There seems to be a kind of contradiction in the Rambam. How much of the Law of Moses is natural Law and how much is only because of revelation? In the Guide you see two different things. One is that the laws of the ancient Greeks natural law [as known by Abraham the patriarch] was necessary step towards Matan Torah [giving of the Torah]. So they are different in essence. Yet the Rambam also gives natural reasons for the laws. Maybe he thought the reasons were a necessary, but not sufficient condition?
That is reason that would create conditions for the mitzvot but not the entire cause.

English Literature in high school and college is depressing

Instead of the greats Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Sophocles, they force people to learn stupid books by blacks


The issue is the quality of the thought of the great writers, not their color, nor sex. This is why English Literature in high school and college is so depressing. They force you to learn second rate hacks just because of their race or sex. Just see an average anthology of English Lit. what garbage they are forcing down people's throats.


But philosophy might be a good idea, or music and art courses. First year Philosophy usually deals with Plato and Aristotle which are in fact important.
The Rambam and Saadia Gaon both wrote books describing the world view of Torah and their books are not possible to understand without background in Plato and Aristotle.

thunderous creation-

Life is very precious. Be happy for every minute and every breath, and for the privileged of being a part of thunderous creation--the universe.
Learn Musar i.e., the books of Ethics of Torah written in the Middle Ages which represent straight Torah. It is very different from what is taught as Torah today which is crooked, pseudo Torah.

Also the books of Musar of the school of thought of Israel Salanter are important. 

Musar is a tool to work on one' character. People can misuse it I admit. But still I think it is effective when used right. 

What I recommend as far as Musar goes is to go through the entire set. That is every single word of the basic classical works, plus the basic works by the disiples of Reb Israel Salanter

Ideas in Bava Metzia chapters 8 and 9 edited I did what I think are some spelling corrections. Tosphot I am thinking of as either male  plural as authors of Tosphot. or sometimes male singular. The buyer is "מסופק"
Ideas in Talmud Did some grammar corrections. Lashon Hara is לשון הרע is masculine. But I also thought to use לשון רעה at least once to show that לשון itself is feminine.

r76  [r76 in midi format]  [In midi you can download the notes and that is the reason i am putting the link here]

I thought to expand a drop on the idea I wrote about Kant Hegel and the Ari based on some math. The idea in simple terms that I put on my blog was if you take an identity element and three other things, you get a kind of triad. This is the basic idea behind a certain thing called an algebra. But do not let the word scare you. There is nothing scary about it. It is just three things with an identity element. But what Cayley- Dickson  Algebra does is expand on this to make a 8 component group and then  16 and then 32 etc. It is reminiscent of what Hegel was doing and also the Reshash (Shalom Sharabi).

This would in itself not be that interesting if not for seeing how these Cayley Dickson Algebras are significant aspects of reality as in Special Relativity and String Theory. That already seems to hint at the idea that they are somehow a part of the metaphysical structure of the world.

Colleges can have a problem in the humanities and social studies departments. Avoid them as much as possible. While it is a great thing to go there to learn STEM and computers, still try to avoid these departments as much as possible.

Allen Bloom went into this in detail in The Closing of the American Mind.   

Instead one should learn Musar, that is Mediaeval Ethics.

There are however a few redeeming things which one could take. First year philosophy is usually about Plato and Aristotle. These are important. Also the arts.

The octaves [the expansion of quaternions, octonians] I think would be something that would fascinate Pythagoreans. There seems to be some odd connection between the way you remember the order of octaves and the musical scale and the fact that Shabat is the middle day of the week according to the Arizal and the recent result by Viazovska that the lattice is the most compact way of packing oranges in eight dimensions. I do not have any great results to report about this. But it seems to me that it must be more than a random coincidence. I think there must be some close connection, but I have not been able to figure out what it must be. Of course Hegel would have a field day with this. He would claim that this is what he was saying all along with his triads within triads.


I am sure lots of people would consider these to be totally unconnected, but maybe I was influenced by reading the Ari a few years back. In any case the Triads you do not need to go to Hegel for. Kant was the originator in his limited scheme. Only Hegel expanded the original idea of Kant. In any case you can see this same scheme --not in the Ari so much as in Shalom Sharabi [known as the Reshash].[That is the author of the Nahar Shalom.]

The curious thing which continues to be of interest to me is the connection with Kant . In Kelley Ross's modification of Kant he a theory of necessity, which  results in the description of eight modes of necessity. See his PhD thesis chapter 5 sec 1

Kant  does not want to expand the original triad. But I wonder.

Even  in Kant we get this triadic structure:

There is a close connection between violence and left wing politics. The reason was pointed out by Dr Michael Huemer. The Left goes by moral relativism. Systems that have at their core moral relativism do not believe in rational dialog. So the only way to argue for your beliefs is by violence. It is not the best option;- it is the only option. And this goes for any system that does not believe in rational dialog.

r71 A Minor r69

"Marx, Lenin Sartre, Nietzsche"

Socialism has become a kind of secular religion. It works up a great degree of frenzy in people. Just think of the words "Marx, Lenin Sartre, Nietzsche". You can feel your blood pressure rising. You can just hear people foaming at the mouth spitting saliva as they say these words. Try to do the same think with the two word"John Locke." You can't do it. The words themselves calm you down. You start to think about individual responsibility and  limited government.




On this blog

For roughly the thousandth time, the masters of social media in Silicon Valley are promising to do something about online hate speech. Bloomberg reports that an impressive-sounding group of tech giants — Facebook, Twitter,Google and Microsoft — have “pledged to tackle online hate speech in less than 24 hours as part of a joint commitment with the European Union to combat the use of social media by terrorists.”

It could be their are just trying to save their company and thus have given in to government pressure. Maybe it is like the Boy-scouts succumbing to pressure? 





But then the Boy Scouts also should have had that ability. Apparently they did not. I have also learned in private life it is a waste of time to stand up to the federal or local government in the USA. Government has just grown too powerful. I have suspected it is a result conspiracy by the KGB. That is I think the KGB concentrated its energies and finances to infiltrate American Universities and succeed so that the later generations of judges and politician all have been educated in the Lenin Marxism tradition.  That is while ordinary working Americans have retained traditional values the elite of government has becomes remarkably leftist. One bit of evidence I have for this is the required courses in American universities for first year students. Just looking over the texts themselves I was shocked at seeing them preach radical leftist socialism. 

 See the ytube video of Bezmenov. I admit to do this the KGB would have had to expend tremendous resources. But from what Bezmenov said it looks like they did.

There is one fellow who is a good friend of mine who thinks the KGB did not have the resources to pull off this kind of operation.  He worked there in one of the sub agencies. And it is hard to know how they could have done so. Still I think the evidence shows their fingerprints all over American universities.

"Doing repentance"

"Doing repentance" in the religious  world is thought to mean joining the religious  world. But I think that the social norms of the religious  world are very different from the Torah. "Doing repentance" is a worthy goal but I think it is the exact opposite of religious  world. The reason I say this is because the norms of the Torah and the norms and values of the religious  world are opposites.

Being strict in rituals way beyond the requirements of the Torah ought to be a warning signal in the first place. Why would people go so overboard about rituals unless there was something else they were covering up?


It is hard to point out any group whose norms are close to Torah. I think the closest you can get to actual Torah is Ponovitch and the great Litvak yeshivas where what the Torah actually says is what matters, not social norms. I mean to say there are places where the emphasis is on actually keeping and learning Torah.

the religious world

At this point in time I want nothing that has the slightest connection with anything to do with the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on. I made a terrible mistake getting involved in this terrible kelipa [evil] and I am super sensitive to anything that could even vaguely remind me of them. So when I say only Musar and the Gemara or Sidur HaGra I am being very specific. No offence intended for the sincere and good people whose names got to be associated with this movement. Still there is something very wrong with it. I am sure there are plenty of sincere and good people involved in Hinduism also but that does not make the religion kosher.
Not only that but I feel that the influence and infiltration of this movement into the religious world itself has ruined everything it has touched. Just saying.

Schopenhauer  dealt with the fact that women can have a negative side. And he saw the problem that England was worshiping women. He thought nothing good can come from that. Since I saw that the subject seemed uninteresting to me since he saw and explained the issue clearly. There is what to discuss however in terms of his concepts of the Ideas in the subject and how that relates to this but it seems off topic for this blog.

What I mean is he did not see fit to put a good deal of the positive traits we see in people into the ideas and the world of unconditioned reality [the dinge an sich]. Nor even into the subject.

So he did not put the ideas into the Will. A great move. But he did put them into the subject which he does not identify as the Will but rather as the opposite side of the coin of representation.


But let'stake a look at Jung. He at least saw fit to out human archetypes into the subject.

What I mean by a "great move" is that Schopenhauer thus solved a puzzle that existed since the middle ages. Divine simplicity. You could say the Ari also dealt with it in the same way, but Schopenhauer shows more in detail why his approach is necessary form a metaphysical point of view.
The Ari is simply mystical and does not concern himself with metaphysical aspects of his system 

Ideas in Bava Metzia   Ideas in Talmud

Tractate Bava Metzia page 14 and page 101

.בבא מציעא יד: קא

I think the רמב''ם held that if someone buys a stolen field from the thief and plants it he gets only the money he paid for the field back, not the expenses.



 He  looked at page י''ד and said it is not the same case as the case on page ק''א. On page י''ד someone stole a field and sold it and the buyer did work on it. The רמב''ם wrote the law just like Samuel קרן יש לו שבח אין לו he gets reimbursed for the amount he paid for the field from the thief   but does not get reimbursed for the improvements not from anyone, not from the thief and not from the owner.

And when the רמב''ם looked at page ק''א he saw a completely different situation. Someone went into the field of his neighbor and planted crops or did some improvements. There the רמב''ם decided as our גמרא does that ידו על התחתונה he gets the least amount either the improvement or the expenses.
In other words the property was not stolen. And even though קרקע אינה נגזלת still there was not even an attempt to claim the property as his own.


In other words what I am saying is that I think the רמב''ם must have looked at this סוגיא completely differently than רש''י or תוספות.



בבא מציעא יד: קא . אני חושב שהרמב''ם קבע כי אם מישהו קנה שדה שנגנב מן הגנב ונטע צמחים  שהוא מקבל רק את הכסף ששילם עבור השדה בחזרה, לא ההוצאות. הוא הביט בדף י''ד ואמר שזה לא אותו מקרה כמו המקרה בעמוד ק''א. בדף י''ד מישהו גנב שדה ומכר אותו והקונה עשה עבודה על זה. הרמב''ם כתב החוק בדיוק כמו שמואל "קרן יש לו, שבח אין לו", שהוא מקבל החזר עבור הסכום ששילם עבור השדה מן הגנב, אבל הוא לא מקבל החזר עבור השיפורים לא מאף אחד, לא מן הגנב ולא מן הבעלים. וכאשר הרמב''ם הביט בדף ק''א ראה מצב שונה לחלוטין. מישהו נכנס לתחום שכנתו ושתל גידולים או עשה כמה שיפורים. שם הרמב''ם החליט כמו הגמרא שלנו אמרה בפירוש כי "ידו על התחתונה", הוא מקבל את הכמות המינימלית או השיפור או ההוצאות. במילים אחרות הנכס לא נגנב. ואף על פי קרקע אינה נגזלת, עדיין לא היה אפילו ניסיוןשל זה שנכנס לתבוע את השדה כשלו. במילים אחרות מה שאני אומר הוא  שהרמב''ם בטח הביט בזו הסוגיא בבא מציעא י''ד אחרת לגמרי מאשר רש''י או תוספות



Link to Ideas in Bava Metzia
Link to Ideas in Shas

"Where can one be?"

"Where can one be?"  This is the question that needs to be answered for people that want to learn Torah? Some of the really great yeshiva like Ponovictch or Brisk are for smart guys. What if one is not so smart but still want to learn Torah?

Sadly most yeshivas nowadays are scams and pretend to answer this question when they go around to rich Jews trying to charity for their supposed public charitable  works. The general run of the mill yeshiva is a private club for the mahco man and his gang of thugs and has nothing to do with learning Torah.
So the question that a simple Jew asked me, "where can one be?" goes unanswered.  There simply is no place for a guy to go to sit and learn Torah for a few hours per day.  Not if he is sincere. [Mea Shearim he called "מאה רשעים"  "a hundred wicked" Mea Reshaim]

This question has bothered me for  along time. To some degree the Shar Yashuv Yeshiva in Far Rockaway was an answer for this dilemma because it was not specifically for smart guys. Nor was it a scam to make a slave population for the rosh yeshiva. It was genuinely for the sake of learning Torah for whom so ever wanted to do so.

r70 g major   r70 midi  r70 nwc

anchoring-bias
I think the ideas in this essay ought to be expanded on in detail in several directions. Some important points like daily schedule [what one does every day without fail is an anchor]., the person one most admires and tries to emulate,[making a conscious decision whom to emulate], with what kind of group to hang out with. And the effects of all this on one's inner self.


() Reb Shmuel Berenabum was thinking along these lines almost certainly when he would consistently point out the importance of learning the oral and written Law. [This is called learning Torah and it means Torah in a slightly expanded form. It does not mean strictly the Five Books of Moses. It includes the Oral Law also which means the books of the sages of the Talmud. I have not counted them. There must be at least ten in all. The two Talmuds, Tosephta, Midrash Raba, Midrash Tanchuma, Eliyahu Raba and Zuta, Avot DeRabbi Natan,   tractates not included in Talmud like mesechet Gerim,  Sifra Sifrei, Torah kohanim.

Reb Shmuel was the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir in NY.



[]I should mention that in some ways I have tried to retain certain anchors in my life without using that exact terminology. My model of human perfection is my father, Philip Rosten. That means for people that did not know him balance and valence [connection] between different areas of value. That is take certain areas of value, Math, Physics, Mozart, Torah (the Oral and Written Law), Family, Survival Skills, etc and you create a valence between them. This hard to describe but I am pretty sure that people that grew up in older times  remember this kind of thing in their own parents. It is just that my father and mother embodied this kind of balance and valence better than anyone I have ever seen or heard of among the living or those gone.

chapter 6 in Pirkei Avot.

chapter 6 in Pirkei Avot. I do not have  a lot to say about it except in the Mir Yeshiva I heard from that the Mashgiach of the Ponovicth Yeshiva in Bnei Brak considered נושא עול עם חבירו to bear the yoke with one's friend to be the most essential of all the traits. 


I also think that I misunderstood that chapter (which is about the importance of learning Torah). For when I was in Safed,  I understood that chapter to mean I should be doing more learning Torah than I was doing. And since everything in this world has a limit, I probably over extended myself in that direction. 

The reason I say this is that I had a kind of attachment to God in Safed, something that is hard to describe. And I thought at the time this attachment was interfering with Torah study. What I did not realize at the time was that attachment to God is one of the goals of the mitzvot. This you can see in the anonymous commentary at the being of the Mishna Torah of the Rambam. He asked a question. One verse says,  "Do the commandments in order to love and fear God." The other verse says "Love and fear God in order to do his commandments." He answers there are two kinds of fear of God. The lower fear of punishment, and the higher awe of God's greatness. The lower fear is to bring to doing all the commandments, and the commandments are to bring to the higher fear and awe of God. So learning Torah according to this view is not the goal but it is to bring to the goal of attachment with God.

Bava Metzia page 14. The argument between Rav and Shmuel

Ideas in Shas updated  I had some idea that I wanted to add about the argument between Rav and Shmuel in Bava Metzia page 14. Mainly it is the thought about what Shmuel must have asked Rav, "Why would thief pay for the improvements to the buyer when it is the owner who is getting the benefits?" And I think it must be that Rav answered to him, "The owner gives the money for the improvements or the expenditure to the thief and the thief to the buyer." That is I am thinking that Rav must have said that the owner has to do only with the thief and the thief with the buyer. At last that is how I think Rashi and Tosphot both must have looked at this sugia.[That the owner can tell the person that bought the field from the thief דין ודברים אין לי אתך. I have nothing to do with you.]

It is important to see how the Rambam and Rav Shach deal with this sugia, but I do not have their books available at this time.

Later it occurred to me that this is not necessarily so. I was doing some sit-ups and it occurred to me that if the thief made the improvements then when the buyer bought the field he paid for the field and the improvements, [like if a fence was built on the property.] Therefore it does make sense for the thief to pay the buyer for the field and the improvements. So maybe my original scheme was right.

[See the original scheme in the link up above on ideas in Shas or at this link  on ideas in Bava Metzia itself on page 101 of Bava Metzia.]


זה עלה בדעתי שאם הגנב עשה שיפורים אז כאשר הקונה רכש את השדה ששילם עבור השדה ואת השיפורים, כמו אם גדר נבנתה על הנכס. לכן זה הגיוני עבור הגנב לשלם הקונה עבור השדה ואת השיפורים. אז אולי התכנית המקורית שלי צדק.

________________________________________________________________________

The Closing of the American Mind

In the book The Closing of the American Mind, Allen Bloom made a point that the project of the enlightenment [classical liberalism ] was at a stage of crisis. He did not offer much in the way of resolution.

It might seem a small consolation   but Allen Bloom did have two ideas that he suggested. Learning the Republic of Plato seems to have been the top priority. "Great books" after that. He also did mention learning Torah in the beginning chapters as a kind of hint but nothing that he explicitly advocated.[I mean to say he mentioned his relatives that had in their background, basic learning of the Oral and Written Law and that that gave them a depth of understanding of the human condition that the NY Times and other modern writings could not compare to.

He also mentioned Hegel in a very positive way, suggesting he might have seen something important there. It is hard to know what though. Allen Bloom in fact had been taught by a Hegelian professor so you you count this as bias towards his teacher. Or it could be he saw something important there.

The truth be told , Thomas Jefferson in a similar vein held the only way the American Republic could survive was by education and for that purpose he founded the university of Virginia. He knew the system of the American Constitution was only workable for a certain kind of person. Not all people.
Only people with a Judaic-Christian orientation.

[My own opinion about this is similar to Allen Bloom and Thomas Jefferson. It is learning Gemara, Musar (Mediaeval Ethics), and Math.] That is to say I do not think all and any education is worthwhile. So in that sense I am disagreeing with Thomas Jefferson. Education yes but only a certain kind of education. Also I am not thinking of the Republic of Plato as being the best of his works but rather the middle dialogues. Also I am thinking Gemara [as shorthand for learning the whole Oral and written Law] Musar Ethics and Math as connecting one's inner self to the Platonic Forms.

[Not that I presume to be anywhere near the greatness of Allen Bloom of Thomas Jefferson. Rather it is my opinion that their ideas need to be modified a bit in because of hindsight.]

I mean to say here that if you look at Allen Bloom's middle chapters about the "self" he is is skimping on the  Kantian approach. [He was quite aware of Kant but in his treatment of the Self he had a lot of material to cover before he could get to Kant.] So what I see is the self of Kant, the "ding an sich,"the thing in itself is something Schopenhauer put the Platonic forms into. Thus all one needs to do in theory is to awaken those Platonic Forms.

religious teachers

The main power of religious teachers comes from their pretense of secret knowledge. Especially knowledge of Kabalah. So they are in particular jealous of the Kabalah Institute [founded on the approach to the Ari of Rav Ashlag] as being a threat to their supposed superiority about this secret knowledge. The only way one can really see through their deception is by experience. There is really very little in the way of checking up on them otherwise.
Only people that were believing in them and burnt are the ones openly saying that they are all frauds, and these people that have been burnt are usually not believable because of the fact that they are losers at this game of fraud. Losers tend to have little of no credibility because of the fact that they are losers even though they are the ones in position to have actually seen the truth.

The truth is religious teachers do not have knowledge of the Ari at all. Most have not even read through the entire works of the Ari at all. And those that have learned the Ari in some depth are usually ignorant of Gemara and thus unqualified. The whole thing is  a scam. 

Even the so called Kabalah yeshivas in Jerusalem are frauds, and are just private county clubs for the macho man and his thugs to sit around all day and chat. Beware.



[In any case for actual knowledge of the Ari the Kabbalah institute seems very good. They have a great edition of all the Ari and without pretense of great knowledge of it they study it seriously. It is the best and most honest approach to this that I have seen.]


This should not be construed as a critique on the Holy Torah, not the written Law nor the oral Law. Rather this is a critique on the creeps that pretend to know it an keep it. in so doing the give the Torah and all Jews a bad name. The religious world are more like enemies of the Jewish people and of the Torah than the friends they claim to be.

In fact I think the Oral and Written Law are very important and I think Reb Israel Salanter found the best approach to make this simple and easy--to learn Musar [the Ethics of the Torah.]

I know on a blog with the Gra in the title it is hard to understand why I would put being in the Armed Forces as good thing. While being in the Armed Forces could cramp your ability to keep all the Mitzvot with all the details. 

Still getting married takes precedence. If a Litvak (Lithuanian) Rosh yeshiva's daughter is a possibility I figure then those people  are not looking at this blog anyway, and that would have happened already.  So obviously you were by-passed. 


 And the religious world is a disaster zone when it comes to shiduchim. [It is  a cheat and a racket for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many  baal teshuvas.]
The main thing there is the fraud and scams. This is besides the fact that the religious world outside the yeshivas is simply a fake religion. It pretends to keep Torah, but worships their human gurus. 

So to be man, it seems to me there is little choice but to  do the Armed Forces thing. [Unless something clicks in university.]

War is justifiable if it is to protect one's home.

Slavery is a biblical law. There are many laws concerning how to deal with slaves. See the laws of slavery in Maimonides. It is a whole book. And the laws of the Bible are forever. There is nothing to indicate that the laws were temporary. The very last of the prophets Malachi ends his prophecy with "Remember the Law of Moses." The whole idea that the Law can be abridged when it says openly that it is forever is ridiculous.  Besides the fact that it says by the laws that they are forever like Tzitzit and Chalah, there is the verse  הנסתרות להשם אלהינו והנגלות לנו ולבנינו לעשות את כל דברי התורה הזאת

And for what purpose would there be a document that you can change its meaning at will? There would be no function for such a document except to give power to the people that claim to understand it and represent it and get money because of their supreme holiness.
A document that's meaning can be changed has no legitimate function in the first place.
We have to say the the Torah has a meaning that is independent of interpretations. And it is only upon us to discern than meaning, not to change it. 

the religious world

c An religious teacher will be the first person to betray you to the enemy.Much less be trustworthy.

The main profession the religious world learn is how to ask others for money. That is their main goal in life. How to get money from others. 


The way they do this is sneaky. They pretend to be doing public service by getting people to  do meaningless rituals and then expect to get paid for that. They also make yeshivas that are frauds. They pretend we are all one big happy family but then when one is on board the ship and no longer is able to learn an independent livelihood they throw off the pretense and it becomes about being their slaves.

This is not Lashon Hara (slander) because just think fora minute if I am right. Lets say all religious teachers are this exact way. Then anyone who knows this and is quite about it is transgressing every second the prohibition אל תעמוד על דם ריעך Thou shalt not stand by and see the blood of your neighbor spilled.

r68 F Major

I am very happy about the improvement to the American military that I have seen recently. My Dad had invested a large amount of his life towards improved and upgrading the military might of the USA. While in the US Air Force he served in the European theater of action. Later literately invented night vision.[At first it was telescope that focused infra red waves. Later the US Army did its own modification to make it small and portable as we see today in night vision helmets. After that he was the head of one of the teams that developed  cameras for the U-2. Then he was recruited to build laser communication for the Strategic Defense Initiative SDI (Star Wars).

Isaac Luria has a modification of the theory of ideas of Plato and the Neo Platonics. Just because some people take the Ari in wrong directions does not mean there is nothing to be gained from him.
I was troubled for some time by the fact of the Zohar itself not being from Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai but I think there is much to be gained from the Ari himself.
I will try to take a minute here to describe my own world view in short terms. In short I take the idea of Kant that there is a limit to pure reason. Beyond that there is the world of the form, [or ideas as Aristotle called it.] That realm has a hierarchy.  Forms of necessity. Areas of more human interest with have less strict forms and more numinous content. But there are areas of the world of forms that are more formal like Mathematical logic. These areas are not completely of bound to human reason because of their formal content.
But even those areas of formal content depend on a kind of knowledge which  reason perceives

Organized schizophrenia is not the same thing as being careful in keeping the commandments of the Torah.

Organized schizophrenia is the over emphasis of rituals in the religious world.

This is not the same thing as being careful in keeping the commandments of the Torah.
Organized schizophrenia is when you have had in the past some charismatic figure who was a schizoid personality type obsessed with ritual preparation of food and cleaning rituals and sex.
And because he was in control enough of his obsession to make sure to do them only at the right times and places he gained a following as being a holy man. [That is he was only schizoid, not schizophrenic.]
So these rituals gained acceptance and became obligatory.
So far this is well known. I have added nothing here to what is well known and commonly accepted.

We can see this tendency in the religious world. Mainly with the groups that are obsessed with rituals and  sex and food preparation and cleaning rituals. But this can be traced back further. See the Sidur of Saadia Gaon and the order of prayers of the Rambam. We can see how things just kept getting added on and added on until there is no time left in the day to do anything,-- especially not learning Torah.

But what I wanted to add today is an idea from the מסילת ישרים Paths of the Just by Rav Moshe Chaim Lutzatto. That is that the outer affects the inner. Thus by extra strictness in חומרות added restrictions which were added on by some schizoid personality and became accepted by the whole social organism one becomes himself schizoid.

Appendix: This is well known concerning Pesukai DeZimra--the part of the morning prayer before the blessings on Kriat Shema. But the reason I mentioned the sidur of Saadia Gaon is the the first blessing of Kriat Shema itself is about three lines. The opening blessing, a short sentence, and the closing. ברוך אתה ה' אלקינו מלך העולם יוצר אור ובורא חושך then about ten words after that. And then ברוך ... יצר המאורות

So the problem seems to be be that the leaders of the religious community tend to be schizoid personalities that gain their fame from their fanatic addiction to rituals. It is a great thing that the Na Nach groups have noticed this problem. And in fact Reb Nachman himself made a note of the fact that often the leaders of the religious are demonic and so urged caution in this regard. My own approach is that I have been hurt so much and so often by the religious community that I simply refuse to have anything to do with them because I figure at this point the Sitra Achra has just taken over the whole thing lock, stock and barrel. I get panicky just by seeing them because of the kind of damage they have already caused me.

To Hagai the prophet during the years of Darius came the word of God. He told Hagai that the people are saying, "It is not the right time to build the house of God." So God told Hagai to ask them, "You have time to sit in your houses and plant your vineyards, but you do not have time to build the house of God?"

You have to get the context right. The First Temple was ordered by God to be built while the Jewish people were still not even in the Land of Israel yet. You can see this in the later parts of Exodus. In those later parts of Exodus you can see God ordering the Jewish people to build a temple and bring daily offerings there. And later in Leviticus you can see many kinds of sacrifices that are to be brought there and the words are used חוקת עולם an everlasting law.

Later the Temple was destroyed by the King of Babylon. So what we have here in this later prophet is the idea that the Jewish people should rebuild the Temple in order to keep God's Law, the Law of Moses.

The house of God here is not a synagogue. It is the Temple in Jerusalem. And this is not personal nor subject to individual interpretation. It is a straight forward order by God to build the Temple.

Darius is famous in the Old Testament. He is also the King or Persia that had the famous run in with the Athenians.. The Athenians supported a rebellion of Ionian a Greek colony in Italy that was under Persian rule. The Athenians burnt the ships that Darius had sent to squelch the rebellion. When the messenger told him the Athenians had burnt his ships, he asked "Who are the Athenians?"
He swore to burnt Athens to the ground, and started the First of the Persian Grecian Wars
Presumably. by that time, he knew who the Athenians were. His expedition to conquer Greece included about a half a million men. It was the greatest armada the world had ever seen up until. Nothing stood between him and total conquest of ancient Greece except 300 Spartans.



His work to conquer Ancient Greece was stopped but his work to rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem earned him  honor and mention in the prophets.

One reason to go into the Navy is to learn how to be a man, a mensch. There is something about learning how to be a man that one does not get by books of Musar or even by learning Torah.

This does not apply to any armed forces, but rather to armed forces that are devoted towards righteous causes.
But people that learn what it is to be honest and reliable and upright and trustworthy from books alone never end up with these traits.

The last person you want watching your back in a survival situation is a religious teacher.  A religious teacher will be the first person to betray you to the enemy.Much less be trustworthy.


The main profession that the religious world learns is how to ask others for money. That is their main goal in life. How to get money from others.


The way they do this is sneaky. They pretend to be doing public service by getting people to  do meaningless rituals and then expect to get paid for that. They also make yeshivas that are frauds. They pretend we are all one big happy family but then when one is on board the ship and no longer is able to learn an independent livelihood they throw off the pretense and it becomes about being their slaves.

Kitzur Shulchan Aruch [Abridged Shulchan Aruch]

The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch [Abridged Shulchan Aruch] is a good book in many ways. It does give a basic synopsis of practical laws. But it has a flaw that it says to go to  religious teachers when in doubt.  Religious teachers are not honest. You can not trust them about anything. I do not know why this is but they can be trusted to do as much damage to you and to me given the slightest chance. And they have no idea of Torah law either. If in doubt about some particular case of Torah law, the only choice is to go to the Gemara directly. [Even going to the actual complete Shulchan Aruch of Yoseph Karo does not help, because you anyway have to go to the Gemara to see how the law is applied and understood.
There is no skipping of this step. However, when one has learned the subject in the  Gemara thoroughly, then the actual Shuclan Aruch with its commentaries is a useful tool.

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Definition of a religious teacher: an idiot that thinks he is smart and in fact smarter than anyone else and therefore people ought to give him money.

 Perhaps one of the most ugly and perfidious concepts is that somehow  religious teacher are righteous, loving and virtuous. 


They work  politically and economically  for  destruction of secular Jews and Baali Teshuva and the State of Israel.


You are told in a constant sensory assault that these religious teachers who cannot do for themselves and live off the charity of secular Jews, it is your duty to lug the ever burdensome dead weight across your own back until you are satisfactorily broken, beaten and demoralized.

Definition of an  religious teacher: an idiot that thinks he is smart and in fact smarter than anyone else and therefore people ought to give him money.


The farther you stay away from this class of creeps, the closer you will be to God and to the holy Torah.

Some people see Kabalah as a negative thing. They group it together with attempts of things like the New Age cults and such. This was never my impression, but I think this opinion should still be considered.  After all how is it that it got to be so widely and wildly  accepted the  religious world? I am not sure how to answer this? From what I can tell there might be some reason to think the entire acceptance of it as a legitimate part of Judaism might have been a mistake.

In any case it is hard to see any good that comes out of it.

However sometimes it seems  people that were good  did learn the Zohar and the Ari. And that does not seem like a bad thing. After all the Ari is just developing a modification of a neo- platonic system and using it to explain the Torah. Still you have to wonder is there perhaps some kind of bad energy mixed up with the whole thing? Based on what we have seen for the last centuries as Kabalah became popular we certainly did not see people improving in any way because of learning it.

What might be going on is that people are putting anything that smacks of the Dark Side all in one trash basket and throwing it all out without inspecting the particulars of each case. Thus they would be putting the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on and cabala and new age and hinduism all together and saying that it is underneath all the same dark side.



In other words some people are instead of focusing on the positive aspects of their beliefs system are focusing on avoiding the Dark Side in all and every manifestation of it. This is probably a good approach. The reason is that it is easy to be distracted and to swallow the bait. I think people are the most interested in avoiding the Dark Side are probably thinking correctly.The question is how to identify the dark side? But they are not concerned with that. They simply dismiss anything that smells even slightly off.

Now I have never done that myself and I am probably at fault for this. As I look over things I have read I see I have studied in great depth and detail systems that were pretty obviously from the Dark Side. Maybe I did not care, or maybe I thought it would not effect me. Maybe I thought I was immune?

I have talked about kabalah in particular is some other essay. But just for now let me mention that Im Kal Da [even though] which comes up all the time in the Zohar is a translation of Im Kal Ze [even though in Hebrew]. It was a phrase invented by the Ibn Tibon family during the Middle Ages. [There were  ways to say "even though" in Hebrew during the time of R Shimon Ben Yochai, like "af al pi" or "af al gav." But Ibn Tibon was looking for something that made more sense, so he came up with this "im kal ze."] Therefore not one word of the Zohar can be from R. Shimon Ben Yochai. QED.

r65 E Flat Major r65 in midi format r65nwc

Why American should not bow before the pressures of the Federal Government to enforce Queer agenda.

 Moral Principles are worth more than money.

A weakening of faith was the problem in Europe and it still is. Nationalism is not a substitute for numinous holy value. The complete rejection of the Middle Ages was a terrible mistake. In the Middle Ages it was the basic starting axiom that faith and reason are not at odds in any way.And the books written then in philosophy show a rigor that have never been excelled.
Later books of philosophy seems to excel in circular reasoning and often plain false principles that sound good at first.

How empty a man's life would be without a woman's touch

I hate feminists but I love women. I think that they are superior to men in many ways. I am in a college dorm and I can tell you there is a real difference when there are guys than when there are girls. How empty a man's life would be without a woman's touch and encouragement. He starts his first breath from a woman's touch. His pleasure and happiness in his life is from women. His comfort in his sadness is from a woman's love. Life would be empty and meaningless without women. That does not mean they are smarter or better at building bridges.

Girl Friends:

The Book of Chronicles, Volume One, chapter two [2:46] and four concerning Kalev ben Yefuna (כלב בן יפונה). He is the only person in the entire Bible that it says the unique phrase, וימלא אחרי השם "He walked completely after God." He had two girl friends.]

I have seen some different opinions about this. Christians seem to be unaware of the different between the Law of the Ten Commandments and having a girl friend. The Ten Commandments are referring to sex with a married woman. To show how this can be derived rigorously from the usage in the Torah is a good idea. But I do not have the books to be able to look it up.

Jewish people

 I see that the Jewish people are in a spiritual situation that is  serious . I have been hoping to emphasize the importance of learning the Avi Ezri  in the hope that learning that book would save our souls. 

Too many false prophets and demonic  religious teachers claim to represent Torah. 

The religious world is an scam pretending to represent Torah, while in fact seducing people into the Dark Side of worship of  religious teachers by means of using the appearance of Jewish rituals

So the book of Rav Shach I think is perhaps the only thing that can help. Everything else can be perverted. Even Musar and even Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot.

One should have a fast session in it and  an in depth one. The fast one should be just to say the words in order and go on until you have finished the whole book word for word. The slow one is more difficult to describe. To do a slow session in the Avi Ezri you will need to pick one chapter and get the sources associated with it like the Gemaras that it is written on and the Rambam also. 


[Appendix: The Avi Ezri is the book of Rav Elezar Menachem Shach on the Rambam. It is in essence close to the Chidusei HaRambam of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. But slightly different. There are few or no יסודות (foundational principles). That is he does not depend on finding some underlying principle to explain things, but rather takes a common sense approach to answering contradictions and problems in the Rambam and the Gemara. It is deep while at the same time being much more understandable than the Chidushei HaRambam.

In the past I have said to learn it because it is a good thing. Now I am trying to make my point a little clearer. The difference is a doctor who says, "Take this medicine because it is good for you," and the doctor who says the same thing but puts it in this way,"Take this medicine so you do not die."


A יסוד is foundational principle. Reb Chaim depends on these very much. He starts in the normal way of finding some contradiction in the Rambam, or between the Rambam and the Gemara. Then he introduces a axiom. Then tries to answer the problem based on the axiom. Rav Shach also begins the same way, but skips the idea of introducing some axiom though he might end up with one.


Instead of Torah and the Oral Law people get interested in Kabalah

 Kabalah might be a negative thing. It might be similar to New Age cults and such.  After all how is it that it got to be so widely and wildly  accepted in the religious world? I am not sure how to answer this? From what I can tell there might be some reason to think the entire acceptance of it as a legitimate part of Judaism might have been a mistake.

In any case it is hard to see any good that comes out of it.

However sometimes it seems  people that were good  did learn the Zohar and the Ari. And that does not seem like a bad thing. After all the Ari is just developing a modification of a neo- platonic system and using it to explain the Torah. Still you have to wonder is there perhaps some kind of bad energy mixed up with the whole thing? Based on what we have seen for the last centuries as Kabalah became popular we certainly did not see people improving in any way because of learning it.


What might be going on is that people are putting anything that smacks of the Dark Side all in one trash basket and throwing it all out without inspecting the particulars of each case. Thus they would be putting the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on and Cabala and New Age and Hinduism all together and saying that it is underneath all the same dark side. This might be the best approach.

Life would be empty and meaningless without women

I hate feminists but I love women. I think that they are superior to men in many ways. I am in a college dorm and I can tell you there is a real difference when there are guys than when there are girls. How empty a man's life would be without a woman's touch and encouragement. He starts his first breath from a woman's touch. His pleasure and happiness in his life is from women. His comfort in his sadness is from a woman's love. Life would be empty and meaningless without women. That does not mean they are smarter or better at building bridges.

Girl Friends: See the Book of Chronicles, Volume One, chapter two [2:46] and four concerning Kalev ben Yefuna (כלב בן יפונה). He is the only person in the entire Bible that it says the unique phrase, וימלא אחרי השם "He walked completely after God." He had two girl friends.]

What the religious world does is put all the emphasis on rituals and the worship of religious teachers.

The prophets end with זכרו תורת משה. Remember the Law of Moses.
The Law of Moses is composed of several areas of value. One important area that is largely forgotten is character traits and the whole area of what is called בין אדם לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man. This is the reason why Lithuanian Musar yeshivas are important.Because they strive for this balance.
What the religious world does is put all the emphasis on rituals and the worship of  religious teachers. That means it is really a different religion than Torah.
Still that is not to say the ritual part of Torah is not also essential. One needs a balance.

I believe in capitalism from a different aspect. That is from learning Torah and Talmud. In the Talmud, property is not considered to belong to the government, but to the individual. And not just taking it by theft or fraud is considered to transgress the command not to steal, but even if the court awards one money that does not really come to him by the law of the Torah (din Torah), that is also considered theft.  Reading Ann Rand later on reinforced this. But Ann Rand was really just emphasizing a point I had seen before, that Socialism is theft disguised as virtue.

But to get a really full fledged defense of capitalism I really had to wait until I read Kant. I do not know if I was trying on purpose to come out with a defense of private property.  I was after all interested in the argument against it. I read the Communist manifesto and Rousseau and approaches that defended the State as opposed to the individual. But these approaches never seemed to hold much water. Especially Marx. To me what he was saying seemed ridiculous. He had some concocted theory that things have as much value as much labor went into making them which is patently absurd. Things have as much value as people want them, not as much time and labor went into making them. You can work all year long on making a pin. It will not be worth more than if you spent less time.

There was  effort from the communists to get the collage curriculum in the USA to feature anti capitalist  thinkers. A lot depends on what he reads and digests in his or her college years. As for me even in my yeshiva years I continued reading left wing and right wing thinkers along with the Talmud. I read Lenin, Sartre, etc. Still the more I read the less they made sense. They would start out with some nice sounding principle and think they and proved it. And then by that dubious principle proceed to demolish normal moral values. You can see how reading the Talmud was for me a relief of logic and sanity from the inanities and absurdities of Lenin and Sartre. The contrast could not have been more stark.
[Sadly though I did not get to Kant until years later. That was a stupid mistake on my part. I had seen him in some private home and could have borrowed him if I had wanted. So instead it took me many years until I finally got to Kant.]

However there is a use for Marxism. It can harness the greed of people to gain power for central government. This is how it played out in the USSR and in China. But I do not think that is a good thing. It all depends if you think the state is more important or the individual.

Every mortal is born with a equal measure of good and evil.

The Ancient Greeks in order to gain allies when Xerxes was coming to invade  sent to potential allies this idea. They said, "Every mortal is born with a equal measure of good and evil. No exceptions." Thus Xerxes would not, and could not, have unlimited success.

Some people like Bava Sali [Israel Abuchatzeira] in their  own way applied this idea to their own lives.  They said there is a limit to how much good and pleasure they will have so they voluntarily limited it. It is well known that Bava Sali fasted most of his life from Shabat to Shabat.

marriage delay.

Women in the western world today are too comfortable, too spoiled, too pampered, too soft, too selfish. 

Getting to the nub of it,  women are willing to marry if, and only if, the man involved is absolutely perfect in every way. He has to be hot, fit, sexy, exciting, monogamous minded, with a good job and money in the bank, and his own living arrangements. He has to be ready made, off the shelf perfect, with no added input and no assembly required. He can’t be a diamond in the rough or a work in progress. He can’t be a young guy just starting out, he needs to be established and earning very good money, and he has to have all these things first, before he’ll be anywhere close to worthy of consideration.

That’s what’s driving the marriage delay.

Almost all Divorce Petitions are issued on the grounds of the husband’s Unreasonable Behavior, and what you may ask would such behavior comprise? Anything you like! but some of the most popular are, leaving the toothpaste-cap off, leaving the loo-seat up and forgetting the mother-in-law’s birthday. In other words, whim. No man ever complaines in a petition as to his wife’s behavior.

I wanted to suggest two types of sessions in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. One is just saying the words and going on and the other is in depth learning. The in depth learning depends on if you have  a learning partner or not. When I have found myself without a learning partner -which is more often than not- I suggest just to take one chapter and just run through it from start to finish. Then the next day do the same thing. And thus continue at least for forty days. I admit I did not do this myself with Rav Shach but rather other people like Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam. This idea of lots of review  I mainly picked up from my first rosh yeshiva and his son who were always talking about the importance of review.

Talmud Bava Metzia 98a. Tosphot first word משכחת. It occurred to me to ask what seems like a simple question. To Rabbainu Tam to take an oath of  a guard one needs כפירה הודאה ואונס. Why is not just כפירה or אונס enough? Is that not the same thing as מודה במקצת where we say מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? I guess because it is different than the case of a loan. By a loan we say he takes an oath because he really wanted to deny the whole thing but אין אדם מעיז פניו בפנע בעל חובו because the lender did him a favor by giving him  a loan. But here with a guard the person that gave the guard something to watch did him no favor.
The question on this is:
But then there would be more of a reason to have a person that denies the whole transaction to take an oath, not less.

What I mean to say is this we say מודה מקצת takes an oath because two things cancel. There is a reason to say he is denying only part when he could have denied the whole thing so let us believe him. To cancel this we say אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו. So then normally our starting position is there should be an oath, because 1-1 is the same as zero.







It also occurred to me a simple way to explain the question of Tosphot on Rabbainu Tam. Rava asks on Rav and Shmuel "if there is a migo then there would never be a case of a שומר taking and oath." The question of Tosphot on RT is that to RT the case of  a guard taking an oath is never a case where there is a migo.

________________________________________________________________________________
בבא מציעא צ''ח ע''א תוספות ד''ה משכחת. It occurred to me to ask what seems like a simple question. To רבינו תם to take an oath of  a שומר one needs כפירה הודאה ואונס. Why is not just כפירה or אונס enough? Is that not the same thing as מודה במקצת where we say מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? I guess because it is different than the case of a loan. By a loan we say he takes an oath because he really wanted to deny the whole thing but אין אדם מעיז פניו בפנע בעל חובו because the lender did him a favor by giving him  a loan. But here with a guard the person that gave the guard something to watch did him no favor.


השאלה על זה:
אבל אז  תהיה יותר סיבה לחייב אדם שמכחיש את העסקה כולה לקחת שבועה, לא פחות.


It also occurred to me a simple way to explain the question of תוספות on רבינו תם. In שבועות רבא  asks on רב and שמואל if there is a מיגו then there would never be a case of a שומר taking and oath." The question of תוספות on רבינו תם is that to רבינו תם the case of  a guard taking an oath is never a case where there is a מיגו because it is always מודה מקצת




בבא מציעא צ''ח ע''א תוספות ד''ה משכחת. עלה בדעתי לשאול מה שנראה כמו שאלה פשוטה. לרבינו תם, שומר כדי להישבע צריך כפירה הודאה ואונס. למה לא  כפירה לבדה או אונס מספיקים? האם זה לא אותו דבר כמו מודה במקצת שבו אנו אומרים מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? תרוץ: אני מניח כי זה שונה מאשר במקרה של הלוואה. על ידי הלוואה שאנו אומרים הוא לוקח שבועה כי הוא באמת רוצה להכחיש את העניין, אבל אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו כי המלווה עשה לו טוב על ידי שנתן לו הלוואה. אבל כאן עם שומר, האדם שנתן משהו לשמור לא עשה לו שום טובה.
גם עלה בדעתי דרך פשוטה להסביר את השאלה של תוספות על רבינו תם. בשבועות רבא שואל על רב ושמואל אם יש מיגו אז לעולם לא יהיה מקרה בשומר לקיחת השבועה ". שאלת תוספות על רבינו תם היא  לרבינו תם במקרה שהשומר לוקח שבועה הוא לא לעולם במקרה בו קיים מיגו כי זה תמיד מודה מקצת.


_

Rav Elazar Menachem Shach

I added an idea here about an idea of Rav Elazar Menachem Shach of Yeshivat Ponovitch.
In short there is question in the Rambam.
First let me say  the Etrogs on an  Etrog tree do not ripen all at once. They can stay on the tree for years. So there is a question what to do about Maasar [tithes]? The Rambam goes with the opinion you go by the time the etrog was picked. But he also says an etrog that goes from the 6th year into the 7th is obligated in tithes. Direct contradiction. Rav Shach says the fruit of the 7th year is not הפקר. They have owners. All Israel. So when his field is being trampled  he would not be obligated in tithes because of trampling,-- not because that from the law they would not be obligated.

I have another answer for the problem, but here I just wanted to defend Rav Shach.[That is since the Etrog has owners it is fruit that is owned by partners and thus obligated in tithes.]


Rav Shach is important-the only area of disagreement I have is STEM [Science, Tech, Engineering, Math]. But in terms of areas of numinous value, I am in agreement with him.  That is that the holy Torah contains all the answers and all the meaning [for human life].

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