A lot of what Torah is about is laws. The concerns about Torah are mainly about keeping the Law of Moses more that interpretation of the text. But there are also elements of Divine service.

With prayer the hidden self [ding an sich] gets connected with God. It is kind of  away to reach one's own essence and tie it to God. And besides that, I have seen enough people that learn Torah that are far from human perfection.


The basic way to do this is to pack a lunch and go off into the wilderness for a whole day and spend the whole day talking with God. If this is not possible then while you are walking down the street is a perfect time to engage in private conversation with God. One good idea about this is that the evil side disguises itself in good deeds. When people convince themselves they are doing some great mitzvah it is usually a heinous crime. The world would be a lot better off if people would stop doing mitzvas and simply be a selfish as possible. The way the evil side gets people is by conniving and convincing  them that they are doing some good deed. People doing mizvot is the destruction of the world. The Gra said it is better to sit in your room and twiddle your thumbs than to go about and look for mizvas to do. [See Sidur HaGra.]

Here is a very nice link to a interesting video concerning Islam
She is bringing up some very nice and important points and I highly recommend this video.I  heard from the daughter of Bava Sali also things along these lines. The idea was that Islam is bad news

Here is another fellow who also has some interesting ideas about Islam


I see in German News that the Spiegel is comparing the people that do not want Germany destroyed by an Islamic invasion to Nazis. This seems like  an unfair comparison. Islam is a real problem and inviting Jihadists into your country is not a good idea.


Here is a video by a German girl who is afraid of the refugees.

There is something strange going on in the world in terms of marriage.I

There is something strange going on in the world in terms of marriage.It is as if the human race is going through some kind of tidal wave that wrecks everything in its path.It is like a snowball effect. The more arrogant the women are, the more men want nothing to do with them, and then the women wish they were romanced and treated special like in the old days..

When Reb Shmuel Berenabaum the Roh Yeshiva of the Mir in NY was asked questions about human problems his answer was "Learn Torah" and I would have to say that is about as good an answer I have ever heard about almost all human problems.

Simply put that means to have about an hour per day of learning sessions in order The Old Testament. That is read one page word by word and then put in a place marker and put it down. The pick up a Mishna. Read one page or a few pages with the commentary. Put in a place marker and put it down. Then pick up a Talmud and again read one page with Tosphot the Maharsha and Maharam from Lublin. Then the same with a few session in Physics and Math. That is the light of the Torah that is in the physical world.

If you have done the Talmud a few times then you should also do the Ari. The Ari is mystical but based on a Neo Platonic world view. So together with the Ari it is good to have a session in Jewish Philosophy from the Middle Ages. That is Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, Saadia Gaon's Emunot VeDeot, Crescas, Joseph Albo, and the two Abravenel's Isaac and Yehuda, and Ibn Gavirol.
[These people have a lot to tell us but their insights are hidden because of the mediaeval character of their works. It takes some effort to uncover the gems inside them.] [There is an amazing connection between German Idealism and medieval Jewish Philosophy. But this would have to be the subject of a whole new essay. }







No Kabalah after the time of Shabatai Tzvi is kosher. Sometimes knowingly, and sometimes not knowingly it all borrows from Natan of Gaza and brings people that read it into the Sitra Achra. Also there are secular subjects that do not reflect the glory of God and are forbidden to learn . That is almost any secular subject outside of the natural sciences are all from the Sitra Achra. So though I do emphasize certain subjects as being good there are many many more that are seduce people into the Dark Side. Thus we find most religious teachers that read these subjects are in fact agents of the Dark Side. That is the reason I always say to be in a straight Lithuanian yeshiva because every other type is a den of Satan. I am emphasizing the good on purpose.

Everything depends on good teachers. Everything.


I went to a very good high school. It had good teachers. I benefited very much from those teachers, though I did not use all the skills I learned there later. Mr Smart the music teacher was just one example. But I remember the other teachers who were dedicated, and very talented. My only frustration was that I wanted to be able to concentrate on just a few things. But today I can say going to a good school I think is very important.
I had lots of good examples around me of people that were motivated and hard working. Both students and teachers.


[Maybe good teachers can do only so much, but from what I saw, they can make a tremendous amount of difference.]

And later I saw this in yeshiva also. Going to a good school  is of utmost importance to be able to get anywhere.

I am not in yeshiva now, but I can say without having a great learning partner ,I would today not have been able to get anywhere in Gemara.

One trouble I did have was in recognizing what really is a good yeshiva. Shar Yashuv was and still is a Baal Teshuva Yeshiva. And I had trouble recognizing that Reb Naphtali Yeager and the other roshei yeshiva were really learning at the top level. So I admit sometimes you can find exceptions to the rule. Reputation is not everything.  Later, I was at the Mir with who was then the deepest thinker in the yeshiva world besides Rav Shach --Reb Shmuel Berenbaum And there I saw the reputation of being the top place was well deserved.

Musar [Ethics] of Torah does not deal with philosophical issues. And that I think is a flaw.

But if one would want to understand the philosophy of Torah there would be a problem. That is the major works about the world view of Torah are great works but don't deal with issues that are in most people's mind all that relevant. And my own education in these areas is zero.

I read a drop of the Guide. And I read a few times the first chapter of the Duties of the Heart which is neo Platonic. I did a good deal of work on the Ari and the Nahar Shalom of Shalom Sharabi but those later sources are dealing more with the mystic aspects of Torah more than the world view aspects.

If I could I would plow through the philosophical works of Torah, Saadia Gaon's Emunot VeDeot, the Guide, Joseph Albo, Crescas, Abravenel. Ibn Gavirol.
The point of this is simple.One does not need to be knowledgeable nor smart at all to be a decent human being. But one's actions invariably follow ones "deot" opinions. And with crooked opinions ones actions will be crooked. Without getting the right opinions about Torah from people that understood Torah fairly well like the Rambam and Saadia Gaon one invariably gets his or her opinions from people that do not understand Torah very well.  And thus one's actions will not reflect the Torah but rather the cruddy opinions of charlatans.

There is a lot of stuff going on in mediaeval Jewish philosophy but it takes effort to get to it.
The surface level is, well,..mediaeval. But under that level there are important insights



To sum up. Musar along with השקפה is important. In yeshiva what is needed is  a separate session for learning the philosophical approach of Torah. Without this people absorb their world views from the street but think well of themselves as being kosher because they do rituals. The rituals however have no effect if the inner center of their minds is filled with nonsense.


Some people others were not happy with the philosophical works of Torah. The result is that when people learn the world view of Saadia Gaon or the Rambam they think it is heresy. This can only mean one thing. That without the books of the Rishonim on the world view of Torah people fall into such mistakes that when they hear the truth they reject it.

Two songs for the glory of the God of Israel

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 q98  q98 midi  98nwc

religious teachers

Religious teachers that are psychopaths cause perverted desires fall from the Divine Chariot.  I think this explains the reason why sodomy is so pervasive in the USA.

My thinking is that we find in the Talmud some serious criticism about religious teachers. But furthermore we also find that what happens in Israel is reflected in the larger world. So when our own house is not in order this is seen in the large in the general events of the world.

Now it is a good question about how to tell the difference between good and bad religious teachers. It is important to know that there do exist bad religious teachers and that because of them there are problems because of people that follow them naively thinking they are teaching Torah.


Now this problem does beg for a solution. The only possible solution I can see is individual. That is it is up to each individual to learn Torah on their own and thus not to be dependent on others to know what it says. And if it is too much to ask everyone to know the whole Oral and Written Law then at least Musar--the books of Jewish ethics written during the Middle Ages tell us in a practical sense what the essence of Torah is. [Musar is a well known set of books. I do not need to list them here. Mainly they are divided between books from the middle ages and the later books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter that went into more detail in how to apply the lessons of Musar in a practical sense. ] [In my non humble opinion the חובות לבבות Duties of the Heart is the best one.]

I should add that the problem about evil religious teachers is not just in that Torah lesson but begins in the LM from Vol I ch 8 and goes through the entire two volumes. This theme does come up in the Talmud also and even the Mishna. אם אתה רואה דור שפורעניות באות אליו צא ובדוק בדייני ישראל שכל פורעניות שבאות לעולם אינן באות אלא בגלל דייני ישראל I forgot where that particular Gemara is. It is somewhere near the end of Tractate Shabat but I forgot the page number.

So who then can decide a halacha issue? In monetary cases where there are two opposing parties we do know who can decide--מומחה לרבים. someone who has been tested by experts in the Talmud and been found never to make a mistake. But in other cases?

The irony is that the people we would hope and expect to teach us morality and true principles of how to guide our lives are often the source of the most damage. In fact, I think this is so in the majority of cases.

I should mention that none of this is meant to disparage the sincere people who are sitting and learning Torah whether privately or in straight Lithuanian yeshivas.

People of intellect and morality are disqualified and  attacked when the religious  world  is under the control of a tyranny backed by the mob.  Don’t ask where all of the smart people are.  Don’t ask where all of the leaders of men are.  The religious world wants to be ruled by psychopaths and imbeciles. 

The best solution would be to fire all religious teachers. Save the money or give it to yeshivas where real Torah is learned [Lithuanian Yeshivas].

Introduction
I wanted to discuss something that is bothering me about a Tosphot in Shavuot 43a and Bava Metzia 81b. In short, Tosphot is asking two questions on Rabbainu Hananel that could be applied to Rashi. But Tosphot does not want to ask on Rashi. Then the Maharsha gives an answer why one question might be more applicable to Rabbainu Hananel. But if you think about it, the idea of the Maharsha applies just as well to Rashi.

The basic idea is this. Shmuel says if a lender takes a pledge  and loses it, he loses the whole loan. The Gemara asks that this does not seem like Rabbi Eliezer nor Rabbi Akiva. R. Eliezer says the lender takes an oath and loses nothing. R. Akiva says he loses the worth of the pledge. The Gemara answers Shmuel is when he did not explain (that the pledge is for the loan), and the argument between RA and RE is when he did explain. R Hananel reverses this. Shmuel is when he explained and the argument of RE and RA is when he did not.

The Gemara in Bava Metzia, on a relevant note, is trying to get a Mishna there is be like both RE and RA and can't do so. The Mishna there says a lender is a paid guard with respect to the pledge. This is good to RA, but not to RE. Tosphot asks if R Hananel is right then the Mishna in BM is everyone's opinion, and it is when he explained (like Shmuel). The question of the Maharsha is this same question applies to Rashi when he did not explain (like Shmuel).

Another question of Tosphot on RH is RE takes too great a leap from nothing (when he is does not explain) to everything (when he does). The Maharsha says this last point of Tosphot is why Tosphot did not ask their first question on Rashi. My question is the same exact point applies to Rashi.

That is: The Maharsha suggested that Tosphot is thinking that if the right version is like Rashi then RE might make just one step from nothing (when the lender does explain) to the exact amount of the loan when he does not. My question is this same answer works even better to Rabbainu Hananel. He loses nothing when he does not explain and only against the loan when he does.

In more detail my question is this:  The Maharsha says we might says when the Gemara says Re and RA agree with Shmuel it means each makes one step from their starting position up one more step. My question is this works well to Rabbanu Chananel. That is when he explains then RE goes up one step to say the pledge is parallel only to its own value of the loan. and when he does not explain then it is not tied to the loan at all. But to Rashi this would not work. When he does not explain it is  parallel to its own value of the loan but when he does explain it is not tied to the loan at all.

I do not say there is no answer to this. I assume there must be an  answer. But I don't happen to know what it is right now. The Maharsha is probably answering this, but I do not see how.

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Introduction
I wanted to discuss something that is bothering me about a תוספות in שבועות מ''ג ע''ב and ב''מ פ''א ע''ב . In short, תוספות is asking two questions on רבינו חננאל that could be applied to רש''י. But תוספות does not want to ask on רש''י. Then the מהרש''א gives an answer why one question might be more applicable to רבינו חננאל. But if you think about it the idea of the מהרש''א applies just as well to רש''י.

The basic idea is this. שמואל says if a מלווה takes a משכון  and loses it he loses the whole loan. The גמרא asks this does not seem like רבי אליעזר not רבי עקיבא. The מחלוקת is thus: רבי אליעזר says he takes an oath and loses nothing. רבי עקיבא says he loses the worth of the pledge. In our גרסה  and the גרסה  of רש''י the גמרא answers שמואל is when מלווה did not מפרש, and the  מחלוקת between רבי עקיבא and רבי אליעזר is when he did מפרש. And רבינו חננאל reverse this. שמואל is when he מפרש and רבי אליעזר and רבי עקיבא is when he did not.

The גמרא בבא מציעא פא: on a relevant note is trying to get a משנה there is be like both רבי אליעזר and רבי עקיבא and can't do so. The משנה there says a מלווה is a שומר שכר with respect to the משכון. This is good to רבי עקיבא but not to רבי אליעזר. Then תוספות asks if רבינו חננאל is right then the משנה in בבא מציעא is everyone's opinion and it is when he מפרש like שמואל. The question I had  was this same question applies to רש''י when he did not explain like שמואל. Theמהרש''א asks this same question.
Another question of תוספות on רבינו חננאל is רבי אליעזר takes too great a leap from nothing when מלווה is does not explain to everything when he does. The מהרש''א says this last point of תוספות is why תוספות did not ask their first question on רש''י. My question is the same exact point applies to רש''י.

That is: The מהרש''א suggested that תוספות is thinking that if the right גרסה is like רש''י then רבי אליעזר might make just one step from nothing when does explain to the exact amount of the loan when he does not. My question is this same answer works even better to רבינו חננאל. He loses nothing when he does not מפרש and only against the loan when he does.
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שבועות מ''ג ע''ב וב''מ פ''א ע''ב. קושיה על תוספות בשבועות מ''ג ע''ב וב''מ פ''א ע''ב. בקיצור, תוספות הוא שואל שתי שאלות על רבינו חננאל שיכול להיות מיושמות על רש''י. אבל תוספות לא רוצה לשאול על רש''י. אז המהרש''א נותן תשובה מדוע שאלה אחת יכולה להיות יותר רלוונטית לרבינו חננאל. אבל הרעיון של מהרש''א חל באותה המידה לרש''י. הרעיון הבסיסי הוא זה. שמואל אומר שאם מלווה לוקח משכון ומאבד אותו הוא מאבד את כל ההלוואה. הגמרא שואלת זה לא נראה כמו רבי אליעזר ולא רבי עקיבא. המחלוקת היא כך: רבי אליעזר אומר שהוא לוקח שבועה ומאבד שום דבר. רבי עקיבא אומר שהוא מאבד את השווי של המשכון. בגרסה שלנו והגרסה של רש''י הגמרא עונה שמואל הוא כאשר המלווה לא מפרש, והמחלוקת בין רבי עקיבא והרבי אליעזר היא כאשר הוא  מפרש. ורבינו חננאל מהפך את זה. שמואל הוא כאשר הוא מפרש, ורבי אליעזר והרבי עקיבא הם כאשר הוא לא עשה זאת. הגמרא בבבא מציעא פא: בנימה רלוונטית מנסה לקבל תוצאה שהמשנה שם יכולה להיות כמו שניהם, רבי אליעזר ורבי עקיבא, ולא יכולה לעשות את זאת. המשנה שם אומרת המלווה הוא שומר שכר ביחס למשכון. זה טוב לרבי עקיבא, אבל לא לרבי אליעזר. אז תוספות שואלים אם רבינו חננאל נכון, אז המשנה בבבא מציעא היא דעת של כולם וזה כאשר הוא מפרש כמו שמואל. השאלה של המהרש''א היה שאותה שאלה חלה על רש''י כשהוא לא הסביר כמו שמואל. שאלה נוספת של תוספות על רבינו חננאל.  רבי אליעזר לוקח זינוק יותר מדאי גדול. כאשר המלווה לא מסביר את הכל אז הוא מפסיד את כל החוב וכאשר ביא אינו מסביר הוא אינו מפסיד כלום . מהרש''א אומר הנקודה האחרונה של תוספות זו הסיבה התוספות לא שואלים את השאלה הראשונה שלהם ברש''י.  השאלה שלי היא אותה הנקודה המדויקת חלה על רש''י כלומר: מהרש''א הציע כי תוספות חושב שאם נכון שהגרסה הוא כמו רש''י, אז רבי אליעזר עשוי לעשות רק צעד. אם המלווה מפרש אינו מפסיד כלום, וכאשר הוא אינו מסביר  אז המשכון כנגד שיוווי ההלוואה המדויק. השאלה שלי היא אותה תשובה שזה עובד אפילו טובה יותר לרבינו חננאל. הוא לא מאבד שום דבר כשהוא לא מפרש, ורק כנגד ההלוואה כשהוא מפרש.


Talmud Bava Metzia 81b Shavuot 43B

In more detail my question on Tosphot and the Maharsha is this:  The Maharsha says we might says when the Gemara says RE and RA agree with Shmuel it means each makes one step from their starting position up one more step. My question is this works well to Rabbanu Chananel. That is when he explains then RE goes up one step to say the pledge is parallel only to its own value of the loan. and when he does not explain then it is not tied to the loan at all. But to Rashi this would not work. When he does not explain it is  parallel to its own value of the loan but when he does explain it is not tied to the loan at all.
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In more detail my question on תוספות and the מהרש'א is this:  The  מהרש'א says we might say when the גמרא says רבי אליעזר and רבי עקיבא agree with שמואל it means each makes one step from their starting position up one more step. My question is this works well to רבינו חננאל. That is when he explains then רבי אליעזר goes up one step to say the משכון is parallel only to its own value of the loan. and when he does not explain then it is not tied to the loan at all. But to רש''י this would not work. When he does not explain it is  parallel to its own value of the loan but when he does explain it is not tied to the loan at all.
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 השאלה שלי על תוספות ומהרש''א היא זאת: המהרש''א אומר שאנחנו יכולים לומר מתי הגמרא אומרת שרבי אליעזר ורבי עקיבא מסכימים עם שמואל שזה אומר שכל אחד עושה צעד אחד מעמדת המוצא שלהם צעד אחד יותר קדימה. השאלה שלי היא שזה עובד גם לרבינו חננאל. כלומר, כאשר הוא מסביר שרבי אליעזר עולה צעד אחד לומר שלגבי ההלוואה, המשכון מקביל רק לשוויו. וכשהוא לא מסביר ומפרש, אז המשכון לא קשור להלוואה בכלל. אבל לרש''י זה לא יעבוד. כשהוא לא מסביר ומפרש את זה, המשכון מקביל לשוויו, אבל כשהוא מסביר שהמשכון כנגד ההלוואה אז, הוא לא קשור להלוואה בכלל.

While Islam is focused on world conquest, the West is spending it energy on trying to figure out what or if there is a problem.

The question is what people focus on as being a problem and how much energy they are willing to spend on fixing it. Some might consider Islam as a mild problem, but it is no where near their top priority. The question is not even intellectual focus. It is emotional focus. To what end are all their emotions focused on?

We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally.

Link to article of Mark Steyn


 Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. 

One obstacle to doing that is that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society--government health care, government day care (which Canada's thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain's just introduced). We've prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity--"Go forth and multiply," because if you don't you won't be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.


The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyper-rationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.


We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally.

Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug

Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time, prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the enemy."

Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us

Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms.

Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true.

Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.
For example, one day in 2004, a couple of Canadians returned home, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They were the son and widow of a fellow called Ahmed Said Khadr, who back on the Pakistani-Afghan frontier was known as "al-Kanadi." Why? Because he was the highest-ranking Canadian in al Qaeda--plenty of other Canucks in al Qaeda, but he was the Numero Uno. In fact, one could argue that the Khadr family is Canada's principal contribution to the war on terror. Granted they're on the wrong side (if you'll forgive my being judgmental) but no one can argue that they aren't in the thick of things. One of Mr. Khadr's sons was captured in Afghanistan after killing a U.S. Special Forces medic. Another was captured and held at Guantanamo. A third blew himself up while killing a Canadian soldier in Kabul. Pa Khadr himself died in an al Qaeda shootout with Pakistani forces in early 2004. And they say we Canadians aren't doing our bit in this war!

In the course of the fatal shootout of al-Kanadi, his youngest son was paralyzed. And, not unreasonably, Junior didn't fancy a prison hospital in Peshawar. So Mrs. Khadr and her boy returned to Toronto so he could enjoy the benefits of Ontario government health care. "I'm Canadian, and I'm not begging for my rights," declared the widow Khadr. "I'm demanding my rights."

As they always say, treason's hard to prove in court, but given the circumstances of Mr. Khadr's death it seems clear that not only was he providing "aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies" but that he was, in fact, the Queen's enemy. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the Royal 22nd Regiment and other Canucks have been participating in Afghanistan, on one side of the conflict, and the Khadr family had been over there participating on the other side. Nonetheless, the prime minister of Canada thought Boy Khadr's claims on the public health system was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his own deep personal commitment to "diversity." Asked about the Khadrs' return to Toronto, he said, "I believe that once you are a Canadian citizen, you have the right to your own views and to disagree."

That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste. The Canadian prime minister is a typical late-stage Western politician: He could have said, well, these are contemptible people and I know many of us are disgusted at the idea of our tax dollars being used to provide health care for a man whose Canadian citizenship is no more than a flag of convenience, but unfortunately that's the law and, while we can try to tighten it, it looks like this lowlife's got away with it. Instead, his reflex instinct was to proclaim this as a wholehearted demonstration of the virtues of the multicultural state. Like many enlightened Western leaders, the Canadian prime minister will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the forces of intolerance consume him.


 Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: ..... So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they've calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.

Go back to that list of local conflicts I mentioned. The jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis, the Russians, the Indians and the Nigerians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Danes and New Zealanders?

So the jihadists are for the most part doing no more than giving us a prod in the rear as we sleepwalk to the cliff. When I say "sleepwalk," it's not because we're a blasé culture. On the contrary, one of the clearest signs of our decline is the way we expend so much energy worrying about the wrong things. If you've read Jared Diamond's bestselling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," you'll know it goes into a lot of detail about Easter Island going belly up because they chopped down all their trees. Apparently that's why they're not a G-8 member or on the U.N. Security Council. Same with the Greenlanders and the Mayans and Diamond's other curious choices of "societies." Indeed, as the author sees it, pretty much every society collapses because it chops down its trees.



 One way "societies choose to fail or succeed" is by choosing what to worry about. The Western world has delivered more wealth and more comfort to more of its citizens than any other civilization in history, and in return we've developed a great cult of worrying. You know the classics of the genre: In 1968, in his bestselling book "The Population Bomb," the eminent scientist Paul Ehrlich declared: "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." In 1972, in their landmark study "The Limits to Growth," the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993.

None of these things happened. In fact, quite the opposite is happening. We're pretty much awash in resources, but we're running out of people--the one truly indispensable resource, without which none of the others matter. Russia's the most obvious example: it's the largest country on earth, it's full of natural resources, and yet it's dying--its population is falling calamitously.

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."


And even though none of the prognostications of the eco-doom blockbusters of the 1970s came to pass, all that means is that 30 years on, the end of the world has to be rescheduled. The amended estimated time of arrival is now 2032. That's to say, in 2002, the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted "the destruction of 70 percent of the natural world in thirty years, mass extinction of species. . . . More than half the world will be afflicted by water shortages, with 95 percent of people in the Middle East with severe problems . . . 25 percent of all species of mammals and 10 percent of birds will be extinct . . ."

Or to cut to the chase, as the Guardian headlined it, "Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster."

Well, here's my prediction for 2032: unless we change our ways the world faces a future . . . where the environment will look pretty darn good. If you're a tree or a rock, you'll be living in clover. It's the Italians and the Swedes who'll be facing extinction and the loss of their natural habitat.

There will be no environmental doomsday. Oil, carbon dioxide emissions, deforestation: none of these things is worth worrying about. What's worrying is that we spend so much time worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about that we don't worry about the things we should be worrying about. For 30 years, we've had endless wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep. The world is changing dramatically right now, and hysterical experts twitter about a hypothetical decrease in the Antarctic krill that might conceivably possibly happen so far down the road there are unlikely to be any Italian or Japanese enviro-worriers left alive to be devastated by it.

In a globalized economy, the environmentalists want us to worry about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. Yet, insofar as "globalization" is a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite--that the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First World. Pigs are valued assets and sleep in the living room in rural China--and next thing you know an unknown respiratory disease is killing people in Toronto, just because someone got on a plane. That's the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald's and Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Buffalo . . .

What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.

As fertility shrivels, societies get older--and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going out of business--unless they can find the will to change their ways. Is that likely? I don't think so. If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them. The Scottish executive recently backed down from a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers. It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem. The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours per year than his American counterpart, and no politician who wishes to remain electorally viable will propose closing the gap in any meaningful way.

This isn't a deep-rooted cultural difference between the Old World and the New. It dates back all the way to, oh, the 1970s. If one wanted to allocate blame, one could argue that it's a product of the U.S. military presence, the American security guarantee that liberated European budgets: instead of having to spend money on guns, they could concentrate on butter, and buttering up the voters. If Washington's problem with Europe is that these are not serious allies, well, whose fault is that? Who, in the years after the Second World War, created NATO as a postmodern military alliance? The "free world," as the Americans called it, was a free ride for everyone else. And having been absolved from the primal responsibilities of nationhood, it's hardly surprising that European nations have little wish to reshoulder them. In essence, the lavish levels of public health care on the Continent are subsidized by the American taxpayer. And this long-term softening of large sections of the West makes them ill-suited to resisting a primal force like Islam.

There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called population explosion was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.
So the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less "Western." Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)--or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.

Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.

What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there's something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe's track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they're flying planes into buildings for they're likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock 'em over?

The latter half of the decline and fall of great civilizations follows a familiar pattern: affluence, softness, decadence, extinction. You don't notice yourself slipping through those stages because usually there's a seductive pol on hand to provide the age with a sly, self-deluding slogan--like Bill Clinton's "It's about the future of all our children." We on the right spent the 1990s gleefully mocking Mr. Clinton's tedious invocation, drizzled like syrup over everything from the Kosovo war to highway appropriations. But most of the rest of the West can't even steal his lame bromides: A society that has no children has no future.

Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an "amiable dunce" (in Clark Clifford's phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA analysts' position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself.

Yet, even by the minimal standards of these wretched precedents, so-called post-Christian civilizations--as a prominent EU official described his continent to me--are more prone than traditional societies to mistake the present tense for a permanent feature. Religious cultures have a much greater sense of both past and future, as we did a century ago, when we spoke of death as joining "the great majority" in "the unseen world." But if secularism's starting point is that this is all there is, it's no surprise that, consciously or not, they invest the here and now with far greater powers of endurance than it's ever had. The idea that progressive Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development was always foolish; we now know that it's suicidally so.


 It seems more likely that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way, and that by 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what's left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: Its population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if it's populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Very possibly. Will Germany if it's populated by Algerians? That's a trickier proposition.


 As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?

The more people that believe in a system, the less likely it is to be true.

There is free will in areas that are not obviously areas of good and evil.

Accepting of good or dumb world views is an example. The Rambam has this idea of two areas of human choise. Good and Evil. True and False.  [That is in the "Shemonah Perakim" (Eight chapters of introduction to Pirkei Avot)]

That is free will applies in lots of areas in daily life that have vast ramifications but are not obviously subject to some commandment. They are not areas that seem to be relevant to good or evil but to true of false world views. But accepting a false world view will bring one to great evil. The way a false world view  gets accepted is by seeming to promote good values.


It seems to me I am presented often with rival world view systems that both have some plausibility but one is true and the other false and it is up to me to discern.


The Crowd is to me not conclusive. The fact that a lot of people believe in a system does not seem to me to be any factor for against a system. That is a result of my growing up in S. California where it was a strike against a system if the crowd believed in it. The more people that believe in a system, the less likely it is to be true. On the other hand the consensus of experts seems to be indication of plausibility. (Steven Dutch has a good essay on constitutes an expert.)

So for now let me just say that the matter of finding a true world view is not a trivial matter, but rather of utmost importance because all of ones action from from it.  
This idea of using reason to decide corresponds closely with the approach of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides that the Torah is to bring one to natural law.
I know there are rival schools of thought but this is what I think gets closest to describing reality truly. And this is what I think describes the underlying principles of the Torah. You can see many elements of the system in the Guide of Maimonides.

The reason why life is hard is theodicity. That is the problem of evil. Not just that there is free will, but also often things happen to us that are very bad and we have no control over and there seems to be no reason for.

The reason we talk to God like we talk with a friend is not because every prayer is answered but rather because we hope the accumulation of prayers every day over many years will make an effect.
My Talmud learning partner told me about a farmer who planted the wrong crops every year. Either barley when there was only a market for wheat or visa verse. Once he found some versa in the Torah which indicated to him that everything God does is for the good. So when people would ask what crops he planted, he would say "The right ones." And somehow after that, things started working out for him.

In the Talmud Shabat 63 we find in learning one should finish the book he is learning and then go back over it in detail. It even suggests learning by just saying the words and going on. לעולם ליגרס אינש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר

The idea is that you present the contents of what you are learning to your subconscious, and automatically the process of synthesis takes place while sleeping or while doing other activities during the day.


we see also in Kant:

From the Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy


Kant characterizes synthesis as that activity by which understanding “runs through” and “gathers together” representations given to it by sensibility in order to form concepts, judgments, and ultimately, for any cognition to take place at all (A77-8/B102-3). Synthesis is not something people are typically aware of doing. As Kant says, it is a “a blind though indispensable function of the soul…of which we are only seldom even conscious (A78/B103)”.





I have thought that this would be helpful for Physics and  I found it helpful.  [At some point I decided natural sciences are important to learn based on the Guide of the Rambam. I would have done chemistry and biology also, but I decided if I would spread myself too thin I would not get anywhere. However at at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, I did have to take chemistry also besides my major. 

When do you need ordination from Sinai to make a halachic decision? Actually not often. But it does need to come from the Gemara. One of the advantages of the real authentic Shulchan Aruch  is it gives a clear picture of the sugia in the gemara and how it develops into the halacha. But if one does actually know the Talmud well enough to be a מומחה לרבים  [a expert that has been tested by other experts and never found to make a mistake, and whose decision has been accepted by other experts] then he is allowed to decide cases involving money as long as they are not cases of wounding or theft. These last two need ordination from Sinai.


The idea of the halachic based on דינא דגמרא the law of the Gemara is well established even in the Rambam. The Maharshal  wrote it is better to decide from the Gemara itself even if one is wrong than to decide based on the Rambam even if one is right.

The basic idea is this. The mishna says one needs three people to judge monetary cases and three [later Rava will explain this to mean  people with the authentic ordination from Sinai] in order to judge robbery and wounds. It is late here but in short according to the Torah we need three people with authentic ordination for everything but the sages made an exception for loans and cases of admissions. What comes out is that the requirement for authentic ordination is not required in  MONETARY CASES. So far the gemara has not said anything about more general halachic rulings.

The people that present and teach Kabalah are caught in a delusional world called the Intermediate Zone that gives those who enter it a feeling of great power and insight.

Every wisdom has a אבן ניגף stumbling block in it. That is you can get so deeply into it that you are doing OK and then you trip over the hidden wire. This applies to what is  taught in Humanities and Social Sciences Departments of universities as is clear from that fact that the students of professors in those department lose common sense and  enter in worlds of delusion. But I wanted to bring up the issue of Kabalah which is known to have a similar kind of stumbling bock in it.

The people that present and teach Kabalah are caught in a delusional world called the Intermediate Zone that gives those who enter it a feeling of great power and insight.

But I get the idea people are interested in numinous reality. Maybe I am also. After all I was at two amazing places in NY which were learning Torah the Oral and Written Law- and yet something inside me felt I was missing something. Where does one go to quench his or her spiritual thirst?

I would avoid Sitra Achra {Dark Side} places as much as possible. The Dark Side is seductive and inviting and seems full of light and love and Jewish rituals to make it seem kosher.

One nice thing bout the Kabalah Center is they do concentrate on the Ari alone and avoid all the Sitra Achra Kabalah that came after the Ari.  That is the best option for those interested in that area of study. Besides that I have not seen or heard of any place that deals with the mystic side of Torah that is not simply the Sitra Achra in disguise.


Now I should mention what the Ari was intending was to get a mental picture of the spiritual worlds above and by this to be attached to God. The problem is most people do not get attached to the Side of Holiness by this but rather to worlds of illusion.

And for laymen it is hard to discern who knows what they are talking about and who does not. Even I have this problem when it comes to other things that I have  knowledge of but not enough to tell who really knows it well and who is a quack. But at least in kabalah I do know enough to tell who is from the side of holiness and who is not.

The Gra brings up the point that a case brought before a judge might require a decision based on the pleas but the truth might be elsewhere. In such a case he said the judge must remove himself. This occurred to me when learning the Rambam concerning civil cases. The Halacha might require one decision but the judge might be aware that it is  a דין מרומה. There is something under the surface that is not being presented. See Shir Hashirim on the verse הנה מטתו של שלמה.
If the judge decides like the truth against the law of the Torah then there is the sword on his neck. If he decides like the law of the Torah against the real truth then Hell opens up beneath him.

The basic idea of Paramenides I paraphrase like this "What is must be. What is not can't be"
This was later contradicted by Herculitus who said the very essence of the world is change. Plato resolved this with dividing reality into two realms. The unchanging real world of ideas and the shadow world of changing things. Kant also divided things into the dinge an sich and phenomena. But to him you cant know the dinge an sich."Things in themselves." This was the opposite of Plato.
Schopenhauer accepted there are two separate realms. But to him there is only one Ding An Sich: the Will.
This can help us understand the verse אין עוד מלבדו. That the First Cause, God, is the only thing that must be. Everything can be or might not be. Their existence depends on him. But they do exist. This is how the Rambam explains the creation. He says it is יש מאין  ex nihilo. Not from himself.God willed the world to be. He did not make it from himself, but from nothing.

This idea of something from nothing is so important to the Rambam that he spends a good portion of volume 2 of the Guide to defend it and he says if one does nothing believe in this the the foundation of the whole Torah falls away.  I should mention that to disbelieve this would take more evidence that is available either to reason or to our senses. Also the Nefesh HaChaim cant be used against this because if you look carefully at his language you will see he says that אין עוד מלבדו means there are no other powers in the world besides God

Ideas in Talmud  Ideas in Bava Metzia  [I did a few spelling corrections and also I did not want to get into a halacha issue too much about if you are learning Torah and there is a minyan davening. I do not think you have to answer but I did not want to get into this subject in a book about Bava Metzia


Title page for Ideas in Talmud  Title page for Ideas in Bava Metzia

Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides

I had come to appreciate the Guide. When I returned to Israel the second time I ended up in an shul in Ramot 3 [a suburb of Jerusalem]. There I opened up the Guide and saw one short chapter that had this remarkable sentence in it לא הצם והמתפלל הוא הנרצה, אלא היודעו. ["Not he who fasts and prays is desirable, rather he that knows Him."]

The Rambam sees Faith and Reason as interacting. That is each informs the other. Reason guides Faith and visa-versa. Each is lacking without the other.

This is a key insight. In the original צמצום contraction of the Ari we find the Infinite Light was contracted. We find this contraction was in each of the מידות (ten sepherot).
.
 This is the idea of Kant that not just human reason, but pure reason is limited. 

(I am here depending on the intuitions of Isaac Luria. And I believe there are sufficient reasons for doing so. What makes him important is his own intuitions of the higher worlds, not the Zohar that he was using to express his ideas. As we know from Kant every representation is given half by the subject and half by the object. So his ideas were half of how he saw things and half of objective reality.]
 [The Reshash רב שלום שרבי Shalom Sharabi gives a good account of this in the  Nahar Shalom.

At any rate, we see the importance of balance in life. This is because one can go over the boundary of wisdom and thus lose faith. And when that happens then wisdom itself becomes stupid because it has faith included in it. Similarly faith we it goes beyond the boundary of wisdom stops being faith of side of holiness but becomes faith of the Dark Side.

This idea of the Rambam is expressed throughout the Guide. But it shows up especially in the parable about the King and his country.  There are people outside the country and people inside. There are people closer to the capital city and people inside. There are people close to the palace and people inside. There are people close to the king's chambers in the palace and people that are in the ouster chambers.  The people outside the country are the barbarians. The people inside keep Torah. The people close to the palace know and keep the Talmud perfectly. The people inside the palace are the מדעים [Physicists in the language of the Rambam]. The inner chambers are where the prophets and philosophers are. The Rambam starts that chapter saying he is not saying anything different there than what he already explained. In this parable we see the idea of a balanced life where people learn the Oral and Written Law and Physics and Metaphysics together.

Bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem

Bringing the Ark of the Ten Commandments into Jerusalem  The music was written circa 1996



Moses being drawn from the Nile by the daughter of Pharoh    music written around 2012



Joseph and his father music is j33 written about 3 years ago  


David the Shepard turned Warrior  



Jeremiah the prophet mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem    The music here was written in NY.


Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah music is q92


i1 b98    

avraham and isaac  The music here was made while waiting in the Borispol Airport to return to NY. [that was probably around 1995]. I think that was the year I had lost my papers. Usually when I go through a lot of suffering, God gives me some kind of great song afterwards.[There is a kind of song towards the end which God gave to me when I first went to yeshiva in NY]


Joseph with his father Music written around 2011 around the time I discovered an answer to a question in Bava Metzia page 97


Moses drawn from the river by the daughter of Pharoh

A large majority of religious teachers are possessed by forces from the Dark Side. A



 The power that the false tzadikm and false messiahs have over us is because of the the support they get from religious teachers. If we would simply learn and keep Torah simply none of these problems would be plaguing us.

It is true that a מומחה לרבים can decide a halachic issue in civil laws. But the qualifications to be a מומחה לרבים are not qualifications that any religious teachers have. They are just innocent idiots that give qualifications one to the other. 

Reb Natan I assume was a gilgul of Natan from Gaza and corrected his sin of supporting a false messiah by supporting a true tzadik. But in doing so he overdid it.

[The main criteria  for a מומחה לרבים is not that he has been accepted by the crowd but he has been tested by people who themselves experts  in the whole Mishna and Talmud and has never been found to make  a mistake or not know a halacha. So who would that be. I would have to say people who in fact were known to know the Talmud well. Not people who had their reputations built of other criteria. So if we look at the true criteria that the Chazal give us it is fairly easy to see that there were people and probably still are a few who do qualify. Rav Shach, Reb Moshe Feinstein, Shmuel Berenbaum. The trouble begins with Baali Teshuva who find some Chrismatic lunatic and decide to call him a "Baki BeShas" expert in Shas. So the idiot gets a reputation for knowing the Talmud because people want this to be so. Not because it is in fact the case.

Michelangelo's Rachel the music is n1  black hole  i3

Moses looks on the history of the birth of the People of Israel  the music here is the same as Moses the Law Giver. I am just trying to figure out how to put this kind of thing together. There is Michelangelo's Leah and Rachel and various events. There is the expulsion from Gan Eden. The giving of the Torah is a way to bring us back into the Garden of Eden but we have to go through the fiery swords of the angels guarding the way .

רות המואביה Ruth the Moavite woman is thinking about the right path in life and she chooses the God of Israel


This is not complete. It is just my first attempt to put something on utube in this way.
The music is q1. The pictures are of Ruth and her thoughts as she is thinking about her path in life.
 and decides to join her path with Noami. She becomes the grandmother of Kind David.

She was born into Moav a nation that was at odds with Israel. A Jewish couple arrived in Moav because of a famine. She married one of the sons. That son died. She was a widow. Her mother in law Noami was on her way back to Israel, Ruth decided to join her. The lesson is even when you are down and out--there is still hope.

It is hard to know when someone knows what they are talking about. It seems to me the only way to to know the subject yourself. Without that it is hard to know.
It is easy to get fooled by credentials  that in many cases were given by people equally as incompetent. The problem is not just credentials that are not relevant to the subject. Sometimes the very fact of the being credentials can show a problem. 

To learn Musar and Gemara. I think with the input of these two things every day that you will see blessings in all of the other areas you want to have go well. So what I think is to do every day about 1/2 hour of, each one. [You could add time to each session if you want. But a half hour of Musar and a 40 mintutes of Gemara I think are the best way for one to get out of problems. The power of Torah is great. Musar means traditional Musar like the חובות לבבות (Obligations of the Heart) or of the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter.]

 I am look at learning Torah as a kind of unexplained thing that has power to help one in life. 

You see this kind of thing in the Old Testament when Elisha the prophet told the Syrian general to be tovel [immerse himself] in the Jordan River seven times and he would be cured of leprosy. Sometimes there is some small thing that can help one in life enormously, but one does not know what it is or does not recognize its value. 

There is a thing as learning the Ari in depth.[That is Isaac Luria.] The surprising thing is that the people that are supposed to be so called "mekubalim" never know the Ari at all. They are all frauds. There is one fellow however, Michael Kohler, who I discovered actually did the work and knows it well. He apparently thinks that the head of a Kabalah yeshiva also knows it well but I think he is wrong about that.  The head of the Kabalah yeshiva just wrote  a book of "look here and look there" so it sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

What is surprising about this is the complexity of the Ari is no where near that of a a single Tosphot. It is not hard at all. But it takes a lot of work. [But still It is nothing compared to Field Theory.]  Even with that degree of simplicity, all the people that are supposed to know it are frauds.

What does this matter? The point that I am driving at is that it is worth doing this work. The reason I think it is be worthwhile is that attachment with God [Devekut] is a result of this learning when it is done right.

There is a well known problem with this kind of learning. And we do find the Ari himself warned about this at the end of the few books on the Torah itself. שער הפסוקים is one place. In any case  avoiding the frauds is the first order of business. The way to do this is actually quite simple. Do the regular Torah learning in a normal Straight Lithuanian Yeshiva. Then after you have gone trough Shas a couple of time [that is in a fast session] then you get the set of the Ari from the Kabalah Institute. They have the best edition. And then you learn the Eitz Chaim many times, or the Mavo Shearim, which are both the major sources needed to know the system of the Ari.

And don't go near anything later than that. The trouble with the later supposedly mystic stuff is it all is drawn from the false prophet of the Shatz and just reading it infects the people that read it with that energy from the Sitra Achra which does not have a cure as far as I have seen. It is fatal to one's spirit and soul. I never saw anyone that fell for it that did not die spiritually from it. [After the  Ari, Yaakov Abuchatzaira,  and Shalom Sharabi are the only ones that I think are OK.]

Still on the subject of the previous essay. The question of conflict between mitzvot is brought up in Yevamot and in Bava Metzia pgs 29  and 82a. עשה דוחה לא תעשה אבל אין עשה דוחה לא תעשה שיש בו כרת ואין עשה דוחה לא תעשה ועשה. [A positive mitzvah pushes off a negative mitzvah, but not a negative mitvah that has as its penalty cutting off from one's people] That is a long sugia in the beginning of Yevamot. Also העוסק המצווה פטור מן המצווה. [One who is doing a mitzvah does not interrupt in order to do another mitzvah] That is the פרוטה של רב יוסף in Bava Metzia. There you see even if one is involved in a small mitzvah, he does not have to interrupt in order to do a great mitzvah. For example one has found a lost object like a towel. Since he has a category of a guard he does not have to give charity even if a poor person walks up to him and asks for charity. And Raba does not disagree that if it would be the case that a poor person asks that he is not obligated and in fact should not interrupt. It is just that Raba says we don't say he is making a profit because a poor person might ask for charity.

One of the issues that come up from this are the fact that lots of time you find yourself learning in a shul and just because some jerk decides he wants to daven Mincha, he expects you to interrupt your learning to answer Amen and stand up for Kedusha. Not only is this rude, but it is specifically against the Halacha. One who is doing one mitzvah even a small one does not have to interrupt in order to do another mitzvah.

We do find that one that is learning is allowed to interrupt to do another mitzvah, but he does not have to. That is as the Gra explains that Mishna in Peach "תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם"

This sugia also comes up in Suka where it brings that the newly married person does not have to say the Shema. I think I might have brought this up before hand with the Baal HaMeor and the Ramban in some blog entry. In any case what you find at the Kotel or in many other places that people expect one to interrupt his learning to say Kedusha is  just a power play to get control over other people.


But it does not end there. The truth is this is symptomatic of  a larger problem. People just don't care about learning Torah. Not those that learn and not those that don't.  To those that learn it is a job they are getting paid for. So they don't care because, כל דאשתמש בתגא חלף ["Anyone that uses the Torah as a means to make money loses their portion in the next world--that is how the Rambam explains that Mishna.] Those that don't learn as we can see just do not think it does anything. They might think many other things are important--maybe supporting some movement or going to some tzadik, or maybe even learning Kabalah. But straight Oral and written law not.

[There is a kind of permission to accept charity if you are learning Torah. But once there are conditions when and where you have to learn, then is devolves into learning for money. ]


In any case I would like to write more about this subject but I feel it would be better to wait and see if perhaps Rav Shach wrote something about this.[My learning partner is not interested in this subject. And without Rav Shach I doubt if I can find much clarity in it. There are too many loose ends. and principles flying around.]

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 The question of conflict between מצוות is brought up in יבמות and in בבא מציעא כ''ט  and פ''ב ע''א. עשה דוחה לא תעשה אבל אין עשה דוחה לא תעשה שיש בו כרת ואין עשה דוחה לא תעשה ועשה.
That is a long סוגיא in the beginning of יבמות. Also העוסק המצווה פטור מן המצווה. That is the פרוטה של רב יוסף in ב''מ. There you see even if one is involved in a small מצווה, he does not have to interrupt in order to do a great מצווה. For example one has found a lost object. Since he has a category of a שומר he does not have to give charity even if a poor person walks up to him and asks for charity. And רבה does not disagree that if it would be the case that a poor person asks that he is not obligated and in fact should not interrupt. It is just that רבה says we don't say he is making a profit because a poor person might ask for charity. זה לפי תוספות

One of the issues that come up from this are the fact that lots of time you find yourself learning in a  and just because someone  decides he wants to להתפלל מנחה he expects you to interrupt your learning to answer אמן and stand up for קדושה. Not only is this rude, but it is specifically against כלל, העוסק במצווה פטור מן המצווה

We do find that one that is learning is allowed to interrupt to do another mitzvah, but he does not have to. That is as the גר''א explains that משנה in פאה "תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם"

This סוגיא also comes up in סוכה where it brings that the newly married person does not have to say the שמע.

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יבמות פרק א' ובבא מציעא כ''ט ופ''ב ע''א. עשה דוחה לא יעשה אבל אין עשה דוחה לא תעשה שיש בו כרת ואין עשה דוחה לא תעשה ועשה. זה סוגיא ארוכה בתחילת יבמות. גם עוסק מצווה פטורה מן המצווה. זה פרוטה של רב יוסף ב''מ. יש לך לראות אפילו אם בן אדם מעורב במצווה קטנה, הוא לא צריך להפסיק כדי לעשות מצווה גדולה. לדוגמא אחד מצא אבדה. מאז יש לו קטגוריה של שומר הוא לא צריך לתת צדקה אפילו אם אדם עני ניגש אליו ושואל לצדקה. ורבה מסכים שאם זה יהיה המקרה שאדם עני שואל כי הוא אינו מחויב, ולמעשה לא צריך להפסיק.   רבה אמר שאנחנו לא אומרים ששומר אבדה עושה רווח, כי אדם עני עלול לבקש צדקה. זה לפי תוספות. העולה מזה הוא כשאתה מוצא את עצמך לומד  ומישהו מחליט שהוא רוצה להתפלל המנחה והוא מצפה ממך להפסיק את הלמידה שלך לענות אמן ולעמוד לקדושה . זה נגד כלל העוסק במצווה פטור מן המצווה. אנו מוצאים שאחד שלומד מותר להפסיק לעשות מצווה אחרת, אבל הוא לא צריך. זה כמו הגר''א מסביר את המשנה בפאה "תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם"