Unconditioned realities. The trouble with understanding morality is that of knowing any unconditioned realities. This is the source of moral contradictions. Just as Kant said that when pure reason ventures into the real of unconditioned realities contradictions automatically pop up.


The objects of experience are individual, particular, and concrete, while, on the other hand, the objects of thought, or most of the kinds of things that we know even about individuals, are general and abstract, i.e. universals.

So he shifted from the regular Neo Platonic approach which had been begun by Saadia Gaon and went to Aristotle. That gives knowledge of individual things since universals are in the individual. From there there will be higher levels of pure reason that can conceive of higher things.


Appendix. Aristotle by putting the forms inside of things helped bridge between objects of experience and universals. And other levels of knowledge that are concepts alone. It goes from the Oral Law, to Maase Breshit מעשה בראשית and from that to Maase Merchava מעשה מרכבה

Letter to a friend

Dear ...: That is a long letter with lots of points. As for the first point. Dale Martin is getting all of his material from other sources. He just puts it together very well. Better than I could ever do. But the actual sources are difficult. At Polytechnic I saw a few books in the library about the hypothetical documents.  But this is a long and involved study.

The Rambam [Maimonides] concerning Maase Breishit is also a difficult subject. I think looking into the Ramban [Nachmanides] is a good area of investigation. All the Rishonim are worthy of study. I do not think there will be any great kashe about the Rambam however because he seems to be uniform in his opinion from the beginning of his life until the end and hinted at it in many places. You are right that without the Ramban (Nachmanides) the Rambam (Maimonides) would have been forgotten and marginalized to the point of vanishing.

Besides that I think that it is helpful to get a general idea of all the rishonim in order to understand any particular one. Context makes a difference.

[I should add that Yaakov Abuchatzeira and the Gra clearly held from the Ari.]

the belief system of Torah is Monotheism

The Sages asked why was Mordechai called a "Yehudi". Today we understand the word to mean a Jew (or Jewish). But it means from the tribe of Yehuda [Judah].
He was from the tribe of Benjamin. So what could it mean?

They answer because he denied idolatry -- because anyone who denies idolatry is  as if he confess to the whole Torah.  Anyone who admits idolatry is as if he denied the whole Torah. [Yehuda comes from the word admit.]

Thus I decided to stay away from idolatrous cults that seem to infest Orthodx Judaism like lice.  Even if they are the only show in town. To me it is more important to stay away from idolatry.

This clarity only came to me after learning Sanhedrin 63 fairly well. Before I learned that page in Sanhedrin the whole concept of idolatry was fairly ambiguous to me. I wrote some of my ideas about that Gemara in my little booklet on the Talmud. Mainly I was concentrating on the Tosphot there. But learning it in depth helped me understand the subject better.

An example of idolatry a person says any created thing besides God, "You are my god, save me" that makes the thing itself into an idol. The person himself gets the normal penalty for idolatry.

I should mention in this context that the belief system of Torah is Monotheism.  That is that God made the world something from nothing. That is Torah belief excludes pantheism. And it excludes worship of tzadikim.

God also is a simple One. He is not a composite of substance and form. He has no form nor substance nor anything that we can conceive of. There is a limit to human reason and even to pure reason in this regard. We can know he exists and that is all.

Also in the Torah there is no sense that God is imminent in nature or tied to natural substances or phenomena.  Nature also is not divine. It's  de-divinized; the created world is not divine, it is not the physical manifestation of God. The line of demarcation therefore between the divine and the natural and human worlds is clear. 


Nature isn't God himself. He's not identified with it. He's wholly other. He isn't kin to humans in any way either. So there is no blurring, no soft boundary between humans and the divine. 

So, to summarize, the view of God is that there is one supreme God, who is creator and sovereign of the world, who simply exists, who is  incorporeal, and for whom the realm of nature is separate and subservient. 

Indeed, creation takes place through the simple expression of his will. "When God began to create heaven and earth," and there's a parenthetical clause: "God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light." He expressed his will that there be light, and there was light and that's very different from many Ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies in which there's always a sexual principal at work in creation. 

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Why do you need to speak out against cults?

Is it slander to speak about cults?

The illusion of being careful about Slander.


Selective enforcement.


Force includes relying on the legal system, which ultimately rests on the use of force as a last resort. Goading your opposition beyond endurance to the point where they respond violently is non-violence only in the most hypocritical, specious sense.

Putting people in the position where they either have to yield to your demands or resort to violence to stop you is emphatically not non-violence.


The three items on the list are calculated, manipulative, and deceptive practices.
 Can you really claim to be non-violent if you threaten someone else's position to the point where they feel they must resort to violence to protect their interests?


Forms of  peace



The only truly non-violent tactic, in the sense that it neither commits nor provokes violence, is complete non-resistance and submission to the demands of the power elite.


Women would have to submit meekly to rape rather than struggle to resist. And no "pacifist" I have ever heard of advocates that.

Generally, what passes for "non-violence" or "pacifism" is one of the following: Relying on the law. This is not non-violence because if all other measures fail, the legal system will use force to achieve its ends. That's why we speak of enforcing the law.

Maintaining a facade of pacifism while provoking the opposition to violence, or creating an intolerable obstruction that can only be removed by force, or threatening their position to the point where they feel they have to resort to violence to protect their interests. This position, as already noted, is hypocritical, manipulative, and deceptive.




The Cycle of Violence


Before we go any further, take your mouse and put the cursor on the bold lettering above.Now, notice what you did. In order to move the mouse, you had to exert force, and very precise and gentle force at that. You didn't rip the mouse cord out of the computer, or crush the mouse in your grip, or push so hard on it that you mashed the trackball flat. The notion that force inexorably spirals out of control is precisely that trivially easy to refute. Now it's probably true that resorting to unnecessary violence may very well lead to retaliation. So restraint in dealing with confrontations is usually a good idea.




Most pacifists react to this issue by simply pretending that it doesn't exist, that people either never deliberately choose violence, that violence always stems from earlier violence, poverty, or injustice, or that if people do deliberately choose violence, it's in rare cases that are not really of great importance. But history abounds with examples of people who have deliberately chosen violence. The ease with which people from non-violent backgrounds have been induced to commit atrocities in wartime shows how easy it can be for the violent to recruit assistants, and for the gratification factor to take hold. Thus, a single individual who opts for violence because he enjoys domination may succeed in recruiting many others less bold than he is.







How do we respond to people who have opted for violence? Appeasement merely reinforces the conviction that violence gets results. Moreover, it provides gratification by reinforcing the feeling of dominance. When confronting people who have already opted for violence, non-violence has a very good chance of perpetuating the cycle of violence. Retaliatory force, on the other hand, makes the results of violence a lot less simple, a lot less effective in getting results, and a lot less gratifying.



Furthermore, violence is only the far end of the spectrum of force. Every screaming brat who throws a temper tantrum in public is testimony to the fact that children do not need to be taught the use of force. And regardless how loving, benevolent and diligent a parent is in meeting and supplying the child's needs, every child sooner or later runs into the fact that other people, much less the physical universe, will not. Sooner or later every human being has to face the fact that some desires will not be gratified.



Throwing the First Punch



Pacifists are vociferous in denouncing "aggression." I can think of a number of cases where "aggression" either shortened a war or ended genocide. None involve the United States, by the way.In 1971, civil war broke out in Pakistan, which was then made up of two ethnically and geographically separate areas. A million people died and ten million fled into India. Faced with an overwhelming refugee crisis, India invaded East Pakistan, which became independent as Bangladesh.







Not only is it morally permissible to commit aggression, sometimes it's morally obligatory.







So What's Your Plan?





There are intellectual pacifists whose real though un-admitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism.
Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.

 Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty....


 Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

The basic reason people support Trump

The basic reason people support Trump is mainly frustration of the vast majority of Americans of seeing the Left destroy the USA and its values. This might not be felt by people that are part of bureaucracy of government. But this frustration is felt deeply by most ordinary Americans.

But what are the forces at work to destroy the USA? Mainly Socialists, Muslims and blacks on welfare. These three are the three headed hydra that is hard at work to destroy everything good and godly  and wholesome about the USA.

The basic reasons I do not agree with socialism are outlined in an essay by Michael Huemer. I will try to find the link. Mainly the reason is that socialism in its very core is based on the labor theory of value which is simply not a true doctrine. I just found the link. Here is the essay: The Theory of Economic Value.

I can not be accused of being ignorant of the arguments for Socialism. I spend a good deal of time learning the whole game plan from Russeou, Hegel, Marx, etc. Probably I spent a lot more time on this than it deserved.  [Not all of the above authors. Just a lot of their writings and also more modern treatments of their thought, like the Cambridge Companion Edition of Hegel, plus  the vast site on the internet devoted to Hegel and Marx.]

What makes more sense to me is: The Talmud, Maimonides, Israel Salanter, the Chafetz Chaim, John Locke, Kant, Schopenhauer, Popper, Jung. These are all on the side of the individual and private property  and the main job of government is to protect the private sphere of activity [civil society].
To help to put all the above together it is helpful to learn The Closing of the American Mind by Allen Bloom and the Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom.

But I have carefully considered all sides of the arguments. I have also discussed these issues with many people that lived under socialist systems and also in the USA before the age of political correctness. With ordinary people and with people thoroughly entrenched in both systems.

Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.

To my understanding it would make sense to get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. The reason is this. Knowing Hebrew is in fact some help to understanding Torah, but not as much as you might think. 

What you need because of limited time is something small and simple that gives you the basic idea. That is definitely Rav Shach's book the Avi Ezri. What he does is to give a good idea on how to analyze any given halacha in the Torah in a very deep way, but also in a very simple way. 

I could recommend Rav Chaim HaLevi Soloveitchik's book the Chidushei HaRambam, but there is something about Rav Shach's book that goes way beyond the Chidushei HaRambam. But since the Chidushei Harambam is smaller you might try to get that and to work on just one long essay.  
I cant really explain very well what the thing is bout Rav Shach's book. It is simultaneously simple to understand and yet very deep. However I admit that it was Rav Chaim Soloveitchik who opened the door to the Rambam.  There were some preliminary steps before him but they were just cracks in the door. Reb Chaim opened it swung it open. Rav Shach then walked in. That being said if possible the best thing would be to get the books of his two disciples Barch Ber and Shimon Shkop and just plow through them.

blaming Israel

I had thought that people would notice a problem with Islam after 9/11. But instead everyone went about claiming it is a religion of peace and blaming Israel. I do not see why this should be any different. Everyone will keep on saying it is the fault of the Jews and that it is because they don't give enough territory  and that Islam is wonderful.

In fact, American were so convinced Islam is great they voted twice for a Muslim President. On the other hand I have to admit I am not really sure what seems to be the problem with it. I can see why people might make a mistake. It took me a long time to realize there might be a problem with Islam. I was certainly willing to give Muslims a chance. It is a long story. But at some point it began to dawn on me that something is really really wrong with it.

אין אדם עומד על דבר אלא אם כן נכשל בו
I had to learn the hard way about a lot of things. But I am not recommending this procedure. It is just the only way I found out about things that had good reputations that were really insidious cults.
And sometimes personal experience is not enough to evaluate things. You know your own experience is just a microcosm of the large picture. So you need a kind of balance and common sense. 

Slander, Chafetz Chaim, Halacha

I think the Chafetz Chaim is very important. [The book of laws on not to speak slander]

But warning people about insane baali tesuva and hypocritical back stabbing FFB is not Lashon HaRa.

But in any case, I along with most other people could use a good dose of Chafetz Chaim. 

 There is a whole set of the works of the Chafetz Chaim in Hebrew that is very inexpensive. You could get it plus and English Hebrew dictionary and go through it at home. I went through almost the entire set while I was at the Mir yeshiva in NY. I skipped on the small book that he wrote to Jews in the USA telling them about basic mitzvot. At the time this seemed redundant to me.

I mentioned to Shimon Buso a grandson of Bava Sali, that there are plenty of ways of misusing the Chafetz Chaim. He answered to me that without learning it, slander is הפקר [a free for all].

I have mentioned that I tried to stick with saying the truth all the time, because the slander thing seemed to me to be impossible to keep. I needed something to stick with that was both powerful and yet practical.


In any case though the Chafetz Chaim is important, I think it is clear that without a good background in the basic works of Philosophy during the Middle Ages that people almost automatically fill in the gaps in their education with pure nonsense. Thus I suggest to go through this very basic minimum: אמונות ודעות by Saadia Gaon, The Guide of the Rambam. Ibn Gavirol, Joseph Albo, Crescas,  Isaac Abravenal, Jehuda Abravenal. Why this should be so hard is beyond me. People do at least this much reading every two weeks. Tally up  the time they spend on novels and newspapers. The exact same time they could go through the above list.

As far as Halacha goes I think it is best to learn the Rambam with the commentaries. That is to go through one half a page of Rambam per day with the Kesef Mishna and Magid Mishna. After that to do the same with the Tur Beit Yosef.

religious world

What is the basic problem with baali teshuva (newly religious people) is simple. Either they are loyal to their parents and friends. Then they are not baali teshuva. Or they are not loyal to their family and friends. Then all the more so they are worthless when it comes to commitment. If they can drop their own family and friends then what is their commitment to anything worth?

That being said the religious world itself is a nightmare of backstabbing hypocrites. Neither the FFB (frum religious  from birth) nor the Baali Teshuva have anything going for them. The FFB think by birth they are the intellectual superiors of  the whole world. The truth is the FFB and the Baali Teshuva deserve the hell they make for each other.
Of course both groups are highly deluded.
Which brings me to the point I often make that the only place you can find authentic Torah is in a Lithuanian yeshiva. There the baali teshuva are taught a balanced set of values that includes loyalty to parents and family. And there the FFB tend to be more aware of their own limitations.

c from this lethal combination of FFB and Baali Teshuva. It is mainly one large idolatrous cult with lots of little variations. But they don't think they are doing idolatry because of the excuse of doing lots of rituals. So when they worship their leaders they think that is not idolatry.

Ideas in Talmud edited  Ideas in Bava Metzia

As you can tell, I am mainly learning in the way I learned in Shar Yashuv by the rosh yeshiva Naphtali Yeager.  I concentrate on "לחשבן את הסוגיא" to calculate the subject.   However I do look at Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and Rav Shach {Elazar Menachem Shach.} but only in so far as they help me understand the subject matter on the page of the Gemara. This is also how my learning partner, David learns.

I admit I can not say how people were learning in the Mir Yeshiva in NY. By the time I got there I was already trying to get through Shas. Plus the in depth study I did was mainly concentrated on the Pnei Yeshoshua and the Maharsha which is certainly not what anyone else was doing. People in general were just preparing in the morning for the classes of the Roshei Yeshiva. And each class was different. You can see the first years classes in the book the Sukat David.
Reb Shmuel Berenbaum however was different. Mainly this is what he would do--take a look at the Mishna laMelech on the Rambam so to the issues that come up in any particular sugia. Those were the areas he would concentrate on. But his answers were based on a a kind of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik kind of approach.

Here is part of a letter I got:

"Would you be able to help me look at some questions regarding the Talmud and the New Testament?  I know that you really respect the Talmud and grow inspiration from it.  Would you say that all Halacha is inspired by the Holy Spirit?  

If so, does the Halacha and the inspiration of it include the statements in the Gemara and in the rest of the sages that seem to refer to Yeshua/Yeshu?  Yeshua affirms the people sitting on the seat of Moshe and says about the Prushim to do as they say, but not to do as they do.  If so, Yeshua would confirm the command of heeding to the sages also in regard to their statements about himself?  Do I have to accept them?  Are they really talking about him?  What do you think?  Do you accept them like the rest of the oral Torah, or would you consider these statements as human additions produced in a different spirit than the rest of the Gmara?  Do you regard it as binding?  Yes or no? Why or why not?"

My answer--


The major thing I find important about halacah is the idea of looking at the Torah in a rigorous painstaking way, plus the idea that morality can be known by reason. The main point of the Talmud is to understand how to keep the written law.  Not every word has to be understood to be divine. But inside of the Talmud is the "Oral Law." In any case reason does have a place in understanding how to keep the Torah. The Rambam has that even Avraham the patriarch only understood natural law after it was revealed. Reason also is a kind of revelation.
The human attempt to greet God's word I think evokes a response from Him. So when I was at the Mir and also in my first yeshiva I felt there was some kind of amazing spirit. But I admit this can depend on the individual.

I am thinking mainly that reason can know morality. 

The critiques in the Talmud would have to be about a different individual according to the time line given there. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Perachia was around 200 BC. He would have had to been a drop too old to have been the teacher of Yeshua. 
The pairs start at the beginning of the second Temple and go up until the end. And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachia was in the middle.

As you can see in the above letter I was trying to hint at the Kantian school of which the Rambam was clearly an early predecessor. But it was late and I did not want to make the letter too long.

I am also thinking about the fact that we give different weight values to different midrashim in the Gemara itself. For example pairs. זוגות, at the end of Pesachim. No one pays the slightest attention to that Gemara even though the Gemara itself is explicit. Also cures.

The idea of how much weight to give to different values seems important to me. Thus in the Torah we have the Ten Commandments which clearly have most of the weight. yet often one or more are ignored because of something that clearly has less weight. And moreover- even among the  other 613 the Torah gives weighted values to different functions. To love and fear God and to be attached to Him are the stated purpose of all the other mitzvot, The verse says in Deuteronomy do the mitzvot in order to love and fear God and to be attached with him.  This is one reason why Musar and the books of the rishonim on the philosophy of the Torah are important to learn. They indicate the weight of each value in Torah. Without them one can mix this up.
 Mainly when people want to pervert the Torah they start with this. They change the order of what is considered more important in Torah.  To make cults they take some doctrine that is either not in Torah at all or something trivial and make it is be of super importance as if it was some secret teaching.

People have a right to protect their lives and property. This should go without saying.

Heather McDonald  on criminal illegal aliens.

People have a right to protect their lives and property. This should go without saying.

Getting married and having children seems to be  a regular part of the yeshiva experience.
You might not get the best shiduch that you think you deserve, but the tendency is to find a good marriage partner.

But the yeshiva world is highly sensitive to factors of social desirability. Especially on the East Coast.

Age and what kind of family one comes from are very important factors.

My own experience with this was that I saw when I got to yeshiva (in NY) people were getting married right and left. Every few days there was another "Vort." This went on a few times per week.
[A Vort is the announcement of  a marriage engagement. But the actual event of the Vort is a meal after Shabat. on Saturday night.



Of course coming from California I had no idea what to expect when I got to yeshiva. But I also got the shiduch"bug." The only reason I was there was because I wanted to learn the Oral Law. But this Shiduch thing was infectious. So after some time people were interested in offering shiduchim to me. The only thing was the Rosh Yeshiva had dibs on me (for one of his daughters). So I had to wait until he felt the time was right to make what was unofficial to be official. However, I screwed things up because I was unfamiliar with social norms on the East Coast.  Not only that but I no longer found any favor in the eyes of the Rosh Yeshiva. So I went to the Mir. But in the Mir I had no social standing.
[I should mention I have no grudge about the Shiduch thing. First of all God gave me a great Shiduch later in any case. And as far as I can see I am not much of Rosh Yeshiva material. As Rav Freifeld saw in me eventually that I am just too wild and searching. --free thinking I guess you could call it. I go by reason and evidence. Not tradition--unless tradition happens to agree with reason and evidence.]



So it is not necessarily easy. Certainly in my case the whole business was a disaster. Still a nice girl I knew in CA came out back East and started chasing me, thank God! Not that I was so happy about it at the time. I still was in the impression I had good possibilities at the Mir. Still this girl from CA turned out to be  a great shiduch for me.

Why is all this important? Because today the social structures of the world are collapsing. So in the larger world even if one is what should be considered a good partner that will not necessarily result in n anything. Also there the problem of cults that use the instability of the larger society as a means of attracting converts as they present themselves as a better option.


At any rate, after my wife left, I decided I was not going to depend on anyone's favors and I found myself a nice girlfriend. Still I do not think this is best idea idea as a rule.  [The girl friend option  is an option because of Chronicles I 2:46. That is the Caleb the friend of Joshua had a few girl friends and wives. That is the פלגש is not reserved for kings alone contrary to the Rambam as the Gra pointed out in his commentary on Shulchan Aruch. 

The religious world outside yeshiva is of course just cults. So if one is not in an actual Lithuanian yeshiva it is best to seek one's spouse among classmates in university.

An integral domain has sub domains. All together you get ten. We know there is an close connection between groups and manifolds. Can you have a kind of Mayer-Vietoris sequence between domains? What I mean is let's say you have a map from an integral domain to a commutative ring, and another map to another commutative ring. And then you have a map from either commutative ring into a larger group. So now can you put an "H" (homology groups) in front of each map? And if so, would this work for all the sub-rings underneath the integral domain? For example could you do the same with a Noetherian Ring, and another Noetherian Ring. And you have an intersection between them. And you map into some larger ring. Can you apply the Mayer Vietoris theorem? Or would there be an obstruction?

How to learn Musar [ethics]

How to learn Musar [ethics]? You would think this would be simple after all the effort put into the idea by Reb Israel Salanter.
 Some people emphasized one particular area of value. A good example is the Hafez Haim.
[Not to slander.]


What to me makes sense is in fact to take the Musar books of the rishonim [medieval writers] and plow through them. But to get a wider perspective what  I think is the best thing is to have one session of going through all the works of classical Musar [about 30 books] and another session of going through the writings of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. Plus one more session in classical Jewish world view issues like the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam and the Faiths and Doctrines by Saadia Gaon  . What happens is that this last step is omitted by most people and the result is people end up with view totally contrary to Torah,-- but think their views are from the Torah.

To learn Musar in yeshivas at all was subject to debate. But what I am suggesting is  a further step to add השקפה. World view issues. I see this as very important because I see that without this later step people really get ideas very much opposed to the Torah but think their ideas are OK because they heard them from some delusional maniac in the name of the Torah.

I have not given this much thought but I can say based on what I have seen that Musar [learning ethics is important, but without world view it can be highly distorted.]

The Hafetz Haim's books about not to slander and general Musar are in fact a great starting place to begin with.
[I should add that not to slander does not mean you can not warn your children about bad cults. That is even if there is one or two decent people in that cult you can still say the cult is bad. The reason is there is such a thing as group behavior, a social meme. Not only that but if the social meme itself is evil, then the group itself is evil.
_______________________________________________________________________


Appendix: For the general public: Musar means mainly medieval books of ethics. But also refers to books by the disciples of Israel Salanter.


Most Musar books do not go into world view issues except the Obligations of the Heart who makes in he first part of his Musar book. However Rav Moshe Haim Luzato did go into world view issues in detail but not in his Mesilat Yesharim.

Music for the glory of God

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I have had a fascination with Halacha [Jewish Law] for a long time. I know that in one previous essay I must have sounded like I was knocking it. But I really meant to knock the misuse of the concept of Halacha and the pretense of people that pretend to know and keep it.

But now I wanted to deal with this subject in the correct way.  And this is not hard to present. In fact my very first year in yeshiva I was shown right away the correct approach towards halacah.
[Yeshiva has in general four years. The first year is for beginners.]  The yeshiva [Shar Yashuv] was doing Chulin which deals with ritual slaughter and things like that. It was perfect to show how to learn Halacha. For every law was more or less a self contained unit. So we would learn the law in the Talmud itself--the source of the law. Then we would trace it down through the Tur, Beit Joseph (by Joseph Karo) and Shulchan Aruch. (The Shulchan Aruch was also written by Joseph Karo and meant to be  a short version of the Beit Joseph so people could do fast review.)



 But that is really just to provide an introduction to the subject. To get a general idea that takes in the big picture what I recommend is this: To get Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's book, Chidushai HaRambam, and the books of his two disciples, Baruch Ber and Shimon Shkop. But even more important I would run out immediately and buy the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.
If you have just one Tractate at home and just one of the above mentioned books, now you are prepared to learn Halachah.

What to do is to take one essay from and of the above mentioned books and learn it with the subject matter in the Gemara. Do not worry of you do not understand it at first. Just keep going over the same essay every day until it sinks in.

This small blog entry is not supposed to be exhaustive. It is rather just an introduction. I should go into the fact of the Maharaha, and Maharshal, and the Gra and the Beit Joseph that all shouted  and yelled about people that decide halachah from short versions of Halacha without knowing the actual Gemara.

Then to actually decide any particular Halacha what I do is to get to know the relevant sources. The first step is to know the subject in the Gemara itself with Tosphot. Then you need to see the Geonim. Often their opinions were not known, so this takes some digging. Then the Rishonim, Rambam, Rif Tur, Shulchan Aruch. After that there is usually no issue that does not become clear.

But if you need an immediate idea, then the best bet is to go directly to the Tur Beit Joseph.

If only more people would learn Halacah properly, a lot of issues would be resolved. Knowing what idolatry is or how to act in many situations would be clear.

Music for the glory of the God of Israel

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Learning fast. Say the words in order and go on is the way to learn Torah, Physics and Math.

Learning fast was an idea that for me had a lot of support. There were the popular speed reading books around in those days. Then there was a collage I applied to that was all about reading fast and going through a few book every week. Then Reb Simcha Wassermann gave me the Musar book אורחות צדיקים Ways of the Righteous that had a whole chapter about going through Shas lots of times fast. Even in violin I saw that when I prepared by just going through the piece straight lots of times I did a lot better at my violin lesson, than if I spend time on the single parts that were giving me trouble.

So in terms of Torah learning this is what I tried to do. At some point however it seemed to me that by just concentrating on a single Tosphot that I would make more progress than if I just read on. So my feeling is that for every subject one does he or she should combine both methods fast and in depth.

In fact,- because not everyone has a authentic Lithuanian yeshiva nearby, and it is wise to avoid hasidic cults so one does not lose his sanity, I think the best idea for Torah study is to buy one tractate and a book of Musar  and just learn them at home.

[Simcha Wassermann was incidentally the son of Reb Elchanan Wassermann the major disciple of the Chafetz Chaim. He was the one to recommend to me to go to the Shar Yeshuv yeshiva in NY which eventually got me to the Mir. I used to hang out with him and in his yeshiva in those ancient days. I ate with him and his wife on Shabat and went to his yeshiva at the end of classes in high school. But I can see today that to have gotten anywhere in Gemara I really needed to go to NY.]

In yeshiva it was possible for me to have long sessions. The normal yeshiva session was from about 915 until 205 and then Mincha. [5 hours]. The from 330 until 815 and then Maariv.  [Also circa 5 hours]. But since I left yeshiva I have found short sessions to be more workable for me.] That is if find I can not do that long stretch, then I try to break up the day into small segments. --Almost teh same way they do in high school.

In any case what I suggest is one session to go through the entire oral and written law words for word from beginning to end. That is Gemara Rashi Tosphot Mahrasha and Maharam  about a half a page per day. [That is about 40 minutes per day.] Then when you have gone through the Bavli that way then the Jerusalem Talmud in the same way-with the Pnei Moshe. Then the Tosephta, Mechilta Sifra Sifri and Midrashim.

[This would work well for Physics also I assume. The trouble is that Physics needs a lot of time just like Torah does. It is hard enough to get to any degree of expertise in one area.]

(White Anglo Saxon Protestant).

I grew up in a totally Wasp area. (White Anglo Saxon Protestant). There was only one other Jewish family within the city. For there was something wholesome and precious about the environment.


The story was that most of the property was owned by a Wasp corporation and we needed special, permission in order to buy a home there.



But ever since then I have never been sympathetic towards people that saw Wasps in a bad light. And I did notice a good deal of left wing politics was directly towards destroying communities like the one I grew up in and I have not thought that there was much merit in such an approach.

[In order for me to go to Hebrew school my mother had to drive me to a city that was far away every week.]

After some years we had to move so my Dad could be closer to his place of work at TRW when they had been contracted by NASA to built satellite communication by lasers and that was right up my Dad's area of expertise. So he was put in charge of the team that was doing that project and we moved.

Besides that my studies emphasized the idea of private property. So my feelings were reinforced by the Gemara's approach that property is not owner-less nor does it belong to government nor to the "people." Property is in the possession of the person that owns it.

For every area of value there is an equal and opposite area of value that surrounds it and one must go though it to get to the real thing. This explains cults and the reason you encounter some hasid the minute you walk into  authentic yeshiva just waiting to snatch you into his cult.
The reason there is no solution for this kind of problem for any area of value is because it is simply the nature of the world.

Lithuanian kind of yeshiva

Please learn Torah!

The reason I thought a Lithuanian kind of yeshiva was a great place was based on experience and also on reading. [Lithuanian means learning Talmud with along Reb Israel Salanter's Musar approach. That is some time during the day is devoted towards learning ethics.]
The background leading up was something I wrote about in some previous blog entry.  I was curious about world view issues from a very early age. So in high school I spent time reading a lot of stuff that was not on the curriculum. Dante, Marx, Spinoza, Plato, Herman Hess, Buddha. Besides that I created a kind of philosophy seminar for my fellow students where we discussed all this, plus philosophers you have never heard of. E.g. many schools of Chinese philosophy.


My point being that I saw the Lithuanian yeshiva as a kind of global answer. That is not just my own searching for answers, but also I saw it as  a kind of answer for the Earth. That is I saw it was learning objective morality, and also creating a kind of community that the central meme (unit of social information) was that of an objective moral system. Not person based, but Torah based.
That is I saw a Lithuanian yeshiva as harmonic motion bouncing between two ends--the individual and the community.
[That is I was not just looking at what was being learned, but the whole picture--the community surrounding the yeshiva.]



Whether any particular place lives up to this ideal picture is not the issue right now. The point is this is how I saw it.

I was not aware of Kant's approach at the time.  So I was judging things based on a small sample of society that I saw, and a small sample of world view thinkers. (I had to pass my courses and my time was limited by other factors.) Still I think my conclusions were largely correct.

It is hard to go back in time recall exactly what I was thinking. You have to understand the context to some degree. The world was on fire. People were searching for the "Truth." Many found Eastern religions to have some kernel of what they were looking for. There was tremendous turmoil in the air, but also unbelievable optimism. There was no limit to how high Man could go-- if only we found the right System. That is to throw of the present "System," and replace it with some higher vision. The world was nothing like it is now. The world is also on fire, but not from optimism, but pessimism. We have seen how our supposedly better systems turned out.   Still I hold with my original conclusion that there is something in legitimate Torah which contains the root and source of the higher reality.

What I think a lot of disappointment comes from is non-authentic Torah. Pseudo-Torah. So my general emphasis is to stress the real thing. The cults should be thrown out. It is not just that they are bad, but they give Torah a bad name.


I have also tried to bring up the Bell  Curve for why some yeshivas fail to live up to this high ideal,
Maybe I could go into some of this in more detail. But the main point would be bureaucracy. At some point "yeshiva" got to be big business, and the "for the sake of heaven" got thrown out. And that brings us up to date. What could be done today to rekindle that old flame?

In any case what I found remarkable in yeshiva was a kind of answer to Socrates. What is the right life?

Yeshiva combines several areas of concern to me: numinous reality, community, meaning of life, right living, objective morality. That is it appealed to me because it seemed to combine a proper approach to different areas of metaphysical and human concern.  It was not too much up in the clouds, nor was it separate from higher reality.
Learning Torah gave me inspiration to go to the Promised Land. [That was mainly Nachmanides (the Ramban) who counts settling in the Land of Israel as one of the 613 mitzvot.] So I took my family and settled there. It was much more than I could have dreamed of for seven years. But at some point I left it, and since then I have not been able to get back. The door closed. I went back to visit but the window of settling had closed. My learning partner suggested that the reason being was that I had not been learning Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot while there the first time. To me what he said makes sense. I think I needed a kind of merit to be able to stay there and lacking this aspect of learning Torah might very well have been the reason for my exile.

I once thought that every institution does the exact opposite of what it says it is intending to do. But at a certain point I saw [in the area of corporations] that this is not true for the long lasting quality institutions.
So what I suggest is that every institution has  an area [penumbra] around it of opposing values.  For example you go to what you think is  a good Lithuanian yeshiva. You are probably right that if the reputation of the place is good then in fact it is. Stereotypes are always true. But right on the first day you walk in there is going to be some hasid who will have an unstated purpose to get you into his cult by hook or crook.


Other examples. Let's say you go to university for music. There will be the inner core. But just waiting on the outside will be the kelipa  of anti-Music just waiting to catch the weak people,--and sometimes the strong.

The Kelipa in universities is in their social studies and humanities so it it is easy to avoid for STEM students.


[I have mentioned before that you might have had bad experiences in a Litvak Yeshiva. This might not have been from the above mentioned kelipa. The kelipa has no power unless you go after it yourself. Rather bad experiences are simply because of the Bell Curve. Of all institutions only the top ten will have any quality at all. The rest will be mediocre at best. This applies to yeshivas all too well.]

r16  [r16 in midi] [r16 nwc] piano c minor   [piano in c minor  in midi]  [piano nwc]  orchestra   [orchestra in midi]  [ [orchestra nwc] CHS [chs in midi] chs nwc  black hole  black hole in midi  black hole nwc

[the midi files are here for people that want to get the notes]

What is a good argument for the Lithuanian Yeshiva is this:

Unsupervised packs of idle youth in the world of hasidim screams adult incompetence. Parental authority has been neutralized by the general secular culture. Most of the time for good reason.
The only teachers they have are insane religious manics. Little Satans with rabbinical credentials.
They are generally at the forefront of the movement to dismantle the family in order to get hold of the youth as little pawns in their organizations.

Parents nowadays are useless when it comes to education because just too many are crazy. Universities teach values that are highly negative. With the facade of reason the social and humanities departments teach Marx.

Is it a wonder that the youth having no credible teachers have no credible values?

The Boy Scout homosexual leaders I am sure are instilling great values in the poor youth that fall into their hands.


So what you and up with is cults or other kinds of terrible religious organizations that are just waiting to prey on unguided unsupervised youth.

You would think that this universal disaster of the West would have merited a few comments here and there. But this one universal catastrophe which has hit every home multiple times has gone unnoticed  and unmentioned.


Thus I claim the Litvak yeshiva is important not only from the aspect of learning Torah but also from the aspect of learning general menschlichkeit. [human decency]

Islam is at war with the West.

Islam is at war with the West.
To deny that fact will not win the war.

A war is not won until the enemy, the loser, knows that he’s been beaten, that he has absolutely no chance in Hell of prevailing and that any further resistance will not only not lead to any sort of future possible, fantasy land victory, it will also lead to further horrors, humiliations and pointless suffering. If you leave as much as a shred of a hope that there is a future possibility of turning the table around, then you haven’t won. You’ve just gained a truce.

It’s as simple as that.

WWII as the last war this country [the USA] actually fought like we meant it is a great example. Germany knew they’d been beaten. Not because they’d lost a bunch of battles and the allied troops were marching at will through Germany itself, but because Germany had thrown everything, EVERYTHING they had at the allies for 6 long years and it hadn’t changed the outcome. Nothing Germany could produce had been able to stop that, and Germany was way ahead in everything technologically, they’d thrown every available German into the grinder down to pre-teens and septuagenarians, they were united as very few, if any, countries had ever been before, and they still couldn’t stop it.

Japan had watched two major cities get obliterated in as many days and, for all that they knew, we could keep on obliterating all of their cities in the same way until there was nothing left.

THOSE are the factors that ended those wars decisively, not any number of won battles, no matter how decisively any of them were won.

What won those wars was the simple message that “we have destroyed/killed x% of you. We can keep on doing so until that x reaches 100, and there isn’t a single thing you can do about it. And unless you surrender, UNCONDITIONALLY, we WILL do so.”

That is the only message that wins wars and makes them stay won.

More on Japan specifically:

Unconditional surrender was not particularly popular among some Allied leaders, especially Churchill and several notable American generals such as Eisenhower. It was heavily debated throughout the conflict, and still remains one of the most controversial policies of the war. Steven Casey in Cautious Crusade has a whole chapter dedicated to the politics of unconditional surrender, and notes that historians have long debated over FDR’s motives and the effects. Generally, it’s believed that his fear was that if militant entities and institutions were allowed to remain postwar, future conflict would be inevitable, invoking the memory of the 1918 armistice with Germany. FDR himself explained, “unconditional surrender means not the destruction of the German populace, nor the Italian or Japanese populace, but does mean the destruction of a philosophy in Germany, Italy, and Japan which is based on the conquest and subjugation of other people.” (Casey, 118). The Allies would avoid any uncertainty, decisively and completely winning the war, or it would keep fighting. It has been asserted that the move was also to keep Stalin from attaining any negotiated peace during a time when the US had yet to open a second front and casualties on the Eastern front were extreme (the announcement had taken place merely a few days after the conclusion of the Battle of Stalingrad). Truman, taking office in April 1945, believed that to go back on the demand of unconditional surrender would be a sign of weakness both to the American people and to the Japanese government, providing fuel for those who wished to continue the war. Critics believe unconditional surrender was a significant boost to Axis propaganda, leading them to fight more fanatically, and lengthened the duration of the war both in the European and Pacific theaters. Upon hearing of it, Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels exclaimed, “I should never have been able to think up so rousing a slogan.” (Fleming, Written in Blood)

The means for which this surrender was to be achieved was total war – the complete mobilization of a nation’s resources, including the conversion of its industry and drafting of citizens. The intention is not to just destroy the enemy military forces, but also to destroy their ability to make war. This leads to an incredibly blurred line between combatants and civilians. For instance, in order to destroy Japan’s ability to make war, factories in densely populated urban centers were targeted. By extension, civilians in industrial areas could themselves even be viewed as “legitimate” targets. By the end of the war, cities were being routinely bombed into submission in an effort to break the will of the government and people to fight.

Hasegawa notes that the use of the bomb was the best possible outcome to Truman, solving the problem of unconditional surrender, invasion, and Soviet interference. For the Japanese, news of the bomb led to complete disarray. Asada states that many in the army and Japan’s R&D board denied that an atomic bomb had been used, or even that it was possible that one could have been developed so soon. Information from Hiroshima was limited, as the infrastructure had already been significantly damaged even before the 6th. However, both Asada and Hasegawa note that by that evening, and certainly by the following day, little doubt remained. Asada argues that acceptance of American technological superiority helped the army “save face” and “smoothed their acceptance of surrender” – a minister tried to persuade the military by pleading, “if we say we lost a scientific war, the people will understand” (Asada, 197).

On August 9th, the USSR declared war on Japan and Soviet armor poured into Manchuria. Coupled with the use of the atomic bomb, this utterly crippled the hope of continuing the war effort. Though Japanese forces mounted a strong defense, they were quickly pushed back. Yet, the supreme council still held on to hope that it could negotiate with the Soviets, refusing to officially declare war. Though the Prime Minister and other civilian leaders now openly declared that Japan should surrender, military leaders wished to continue the fight. Even after the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th, the supreme council still tried to push for maintaining the position of Emperor, and there was a 3-3 split for three other conditions: war criminal trials would be conducted by the Japanese, self-disarmament, and that occupation (particularly of Tokyo) should be avoided or limited wherever possible. (Hasegawa 204, Frank 291). The short span of time between bombings as well as Allied threats were made to give the impression that the US already had a stockpile of the weapons when in actuality it only had the two. A third would have come “sometime after August 19, and then the fourth bomb in the beginning of September,” (Hasegawa 298). It was only until the morning of the 10th that the Foreign Ministry sent telegrams saying it would accept the Potsdam Declaration and unconditional surrender after Hirohito himself demanded the war’s end. Even then, there was an attempted coup by a segment of the military leadership, which invaded the imperial palace and nearly killed the Prime Minister, as well as other senior officials. On August 15, the emperor officially announced the surrender worldwide. Many pockets of Japanese soldiers still continued to fight, and many military officers chose suicide over surrender. By 1947, a new constitution was written, and while the emperor was maintained as ceremonial figurehead, the Empire of Japan was formally dissolved.

Whether it was the use of nuclear weapons or Soviet invasion that more forcefully led to surrender has been hotly debated between historians. Hasegawa places greater emphasis on the Soviet invasion, suggesting that Japan would likely have stood steadfast under multiple atomic bombings as it had done in the face of firebombing. Asada directly references and disputes his account, claiming that nuclear weapons and the threat they posed to the homeland reflected a much more “direct” impetus to end the war rather than the invasion of Manchuria, and offered an easier way out for the leadership. Further, they came as a complete surprise to Japanese leadership, whereas eventual conflict with the USSR was expected. Frank’s account, and most other anti-revisionist historians support this thesis.

It’s worth noting that the term “unconditional surrender” originated after the battle for Fort Donelson with Grant’s subordinates Andrew Foote* (“No sir, your surrender will be unconditional!”) and CF Smith (“I’ll make no terms with rebels with arms in their hands — my terms are unconditional and immediate surrender!” and, more famously, “No terms to the damned Rebels!”). The total-war idea came to full deadly fruition later with Sherman, of course.

What’s most interesting to me about it all, though, is how Grant and Sherman are almost universally revered and lionized as American heroes now, while modern-era “hard war” men like Curtis LeMay are regarded by many as somehow monstrous, executors not so much of victory as of atrocity. Is that a function of the unique horror of nuclear weapons, or of merely being farther removed in time? Does it maybe say more about us than it does about them?

Either way, in light of our ongoing (and so far unsuccessful) struggle with Islam–a perhaps even more fanatical and dedicated foe than Imperial Japan–it’s all worth thinking about very damned carefully, I’d say.

The way Muslims take over. It is by this combination of diverse tactics. Seeming nice when in small number. Then they are liked. Then when the number grows to about 20%, then the things change. There are attacks. It is a long story. But I have looked at the history of Muslims takeovers in the Middle East and Asia and Europe and it always follows a fixed tried and true pattern that never has failed even once.

Straight forward armed invasions have often proved non effective. The best method is this pattern of softening up the population before the actual attacks begin. 

Emphasis on the prohibition of  Lashon HaRa (slander) is amazingly great. I only wish I had been more careful about this myself. In fact, everyone that I ever knew that had success in Torah learning were always extremely careful about this. In fact, I would say that success in understanding and keeping Torah always seemed to depend on carefulness in Lashon Hara, and not at all in intellect. 

I saw very smart people that did not get very far in learning, and simultaneously they also were not careful about Lashon Hara. 

I also saw people not so smart, but that learned and understood Shas [Talmud] very well, and it always turned out those were the guys that were careful about Lashon HaRa. 

But for myself I should mention that warning people about bad groups in not in the category of Lashon Hara. Still I wish I had spend more time on the Chafetz Chaim. 
Maybe things would have been better if I had. 

For the general public let me just give some background. Slander has its own verse in the Torah. But there are plenty of other verses that are applicable to it. The actual verse is לא תלך רכיל בעמיך "Thou shalt not walk around as a tale bearer among your people." Leviticus.

Rav Freifeld (informally known as Reb Shelomo)[the founder of Shar Yashuv] in NY was always telling me and anyone else that would listen to do review ten times. This put me in a real dilemma which has continued until this very day. I want and need to make progress. But understanding often only comes after ten times of review.
So what I tried to do was in some areas to do the ten times review idea.  This was both in Far Rockaway [where Rav Freifeld's  yeshiva was. I recall doing chapter 5 of Ketubot a lot of times. I do not recall if it was ten altogether. When later I got to the Mir in NY, I remember doing every Mahrasha and Pnei Yehoshua either ten or more times. I put a dot next to the paragraph to show every time I finished it. But the afternoon sessions were anyway for going fast and that it when I tried to plow through Shas with just Gemara, Rashi, and some Tosphot.

There is a lot to go into about this. But in short I have always felt this tension pulling me in opposite directions. On one hand to stay on the page until everything is clear and understood or to go on and depend that on the second and third time around it will become clear.

What I wanted to say was basically that every rosh yeshiva I ever knew and the good learning partners I had were always into the "Stay on it until it is clear." Maybe that is why they are rosh yeshivas and I am a bum.

The learning partner I had  recently was even more into staying on it until every word is clear more than anyone I every knew.

So my conclusion is this: What I think I smart people are more into the stay on it until you get it. That is the reason they can stay on it until they get it. But for me this sometimes does not work. Often it happens that no matter how long I stay on something I just do not get it. So what I think is what you find in Lithuanian types of yeshivas is the right thing. The morning's should be for "stay on it until you get it."  The afternoon should be for "Girsa," say the words and go on.

I have never heard of any Litvak yeshiva that did not learn in that way and I think the reason is the Roshei yeshiva in Europe discovered that this was the most effective way.

On a side note: Shar Yeshuv is  a very good yeshiva. I have said this before but let me repeat. Even though it starts at the beginning level it goes up to a very high level very quickly. The present day Rosh yeshiva Naphtali Yeager is probably one of the greatest Torah scholars I have ever known and certainly is no less than the roshei Yeshiva of the Mir in NY.

r15 [r15 in midi] r3 [r3 in midi]  q100 [q100 in midi] q10 [q10 in midi]  q96 e flat major  [q96 in F major in midi] [q96 in E flat major]  mathematics [mathematics in midi]  q60 [q60 in midi]  q6  [q6 in midi]

q96 in e flat and q96 in f are two different pieces--not just the same piece in a different key

In some cases people who disagree with the traditional monotheism of Torah will attempt to redirect it into a form very different from the original, or take it over entirely. Hasidim are a good example.

After reading some  nonsense, you have probably asked yourself; "How could anyone in his right mind believe that?" There is an answer to your question. In. fact, the person who believes the nonsense will usually provide the answer himself if you give him half a chance. Go to the source. Read the believer's account of how he came to believe. He will probably give a clear enough description that you can see where he went wrong. 

Usually they build on some preexisting system.


A lot of people  misunderstand the Torah and stress trivial issues, ignore or downplay significant ones, or garble concepts because they find certain concepts in the the Torah not to their taste or mode of thinking. 


In some cases people who disagree with the traditional monotheism of  Torah  will attempt to redirect it into a form very different from the original, or take it over entirely. The cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on are a good example.
They changed the Torah to make it more tasty. But it says about the incense "if one had added honey to it no one would have been able to resist it. So why did they not add honey? because the Torah say all leaven and all honey thou shalt not add to it." [I hear once someone say a slight twist on this. "Why did they not add honey to it? Because the Torah says. Period."]




Some adhere to the Torah out of inertia. They feel a need for some kind of spiritual activity, and the Torah is the best (or only) game in town.


Many  adhere to the Torah for social acceptance. They  like participating in special occasions, or may value it as a symbol of national or group identity

Once Torah becomes really established, the Torah itself can be a route to power, prestige, and privilege. Not only do some people adhere to the Torah for cynical reasons, they are entrenched at its very center. They are the leaders.

I support Trump because from the standpoint of policy. That is,- I know there is a lot of ad hominem arguments that are attacking the character of people that support him. But I am looking at this more from the context of the Constitution of the USA and the job of the chief executive to uphold and support that Constitution.

I might try to go into this in more detail but for right now let me just say that I think the Constitution has been ripped to shreds by the present government.

I do not do a lot of thinking about government. So off hand it would be hard to write a whole essay.
I did a good deal of reading about government over the years. Especially Plato, Aristotle, Locke Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Arendt. I noticed in practice that the USA had become an amazingly hostile place for the white male. That it is was hostile towards white people and hostile towards males. So when you put both together you get (hostility)^2. Add to that hostility towards working people and hostility towards private property and it seemed to me that the USA had changed from the amazingly wholesome moral decent society that I had once knew to become a mocker of its former self. So when Trump comes along to bring back the older order I am impressed.

I know this is not an argument. But it would take some thinking on my part to form a decent argument for Trump.  Maybe I should do some thinking in that direction. As background let me say I am somewhat familiar with communist systems and in fact many other systems that people live under and I have not seen anything that compares even remotely to the Constitution of the USA.

The problem of Halacha [Jewish Law].

I want a Yeshiva Bachur that knows how to learn.

 Halacha does not cover everything or even the most important parts of Torah. There is for example the חובות לבבות Duties of the Heart whose whole premise is that obligations of the heart are also obligations.
The Guide for the Perplexed and all the books of the Rishonim that deal with world view issues  consider world view issue to be in the category of obligation, moral obligation.

There is also the nightmarish world of people that think they are keeping halacha, but are animals. Clearly Halacha is not covering as much as it should. Obligations of the Torah go way beyond Halacah, and in fact the balance of weight is on the side of things not considered in the realm of halacha. Midot. Character.

These are just a few points I wrote down quickly in order not to forget some of the basic issues. But each point should be examined and expanded. Also I forgot to mention  that people have in daily practice only a few guiding principles [a mental model]. So when the emphasis is on halacah, the tendency will be to forget the things that the Torah requires that are way more important than halacah.

Also I do not want to forget the Reshash {Shalom Sharabi} and the Chafetz Chaim.

Where to start? First the Chafetz Chaim. In the book Shemirat Halashon ([שמירת הלשון] which is the sister book of the Chafetz Chaim--the Musar book meant to encourage people not to slander) the Chafetz Chaim says the verse והלכת בדרכיו ולשמור מצוותיו (to walk in His ways and to keep his mitzvot) should be understood as meaning order of precedence. [That is to walk in His ways comes before keeping mitzvot.] The meaning  of walking in his ways is  "What is he? Compassionate. So you should be compassionate. What is he? Merciful. So you should be merciful." That is, the whole range of good character.

The Reshash {Shalon Sharabi} brings from the Zohar in the Nahar Shalom that the mitvot are the clothing of one's soul. The Torah one learns is the food and drink of the soul. Then he asks, "So what is the soul?" He answers it is one character (Midot). And he says there that a lack in Torah and miztvot can always be corrected. But a lack in ones character can never be corrected.

_________________________________________________________________________________

The problem of הלכה. I wanted to deal with this issue based on a few things.

One is the obvious problem that הלכה does not cover everything. There is for example the חובות לבבות  whose whole premise is that obligations of the heart are also obligations.
The מורה נבוכים and the books of  סעדיה גאון, הרמב''ם וראשונים that deal with השקפה obviously consider world view issues to be in the category of obligation, moral obligation.

There is also the nightmarish world of people that think they are keeping הלכה, but are animals. Clearly הלכה is not covering as much as it should. Obligations of the תורה go way beyond הלכה, and in fact the balance of weight is on the side of things not considered in the realm of הלכה היינו מידות.

These are just a few points I wrote down quickly in order not to forget some of the basic issues. But each point should be examined and expanded. Also I forgot to mention שטרנמן  brings the idea that people have in daily practice only a few guiding principles. So when the emphasis is on הלכה, the tendency will be to forget the things that the תורה requires that are way more important than הלכה.

Also I do not want to forget the רש''ש רב שלום שרעבי and the חפץ חיים

Where to start? First the חפץ חיים. In the book שמירת הלשון which is the sister book of the חפץ חיים the חפץ חיים says the verse והלכת בדרכיו ולשמור מצוותיו  should be understood as meaning order of precedence. That is to walk in His ways comes before keeping מצוות. The meaning  of walking in his ways is  "What is he? רחום. So you should be רחום. What is he? חנון. So you should be חנון. That is, the whole range of good מידות.

The רש''ש רב שלום שרעבי brings from the זוהר in the נהר שלום that the מצוות are the clothing of one's soul. The Torah one learns is the food and drink of the soul. Then he asks, "So what is the soul?" He answers it is one's מידות. And he says there that a lack in תורה and מצוות can always be corrected. But a lack in ones מידות can never be corrected.

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הבעיה של הלכה. בעיה זו מבוססת על כמה דברים. האחד הוא הבעיה הברורה כי הלכה אינה מכסה את הכל. יש למשל את חובות הלבבות אשר ההנחה כולה היא כי חובות של הלב הם גם חובות. המורה הנבוכים  והספרים של סעדיה גאון, הרמב''ם והראשונים   שוקלים השקפת עולם להיות בקטגוריה של חובה, חובה מוסרית. יש גם העולם המסויט של אנשים שחושבים שהם שומרים הלכה, אבל הם חיות. ברור שהלכה אינה מכסה ככל שצריך. חובותיהם של התורה הולכות הרבה מעבר להלכה, ולמעשה יתרת המשקל היא בצד של דברים שלא נחשבו בתחום הלכה היינו מידות. אלו הן רק כמה נקודות רשמתי במהירות כדי שלא לשכוח חלק מסוגיות היסוד. אבל כל נקודה יש לבחון ולהרחיב. כמו כן שכחתי להזכיר שטרנמן שמביא את הרעיון שיש אנשים בפרקטיקה יומיומית רק כמה עקרונות מנחים. לכן, כאשר הדגש הוא על הלכה, הנטייה תהיה לשכוח את הדברים  שתורה דורשת כי הם הרבה יותר חשובים מאשר הלכה. כמו כן אני לא רוצה לשכוח את הרש''ש (רב שלום שהרעבי) ואת החפץ חיים. איפה להתחיל? תחילה החפץ חיים. בספר  שמירת הלשון  (שהוא הספר האחות של חפץ חיים) חפץ חיים אומר הפסוק והלכת בדרכיו ולשמור מצוותיו צריך להיות מובן שיש סדר עדיפות. כלומר ללכת בדרכיו מגיעה לפני שמירת מצוות. המשמעות של הליכה בדרכיו היא "מה הוא? רחום. אז אתה צריך להיות רחום. מה הוא? חנון. אז אתה צריך להיות חנון. כלומר, המגוון השלם של  מידות טובות. הרש''ש (רב שלום שרעבי) מביא מן הזוהר  בתוך הנהר שלום  כי מצוות הן הבגדים של נשמת האדם. התורה שלומד הוא האוכל והשתייה של הנשמה. ואז הוא שואל, "אז מה היא הנשמה?" הוא עונה שזאת  המידות . והוא אומר שם כי חוסר בתורה ואת מצוות יכול תמיד להיות מתוקן. אבל חוסר במידות לא ניתן לתקן

 There is a definite set of books that is the actual Oral Law. The two Talmuds, Sifra, Sifrei, Tosephta, and the Midrash. That is the actual books handed down to us by the Sages of the Mishna and Talmud. There is not one straightforward Halacha book without arguments among them. Not one. What the Rif and Rambam did was to try to derive the halacha from the Oral Law.

And the Rambam wrote in his letters "כשם שאין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבכתב כן אין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבעל פה. Just like you can not add or subtract to the written Law, so you can't add or subtract from the Oral Law.

But regardless of that, the Sages definitely had an idea of a final pesak halacha. But why there was no book written that contained it is beyond me.

So we have first order Oral Law. The actual books given to us by Chazal [the sages]. Then there is second order Oral Law--the books of the Rishonim that derive halacha and Musar and world view issues from the first order Oral Law.

In a practical vein what this means is to learn the Oral Law one ought to learn the actual Oral Law. Derivatives of it are good, but not the same thing as the thing in itself.