is known in the  as the problem of the אמצעי intermediate. That is people know God is the creator but they feel they can't approach Him directly so they go through a middle step like a person or anything else to serve as a middle step.]
Then the Rambam says  the actual idolatry that we know came after that. It seems the rambam is saying the later step was worse. That is the אמצעי (emtzai) (using an  intermediate) is less serious.

But then when you look at the Rambam about actual שיתוף joining --in the only place he actual brings up our Gemara-he says one who swears by God and something else will be uprooted--that is the opinion of R Shimon. Not like R Meir!

So what we have here is what seems like a contradiction in the Rambam.
I should mention that there are people that do not consider going through an intermediate as a problem. There are groups that think this is OK. But I think the Torah is right that this is a problem.
I don't know why people ignore the Torah in this detail, but to me it seems like a serious matter.
I don't mean to be critical of any tzadik. But even a tzadik  should not be an intermediate.

When I read  the introduction of Maimonides to the Mishna, I was surprised to see that he had already at the beginning of his life laid out his plan about what he was going to write. He already had the basic outline of the Yad HaChazaka (Mishneh Torah) and the Guide for the Perplexed already laid out in his mind.
This reinforced what I was anyway thinking about the Rambam that his switch to Aristotle was intentional and meant to clarify the issue of idolatry. He meant it from the beginning, and it was not some fluke at the end of his life.

He wanted the difference between idolatry and Monotheism to be sharp and distinct and not dependent on degrees. Of course you could ask who does not want that? Everyone wants that! But my point is no one could get it. With Nachmanides or any Neoplatonic system, it is completely arbitrary where you draw the line between godliness and not godliness. Obviously the Rambam meant right from the beginning to stamp that out.
As long as you believe in Emanation, then anything you want can be godliness. And you can conveniently say the line stops where you want it to stop so that your system is conveniently kosher and everyone else's is not.  Perfect. [I don't claim that was the only reason the Rambam switched to Aristotle. The Neo Platonic systems had anyway been tried and failed. I don't recall what the problems were off hand. Maybe the third person problem was one thing.(Which is only a problem if you consider substance to be not a composite.)]

At any rate, we do have Nachmanides with his Neoplatonic approach, which does tend to balance the playing field.

And this leads to the question about שיתןף "joining" in Tosphot Sanhedrin 63b.

 I am not sure what that Tosphot means. He says one can have a business with Christians because of 1) when  they swear by their holy things, they don't intend godliness, 2) when they mention Jesus, they intend the Maker of heaven, 3) they are not commanded about "joining."
So far I have not been able to make heads or tails about what Tosphot means here.

I am guessing that maybe in the Middle Ages people would swear by the wafer. The second thing seems to be dealing with the Trinity of Athenius.  The third thing seems to be some kind of idea about Emanation because otherwise why would they not be commanded not to do joining?

And it is hard to know why Christianity would be "joining" שיתוף. Joining we know from page 63a means to join something else to God. What Christians do is say x=y. That is not the same as x+y.

Appendix:
1] I should mention just to clarify that saying someone is the son of God is not a problem because the Torah does this all the time.  בנים אתם להשם אלהיכם, שלח את בני ויעבדני, בני בכורי ישראל "You are the children of the Lord your God," "Send out my son so that he will worship me." "Israel is the first born of God." "My son, my first, born Israel." So if all the Jewish people are children of God, then specifying one particular member of the entire set as a son of God is not an exception to the rule.
So if your father says, "These three boys are my children" and then says "This boy [who is in the set of all three boys] is my son," there is no contradiction because he was already part of the entire set.
2] Tosphot is not referring to Roman Catholic doctrine after Aquinas. Rather to pre-Aquinas doctrine which was Neo-Platonic.
3] We can see why pantheism would be a problem. Not only is it not what the Torah is saying, but also it has this aspect that the Rambam did not like about  Emanation. [To the Rambam there is no emanation.]
4] To the Rambam God is the First Cause. He is not a composite.
5] It is not just that I do not understand the individual points of Tosphot. It is also I don't know how he is combining his points.
6] We find for example that the Ari considers the souls of people like the patriarchs to be from the world of Emanation. And that we know from the Zohar and the Ari is Godliness. To the Ari the bottom of Emanation is where godliness ends and creation begins. That is explicit in the Zohar. And in the Shaar HaGilgulim of the Ari and Reb Chaim Vital we find this theme extended greatly. We find even Bava Sali said about his son, Meir Abuchatzeira that his soul was from Emanation. So it is not unusual to claim someone is Divine. No one considered it even to be a theological problem. Mainly because people form their ideas based on group identity, and not because they actually think about the implications of their beliefs.
7] So the venues of future exploration are the Gemara in Suka and the other Tosphots that bring up this issue.   The Gemara in Suka asks on the Mishna the question of "joining."
8] My own opinion I should mention is like that of the Rambam. God is one, not two and not three, and not a composite. And I don't think anyone's soul is Godliness. But I am willing to accept that some people are divinely inspired like Moses and the prophets.

) Stay away from doctors.
) Stay away from psychologists.
) Stay away from people that present themselves as teaching Torah. (There are not many exceptions but the heads of Lithuanian yeshivas are exceptions to this rule in that they in fact are just teaching Torah.)

)They are all false healers, and are put on earth in order to make people sick. Doctors are here to make people physically sick. Psychologists to make people mentally sick. And people that teach Torah are to make people spiritually sick.

) Learn Torah in the straight Lithuanian Yeshiva Path. Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot.

) Go to a forest to talk with God (This is hard in NY, and easy in Safed. If you are in NY, and no forest is around, just being in your room alone and talking with God is also good.)


) Learn fast. Very fast. Say the words quickly in order and go on. I have used this method for years but also learned in ways that I think applied to me. For example I have a learning partner which is a prime axiom in the Litvak world.  Also when I was at Polytechnic, I said the words forwards and backwards because I was under pressure to pass exams. I could not rely on the idea I would eventually read the material again. I had to know it then and there.
For myself I also combine ideas from my parents,  the Rambam, the Gra and Rav Shach.  I am not saying my path is anything anyone else would agree with. It is just that it works for me.

I notice that sometimes I bring up this small paragraph in the Talmud about the argument between Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai and it seems to make some people uncomfortable. The basic idea is simple. R Meir said they said to the Golden Calf, "These are your gods Oh Israel which brought you out from Egypt." If they had said "This is" they would have been destroyed. R. Shimon said But anyone who joins the name of God with something else is uprooted from this world . So it must be they desired many gods.
This statement of R Shimon has two possible meanings. One is that joining is worse than idolatry. But then there would be a question from the verse he brings as a proof "Only to God."
Or he means idolatry and joining are equal but they did not accept the Gold Calf but just desired it. But then we have a question from the verse where they said "these are your gods."

The reason I think that people don't like to her this is because "joining" is a delicate point.

For one thing sometimes a person is following some great leader--and in fact that leader is great, or sometimes there are following someone who is not great. But in both cases they are adding something to God. So when I mention this particular small paragraph it makes them uncomfortable.

There is a limit to sexual freedom from the standpoint of the Torah. Reform Judaism is admirable in many ways but in this issue I think they are going against the Torah.
The right aspects of Reform are its support of Israel and recognition of the importance of laws of the Torah between man and his fellow man. And my family in fact went to Temple Israel of Hollywood and that is where I had my bar mitzvah. But Reform is not careful enough when it comes to laws between God and man. In any case, I would still attend only Temple Israel as that was the place my parents decided was right for us. But personally I would try to be more careful about the laws of the Torah.
In any case, when I decided to learn Torah I went to NY, and was very happy with the Lithuanian yeshiva world. But if I was in LA, I still would go only to Temple Israel,  [and avoid the insane religious world  there like the black plague.]
[I was a few years in Shar Yashuv Far Rockaway, NY which was an amazing place. And later at the Mirrer Yeshiva which was better than an LSD trip.] OK that is maybe not the best metaphor. Let's just say the Mir was a stupendous  place for the few years I was there. And I think that anyone who wants to have an idea of what the Torah is about also should attend a straight Litvak place for at least four years.[Which was the time I was at the Mir.]
I should mention for the general public that the normal time frame of a Lithuanian yeshiva is in fact exactly four years. You go through  four levels until the top class. But the actual cycle of a Litvak yeshiva is seven years--for the three Bava's  and Ketubot, Gitin, Kidushin and Yevamot.

[For me everything got mixed up because in my switch from Shar Yashuv to the Mir I ended up in Far Rockaway in the middle of Yevamot   and I had just finished Ketubot. Then when I got to the Mir they were doing Nedarim for Elul and then started Ketubot. So I joined the Shabat group. That was a small group that were doing Shabat.] 

It is hard to figure out what R. Shimon ben Yochai is saying in Sanhedrin 63.
There is one question because the verse he brings does not distinguish between "joining" (שיתוף) and regular idolatry בלתי להשם לבדו [To God alone].

So let me lay out the basic paragraph and then I will say over the problems.

 Rabbi Meir said, "If not for the letter "vav" in 'these are your gods, O Israel, which brought you out from Egypt,' the Jewish people would have been destroyed."

R Shimon said, "Anyone who joins the name of Heaven with something else is uprooted from this world. Rather it means they desired many gods."

What it seems at first glance  is this. It would not have mattered if they had done pure idolatry or joining--in any case they would have been destroyed. Rather they only desired other gods. This makes sense. But then what do we do with the fact they said, "These are your gods Israel." They did more than desire. They accepted.

So now we understand why Rashi said in fact just that: They accepted other gods. But then what is R. Shimon saying?

Now just to be clear, the verse בלתי להשם לבדו "To God alone" is from the verse "He who sacrifices to the gods will be destroyed,.. only to God alone." Exodus 32. That is: One must not sacrifice to the gods, only to God. This does not distinguish between to other gods and to other gods with God. As far as this verse is concerned it is all the same thing. One must sacrifice to God alone, and anything else is bad.

And I hoped to get insight by opening up the Talmud in Suka 45b. But so far I have gotten nowhere.

What I had thought at first is R. Shimon is saying joining something with God is worse than straight idolatry. And if that was the case, everything would be OK except the verse "To God alone." --which has one complete set of services towards God alone--and everything outside that set is not OK.

This is relevant modern day issues because Christianity is considered by Tosphot to be "joining" [Sanhedrin 63b].  That is Tosphot thinks Christianity is joining someone to God. But then he says gentiles are not commanded against this. But why not?
In any case, it looks to me that Tosphot is right because even Thomas Aquinas has trouble getting past the idea that the physical body of Jesus was God. I forget his answer but at the time I read it, it did not sound very convincing. I will leave that to  modern Scholastic Scholars like Feser.

There is a basic canon of Torah that is different than the Christian canon. The basic Torah cannon includes the written Torah which we have together with Christians but also the Oral Law which Christians don't accept.
But the Torah cannon is not fluid. You can't just write a book in Hebrew about Torah topics and say it is a part of the Oral Law.--even though people do this all the time. The reason they do this is the basic Torah cannon is hard to read. It is not light literature. And it is hard to understand. And it is against worship of people. If some person has  a particular figure he admires and he wants to worship him or her, they add some book or series of books that  make worship of that person to be considered kosher and desirable.


Appendix:
1) The Torah cannon is the regular "Tenach" (Old Testament), the two Talmuds, Mechilta, Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta, Torah Cohanim, Midrash Raba. It is  lot to read, but you could go through it in a year or two.  When you add the commentaries, it takes more time.
2) The Torah cannon also is different in the weight given to each section. The Oral Law is not given the same weight as the Written Law. We know it is just human beings trying to understand the Divine wisdom of Torah. But it has more weight that just anyone's opinion.
3) Halacha literature has a funny kind of status. Because it tends to stick with the Oral Law it partakes in some aspect of the respect we have for the Oral Law. It at least has the advantage that it is understandable. You don't need to spend two weeks on one page as you do when you study Talmud. But it has the disadvantage that it is not in fact the Oral Law. It is just someones opinion of what the oral law would say about some issue.
4) Kabalah also has a funny kind of status. It is not the Oral Law. But some people think it was handed down in some kind of secret tradition. Even so, it is not the Oral Law. It is, at best, a possible addition.
5) Shelomo Luria had a few choice words about the Rambam. Let's say he did not like the idea of anyone trying to rewrite the Oral Law--even someone of the stature of the Rambam. Nowadays the divorce between halacha and the Talmud is complete.  People that follow halacha don't know nor care what the Talmud says. And the modern Halacha books of the Charedi world are perversions of halacha as understood by the Talmud--even those of Rav Ovadia Joseph. Certainly Reb Ovadia did not intend this but the simplifications he introduced into a halacha are definite perversions.
E.g. you can crack nuts on Shabat and put the shells on the table. To say otherwise is a perversion of halacha. You can't make a pile. So what you have is people supposedly trying to make halacha simple but what they end up doing is distorting it into Picasso portraits.
And in fact even this is being stricter than you really have to be. Because that Mishna (Chapter Beit Shamai in Shabat where this issue comes from) is Beit Shamai--the Gemara reversed the order right there. The opinion of Beit Hillel right there is even shells of nuts that you can't eat are not mukza. [That is Rashi's opinion there on the page.] And that is  Stam Mishna (a mishna with no names) [Beit Hill and Beit Shamai is considered "stam"] coming after an argument and the Halacha is like Stam, Not to mention Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai who does not hold by mutza at all except for things that are not fit for any use and which one put away like figs on a roof to dry.[The halacha is in far like Rabbi Shimon, but the Talmud itself does state cases in which R. Shimon would agree there is muktza --so I am not using his opinion here to find a permission. I am just mentioning it as another factor to add to the role call.] And if you look at the reason for muktzah the Raavad brings, the reason for it don't apply when there is no public domain around. [600,000.]
So I am not saying Reb Ovadia is not right. Rather it is possible to simplify halacha without perverting it. Halacha today means taking the most strict opinion and making it stricter (in the name of making it "simple") and then presenting it as an unquestionable immutable law given at Mount Sinai.

So fine that Reb Ovadia wants to say that shells are muktza. Fine, he has plenty of support. All I am saying is when people write in his name not to peel the shells and put them on the table that is plainly false. And even the shells --it is not to everyone that they are mukza. What if not everyone wants to be strict?  But strict or not is not even the issue. It is the fact that the Talmud is considered irrelevant to this discussion. No one would even dream of opening up  a Gemara to discover a halacha. That is what I mean to say when I say the Halacha has been divorced from the Oral Law.

People believe in Torah and yet worship humans.

And this creates  cognitive dissonance. People believe in Torah and yet  worship humans. It is a true critique that I feel should not be ignored. [In fact, most of the so called religious world is subject to this phenomenon.]
Some Litvaks, like my friend Rav Silverman [pronounced Zilverman] in the Old City (Jerusalem), see this flaw and therefore decided that the Gra was right to dismiss the entire realm of anything coming from the Baal Shem Tov. [Even though the actual Cherem was on the school of  Magid from Meztrich.] SinceRav Nahman of Breslov was not a disciple of that school so the Cherem did not apply to him. The Cherem was not on the Baal Shem Tov or all his disciples. See the book that brings the actual letters.




Appendix:
1)There are other Litvaks [Lithuanian Jews] who see this flaw

There is a verse in the Torah which Rav Shick used as a proof of pantheism, "There is nothing without God" אין עוד מלבדו. But if you open the Rambam יסודי התורה א:ה you can see he explains that verse to mean there is nothing without God, not there is nothing but God.


There is a word that is used to describe the faith of the Torah--that is traditional Jewish Faith -Monotheism. Rav Shick has tried to present panentheism as traditional Jewish faith and some people are taken in by this scam because of lack of learning Torah.

Now Rav Shick himself was probably never aware that what he was teaching was not the Jewish faith. He never read the basic works of traditional authentic Jewish thought. That meant he never read the Guide of the Rambam, nor the Emunot VeDeot of Saadia Gaon or the Ibn Ezra. or the first chapter of the Chovot Levavot. So if all his reading consisted of Kabbalah, it is easy to see how he might have missed this basic fact of Jewish faith--monotheism.

Not that I have anything in particular against pantheism as a philosophical possibility. Just I am not thrilled when it is presented as Jewish faith.


So Rav Shick made an honest mistake. But it is no credit to him if we continue believing this mistake.The Torah is Monotheistic.]

The main idea of Israel is the idea of protection of individual rights for everyone in its borders-regardless of faith. This is displayed very well in the case of enemies of Jews that live in Israel that work to kill Jews and yet their rights are still respected unless they actually break some law. It is a degree of respect for individual rights that you don't see anywhere else.

At any rate the only way that I can see one can defend the state of Israel is from a libertarian point of view, of respect and protection for all people in its borders--even those that ought not to be protected.



 There is something about the superorganism and the State that is interesting at least. All I am saying is that you can't defend any state from the standpoint of Hegel because I just don't think nationalism is that great of a principle. While people certainly choose their morality based on group identity but I see that as a negative thing. I think it is better to choose ones morality based on principles that are perceivable by reason.

In Israel, there is a tight kind of community that believes in just learning Torah. This is different from the American yeshiva world, in  that going to work in Israel is considered a bad thing. The thing that keeps this going is government stipends from the State of Israel. Some use this stipend system even though they could not care less about learning Torah. But that is to be expected with any kind of institution. There will always be people around that will try to misuse it.
In any case, it seems to be an ideal situation for people that want to learn Torah their whole lives. And some people manage within this system fairly well.  I can tell by a glance who is learning Torah seriously, and who is just playing games. And I can tell there are a considerable number of people that are very much into the idea of sitting and learning all their lives for the sake of Torah alone. You don't see this much in the USA, even if people say that that is what they are doing. But in Israel you see this in  cities where there are traditional Lithuanian yeshivas.

I should mention this is an ideal I believe in, even if I don't have the merit to do it myself.

On the other hand there is a parallel community of Religious Zionist yeshivas that do believe in work and this system also I approve of. And each one I think is good and I have no preference one over the other. But it is when I see abuse of either system that bothers me.
The advantage of the Religious Zionist is that you see less abuse of the system. If people want money, they work.  If they are satisfied with little, they learn. You don't get that freedom in the Lithuanian yeshivas. But in the Lithuanian yeshivas, you get a degree of learning that is of the highest quality.
Both systems and communities complement themselves. It is like a natural ecosystem with its natural balance.
I cant stress enough how essential this idea of sitting and learning ones whole life is in the Israeli system. And the source of the idea is legitimate. [See the Nefesh HaChaim from Chaim from Voloshin. He brings the main sources. But you can see this yourself in the Gemara and Rambam.] And throughout the ages this was considered the highest ideal. It is just that it was never realizable until the State of Israel was born. Before that it was kind of ad hoc. The best a person could do who wanted to be learning was to accept some rabbinical post but that often had the unfortunate effect of taking ones time away from Torah. There never was sufficient funds in any community to support anyone who wanted to get married and still spend all their time learning. So people found arrangements with rich father-in-laws. I am not saying you have to like this, or agree with this. It is just that you have to understand it in order to understand what the Litvak yeshiva world in Israel sees as the goal of life.
But in the USA you see less of this, perhaps because of the expenses involved.
Certainly I saw plenty of people in the three great NY yeshivas, Chaim Berlin, Mirrer, and Torah VeDaat that also wanted to spend their whole lives learning Torah and somehow managed it. But in no case did I ever see this without the support of the wife.

 I would have to say the Religious Zionist approach is probably closer to the actual path of the Torah.
Mainly because as you have guessed that living off charity ones whole life is not the path of Torah. And in the USA, I have even seen places that claim Torah is a legitimate means of making money in order to get people to support their kollels. [That is, of course, a lie; and a malicious one at that. It is meant to scam people.] So there are enough kinks in this system to get me thinking the Religious Zionist approach is better. Torah with Work. And if one does Torah alone, then he does not lie about what it is he is doing. Torah is not a means for a living. Rather there is a kind of permission  (to some opinions) to accept charity in order to learn. But that is all it is -- charity.

דברים שבלב אינם דברים

Words in the heart are not words

The two blank areas are where we do not know what Rav Shach and the Rashba would say. [Unless I could get around to learning this with my learning partner.]

I mean we have Truma and kadshim where we know words in the heart are words and we have an open Gemara in Shavuot circa 26 that says we don't learn from them because of the rule שני כתובים הבאים כאחד אין מלמדים
Marriage is an act so we clearly need words. Buying and selling are acts so we need words to show intention.

See Kidushin 49b and the Rashba there , and Ketubot 75 and the Tosphot there.
Rambam Hilchot Shavuot 3 about an oath to a person that is using violence.
And what about Chametz and הפקר letting go and abandoning something. מבטלו בלבו ודיו he nullifies the Chametz in his heart and that is that." What about דברים שבלב אינם דברים

The Golden Calf and Joining something to God.

R. Meir said that if not for the vav in "These are your gods Israel which brought you out of Egypt," the Jewish people would have been destroyed. The vav meant they were not denying that God brought them out, but rather God and the Golden calf. ["These are your gods," not "this is your god"].
R. Shimon Ben Yochai said joining (שיתוף) is liable destruction. So rather it means they desired many gods.
 How is R Shimon answering R Meir?
I think he is claiming "joining" is worse than regular idolatry.
At least that is how Rashi explains this saying that they in fact accepted other gods.
In any case, I think we can see clearly from this Gemara what the problem with the Golden Calf was. It was either adding something to god [that is R Meir's opinion] or it was worshiping another god in which case joining would have been worse.

Now once I was connected with Moharosh's group in Safed and I think they were giving hell to the local rav. [I am not sure of all the details but I think they had tried to take over a local building under building 7, to make it a Breslov shul. That is a law in Israel that once a building has been made into a synagogue you can't do anything with it after that.] In any case the Rav was bothered and so made  a speech that was critical of Breslov. The idea of the speech was that the problem with the golden calf was not that they denied God but they said the God is everywhere and in everything and so it was the part of God in the Golden Calf that brought them out of Egypt. I felt he was being critical of me, but later I decided that I was mistaken in that notion. [Later he invited me back to the community after I had left so clearly he was not mad at me. ] Rather I think he was just being critical of that group. But was that in fact the problem with the Golden Calf?  Not according to our Gemara here in Sanhedrin 63. Here in Sanhedrin 63, the Gemara is thinking God  made the world and he is not the world. The trouble with the Golden Calf was adding something onto God. "Joining."
But what that rav said might be true anyway. It is just that you don't see it in our Gemara. They were not subtracting but rather they were adding. 

)סנהדרין סג. הקדמה. רב אמר האומר לעבודה זרה אלי אתה חייב. התלמוד שואל חייב במה? אם מיתה זה כבר כתוב במשנה. אלא להביא קרבן חטאת. אבל אם זה נכון אז רב אמר משפטו רק לפי דעת רבי עקיבה שאמר בן אדם חייב גם על מעשה קטן למשל השתטחות. ומה היינו חושבים בלי רב? שכרת כתובה רק אצל גידוף. קא משמע לן שיש היקש ויזבחו וישתחוו ויאמרו אלה אלהיך ישראל. זה הגמרא. השאלה כאן היא שהגמרא התחילה לשאול על דיבור. מפריע לגמרא שבן אדן יהיה חייב קרבן על דיבור. ואז היא מביאה פסוק שיש בו היקש בין דיבור ומעשה. זה אמור להורות שיש חיוב על דיבור. אבל קרבן ע''ז נכתב דווקא על מעשה, וכרת נכתב רק על דיבור במצב של מזיד."כי השם הוא מגדף". מה שהגמרא מכוונת כאן היא שע''ז חייב קרבן בגלל שקרבן נכתב הפירוש אצלה ויש היקש מ"אלה אלהיך ישראל" ל מעשה ע''ז. ומה היתה ההווא אמינא? שאין חיוב ע''ז אלא אם כן נכתב כרת אצלה. וכרת נכתב רק בפרשת שלח לגבי ע''ז במזיד


The Talmud in Sanhedrin wants to find a way of getting saying "You are my god" to a false god to be liable a sin offering. It can't do this except to R Akiva who says bowing is liable, and bowing is not considered a pure act. [I think because it does not act on anything.] But if we had R Akiva alone we might not know that saying you are my god to a false god would also be liable because cutting off is written only by cursing. So Rav informs us that saying "You are my god" is also liable a sin offering because of a juxtaposition "They bowed and sacrificed and said these are your gods O Israel."

The question was how does this work? We have a juxtaposition היקש from "You are my god" to idolatry but there is no cutting off written by regular accidental idolatry  only for idolatry done on purpose and for that there is no sacrifice.


The important thing to realize here is that cutting off is not written by accidental idolatry. So what the Talmud means is we know regular idolatry is liable a sin offering because a sin offering is written by it explicitly, at the end of Parshat Shelach  Number 16. So we have a היקש from saying "You are my god" to regular idolatry.

In any case, the way the Talmud puts this is difficult. We have R. Akiva saying bowing is liable a sacrifice. Then the Talmud says If we had had only this statement of R Akiva I might have thought that is liable because it is גידוף blasphemy and for blasphemy there is a כרת that is openly written. So now with Rav we know saying you are my god is also liable because of our היקשץ

This last paragraph I am just saying over what the Gemara says. But what is difficult here is this: In the parshah where we have a sacrifice for doing idolatry Numbers 16 גידוף blasphemy is not mentioned at all.  And right after that when it does mention גידוף it is talking about doing idolatry on purpose for which there is no sacrifice. There is something going on here I just can't figure out.











Appendix;

Introduction: In the Talmud we have a statement of Rav that one who says to an idol "You are my god" is liable.

The Talmud asks liable for what? If the death penalty when he does it knowingly, then that is anyway what is says in the  Mishna. [Rav has told us nothing new and that is not good. He would not have just repeated the Mishna unless he would say that that is what he is doing.]

So he must have meant he is liable to bring a she goat [a sin offering]--the sacrifice prescribed by the Torah for doing idolatry by accident.
The Talmud asks that this does not seem to be like the Sages but only like Rabbi Akiva. [And that is not very good. We already know the law is not like Rabbi Akiva against more than one sage. If he would be arguing with only one other person that would be different.]
Where do you have this argument? In a Braita [teaching] that says:  One is liable to bring  a sin offering only for an act, e.g. bowing, pouring, burning, and sacrifice.

Reish Lakish said, "That is coming to Rabbi Akiva who said the law is one can be liable even when there is not a perfect act, but even just a small act like bowing."
The Gemara concludes that you have to say that the statement of Rav is coming only like Rabbi Akiva. (Even though the Talmud is obviously not happy with this.)

"So what might have we thought?", the Talmud continues. That being cut off from ones people is not written by idolatry. So now we know it is by means of a hekeih היקש -אתקושי אתקש-juxtaposition that God told Moses, "Go down from this mountain because the people gave sacrificed and bowed down and said these are your gods Oh Israel."

End of introduction.

So what is the obvious question here? It is that we start out not being happy with a obligation to bring a sin offering for speech. In the middle of the discussion we discovered that R.Akiva makes one liable even for bowing which is an act with no object.  So we decided that for speech also R Akiva would say one can be liable even though it is an act with no object.
But then look what happened. "We might have thought that כרת cutting off is not written by idolatry. So now we know it is by this juxtaposition. for idolatry.
We know you need an act to bring a sin offering because of Leviticus 4. ועשה אחת מהנה. And we know כרת  is written by idolatry in Numbers 16 where it gives the rules for the high priest,  the king, the congregation, and an individual to bring a sacrifice for idolatry. But there it is speech that is singled out. The verse says "This is the law for one who does by accident, but one who acts on purpose will be cut off from his people, he has blasphemed God." So what do we learn from the  היקש juxtaposition? That acts are also liable! Not just words.
So we learn from speech to acts. What the Talmud is trying to do is to learn from acts to speech. So what is going on? Could it be the Talmud is trying to answer for R. Akiva, and not Rav as it seems? Any suggestions?


)סנהדרין סג. הקדמה. רב אמר האומר לעבודה זרה אלי אתה חייב. התלמוד שואל חייב במה? אם מיתה זה כבר כתוב במשנה. אלא להביא קרבן חטאת. אבל אם זה נכון אז רב אמר משפטו רק לפי דעת רבי עקיבה שאמר בן אדם חייב גם על מעשה קטן למשל השתטחות. ומה היינו חושבים? שכרת אינו כתוב אצל עבודה זרה. קא משמע לן שיש היקש ויזבחו וישתחוו ויאמרו אלה אלהיך ישראל. סוף ההקדמה.השאלה כאן היא שהגמרא התחילה לשאול על דיבור. מפריע לגמרא שבן אדן יהיה חייב קרבן על דיבור. ואז היא מביאה פסוק שיש בו היקש בין דיבור ומעשה. זה אמור להורות שיש חיוב על דיבור. אבל קרבן ע''ז נכתב דווקא על דיבור

Can one be liable to bring  a sin offering if he accepts a false god in his heart without saying anything?
This would be practical if it were the case. He could come to the the court of law and say he accepted some god like Allah or Brahman, and asks if he must bring a female goat. And they say "Yes." I could go further, but I think clearly you can't be liable for thoughts of idolatry.
If you were, then why does the Talmud in Sanhedrin bend over backwards to find a way to make liable  someone who said to a false god, "You are my god?" And it has to conclude it is only like R. Akiva, and it obviously is not happy with that fact, because that would push it out of the realm of Jewish Law. [The law we know goes by the majority. But there are many exceptions. Still in this case it is an established principle: The law is like R. Akiva against his friend, but not against his friends.    הלכה כרבי עקיבה כנגד חבירו ולא כנגד חבריו]

Now I have to mention that the Gemara is not involved in the issue of the death penalty for when one does idolatry on purpose. It knows that there is an open verse that one who bows to a false god gets the death penalty. It is only bothered by the question of-- if the guy does it by accident, does he bring a sin offering? And that is where the Talmud is bothered because for a sin offering we need some act with an object. [See the discussion of Prichard of the British school of Intuitionists about what constitutes an act. But in our case here we see the Talmud considers an act to be only something that has an object.- not bowing, and not words.]

Of course, you can imagine this got me thinking about דברים שבלב אינם דברים - קידושין דף מט
ב words in the heart are not words [Kidushin 49 Ketubot 75 and see the Rashba  Shelomo ben Aderet on that Gemara in Kidushin  who has the idea that this is only when the words in the heart contradict some act. (That is his idea. You won't find it in Tosphot.) [Not the same as the Rashba of Tosphot who is Shimshon ben Avraham]  [What I mean is that the thought can make him obligated in a sin offering even if he say nothing. The court can't make him obligated but he knows himself that he is obligated.]

And Rav Elazar  Shach [author of the Avi Ezri] says that applies specifically where one makes an act by means of his words.

In any case, you are obviously thinking about the Gemara at the end of Hulin about guy who was sending off the mother bird from the eggs and fell and got killed, and the Gemara suggest that it was because he might have been thinking thoughts about idolatry.  For thoughts one does have to bring a burnt offering, which can be brought  just like a peace offering. It does not have any conditions attached to it. You get get up in the morning and say "There is  upon me to bring a peace offering" or "a burnt offering." But you can't do this with a sin offering which can be brought only for very specific things.

The main engine of yeshivas in NY is the idea ביטול תורה כנגד כולם. Lack of learning Torah is equal to all the other sins put together.
It is not the idea that learning Torah is equal to all the mitzvot put together. If learning Torah was just a nice mitzvah there would be little reason for yeshiva.
But this idea that lack of learning Torah is equal to all the other sins together means that Torah is an obligation on every person.
And the idea that lack of learning torah when one is able to learn is a sin has a good source in the gemara in Sanhedrin כי דבר השם בזה הכרת תכרת הנפש ההיא מקרב עמה זה מי שאפשר לו ללמוד ואינו לומד.
This would be the reason why I myself went against my parents wishes and went to yeshiva instead of to university. I felt learning Torah was that important. Still in hindsight I  see that my parents were right and if I could go back, I would have learned half a day in the yeshiva, and spent the other half in Brooklyn Collage.

I know there are different opinions about this issue. Some people think that one should learn Torah all the time and that is that. That is in fact the general approach of Lithuanian yeshivas in Israel. In fact, in Israel if one works and learns he is considered a second class citizen in the Charedi world. Forget about decent shidduchim for his children. People won't touch him with a ten foot pole.
And based on the statement in the Talmud about the importance of learning all the time it is hard to argue with the Israeli approach.
I don't have a clear resolution to this matter, but I think that a possible solution goes like this: If you are learning Torah and you don't let go for any reason, then there will be help from heaven that you can continue to learn. But if you let go, even a little bit, then you will not be able to get back to it. And if you try to get back to it after you gave it up --it will blow up in your face. It won't be real Torah you will get back to, but some false pseudo Torah. [I can't explain this. It is just what I think I see happens.]
I can' answer this contradiction and I don't minimize its importance. But I can minimize the area of conflict.
I claim there is much less of a controversy here than people think. Litvaks traditionally had a side learning project. And we know the Rambam held that one must learn Physics and Metaphysics. I think that areas outside STEM subjects in fact should be shut down in universities. I can't see any good in any of the social or humanities departments  in most colleges.

Sanhedrin 63

Introduction: In the Talmud we have a statement of Rav that one who says to an idol "You are my god" is liable.

The Talmud asks liable for what? If the death penalty when he does it knowingly, then that is anyway what is says in the  Mishna. [Rav has told us nothing new and that is not good. He would not have just repeated the Mishna unless he would say that that is what he is doing.]

So he must have meant he is liable to bring a she goat [a sin offering]--the sacrifice prescribed by the Torah for doing idolatry by accident.
The Talmud asks that this does not seem to be like the Sages but only like Rabbi Akiva. [And that is not very good. We already know the law is not like Rabbi Akiva against more than one sage. If he would be arguing with only one other person that would be different.]
Where do you have this argument? In a Braita [teaching] that says:  One is liable to bring  a sin offering only for an act, e.g. bowing, pouring, burning, and sacrifice.

Reish Lakish said, "That is coming to Rabbi Akiva who said the law is one can be liable even when there is not a perfect act, but even just a small act like bowing."
The Gemara concludes that you have to say that the statement of Rav is coming only like Rabbi Akiva. (Even though the Talmud is obviously not happy with this.)

"So what might have we thought?", the Talmud continues. That being cut off from ones people is not written by idolatry. So now we know it is by means of a hekeih היקש -אתקושי אתקש-juxtaposition that God told Moses, "Go down from this mountain because the people gave sacrificed and bowed down and said these are your gods Oh Israel."

End of introduction.

So what is the obvious question here? It is that we start out not being happy with a obligation to bring a sin offering for speech. In the middle of the discussion we discovered that R.Akiva makes one liable even for bowing which is an act with no object.  So we decided that for speech also R Akiva would say one can be liable even though it is an act with no object.
But then look what happened. "We might have thought that כרת cutting off is not written by idolatry. So now we know it is by this juxtaposition. for idolatry.
We know you need an act to bring a sin offering because of Leviticus 4. ועשה אחת מהנה. And we know כרת  is written by idolatry in Numbers 16 where it gives the rules for the high priest,  the king, the congregation, and an individual to bring a sacrifice for idolatry. But there it is speech that is singled out. The verse says "This is the law for one who does by accident, but one who acts on purpose will be cut off from his people, he has blasphemed God." So what do we learn from the  היקש juxtaposition? That acts are also liable! Not just words.
So we learn from speech to acts. What the Talmud is trying to do is to learn from acts to speech. So what is going on? Could it be the Talmud is trying to answer for R. Akiva, and not Rav as it seems? Any suggestions?

 
)סנהדרין סג. הקדמה. רב אמר האומר לעבודה זרה אלי אתה חייב. התלמוד שואל חייב במה? אם מיתה זה כבר כתוב במשנה. אלא להביא קרבן חטאת. אבל אם זה נכון אז רב אמר משפטו רק לפי דעת רבי עקיבה שאמר בן אדם חייב גם על מעשה קטן למשל השתטחות. ומה היינו חושבים? שכרת אינו כתוב אצל עבודה זרה. קא משמע לן שיש היקש ויזבחו וישתחוו ויאמרו אלה אלהיך ישראל. סוף ההקדמה.השאלה כאן היא שהגמרא התחילה לשאול על דיבור. מפריע לגמרא שבן אדן יהיה חייב קרבן על דיבור. ואז היא מביאה פסוק שיש בו היקש בין דיבור ומעשה. זה אמור להורות שיש חיוב על דיבור. אבל קרבן ע''ז נכתב דווקא על דיבור

I am not so upset about "yes" means "yes." Mainly my feeling is that people should marry young. That is right after high school I think people should spend about 4 years in yeshiva learning Talmud and girls should be in seminary. During that time they should get married. Then after that work or collage. And this aspect that collages in the USA are becoming more puritan is I think a good sign.

And what starts in California inevitably goes east and more east and west. Though I suffered greatly in yeshiva but now I can see that the whole thing was good for me. I know there are people that have legitimate complaints about yeshiva but it is after a human institution with human failings. Still it is the best thing out there.

But the  yeshiva can't be a cult yeshiva. Those are easy to spot. What you need is a place like Ponovitch or Mercaz HaRav. It is usually very clear the distinction between an authentic yeshiva  and a cult yeshiva.