Allen Bloom also thought the Enlightenment project had reached a crisis point in the USA.

MacIntyre  advances the notion that the moral structures that emerged from the Enlightenment were philosophically doomed from the start.
I heard this also from my learning partner. I think he heard it from his father. The idea is that once the pursuit of pleasure is legitimized  then the USA is just going on the natural path that that leads to.

Allen Bloom also thought the Enlightenment project had reached a crisis point in the USA. [In catastrophe theory that would be considered a cusp in which one can jump up or fall down but can't continue in the same path because the manifold stops there. [To jump up the USA would have to return to Judeo-Christian values and get rid of the terrorists.] I can't draw a picture of this but the idea is you have a critical point which has several points where it can veer off to. And sometimes there is no path at all but because of the momentum one is forced to a jump point. Allen Bloom thought the USA had come to such a point. He did not put it in that way but if he had known catastrophe theory I think he would have.

MacIntyre went to Aristotle and  Catholicism and Thomism. That would not be my answer. But my answer would not be far away. But my focus would be Maimonides
This is not so far from MacIntyre.  

In theory I found a few difficulties with the Catholic approach that I think Aquinas did not deal with satisfactorily. Same goes with Aristotle. Besides that I saw in my parents who were Reform Jews  an amazing level of Menschlichkeit [human decency] that would indicate to me that the Jewish approach was a better alternative (with certain limitations.) 
["Reform" but with belief in the Oral and Written Law unlike official Reform doctrine. Probably Conservative would be a better description.]


I might have mentioned this before but I saw a problem in Aristotle's Metaphysics that seemed unanswerable to me. And many other thinkers seemed to have problems. I cant even begin to name them all.   Concern for the moral implications of any social theory is also important to me. And the Kant approach where moral autonomy is central makes a lot more sense to me than system where discipline is imposed on people from some outside authority. It is the most comprehensive and logically rigorous system since Aristotle. I am a bit shocked that people in the west are not aware of it while in the USSR this school of thought was well known--(if only because it was a direct attack on Communism). But at least they did not ignore it.

My approach would be to make schools based on the Rambam idea of learning the written Law [Bible] the Oral Law [the Mishne Torah of the Rambam], Physics [String Theory], MetaPhysics {Plato, Aristotle, Kant.}

The Rambam considers Torah and Mitzvot to be an introduction to Physics and Metaphysics. And he makes it clear he means the kind of things the ancient Greeks called Physics and Metaphysics. (See the introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed.) Not Mysticism.

The Rambam considers Torah and Mitzvot to be an introduction to Physics and Metaphysics. And he makes it clear he means the kind of things the ancient Greeks called Physics and Metaphysics. (See the introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed.) Not Mysticism. For this reason I thought to say over what kind of path I think can help people in this direction. It is the idea that you see in the Talmud לעולם ליגרס אדם אף על גב דמשכח ואף על גב דלא ידע מאי קאמר. One should always be "גורס". One should always just say the words and go on even though he does not remember and even though he does not know what he is saying. This does not take the place of time and effort though.But I have found this to be helpful. You can see this idea expanded on in Sichot HaRan chapter 76.

In any case this is not to take the place of learning Gemara. The basic idea of the Rambam is this: That the fulfillment of the commandment to love and fear God is by learning Physics and Metaphysics. But one can't get to that level without first learning the Oral and Written Torah. Now in fact you could say the Rambam holds the entire Oral Law is contained his  book the Mishne Torah and you could go through it in a week easily. Fine. Do so. But still in order to understand the Mishne Torah one needs to learn the Talmud.
And this should not be taken as an excuse for Bitul Torah. [Bitul Torah means not learning Torah when one has the time to do so. It is considered a major sin Talmud. ] When one can be learning Torah he must do so. It is just that the Rambam considered these two fields to be part of the Oral Law.You can see that if you compare the beginning of Mishna Torah where he says Physics and MetaPhysics =Pardes, and the Laws of learning Torah where he says Pardes is in the category of the Oral Law.

If one has the opportunity to go to university and learn an honest profession then leaving that to go to yeshiva full time is a step down.

There are people for which going to yeshiva would be step up. There are others for whom it would be a step down.
If one has the opportunity to go to university and learn an honest profession then leaving that to go to yeshiva full time is a step down. There is no opinion that one can use the Torah to make money as modern yeshivas are. כל תורה שאין עמה מלאכה סופה בטילה "All Torah that is without  a job is worthless." That is a statement from the son of Yehuda HaNasi. And I have definitely seen this in every person that is in kollel. They are a completely worthless bunch of sanctimonious jerks. Their main job is to get people to give them money. That is their major goal is to create a slave class of people that will support them. Baali Teshuva. (That is to make them depend on the community so they can't escape and to keep them down in menial jobs so they can't rise and have to support the master race, the frum from birth. ) Kollel people are stupid people pretending to be smart and then demanding to be supported for their supposed smartness. There is nothing wrong with being dumb. But fraud is wrong.


Yet in universities there is nothing for students that want to learn about the most basic questions of life: Why are we here? What should we be doing? What is it all about? For that reason learning Torah is important. For that reason learning the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam and Gabirol and other Jewish philosophers from the Middle Ages is important. And if the choice would be yeshiva or some cult or dishonest profession then clearly learning Torah and even accepting charity in order to be able to learn  is preferable. It really depends on what one's situation is. But f one goes to yeshiva at least it has to be a legitimate Litvak (Lithuanian) place. No cults. And if there are cults on one's area, then the first thing is to run them out of town.

The major thing seems to be that learning Torah is important but when people decide to use it for money it loses it value. And those people along with it. Jewish people are in search of the values of the Torah and there are plenty of charlatans that want to capitalize on their naivety.

One needs to be careful not to budge from the Torah. And not to use Breslov as an excuse to do so.

I know one fellow who was  a student of Rav Hutner and in Jerusalem but still went to the Breslov synagogue in Mea Shearim. Rav Hutner said to him you can't go there and come to me also. You have to choose which one you want. So he choose Breslov and you can see that he lost the whole learning Gemara thing. I saw this not just once or twice but countless of times.


 Rav Hutner had the Lekutai Moharan on his stender for  full year.
It is just that Breslov is  a consciousness trap to lure people in. And then they stop learning Torah. Note that Rav Hutner would not have had any problem with that fellow learning the Lekutai Moharan all day day. It was just joining Breslov that he objected to.
My learning partner asked him you had  a chance to be a disciple of one of the greatest sages of the generation and you turned it down to go to the shul in Mea Shearim? What were you thinking? He answered, "There is a thing about Breslov as a group." Right. And lose all desire to learn Gemara along with it. Really.

I saw two students from a Ponovitch Yeshiva


Then I told one one them about the above mentioned story and I said, "If you have already merited to be in a Ponovitch yeshiva, then you must not leave under any circumstances, but hold on for dear life."
Then he said, "We is going right back to the yeshiva in Jerusalem."
I told him, "That makes no difference. That whole story was in Jerusalem itself."

 Breslov is as fishermen use bait. This is often found in cults. They use some great teachers ideas as consciousness traps to entice people.

My father was a good Jew

 My father was a good Jew, a good father, a good husband and a good son to his parents and  a good brother. He was able to instill family values in his children in  way I have never seen anywhere else. He was an amazing husband to his wife, my mother. They never argued. He never raised his voice. He could solve differential equations, do integral Calculus, design laser satellite communications for NASA, he could fight with honor  in World War II as a captain in the USA Air Force. [ His squadron consisted of a squadron of B- 29 heavy bombers.] He  built a base in France that would take a damaged airplane and fix it and get it off the ground within hours. When he suffered the devastating loss of my mother, his wife he  got up again and started life again. He never asked for help and never complained even when down and out. He would always pick himself up and start again.  He  invented the infrared camera that was the forerunner of night vision goggles for the USA Army and now used in the James Webb Space Telescope. He invented an x ray copy machine and build the camera for the U-2. He was a patron of the Los Angeles Opera and gave generously to Israel. I should mention that none of this would have been possible without my mother. They were one in heart and spirit. And he could die standing on his two feet. Philip Rosten (Rosenblum). When the USA wanted infra red satellites they hired TRW. TRW found out my dad was the creator of the Infra Red telescope. So they hired him. When the last Infra red satellite was launched then he went to work on Laser communication between satellites. He took me to see his lab at TRW where I saw the laser.
That is my role model.




Here is a picture of the B-29.

I should mention. He never lied, he never said lashon hara [gossip or slander] and he never bragged.
Whether he was designing laser communication for NASA or what he did in WWII, I had to drag the information out of him. And he always had time for his family. He took us on many family vacations skiing on the winter break and every weekend we went on a family outing either to the beach or the mountains. [Not on Shabbat when I had to go to Hebrew School at Temple Israel. Our outings were always on Sunday.] And he always had time to spend with each one of us brother individually. and he had plenty of time to listen to me and guide me and hear my complaints and problems and doubts. I always wanted to take walks with him and he always came with me whenever I wanted, and he listened to me with amazing patience and love.
He was an expert marksman, because he was raised in a home that spoke only Yiddish he transferred that easily to German (Deutch) and after WWII was  in charge interviewing  German civilians and signing their release papers when he was convinced they were not Nazis. He was I think close to an expert skier. But I am not sure. There are three levels and I know he was close to the top level. That is either at the third level or at least close to it. He was a good sailor. He knew how to handle a sail boat. But as far as things are with me, the main thing was he knew how to be a good father. He knew when to be firm and when to be lenient. I should mention my Dad's parents were dirt poor immigrants on the Lower East Side and could not speak a word of English when they got off the boat.

All that being said what this all means is that my Dad had balance. He could balance between different areas of value well. I don't claim he could do Physics like Einstein or compose like Mozart.  But within him was contained many aspects of values that he directed and guided his children to continue on.  For learning Torah I try to learn from and emulate the Gra and my teacher at the Mir Yeshiva Reb Shmuel Berenbaum. When it comes to Music I try to study and learn from Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.
THE sad thing is you never hear his name in connection with the Infra Red Telescope nor laser communication between satellites which is just now being used by Musk to create a array in space.

Our beliefs about morality are guided by the social group we want to fit into, the self-image we want to maintain, the desire to avoid admitting to having been wrong in the past, and so on. It is pure accident if we actually form correct beliefs. An analogy: suppose you go to the doctor, complaining of an illness. The doctor picks a medical procedure to perform on you from a hat. You would be lucky if the procedure didn’t worsen your condition.

Whom one follows is the main question in life. People are such that they need an Alpha male.
Whom one chooses to model his or her lives on is the most important question in life.

 I think what religion or politics or world view one follows is trivial and in fact makes no difference.

Therefore one ought to be extra careful about whom he or she follows since everything depends on this one question.
And it does no good to say one will be his or her's own person. Everyone gets their values from somewhere. Even people that claim to have no rules like the hippies are the most intolerant of any deviation from the norms of behavior of their communities. Values come from one's peers, parents, T.V., Movies, Religion, etc. But rarely (if ever) does one come up with his own values from scratch.



This idea is why I see people that follow a false prophet in a negative light even if their general world views are OK. And this is why I think well people following a true prophet but who may have some ideas that are mixed up. To me whom they follow is everything.


This means there is some kind of problem to work out with the Rambam who hold the major prohibition of idolatry to to serve an intermediate in order to come close to God.You could simply say serving an intermediate is forbidden but following a teacher is ok.


In any I am generally unhappy with the results I see in people following almost any charismatic leader. That includes even people I would consider to be tzadikim. You might say I am not happy with any tzadikim. Though people do follow their particular charismatic leader still, I think following God alone and  to learn and keep Torah is best. When people follow any leader they tend to fall into idolatry as fast as a speeding bullet.

Breslov I have to admit is kind of a mixture of idolatrous cults--each one with their own demigod.  their leaders are always the major object of worship of their followers.

My approach for those that are curious  is to follow the path of my father and mother as closely as I can get to it.  To me the commandment of "Honor thy father and mother" is  real and immediate and I think to myself often how many problems I would have been saved from if only I had paid attention to them. But I realize some people have bad parents and the sages of the Talmud were also aware of this fact.  So as a general rule I suggest people use common sense reason.

But common sense is not common.  Our beliefs about morality are guided by the social group we want to fit into, the self-image we want to maintain, the desire to avoid admitting to having been wrong in the past, and so on. It is pure accident if we actually form correct beliefs. An analogy: suppose you go to the doctor, complaining of an illness. The doctor picks a medical procedure to perform on you from a hat. You would be lucky if the procedure didn’t worsen your condition.

Songs for the Glory of the God of Israel

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Philip and Leila Rosten

I come from a family of ordinary Jews. My Dad was a working guy and never asked for handouts. [link] And so was all my family from as far back as there are any records. We were what you could call Goldilocks Jews--not too hot, and not too cold, but just right. We had great respect for Torah--the Oral and Written Law.
If I had decided to learn Talmud along with my regular studies in high school and university my parents would have been thrilled.  But instead I decided to spend all my time on Talmud and not prepare for any career. I certainly was not planning on using the Torah as a means of making a living.

Why I bring this up is part of my reasoning at the time was I simply found my abilities to be limited in subjects that I was interested in. And there were other subjects that I was interested in but I thought they had little value.

So what I suggest today is in fact to learn Talmud Torah but not to use them as a means to make money. And in spite of the excuses people make to use Torah for a livelihood I have found that it usually leads to the dark side.--but not always. Clearly there were great roshei yeshiva like Reb Shmuel Berenbaum-the Rosh yeshiva of the Mir Yeshiva in NY who was the genuine article--a real gaon. So to be a Rosh Yeshiva  was apparently considered as a kosher thing just like in Europe there was a job to be a rav. That was not being paid to learn or teach but give advice and take care of religious matters in town or in the yeshiva.

And as for subjects where it is allowed to make a livelihood I recommend the path of learning of  "Say the words and go on." [From the Talmud 63. לעולם לגרס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר Forever one should say the words and go on even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying.]


I think that if I had known of this simple advice when I was younger I might have in fact been able to balance between Talmud learning and the other subjects I was interested in.

And if I had known the Rambam' opinions about learning the seven wisdoms that might have made a difference in my career choices. The Rambam holds learning Talmud is just to prepare a person to be able to learn Physics and Metaphysics. And it is by the later two that  a person comes to human perfection.

the religious world

There is a certain amount of Sitra Achra (Dark forces) that has weaseled itself into the religious world

This seems to me to be similar to something that happened with Muslims after their golden age of philosophers like Al Kindi.

חבלים נפלו לי בנעינים destroyers have fallen upon me in pleasant places.

Whenever the Sitra Achra sees something precious and wholesome, it strives to get close into it and make it unclean.
This happens when you try to go to Israel. Right when you get there something happens to take away the good flavour. Or you are learning Torah in a good authentic Lithuanian yeshiva and then the Sitra achra sens its human demons to make it uncomfortable for good people.
And once the dark forces get in, then they spread everywhere and there is no place safe. This is my reasoning why I never venture near any the religious synagogue and will pray only with Reform or Conservative Jews.

Bringing secular Jews into the religious world has been a major movement in the religious world. I think its main purpose is to create a slave class. That is to make people that are slightly religious but will never be accepted in the the religious world. The reason for this movement is that the religious world always make their living only by using the Torah to make money. And without a slave class to support them they would be out of business.

A song for the glory of the God of Israel

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A song for the glory of the God of Israel

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the philosophy of the Torah.

There are a good number of books that deal with the philosophy of the Torah. They are not books of mysticism that use Torah as a jumping point for mysticism. And also they are not books about the השקפה or world view of Torah. They are actually books that deal with the philosophy of Torah. The main ones are from Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Ibn Gavirol,, Crescas, Joseph Albo, Isaac Abrabanel, Judah Abrabanel.  You almost never see them in yeshivas. In many yeshivas they are excluded on purpose. The reason I think is that there is great fear that some yeshiva student might pick one up and discover that they all claim the worldview of Torah is Monotheism, not pantheism. What yeshivas want their students to think is that no one ever thought about worldview issues of Torah until books came along that claimed the Torah's world view is pantheism. The ironic fact is that only Reform and conservative Jews have a belief system that is in accord with the Torah--Monotheism.


There was a controversy about the idea or desirability of learning Philosophy after the Rambam came about with the Guide for the Perplexed.  The people opposed to this generally went with the more mystic kabbalist traditions. Each blamed the other for the perils of Jews in Spain.

The very fact that all philosophy [including all of the great Jewish philosophers from the Middle Ages] is excluded from all yeshivas shows where the weight of this debate came down on. That leaves only Secular and Reform Jews believing in Monotheism. You can see this fact in daily life. Often I hear some secular Jews tell a religious Jew that one must pray to God alone, not to any person. That I hear in answer to the statement of the religious Jew that the secular Jew ought to go to some tzadik and ask him for help. 

Shabat. Work on Shabat that is not intended, but it must happen.

There is an argument about doing some kind of work on Shabat that is not intended but it must happen.  There are 39 type of work on Shabat that are not allowed, e.g. sewing, lighting a fire, building etc. Many of them have to do with types of things that would go into baking bread. But that would not apply to baking with electricity which is not fire.]

In any case The Ri [Rabbainu Isaac] holds when it is a work that must happen it is forbidden even if he does not want it. The Aruch says when he does not want it is it permitted. This comes up in Tosphot in Yoma page 34 [that is the biggest Tosphot I think I have seen in a long time]. Tosphot brings this argument in Shabat also. And Joseph Karo also brings it.
This subject is also R. Akiva Eiger's object of study in one of his long essays.

What I wanted to say today just before I have to run is this. I think the Aruch makes a lot of sense. Just think about it. We are going with R. Shimon that מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה פטור. Right?  So what is going on in דבר שאינו מתכווין? It is that he is doing something else that results in the work. And let's say the work must happen. Why would that be any worse that doing the actual work itself, but with a different intention from what the work is liable in? He could be digging a pit which is actual work but if he only needs the dirt then he is not liable! I would have to say the Aruch makes a lot of sense to me. [Incidentally R. Akiva Eigger also spends his entire long pamphlet on this topic defending the Aruch.]
I brought this up with my learning partner, and he said first of all he can't see any difference between  מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה and דבר שאינו מתכווין שהוא פסיק רישא.
And he also pointed out that the Ri is in fact saying something very sensible. That דבר שאינו מתכווין שהוא פסיק רישא דלא ניחא ליה is forbidden by rabbinical law as a fence around the Torah. He is not claiming that it is forbidden from the Torah itself.
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There is an argument about doing some kind of מלאכה on שבת that is not מתכווין but פסיק רישא.  There are ל''ט types of work on שבת that are not allowed, e.g. sewing, lighting a fire, building etc. Many of them have to do with types of things that would go into baking bread.

In any case  ר''י רבינו יצחק  holds when it is דבר שאינו מתכווין שהוא פסיק רישא דלא ניחא ליה. The ערוך says פסיק רישא דלא ניחא ליה is  permitted.


 The ערוך makes a lot of sense. Just think about it. We are going with רבי שמעון that מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה פטור. Right?  So what is going on in דבר שאינו מתכווין? It is that he is doing something else that results in the מלאכה. And let's say the work must happen. Why would that be any worse that doing the actual work itself but with a different כוונה from what the מלאכה is liable in? He could be digging a pit which is actual מלאכה but if he only needs the dirt then he is not liable!


I brought this up with my learning partner and he said first of all he can't see any difference between  מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה and דבר שאינו מתכווין שהוא פסיק רישא.

And he also pointed out that the ר''י is in fact saying something very sensible. That דבר שאינו מתכווין שהוא פסיק רישא דלא ניחא ליה is forbidden דרבנן as a fence around the Torah. He is not claiming that it is forbidden from the Torah itself.

Music for the glory of God

q54



This I think might need some editing. It seems likely to me that it does but I am not sure.

The discipline of learning Torah.It must cease to be an activity conducted by moles and religious fanatics, each burrowing in its own hole, and become a public and co-operative enterprise.

There is a philosophical side to Torah which deals with the big questions. The trouble is people that are fit and understand Torah well enough to deal with that side of Torah are usually involved in Talmud. That leaves those areas of deep interest open to the frauds.   the religious world is a Mafia in which the almighty dollar is their god. The best approach to to dismantle their organizations and replace them with authentic Torah scholars. The religious world depends on its reputation for being authentic to be able to make money and get respect. That is why the trivial  rituals and Yiddish and dress are so important to them.


What I suggest is that one area of time of Torah study should be devoted to the philosophical side of Torah. That means I am suggesting something along the lines of Israel Salanter. he started the Musar movement which was successful in bringing the between man and his fellow man aspect of torah to the attention of many Jews--both religious and nonreligious. Now in almost all authentic Lithuanian yeshivas there are two short Musar sessions and a Musar shmoose on Thursday. What I suggest is to add the philosophical side of Torah also to yeshivas.

That is to say to have a section in the Beit Midrash with the Guide of Maimonides, Emunot VeDeot of Saadia Gaon. And the people that finished the basic set of books that compromise Jewish Philosophy-- Joseph Albo, Avudraham, Abrabenel,  Crescas, Ibn Gavirol, Duties of the Heart.

To get back and understanding of the issues they were dealing with I would also have to add the entire set of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. Without the first two it is impossible to understand the Guide of the Rambam. And Kant is an important because of the Critique on Pure Reason. That is to know the limits of not just human reason, but to know the limits of pure reason.

I have to warn people that I have seen plenty of people that left a Lithuanian yeshiva environment and get involved in Breslov . It is hard for me to understand why people would think that stopping learning Torah and running around with nonsense all day would make them close to a tzadik.



Some strange doctrines have entered into the religious world. So I should mention that by belief in the great tzadik  I am not condoning the idolatry or pantheism that people by mistake seem to hold by in the religious world. Prayer must be directly towards God alone. But we can pray in the merit of a tzadik or ask him to pray for us. And pantheism has already been dealt with and disposed of by Saadia Gaon, the Rambam in the Guide and the son of the Rambam. So I don't know why people still try to claim the Torah holds by pantheism.    God has no substance so nothing is God's substance. The world is not God. Saying things have godliness in them does not mean they are godliness. And what ever Godliness is it is not God. It is a creation. And even the infinite light is also a creation as the Ramban says openly in Breishit and the Arizal also.

the proper path in life

I have a few questions about the proper path in life. The reason is that I found that I have certain limitation in my abilities. That is I follow the law of limited returns. I can concentrate on one subject for  a long time and never get any further than if I would spend just a minimum amount of time on it.
But there are other people like my ex girlfriend Wendy Wilson who could excel in any subject she choose and the sky was the limit. You probably know some people like that.
For this reason I find myself in a kind of dilemma. It seems as a general rule that unless you are dealing with really brilliant people the best thing is to get a balanced education. That seems to have worked best for me. But there are people that would get distracted by a general education and need to concentrate on one thing alone.

I should mention in  the USSR, very young children could choose a path in life at a very early age. They could decide to go into the hard sciences or music or a few other venues. So apparently the Soviets were aware of the advantage for some people to concentrate on one area alone.

That being said I think that in general a balanced approach should be the general rule. Bearing that in mind I would like to recommend this kind of "seder hayom," order of the day.
You start a 9:15 with Halacha. That is you do the Rambam with no commentaries allowed,  and you just read straight until 10:00. That will get you through the whole Rambam in less than a year. Then at 10:00 you do Talmud in this fashion. You take one עמוד one side of a page and do it with Rashi Tosphot and some Maharsha and Maharam. That takes about 40 minutes.  Then you do another side of a page and you keep on going until 2:00. That will get you through Shas in less than a year. Then at 2:00to 4:00 you have your break and then at 4:00 you go to Brooklyn College to learn natural sciences or even perhaps law. But not any subjects that are pseudo sciences. In Chaim Berlin Yeshiva this was simple because Brooklyn College was right around the corner. But in theory even at the Mir one could do the same by taking a bus down King's Highway. That is for NY.  California is sadly an עיר הנידחת and there is as of yet no authentic yeshiva. It takes a lot more to build a yeshiva that to paste a name on a building. All religious establishments in California are branches the yeshiva of the Satan. So I don't recommend them.

songs for the glory of God

q52


q53

(1) There is an argument that David Hume presents on  knowledge based on reason. It is that we can check our  empirical knowledge. If we see an object we can get closer and check to see what it feels like and make other tests. But knowledge based on reason what can we check it against? What measuring stick do we have but to check it against other knowledge we also know by reason.

This does not seem to me to be a good argument. We check empirical knowledge against other empirical facts and we weigh degrees of certainty. We check a priori knowledge with other a priori knowledge and we weigh degrees of certainty.

(2) Spinoza thought to prove pantheism based on an axiom that is highly doubtful; that no substance can affect another substance. But he was doing this for a good reason. He wanted to answer the Mind Body problem raised by Descartes. He thought to do this by turning Descartes argument inside out.

(3) In any case both these thinkers had something right about them. It was Kant that was able to create his synthesis between these two schools of thought the rationalists and the empiricists.

(4) Dr. Michael Huemer makes some powerful arguments against Kant, but I think his arguments are answerable. One question he has is against the very beginning of Kant's argument. That is the question how is a priori synthetic knowledge possible. He follows the intuitionist school to answer this. He says that we can perceive a priori synthetic knowledge by reason. And that is true. But the axioms we start with have to be known in a different way than how we reason from axioms. We know the beginnings of reason or unconditioned reality by immediate non intuitive knowledge. (See Kelley Ross's web site. )

The truth of my assertion here is actually contained in Kant's initial question. How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible. What Kant has done here is he has already created a third category of knowledge. While Hume thought that all reason can do is to deduce things from definitions and see contradictions in those things, Kant has made a direct attack on this and claimed there is a kind of knowledge that sees things that are not contained in their definitions and not perceived by the senses.

But what Kant wanted was synthetic a priori after you know definitions and some basic ground of knowledge. What Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer what is synthetic a priori to tell us axioms and things before we start to reason about them.







(5) In order to defend Torah I depend on both reason and immediate non intuitive knowledge.
I say moral principles are the basis of Torah and moral principles are known by reason. This much is clear from the Rambam in The Guide for the Perplexed. But  reason itself needs to be based on immediate non intuitive knowledge. [He says natural law which was known by Abraham and later on by the ancient Greeks could not have been known by reason but needed to be revealed.]
The idea here is that there are universals. Here is a proof that universals exist from Michael Huemer: 

Paul Benacerraf originally raised it as a problem about mathematics: since we have no interaction with the number 2--we do not bump into it on the street, and so on--how can we have knowledge of it? I might plead that it is not the moral philosopher's job to answer this. Whether or not there is moral knowledge, there is a priori knowledge of other kinds, so there must be some solution to Benacerraf's problem. Whatever the explanation for a priori knowledge in general is, there is no reason to think it would not work equally well for moral knowledge.





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

1.	The following statement is true:      (Y) Yellow is a color.
2.	The truth of (Y) requires that yellow exist.
3.	Therefore, yellow exists.(53)

Comment: Suppose I say, 'The King of Colorado is fluffy'. Since there is no king of Colorado, some would say the sentence is false; others would say it is neither true nor false. But no one thinks it would be true. Sentence (Y) is of the same form, so it can be true only if 'yellow' refers to something--that is, only if yellow exists.

Some philosophers (the 'nominalists') say that the only thing multiple particulars have in common is that we apply the same word or idea to them.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Here is an argument against that:

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

And moral principles are a priori universals --that is not known by observation.
A proof of this from Michael Huemer:

(1) Moral principles are not observations. The content of every observation is descriptive.

That is, you do not literally see, touch, hear, etc. moral value.

(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter. Just as you cannot expect to derive a geometrical conclusion from premises in economics, or derive a conclusion about birds from premises that don't say anything about birds, you should not expect to derive a conclusion about morality from non-moral premises.

Moral objectivism (like objectivism in general) seems to be entailed by the law of excluded middle and the correspondence theory of truth, along with a couple of what seem equally obvious observations about morality:

(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)

How do we know moral principles? One can ask how can we know anything?

For if we know some particular thing, then there are only three possibilities as regards its justification:

(a) it is infinitely regressive. That is, there is a reason for it, and a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that, and so on indefinitely.
(b) it is circular. That is, it is based on some chain of reasoning in which something ultimately is supposed to (directly or indirectly) justify itself.
(c) it is foundational. That is, the item of knowledge itself is, or is based upon, a fact that is known directly and without any argument or reason given.


Imagine an argument with  person that thinks every piece of knowledge requires proof.
\

Me: I know that it's wrong to torture people just for the fun of it.
Skeptic: What's your reason for thinking that?
Me: Isn't it self-evident? Why do I need a reason?
Skeptic: Because if you don't have one, then it's just an arbitrary claim.
Me: How do you know that?
Skeptic: Why, that's self-evident.

(6) The way to understand immediate non intuitive knowledge is this. The best place to start is with the Sidur (prayerbook) of the Gra (Elisha ben Shelomo the Gaon from Vilnius). In one comment on the hagadah on ברוך המקום ברוך הוא  there the Gra explains everything has a hidden aspect and a revealed aspect. כל דבר יש לו נגלה ונסתר
That means when we see a sidur we see get information about that object. We we then feel it we get more information about it. The more senses we use we get more information. We might open it and read it and get even more information. But we are only getting information about the object. But what is the object we still know nothing. Lots of people knows lots of information about you. But no one knows who you really are inside.
The dinge an sich. The thing i itself. What is it that tells us there is some difference between what we sense about an apple and the apple in itself?

  If you were to remove from the apple its redness and roundness, sweetness and hardness, coldness and smoothness, would there be any apple left? Yes. The thing in itself. 


How we know unconditioned realities is different than how we process information based on senses or reasonable deductions.

(7) The Torah is holistic. It encompasses all of human life. Religious and political and  interpersonal. But it considers all its laws to be from One Divine source. It makes no distinctions between laws that are between man and fellow and man and laws between man and God.
That is it avoids the common mistake that religious people make. They get all excited about serving God and therefore emphasis commandments that are between God and Man thinking that that is the source of meaning and value. The Torah could not be more explicit that this is  a mistake. The holy and numinous aspect of the Torah, its unconditioned reality, is both for commandments that are between man and his fellow man and between man and God.

(8) The practical way to keep Torah is by learning Torah in an authentic Lithuanian Yeshiva and to avoid cults like the Black Plague. Since the religious world has become infested with cults that means in effect that one can't pray in a religious Synagogue. In fact, even some authentic yeshivas are borderline cults. But at least they are teaching authentic Torah--so they are OK to learn in and pray in. I would not go anywhere near an religious synagogue because I think they are dens of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side) and I fear for my life and soul.

When people become religious, they lose the ability to discern between right and wrong.

When people become religious, they lose the ability to discern between right and wrong. One reason is they become infatuated with some miracle worker from the Dark Side. And they think because that charismatic person [demon] is religious with their kind of religion that therefore his powers must be from the Realm of Holiness.
But there are other reasons. And some of these reasons I know about. And some I don't. But the in any case is when someone becomes religious, you can forget about menschlichkeit [human decency.]

I think Israel Salanter tried to fix this with limited success. [That was his reason to start the Musar movement--to combine good character traits with Fear of God.]



 My approach is that there are universals. Morals are one kind of universal. And they are recognizable by reason. But, since human reason is corrupted  to the desire to fit in with some social group, so we need some kind of revelation that is not thought, and not sensed. So, we need Torah to make us aware of the difference from right and wrong in the first place. But, since Torah is connected with numinous reality, it can easily be subverted. And numinous value always conquers non numinous value. Right and wrong is mainly mundane. Pay your bills. Work for a living at an honest job, etc. That has nothing like the power and excitement of some religious "high" that one gets from a cult.

I should mention that being religious is very different from keeping Torah. These are in fact exact opposites. There is almost nothing that the religious do that is in accord with Torah.

Consciousness traps exist everywhere

Consciousness traps exist everywhere. I looked at different cults for a long time trying to understand a little bit about my own attraction to destructive cults. I have had the strange kind of tendency to abandon good groups or a good social situation to join weird groups. So I have gone through a long process of self introspection and also trying to understand the attraction of cults,

I was writing about this a few years back. Mainly I was studying Hindu cults in the USA and also in India and also Scientology. I did not have the stomach to look at Jewish religious cults. But I am  familiar with Hasidim. I think Hasidic groups are very bad cults, It is just that many Hasidic groups are  consciousness traps that lure people into their private cult.

It is characteristic of cults is they target people that are already on a good track and try to derail them. They will go into  Lithuanian yeshiva where people are sitting and learning authentic Torah and try to lure them into something else. Often they will claim that these things do not contradict. They might also go to places where students are in fact on good life paths and try to lure them into their cult.

I wish I could learn Torah but I can't. Not only that but I also wish I could tell people about how great the Torah is and there also I find myself without words.

The reason is that when one is not worthy to learn Torah he is evicted. And the door to holiness is then shut behind him so he can't get back in. And then he is filled with illusions to run after that he thinks will give him happiness in this world or the next. The Satan then gives the power to do miracles to people that have their powers from the Dark Side. And he makes it seem that they are holy people. The glitter draws people that are not worthy of Torah.

This is the reason that when people become religious they lose the ability to discern between right and wrong. They become infatuated with some miracle worker from the Dark Side. And they think because that charismatic demon is religious with their kind of religion that therefore his powers must be from the Side of holiness.

Peace or war.

Aut pax aut bellum. 
If the Arabs in Israel had wanted peace I think that would have been clear. It seems to me that Israel needs someone like Joseph Stalin. Just imagine what he would do right now if he was head of the Israeli government. He would simply ship every last Arab off to Siberia or the Antarctic. 

Now  Arabs walking the street armed with nothing more than  kitchen knifes go around killing Jews. Somehow I doubt if a similar kind of situation had or would exist in Russia today that Stalin would have had much patience or tolerance for this kind of behavior. 

But you don't need to be a genius to know that the Israeli government will not take steps to stop this because they need that everyone should think they are nice. They don't understand that there are people that will never think they are nice no matter what they do.

The reason authentic yeshivas throw out people is because they found that Modus operandi is profitable--that is it makes the yeshiva successful. [Mode of operation]] The Rosh yeshiva does not consider every individual case separately. He just knows  that by throwing out anyone that does not exactly fit in is the only way that he can have a beit midrash where people are sitting and learning Talmud.
Whether you this this is nice is not so much the issue as much as the rosh yeshiva knows that without this rule, he will not have a yeshiva.
The fact is the rule is probably applied in wrong cases. It may very well result in the downfall of the institutions it is meant to uphold.
I suggest a modified version of this rule. Fitting in ought to be defined as learning Talmud. It should not be defined by social group or marriage status of whether the  fellow is a social outcast or not. That there should be only one condition--learning Torah.

The problem is the rule of throwing out people is always applied to the wrong people.

The deeper reason for this is in the LM circa Vol I chapter 157. There are people that are not fit for holiness. So they are thrown out. Then when they are thrown out the door closes so they should not come back in. But then after they wander off into the world of delusions the door opens again. But what happens if there are lots of people that need to be thrown out? There is fear that the door will stay closed after they are all thrown out. So at the door the place a person that fears God. When he is standing in the doorway the door can't close. And he throws out the people that are not fit to be inside.

So if the mashgiach throws you out, don't be discouraged. Be happy that at least you can still learn Torah somewhere else. If he would not be standing there to throw you out it might have happened that the door into holiness might get closed completely. That would mean that even somewhere else you would not be able to learn Torah.


For myself I consider that this happened to me in several situations. I mean to say that I was in situation that were very good but I had not reached those situations from my own merits or good heart. So the attraction of other glittery things attracted me. I was in my parents home which was a place of tremendous purity and wholesomeness. And I left that. Ditto with Israel and ditto with the Mir Yeshiva in NY. But as I mentioned sometimes it happens that when one is not worthy the door back into holiness closes. So you can't get back in even if you recognize your mistake.

Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

A fellow today  told me he thinks people have two levels of consciousness. That is maybe many more. But he wanted to discuss just two.
The lower level,  where his job determines who he is. Then the higher level which is more concerned with the meaning of life.




I tied that into Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind in his treatment of the Self.

That is before the Enlightenment people's self identity was religious identity.
The Enlightenment was meant to knock the Kings and Priests off their thrones. Political power was taken from Kings and religious power from priests. Religious identity became obsolete. Now the self depends no longer on one's religious identity. Ask Freud and he will tell you the self is sex. Ask Nietzsche and he will say it is the will to power. Ask Locke he will say it is ones means of making a living. And this by default is the self identity of the Western man.

But the whole thesis of Allen Bloom is the Enlightenment has run into  a dead end. And he certainly has no solution of even a half baked attempt at a solution.

I myself have had a kind of development when it comes to personal identity. I felt at 11 years old I had a choice of what kind of character I wanted to be. Later at two great yeshivas in NY my self identity became tied to the idea of learning Torah. [One yeshiva was Shar Yashuv and the other was the Mir in NY.] To a large degree this self identity for me has stayed stable. But I admit this self identity for me has had its ups and downs. I am no Rosh Yeshiva and I also have seen enough things in the world of Litvak yeshivas to cause me some doubt about how effective learning Torah is to make people into better people. However despite that I still try to stick with Torah as best I can/





The fellow I was talking with had also been wondering what makes some of the creepy religious teachers the way they are? Do they just wake up one morning and look in the mirror and say, "I am the messiah?" Or something along those lines?
I have already dealt with that issue a long time ago. I studied many cults and I got an idea of the basic pattern. But I also tie it in to the fact that they use the Torah to make their money. That is what they do for a living. That is the one and only thing the Torah says you can't use to make money with. There is something about that sin that makes them insane.
The basic problem of cults fits in nicely with the Kant  School. 
So I have an easy explanation of cults and cult leaders. The archetype. At some point they lose their own identity and become absorbed in some Archetype.

A song for the glory of God

q51

Rav Shach rocks! If you want a date with me, finish the Avi Ezri.

I see there is what looks like a contradiction between the Rambam and the Tosephta and I thought I had an answer, but now I see I don't. I was looking at Rav Elazar Menachem Shach's essay on this subject and I had thought that my idea was what he was getting at but it clearly is not.

The idea is the Rambam says if one ate forbidden fat or remainders of sacrifices he brings a sin offering. But if he forgot which one he does not.

That is lets say someone has a piece of fat on the table and eats it.  Then someone walks in and asks "Where is the חלב forbidden fat I left on the table?" He brings a sin offering.
But let's  say the next day he forgets if it was חלב או נותר forbidden fat or remainders. Then he does not bring a sin offering.
But let's say the day after that he remembers again that it was חלב forbidden fat and then a second later he forgets again. Then he brings a sin offering. And that is where the Rambam stops. But at that point the Tosephta adds if he remembers again then he brings another sin offering.
The commentaries on the Rambam give half baked excuses to make sense of this.
I thought I had an answer but it is wrong.

What I had thought was the Rambam is talking about חלב or נותר, or else he did work either on Yom Kippur or Shabat. And to be frank and admit my fault I had thought the Tosephta was talking about קרבן טומאה. That is I thought the Tosephta was talking about a case in which he walked into the Temple in Jerusalem while unclean or ate from sacrifices while unclean.

What I was thinking was this: The Rambam brings from Rabbi Akiva that there is something special about a sin offering for uncleanliness. That is you need to have knowledge of the uncleanliness before he sinned. That is true.  But I had noted that after he sinned he needs to know what kind of uncleanliness he became unclean by. That also is true. But I had underestimated the need for this second condition. I had thought that in our original case of forgetting that it would be enough if he remembered that he was unclean but still did not know by which kind of uncleanliness. This is
I am sad to say a stupid mistake on my part. But one thing we gain from all this is that now we know why Rav Shach did not choose this path as an answer.

Appendix: The major point of this essay is this: The normal case of a sin offering for walking into the Temple while unclean is unusual. It is a case where one needs knowledge before the sin that he is unclean. That means he knew he was unclean. And then he forgot and in a state of forgetfulness he walked into the Temple. And then the next day he remembers he was unclean or someone reminds him. That still is not enough to be required to bring a sin offering. The last knowledge has to be together with knowledge of what kind of thing made him unclean. This is clearly what the Rambam says. So it would not work to put the case of the Tosephta as a case of uncleanliness.

That is day one he knew he was unclean. The next day he forgot and walked into the Temple. Then day after he remembers he walked into the temple or ate a sacrifice in a state of uncleanliness. He would not bring anything. The reason is this is not like forbidden fat or remainders of sacrifices. Here in our case he needs to know what kind of uncleanliness made him unclean.

That means I think we will have to settle for what Rav Shach says that the Rambam simply had a different version of that Tosephta. This is not a good answer but we can see that no other answer is possible here so we have to settle for an unsatisfactory solution.

Song for the glory of God

q50 mp3  [q50 in midi]  q50 nwc

I see religious world as just as much a threat to Torah as Cultural Marxists and even more so. This is because it tries to destroy Torah values from the inside. But this does not invalidate the Torah. Abusus non tollit usum

There is a problem keeping marriage together in the world of the religious mainly because religious teachers, when asked by a wife about her husband, always say to her that her husband is a creep and  insane and she would be better off to get rid of him. Why they do this is beyond me. Sometimes I think it is because of feminine charm. They must be thinking of feeling that all women especially young and pretty women are  צדיקניות. This is of course not news. Asking people why their marriage stayed together the answer is always, " because I never let my wife talk to a religious teacher."

When the husband goes then to the religious teacher and asks why the religious teacher is trying to break up his marriage the religious teacher  says, "that is not my problem."


This does present a problem. How does one go about keeping Torah when its representatives are madmen? This is a difficult problem and I am not at all in any position to give any clear answer.
What I do myself is try to learn and keep Torah as best as I can. And I try to keep in mind to stay away from these vicious madmen as far as possible. They might claim to be keeping Torah but I know better. They are enemies of Torah, not representatives of Torah, enemies of the Jewish people, enemies of God.

In effect this means that one that wants to learn and keep Torah has to go against the mainstream consensus.

The cherubim with revolving swords were place on the place back to the Tree of Life. That is to get to the tree of Life --Torah--one has to pass the test of the revolving swords.

The problem comes from using Torah as a cash cow. It is just a way to get ahead in life and crawl to the head of the pack.When people do this they are מועל בהקדש. [Using a holy thing for a mundane purpose.] That is the same as using an ox that has been dedicated to the Temple. There is a לאו a Biblical prohibition to use anything consecrated to God for mundane use. That is the reason the Gra gives for the idea כל דאשתמיש בתגא חלף anyone that uses the crown (of Torah) passes away. And this is clearly the source for the Rambam to reiterate this same prohibition in the Mishne Torah.


So instead it is best to focus on the fact that religious teacher have become part of the war on family values. But instead of fighting against the family from the outside like most Marxists do, they instead attack the family from the inside.

I see religious teachers as just as much a threat to Torah as Cultural Marxists and even more so. This is because it tries to destroy Torah values from the inside.
The major problem is religious teachers, but in fact everyone that supports them is guilty.

This of course does not apply to people that in fact learn and teach Talmud every day in authentic Lithuanian yeshivas. True and authentic Roshei Yeshivas are doing great work. It is the cheaters and scammers that are the problem.
religious teachers have maneuvered themselves into positions of power in Israel all by the pretense of representing Torah. It is time to pull off their masks.
The trick is they claim to be telling us simple Jews what the Torah says. They get away with this fraud because many simple Jews like myself have not spent the proper amount of time and effort to learn and understand Torah. This puts us into a position of disadvantage compared with the scum that call themselves religious teachers.

________________________________________________________________________________

יש בעיה של שמירה על הנישואין  בעולם של יהדות החרדית בעיקר בגלל רבנים כאשר נשאלים על ידי אישה על בעלה תמיד אומרים לה שבעלה הוא שרץ ומטורף והיא תחיה טובה יותר  להיפטר ממנו. למה הם עושים את זה הוא מעבר לי. לפעמים אני חושב שזה בגלל קסם נשי. להם  יש התחושה שכל הנשים הצעירות ויפות במיוחד הן צדיקניות. זה כמובן לא חדשות. כששואלים אנשים למה נישואיהם נשארו יחד התשובה היא תמיד, "כי אני אף פעם לא נתתי לאשתי לדבר עם רב." נחמן מברסלב ציין בעיה זו בספרו לקוטי מוהר''ן בכמה מקומות, אבל אזהרותיו מעולם לא נענו. ופעם אחת שהזכרתי כמה מרעיונותיו בבלוג הזה, ומייד איבדתי את כל הקהל שלי. אז זה נראה לי שזה לא משהו שאנשים רוצים לשמוע. אז למדתי לסתום את הפה שלי על זה. זה גורם בעיה. איך אפשר ללכת עם שמירת תורה כאשר נציגיה הם משוגעים? זו בעיה קשה ואני בכלל לא בכל עמדה לתת תשובה ברורה. מה שאני עושה לעצמי הוא לנסות ללמוד ולשמור על התורה כהטוב ביותר שאני יכול. ואני מנסה לזכור להתרחק ממטורפי קסמים אלה ככל האפשר. הם יכולים לטעון שהם שומרים תורה, אבל אני יודע טוב יותר. הם אויבים של תורה, לא נציגיה, אויבי העם היהודי, אויביו של אלוהים. למעשה זה אומר שאחד שרוצה ללמוד ולשמור על התורה יש ללכת נגד קונסנסוס הזרם המרכזי. הכרובים עם חרבות מסתובבות היו במקום הדרך בחזרה לעץ החיים. כלומר להגיע לעץ החיים שהיא התורה, יש לעבור את המבחן של החרבות מסתובבות. הבעיה מגיעה משימוש בתורה כפרה חולבת
יש לאו דאורייתא להשתמש בשום דבר המקודש לאלוהים לשימוש יומיומי. זו הסיבה גר''א נותן לרעיון כל דאשתמיש בתגא חלף. כל מי שמשתמש בכתר של תורה מאבד חלקו לעולם הבא. וזה  המקור לרמב''ם
צריך להתמקד בעובדה שרבנים חרדים הפכו לחלק מהמלחמה על ערכי משפחה. אבל במקום להילחם נגד המשפחה מבחוץ כמו רוב המרקסיסטים, הם מעדיפים לתקוף את המשפחה מבפנים. אני רואה  יהדות חרדית  כאיום על תורה כמרקסיסטים תרבותיים ואף יותר מכך. זאת, משום שהיא מנסה להרוס את התורה  מבפנים. הבעיה העיקרית היא  רבנים חרדים, אבל למעשה כולם שתומכים בהם הם אשמים. זה כמובן אינו חל על אנשים שלומדים  בכל יום בישיבות ליטאיות אותנטיות. ישיבות האמיתיות ואותנטיות הראשים עושות עבודה נהדרת. רק הרמאים ונוכלים הם הבעיה. רבנים חרדים תמרו את עצמם לעמדות הכח בישראל כל על ידי העמדת פנים של המייצגים התורה. זה הזמן למשוך את המסכות שלהם. הם טוענים שהם אומרים לנו, היהודים הפשוטים, מה שהתורה אומרת. הם מצליחים בהונאה זו, כי יהודים רבים  כמוני לא בילו את הכמות הנכונה של זמן ומאמץ כדי ללמוד ולהבין את התורה. זה מעמיד אותנו בעמדה של נחיתות לעומת חלאת הרבנים 

Physics,

I love learning Physics and MetaPhysics

A Rambam Yeshiva would not be anything like the yeshivas we see today. The books there would be the Mishne Torah and Aristotle's encyclopedic work Physics and his other encyclopedic work,  Metaphysics. He writes clearly in several places the the Mishne Torah contains the entire Oral Law and if he has that book he does not need Talmud or the writings of the Geonim. He could not be any more explicit if he tried.  In the beginning of Mishne Torah he writes that the Mishne Torah contains all the Oral Law and take a good look at his language there when he says "One does not need any other book from among them." [ביניהם not בינתיים.] That is one reads the Old Testament and then the Mishne Torah and one does not need any other book from among the books that he just mentioned in that paragraph. Look at that paragraph and you will see he does not mean to learn Mishne Torah and then Talmud. He clearly meant his book to replace the Talmud. Period.

So you can ask then what to do after you have read the Mishne Torah? You can finish it in one month easily. Start at 9:00 AM and go until 5:00 PM. A normal working day. You can finish it in two weeks. Then he explains you learn "the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot which are the Physics and Metaphysics of the ancient Greeks." Here too he explains this clearly in several places in the Mishne Torah and  Guide. And he not ambiguous in any way. You can see what enraged people about the Rambam. He says after one has finished reading the Written and Oral law (as he defines Oral Law to mean his book the Mishne Torah), then he spends all his days learning Physics and Metaphysics.
And don't think that was the major thing that caused the controversy about him. In fact in the very first controversy these outrageous statements did not even come into play as a factor.
The thing that condemned him in the eyes of the Jewish world was that he said not to give money to yeshivas.   And this was in the commentary on the Mishna which was read by all Jews everywhere. He writes that on Avot chapter 4 Mishna 7.
[His idea there is that there is no mitzvah to give money to someone who can work but refuses to do so. Also his idea is that it is forbidden to be נהנה from words of Torah. The Gra also compares words of Torah to הקדש. This is a whole subject in itself but in any case it is important to understand the Rambam  and not to try  to explain away what he says. And this applies to everything in Torah. The first thing is not to explain away things you don't like. Rather if you can't keep what it says then don't keep what it says, but don't try to say it means something besides what it in fact says.]




So clearly a Rambam approach to Torah  would be a radical departure from what people think today compromises a Torah approach. And he writes in a letter that the only reason that his book was not accepted as the final decision is because of the arrogance and pride of people wanting honor and power. So when the final redemption comes and arrogance and the evil inclination will be eliminated from the world then his book will be accepted as the objective truth. In the future the Mishne Torah of the Rambam will be considered as the truth and final decision. The son of the Rambam who became the Rav of the city after the Rambam in fact taught the Mishna Torah instead of Mishna or other things that had been customary to teach between the afternoon and evening prayers.

 My personal opinion is that Physics today (and Meta-Physics) has gone considerably beyond Aristotle and that today the Rambam would hold to learn the Old Testament, then the Mishne Torah and then modern Physics and Kant.

And I should mention that this is the way I have accustomed myself to be learning for some time now. The only thing is I admit I do learn Talmud as I thing it is the only way to understand the Mishne Torah. Without knowing from where the Rambam gets his decision, people always misunderstand what he is saying. [And they think they understand.] For that reason, one should also learn Talmud and Rav Shach's commentary on the Rambam together with the Rambam after finishing it at least once.

Song for the Glory of God

q50 in mp3  [q50 in midi format]  q50 nwc

The way I try to justify Torah is by immediate non intuitive knowledge.

The best justification for Torah is good parents. But if you don't have that then you have to go about it in a more circular fashion.
The way I try to justify Torah is by immediate non intuitive knowledge. The way I try to go about explaining this is thus: You have an object in front of you you can feel and see and smell. How do you know the actual has anything to do with how you perceive it? You depend on empirical sensory perception to tell you things about the object. But let's take something you can't perceive directly. E.g. 2+2= 4. You don't have a physical way to test this. You depend on reason. But there are however areas that reason starts to contradict itself. Questions like, "Is the universe infinite?" "Is time infinite?" Unconditioned realities. Knowledge about unconditioned realities depends on immediate non intuitive knowledge. These are things like when Socrates asked the slave about some aspect of a triangle. The slave did not know. But Socrates by a skilled set of questions guided the slave until the slave knew the answer. So he showed the slave that he knew things that he did not know that he knew.
There are things you know not by sensory perception and not by reason.

Let's say you have a clock. At 6:00 is all form and no content. Like logic. At 7:00 is Math. More content but not completely formal like Godel showed. 8:00 is Physics. There you deal with actual physical things that have content. 9:00 is Music. 10:00 is laws about people's relationships. 11:00 is mystic  and metaphysical realities. 12:00 is all content and no form- God.
The content is the thing that is known by immediate non intuitive knowledge.

This immediate non intuitive knowledge is the way I think the Torah was received. And Reason was a step before that as the Rambam explains in the Guide. That is Reason perceives objective moral values. [Natural Law.] And immediate non intuitive knowledge knows the level after that.

(1)The God of Maimonides and Aristotle tends to lack personality. (2) The omnipotence and benevolence of God, while happy and comforting to contemplate, generates the Problem of Evil, that the evidence of the world and of events frequently would seem to contradict an omnipotent and benevolent agency.
(3) It seems to me that Yaakov along with Job and King David found some way of dealing with these issues. The way they did this was to project God's goodness out over a longer period.
(4) Schopenhauer started out that "the Will" is essentially irrational and not benevolent in any sense. Later he indicated that the Will is multi dimensional.
To me it seems that this was the opinion of Job and God himself who agreed with Job.
The friends of Job said: "God is just". God said they were wrong. Point blank. At point blank range. There is no way to misinterpret this because the entire Book of Job shows this.


 The first statement is that Job was without sin. So trying to fudge the variables here does not work. Trying to make it that there were other faults is clearly not what it says. Then the whole story of how God caused him to suffer in order to win a debate with Satan just shows the point. Because you want to win a debate with someone does not give you cause to make someone else suffer. This is the clear position of the narrator.    The Book of Job and Schopenhauer are in clear agreement.


( People ignore the fact that if God is good then he is not just. You can't have it both ways.)


Schopenhauer also had a chance to put the subject into the Will. But like the Rambam he refused to take that route. Furthermore he also decided not to put the ideas into the Will either. In these ways he seems to be very much like the Rambam.


What enrages people is that the Rambam understands the Torah thorough the eyes  and world view of Aristotle. And that he is not embarrassed about that makes it worse. At least he could try to hide where he gets his ideas from like everyone else. And what makes it even worse is that no one can claim to understand the Torah better than the Rambam unless they want to seem like an arrogant, ignorant fool. Thus people just ignore the Rambam when it comes to the world view of Torah.

My approach is different than the generally accepted approach. I say the Rambam was right, and everyone else simply does not understand the Torah.

In any case  the Rambam's approach to Torah is I think about as close to the actual Torah approach as possible. In another approaches there are strong elements of polytheism. They may not reach pure polytheism but they certainly come close. Today  Torah practice often contains polytheist beliefs. In fact it is almost an axiom that the more strict one is in practices the more likely there are underlying polytheistic beliefs. Monotheism is not the same as polytheism except in number. There is more than a quantitative difference. There is a qualitative difference. A difference in world view. And the world view of Torah could not be further away from what people think it is today. It presents a reality that is radically different than what people think the Torah is about.

A Rambam Yeshiva would not be anything like the yeshivas we see today. The books there would be the Mishne Torah and Aristotle's encyclopedic work "Physics" and his other encyclopedic work the Metaphysics. He writes clearly in several places the the Mishne Torah contains the entire Oral Law and if he has that book he does not need Talmud or the writings of the Geonim. He could not be any more explicit if he tried.  In the beginning of Mishne Torah he writes that the Mishne Torah contains all the Oral Law and take a good look at his language there when he says one does not need any other book "from among them." That is one reads the Old Testament and then the Mishne Torah and one does not need any other book from among the books that he just mentioned in that paragraph. Look at that paragraph and you will see he does not mean to learn Mishne Torah and then Talmud. He clearly meant his book to replace the Talmud. Period.

So you can ask then what to do after you have read the Mishne Torah? You can finish it in one month easily. Start at 9:00 AM and go until 5:00 PM. A normal working day. You can finish it in two weeks. Then he explains you learn "the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot which are the Physics and Metaphysics of the ancient Greeks." Here too he explains this clearly in several places in the Mishe Torah and  Guide. And he not ambiguous in any way. You can see what enraged people about the Rambam. He says after one has finished reading the Written and Oral law (as he defines Oral Law to mean his book the Mishne Torah) then he spends all his days learning Physics and Metaphysics.
And don't think that was the major thing that caused the controversy about him. In fact in the very first controversy these outrageous statements did not even come into play as a factor.
The thing that condemned him in the eyes of the Jewish world was that he said not to give money to yeshivas. He wrote that the heads of yeshivas that say it is a mitzvah to give money to yeshivas are liars.  And this was in the commentary on the Mishna which was read by all Jews everywhere. He writes that on Avot chapter 4 Mishna 7.

So clearly a Rambam approach to Torah  would be a radical departure from what people think today compromises a Torah approach. And he writes in a letter that the only reason that his book was not accepted as the final decision is because of the arrogance and pride of people wanting honor and power. So when the final redemption comes and arrogance and the evil inclination will be eliminated from the world then his book will be accepted as the objective truth. In the future, the Mishne Torah of the Rambam will be considered as the truth and final decision. The son of the Rambam who became the Rav of the city after the Rambam in fact taught the Mishna Torah instead of Mishna or other things that had been customary to teach between the afternoon and evening prayers.

 My personal opinion is that Physics today (and MetaPhysics) has gone considerably beyond Aristotle and that today the Rambam would hold to learn the Old Testament, then the Mishne Torah and then modern Physics and Kant.

And I should mention that this is the way I have accustomed myself to be learning for some time now. The only thing is I admit I do learn Talmud as I thing it is the only way to understand the Mishne Torah. Without knowing from where the Rambam gets his decision, people always misunderstand what he is saying. [And they think they understand.] For that reason, one should also learn Talmud and Rav Shach's commentary on the Rambam together with the Rambam after finishing it at least once.