People go through all kinds of problems,

People go through all kinds of problems, psychological or relationships etc. Depressions, OCD etc. I do not know why. I can imagine a bad childhood may have something to do with some of it. 



Still whatever the reasons are there must be a way to break out of it. 
The best way I can figure out  at this point is to develop a connection with some Lithuanian kind of yeshiva where Torah is learned for its pwn sake and to join in as much as possible and also to learn Musar.  That is to say I think there is "numinous " power in Torah learning that can correct many problems   But it has to be authentic Torah from the side of holiness for this to work. Therefore it seems to me best to learn a little Gemara and a little Musar every day either by yourself or in some kind of Litvak Yeshiva situation. I hope this will in itself solve your other problems. 

"Learn how to learn.The problem nowadays is-- in Torah, very evil people claim to be experts. Therefore you have to have someone either from the Ponovitch Yeshiva in Bnei Brak itself, or some authentic Litvak yeshiva.

At some point you ought to "learn how to learn." I am not all sure how this could work in your preset situation and schedule [i.e. most people need to learn a vocation or are already involved in their vocation]. The best thing I would imagine would be to start a kind of "iyun shiur"[in depth session] as it is called on your own. Maybe with just one essay from Rav Shach or just one page of Gemara and working on it on your own.  But the way this would work I think would be you would need one Gemara [like Bava Metzia or Ketubot] and a few Rishonim and Achronim like R. Akiva Eiger. With the proper materials and books you could probably do it on your own. 

The problem seems to be that most people are not in walking distance from any kind of authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. So the only way most people will ever be able to learn Torah is by doing it on their own [and staying away from people that are pretending to teach Torah, but are actually demons as Reb Nachman mentioned in the Lekutai Moharan Volume I:12] [The trouble is the vast majority of people that claim to be teaching Torah - are teaching the Torah of the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side).]


Maybe it is a matter of taste but in yeshiva, I was not ready for Reb Chaim Soloveitchik kind of things, and instead did a lot of Pnei Yehoshua and Maharsha. The issues the later achronim and the achronim starting with Reb Chaim and going up until Rav Shach are very different and deal with very very different kinds of issues. I feel both are important.
Today I would have to say the Reb Chaim et al. up until Rav Shach are more important. But I can not explain why. The main thing is that Reb Chaim deals with more fundamental issues.

In a lot of places I have seen a tendency to skip what is called "לחשבן את הסוגיא" "to calculate the sugia (subject)." --to work out in exact detail what Topphot is saying  before jumping into lamdanut ("global issues " that is how the sugia relates to other places in Shas). This is something that is ignored nowadays, but it is something that Reb Chaim and all the achronim assumed people were doing on their own. Nowadays it is almost completely skipped.

[The first thing you show up to yeshiva is they tell you to get your own copy of the basic rishonim, the Tosphot HaRosh, the Rashba, the Ritva, and the Chidushei HaRamban [Nachmanides] and also the Tur, Beit Yoseph. I can't say if this is all that helpful. Maybe for some it is.But for me learning from great roshei Yeshiva like Naphtali Yeager and Reb Shmuel Berenbaum  was probably more helpful. It is like learning the violin. You can pick up something by reading books, but to actually be able to do it you need someone that is an expert.  The problem nowadays is-- in Torah, very evil people claim to be experts. Therefore you have to have someone either from the Ponovitch in Bnei Brak itself or some authentic Litvak yeshiva.


 But I am just trying to give you an idea of what is involved in knowing how to learn.

Rav Shach,

Rav Shach, the Rosh yeshiva of Ponovitch, [who wrote the Avi Ezri] obviously held from the basic Litvak yeshiva path along with Musar. Though my idea of education is a drop wider but the basic approach of Rav Shach I have to admit is probably the best. I mean for sure one needs at least a good four years of straight Torah learning all day in order to get anywhere.

[For me four years was not enough. I only barely began to skim the surface after three years in Shar Yashuv and then another three in the Mirrer in NY. All I mean is at least four years.



And though I am critical of  places that use the name "yeshiva" that are really just club houses and have nothing to do with Torah, still the great yeshivas like Ponovitch and the great New York Litvak yeshivas are really amazing places. [i.e. Torah VeDaat, Mirrer, Chaim Berlin.]


My parent's approach however was more along the lines of  a balance between Torah and Derech Eretz [Derech Eretz has a dual meaning of being a mensch (being just and acting right in all circumstances) and also doing honest work for a living and not depending on charity.] [I really liked the Litvak Yeshiva World, but it was too close to other groups that are Sitra Achra סיטרא אחרא [the Dark Side]. And the boundary is porous. Not only that, but the divisions are not well defined. [I mean the Sitra Achra penetrated the boundary.]

If you do not have a yeshiva in your area the simple thing to do is to get one Tractate of Gemara [if you need English then the Soncino is best]  and one book of Musar {Ethics. The Obligations of the Heart is best.} If possible then one of the basic books that go into Gemara in depth like Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or Reb Chaim Solovietchik's Chidushei HaRambam.

A good reason to learn Torah is that people need help from problems.  Instead of going to people that can not help, the best thing is to go to God's word.

I also can not recommend any yeshiva  a such but rather to learn Gemara, Musar, Math, and Physics.


For some people yeshiva might be a workable option. For others nor. So I can not recommend yeshiva , but rather learning Torah and keeping Torah, jogging and survival skills.


Yeshiva is a stave of reed. It looks sturdy, but if you lean on it, it breaks.  They claim to be there to help the public but they are in fact there to help themselves. What makes this upsetting is people think they represent Torah values.

s34 G Major

What should be one's education?

The kind of Seven Wisdoms (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) that were mentioned by the Gra. In the introduction to the translation of Euclid by Rav Baruch of Shkolev a disciple of the Gra he quotes the Gra as saying "To the degree one lacks knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree there will be  a lack of knowledge of Torah."
Then  there is the Rambam's view of Physics and Metaphysics as being part of Torah itself.

[It was in fact awareness of the view of the Rambam and the Gra that encouraged me to take the step to start this kind of learning after I had  been against it as I was part of the religious world.] See also the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות in the Introduction where he brings the seven wisdoms and also the second chapter.

Here I am dealing just with logistics. But having dealt with that then the question comes up, what is the effect of  a liberal education, or what should be the results? What effect does it have on one's soul?
Why is simply sitting and learning Torah not enough? Or is it enough?


Appendix: I mentioned before that my basic approach is Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music Survival skills. [As you can see I have left out a lot of the liberal arts and included a few things. Also I did not include what the Rambam meant by Metaphysics-- that is the set of books of Aristotle by that name. The reason is I am not so thrilled about philosophy.]

Reb Nachman called religious teachers "Jewish demons"

Even though I am critical of most yeshivas nowadays, there were two great yeshivas that I was at in NY, Shar Yashuv and the Mir. At Shar Yashuv I was there sometime and the Rosh Yeshiva [Rav Freifeld] probably saw that I was frustrated in not making much progress. He made a promise to me that after a year and a half I would be able to learn. It occurred to me today that (if I do not have the time-line mixed up) that his promise came true. I think the first year we were doing Chulin. The next year, I think, was Ketubot. If this time line is correct, then  it was when doing Ketubot that I started asking questions from his son-in-law, Rav Naphtali Yeager,  and that is when I discovered what it means "to learn."
I think I must have described this elsewhere,- but mainly the idea was that I would come up to him with a question, and instead of answering it, he would have me recite the whole Tosphot. Within that context he would not accept the adding or subtracting words from Tosphot to make it make sense. And there would be no whitewashing problems in Tosphot. Nor would he accept making up principles. These thing that most yeshivas do were considered completely "traif"--pseudo intellectualism, and simply dishonest. Then he would how Tosphot by some turn of  phrase was attempting to answer some deep question. It is hard to explain but in the two books I have links to in this blog I have tried to show what it means to learn Torah.


But the yeshivas in Israel and in other places in the USA were pretty bad. The  Lakewood Kollel in LA did their best to break up my marriage after returning to the US from Israel. The other religious people there were if anything even worse. I discovered that when Reb Nachman called religious teachers "Jewish demons" he was not exaggerating. [LM Volume I: 8, 12, 28.] [That however, might be considered as "lashon hara"[disparagement ] and an insult to demons.]
These were the same people making a whole song and dance around me as if we were all one big happy family when they were trying to get a donation from my parents.




[No offence intended towards the great gaon, Reb Aaron Kotler.] I would rather not go into this in detail, but I did mention a few times that the signature of the Gra on the second excommunication ought to be considered valid, and if I had accepted it in that way, I would not have gone through this problem.

In any case, I have said it before, and I will say it again. In LA the only kosher places I know about are Temple Israel in Hollywood [Reform] and Mount Sinai Synagogue [conservative]. I think the religious mainly use rituals to cover up un-kosher insides [like the sages of the Talmud said about the pig. It shows itself to be kosher by stretching out its split hooves, but covers the fact that it does not chew the cud.]
The most basic assumption of the religious is that only their version is Kosher. I think it can be shown from the Oral and Written Law that only their version is treif (not kosher). little of what they do or say has any connection to the holy Torah at all except in appearances. It is all one big act to get money from secular Jews.

Monotheism of the Torah

Rav Shick [of Breslov] spent a great deal of effort and he must have printed  more than several million pamphlets trying to change the paradigm [world view] of Torah from Monotheism to pantheism.

I wrote an essay on this a few years ago that brought up the basic points, but was a little too sharp {I admit.} Since Rav Shick was claiming this as if Rav Nachman had supported this, I included critiques on Breslov.

But in that essay I brought some  of the relevant points: Spinoza, the Upanishads, where pantheism is held by. And I showed it has no support from the Ari''zal based on a least four of five references I brought there from beginning of the Eitz Chaim.

I did not bring up possible places of support like the Remak [Moshe of  Cardavaro] or the Shelah. Some suggested also the Ibn Ezra.

I discussed this once with Israel Rozen a friend mine in Jerusalem, and he pointed out that the Nefesh HaChaim does not actually support pantheism,-- even though some people understand it in that way.


All I wanted to say now was the clarify the basic idea of Monotheism of the Torah as understood by the Rambam and Saadia Gaon. That is that God is one and not a composite. And he made the world something from nothing. יש מאין. [ex-nihilo]. That is to say,-- that even from God's point of view nothing exists without him making it exist every second --but not that it is Him. He made everything from nothing. The world is not Divine. [Causality does not imply identity though Buddhism and Hume both conflate these issues. Buddhism has to do this because of the fact that there is no substance that continues in time. So they have to adhere to some form of causality to get identity. But I can make a tuna fish sandwich, but that does not mean that I am a tuna fish sandwich.

As Dr. Kelley Ross wrote on this issue : "Since the approach of Buddhism to the world is to break attachments, so that one does not suffer because of relationships to things, a simple way to do that is to say, in effect, that there are no things. If nothing is substantial or has any essence, this will do that job. What we get instead are the doctrines of "momentariness," "no self nature," and "relative existence." If everything exists only momentarily, then nothing is durable, and we lose that characteristic of substances. If there is no self nature, then there is nothing in things that makes them what they are, and we lose the existence of essences. If things only exist relative to other things, then (1) nothing exists independently and we lose that characteristic of substance, and (2) nothing has its own character, so we lose that characteristic of essence. So what is actually there? Well, what we see is the "form" of things, the external appearance. Since there is no self nature and things only have relative existence, what are things in themselves when we take away everything else? Well, Emptiness. This is not nothingness (a major heresy), but neither existence nor non-existence nor both nor neither. In other words, we can't say or comprehend what is there. Later, in Mahâyâna Budddhism, we get the doctrine of the Heart Sutra that "Emptiness is Form, and Form is Emptiness."

Unfortunately, Buddhism always had difficulty with the implications of all this fundamental metaphysics. The loss of substance and essence takes with it identity, so that it becomes difficult to say that an individual, like the Buddha, achieves Enlightenment and Salvation. The individual, in fact, does not survive beyond the moment, and so it is a different being who achieves Enlightenment from the one who existed previously, and a different being in turn who achieves Salvation. Buddhism attempts to substitute causality for substance, so that what I am now is simply caused by what I was before. Unfortunately, this does not restore identity. If I make a tuna sandwich, and so cause its existence, this does not mean I am the tuna sandwich. Causal connections can be within substances or pass between them, and the identity relation is contributed by the substance, not by the causality. In the end, Buddhism seems to settle into the notion of "provisional existence," which is durable and identical, and then, with some other expedients, ceases to worry about the matter. The popular belief, indeed, is that Buddhism is about finding one's true self, not about finding that there is no self at all (anatma or anatta, "No Self"). "

The Rambam thought this principle was important enough to spend the second volume of the Guide on it.

Yeshivas have fallen as institutions

Yeshivas have fallen as institutions for the sake of learning Torah. Most are more likely to cause damage than to help one grow. Therefore the best thing is to  learn Torah at home  That is to go through (word for word) every last word of the Oral and Written Law.
Most yeshiva s have become self serving bureaucracies.

It is in truth hard to tell exactly how they changed or when or why. I am pretty sure my experience was not limited to me alone. The basic story line seems to be consistent. They started out in Israel and the USA very much "for the sake of Heaven." Then it seems they became more alone the lines of private clubs for the head macho man and his goons.

The best approach is that of Reb Israel Salanter learn Musar [Mediaeval Ethics] and do what it says. That is very different than the yeshiva thing.  The Musar movement has become a kind of  "frumkeit" movement. The leaders of Musar and the Yeshivas are Baali OCD [masters of the Obsessive compulsive disorders.]

In short the frum world certainly  a different religion than Torah. But even the Torah World got the "frumkeit" virus (religious nonsense virus).

Part of the trouble is the song and dance they make to pretend "We are all one big happy family." This is a sin of "You must not place a stumbling block in front of  a blind man,"אל תתן מכשול because later when these same students they made the show and dance for actually come into a time of need, there is no question all these fair weather friends will turn their backs on them.  And I would be transgressing the sin of "Thou shalt not stand by the blood of your neighbor"  אל תעמוד על דם רעיך'if I did not warn people about this.

The belief system of the Torah is not pantheism but rather Monotheism.

  The disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin brings in his book (the Nefesh HaChaim), the verse  אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו "You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him," to mean that not only is God the only god, but also the only independent power in the world.

  This verse is commonly used to support pantheism. I wrote an essay showing that the belief system of the Torah is not pantheism, but rather Monotheism. But for now I wanted to show what the verse really does mean. It means there is no independent power in the world. But there is a world that is not God. But it is not separate from God. No one can help or hurt you without the permission and will of God.
  Reb Chaim himself goes into this in this way:  from the perspective of God nothing can exist without Him. But from our perspective, the world is not God.
But he also says it is  a סגולה, a help, to keep this in mind, that no one can help or hurt you without God's permission and will.

This whole thing is  reflected in Quantum Mechanics which shows that the world is radically subjective. It does not exist until it is observed. So it all depends on one's perspective. That is to say we know locality and  causality from Relativity. And with Quantum Mechanics, reality can be either non-local or subjective. Therefore we know that the second choice is true. Reality is local and subjective.[I was critical at one time of this point of Reb Chaim and I thought it should not matter one' perspective. It is thus and thus or it is not by the law of the excluded middle. I am pretty sure I was  not the first to voice this critique on the Nefeh Hachaim.


It is common for people to think that this is pantheism but it is not.



The Rambam and all the rishonim have made a point that God is not matter, and has no matter or form. He  utterly simple. He is not a composite. He has no ingredients Thus most of the books in the religious world nowadays are explaining the Torah in a way contrary to the way the Rishonim understood the Torah.

[We know QM is true from the double slit experiment. One slit, the electron acts as a particle. Two slits, it acts like  a wave. We know Relativity is true from GPS. The satellite moves with respect to you so you have its goes slower by  some microseconds.You are closer to the centre of the Earth so you go slower by some microseconds. So you adjust the clock on the satellite accordingly. If you would not correct for these two effects the GPS in your taxi would be off every day by a few kilometers.]

 התלמיד של הגר''א, רב חיים מביא בספרו  נפש החיים , הפסוק אתה הראית לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו לומר כי לא רק שהוא האלוהים האל היחיד, אלא גם את הכח היחיד בעולם.   פסוק זה משמש בדרך כלל כדי לתמוך הפנתאיזם. כתבתי מאמר מראה כי מערכת האמונות של התורה היא לא הפנתאיזם, אלא מונותאיזם. אבל לעת עתה רציתי להראות מה הפסוק באמת אומר. זה אומר שאין כוח עצמאי בעולם. אבל יש עולם, וכי הוא לא אלוהים. אבל זה העולם אינו נפרד מאלוהים. אף אחד לא יכול לעזור או לפגוע בך בלי רשות ורצון האל.  ר 'חיים עצמו נכנס בזה בדרך זו: מנקודת המבט של  אלוהים אין דבר יכול להתקיים בלעדיו. אבל מנקודת המבט שלנו, העולם הוא לא אלוהים. אבל הוא גם אומר שזה הוא סגולה(לעזר) כדי לשמור את זה בחשבון, כי אף אחד לא יכול לעזור או לפגוע בך בלי הרשות של אלוהים. כל העניין הזה משתקף במכניקה הקוונטית אשר מראה כי העולם הוא סובייקטיבי לחלוטין. הדבר לא קיים עד הוא נמדד, כמו שאמר בוהר. אז זה הכל תלוי בנקודת המבט של המתבונן. כלומר אנחנו יודעים סיבתיות מהיחסות. ועם מכניקה הקוונטית, יודעים שהמציאות יכולה להיות או לא מקומית וסובייקטיבי. לכן אנו יודעים כי הבחירה השנייה היא נכונה. המציאות היא מקומית וסובייקטיבי. הרמב''ם וכל הראשונים החזיקו שיטה  שאלוהים אין בו חומר, ואין לו שום חומר או צורה. הוא לגמרי פשוט. הוא אינו מורכב. אין לו מרכיבים. אנחנו יודעים שמכניקת הקוונטים נכונה מן ניסוי שני הסדקים. חריץ אחד, האלקטרון מתנהג כחלקיק. שני חריצים, הוא מתנהג כמו גל. אנחנו יודעים שיחסות נכונה מלווין מיקום הגלובלי. הלווין נע ביחס אליך וכך זה ממשיך איטי ידי שבעה מיקרו שניות ממה שאתה. אתה קרוב יותר למרכז של כדור הארץ וכך הלווין ממשיך יותר מהר ממה שאתה ידי ארבעים וחמישה מיקרו שניות. אז לך להתאים את השעון על הלווין להיות איטי שלשים ושמנה מיקרו שניות.

Uman Rosh Hashanah.I am pretty impressed with Reb Nachman

Uman Rosh Hashanah. The main reason yeshiva students come to Uman is for the Russian girls. I can't disapprove. After all Russian girls are pretty. But no one should have an idea as if this is some kind of mitzvah, And though Reb Nachman was a great tzadik, still no one of the groups that worships him can be considered to be keeping the Torah in any sense.

The trouble is the whole thing seems ambiguous. No one gets involved with it without getting some kind of state of delusions along with it.


I am pretty impressed with Reb Nachman himself I admit. But the people in Breslov are nightmares.

Dr Kelley Ross
.

"Chief among the limits imposed on war is the principle that civilians are to be separated from combatants. This serves to limit the suffering to be endured by those, the non-combatants, who have not overtly been engaged and prepared to participate in war. A strong motivation for such provisions came from the experience of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), when armies not only lived off the land, taking the food and fodder they needed for the armies to survive and function, but they actively looted the land, even torturing and murdering peasants and tradesmen in the hope of finding hidden money and other valuables.


To separate civilians from combatants, three things are essential:  (1) combatants must be easily recognizable, which means they are in distinctively military uniforms, in obviously military conveyances (including naval warships), or otherwise wear something to distinguish them as soldiers; (2) combatants target only other combatants and not civilians; and (3) combatants do not hide or mix themselves among civilians while continuing to fight, which would require that the enemy, to fight back, cannot avoid injuring the civilians"

The problem in Israel is none of these conditions apply. Arabs militants wear nothing that distinguishes them from Arab civilians. Arabs target Israeli civilian populations. Arabs hide and mix among civilians while continuing to fight.


"Like spies, irregular combatants, out of uniform, who cannot be distinguished from civilians, cannot expect any protection from the privileges afforded to proper prisoners of war. They can be shot.


 "So, when civilians enter combat, they can neither expect to be treated as civilians, which they no longer are, nor to be treated as proper soldiers, which they have not become. If civilians wish to be separated from combat and be treated accordingly, they must behave as civilians. Otherwise, they warrant the fate of those who seek to evade the laws of war or seek advantage through deception."


Added to this is an optimistic argument that the idea of national-sims is gaining ascendancy nowadays. This seems to be a good thing as Howard Bloom makes clear in his book the Lucifer Principle. If so then this provides a strong argument for Israel and for the idea that Muslims do not belong there. It is not their land. Never was and never will be.

Simply learning and keeping Torah

1.) According to Kant there are areas of reality that human reason can not venture into, and if it does, it gets caught in self contradictions. This area he calls unconditioned reality.
2) But we do have access to unconditioned reality by ways other than reason. That is through a kind of knowledge that is not reason and it is not felt or sensed.
3) My story has to do with how I came into contact with this kind of knowledge.
4) I was reading a little about Wyatt Earp and realized that 30 seconds of his life defined his entire life--everything leading up to it and everything afterwards. That was the gun fight at the OK Corral.

And I realized that it is not always up to a person to choose his life's meaning. All you can do is accept it and try to be worthy. I saw this also when I was reading the trial of Joan of Arc.

5) So I thought to put down briefly the basic story.It seems to me that it really started with yeshiva in NY. I felt some kind of force drawing me there to the degree that even though my parents were against it (and I loved my parents dearly), I simply had to go and learn in a Litvak yeshiva. I think today that those years of intense study of Gemara helped to prepare me.
6) I got married while still in the Mir Yeshiva in NY.
7) After some years I decided to go to Israel
8) Right when I got off the plane and breathed my first breath of the air of Israel I could feel it.
9) When we got to Safed the next day everything started lighting up.
10) Then there was some kind of cleansing process for  a few months and then the Divine Presence hit me like  tidal wave.-that both my wife and I felt, and I think my children also.
11) What I think this means is that: simply  learning and keeping Torah in the most simple way leads to the Divine Presence. No intermediates are necessary, No mystic intentions. Just simple Torah and being in Israel.
12) After about seven years I simply could not take it anymore and decided like Yona the Prophet to escape the Presence of God.
13) And would have been that,-- if not that the daughter of Bava Sali, Avigail Buso reminded me of my destiny. [She was thinking mainly about the path of Musar of Reb Israel Salanter and the Tur, Beit Yoseph and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and his students like Reb Shimon Shkop and Rav Shach and  the other gedolai Lita. That is it in a nutshell.
14) Therefore, I have mentioned on this blog the importance of learning Torah in a Litvak (Lithuanian) yeshiva where Torah is learned for its own sake along the lines of simply learning and keeping the Law of Moses -the Oral and Written Law. Nothing more or less.

There are issues in my life that are inherently ambiguous. After high school I went directly to a great yeshiva in NY of Reb Freifeld. Without that I highly doubt if I ever would have "been able to learn," or to reach any understanding of authentic Torah. Still my parents wanted me to learn a vocation along with Torah and thus this move did not please them. This issue still underscores my ambiguity about this issue until this very day. [It is not that in principle I could not have attended Brooklyn College at the same time--as people were doing anyway in Chaim Berlin. It is rather that Shar Yashuv was very far from Brooklyn College and also I can see today I needed a few years of Torah alone in order to get anywhere. Divided attention would have I am afraid to admit that I would not have gotten anywhere in anything,

Still there are many issues that are related and hard for me today to figure out.Being far from my parents I think was bad for me and for them. I think I lost a lot I could have learned from them, Still as I read in the Torah right after I got to yeshiva that God placed the fiery angels to guard the path to the Tree of Life--that one has to go through hell to get to Torah. And later I saw that also in the two books on Talmud that God granted to me to write. It was with an enormous amount of pain and difficulties that it seems I needed to go through in order to merit to write anything decent in Torah thought. 

do it yourself kind of guy

I have always been a do it yourself kind of guy and thus I recommend to others. If you want a place to learn Torah and the local synagogue is too politicized, then get yourself an Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and take a piece and work on it at home. Get Gemara and Musar, and do not depend on the local place which is likely to have too many bad influences. 

The result of "Torah alone" studies is usually bad.

Keeping out secular studies was the major factor in most yeshivas and it still is in the ultra religious world. To some degree this is very justified because of social studies and the humanities which are mainly garbage. Especially that mentally sick demon, Psychology.

But the result of "Torah alone" studies is usually just as bad,- or worse. It tends to creates sanctimonious, jerk offs. [That is "holier than thou" people. You know the type.] For this reason, I just have not been able to recommend "Torah alone" as a legitimate program.

My ideas is to have balanced program Math, Physics, Music, Gemara, Musar, Survival skills.


Though I realize the great importance of learning Torah, I just can not recommend it by itself, but only in balance.
[I had seen the Torah alone approach in Israel among the ultra religious. This did exist in NY also to some degree in the Mir. But I rarely saw any good in this approach and it certainly was not what the books of Musar from the middle ages were saying. Later  Musar itself become anti secular studies but that were definitely against the original set of Musar books like the חובות לבבות and the מעלות המידות.]

I fail to see in "holier than thou" people anything worthy of admiration.

[I suspect part of the motivation to be so much against learning things like Math and Physics stems from the fact that they tend to show that many of  those that may know some aspects of Torah are not smart. Knowing some aspects of Torah is relatively easy, while Math and Physics are basically hard. If the natural sciences were part of  Torah education then many people could not pull off the scam they they do by seeming to be smart and spreading the word around  that- if you know Torah well somehow that makes you the top of the pack and from the top shelf..]

female empowerment. Every society that has tried female empowerment has died. Tellingly no society with empowered women has lasted more than 3 generations.

from this link

The reality is that female empowerment has reared it’s head throughout human history (most notably at the end of the Roman empire). Empowering women is one of the cycles of human existence, and it always follows the same pattern;

1) a society becomes wealthy and importantly, safe.
2) the men, unchallenged, become weak.
3) the women’s hypergamous instinct is triggered. The women start to doubt their men’s ability to protect them.
4) women initiate a society wide shit-test – pushing for economic, political and societal freedoms.
5) the men, anesthetized by decades (or more) of women behaving decently grant women their freedoms.
6) the women, free of boundaries, behave in an ever more feral manner, desperately trying to provoke the men to push back, to reset the boundaries, to prove their strength, to lay to rest the hypergamous doubt.
7) the men, ever more disgusted by their women’s behavior disengage from women, and in so doing disengage from society, working less, producing less, offering less protection.
8) societal collapse or reset, usually precipitated by a trigger event – maybe a natural disaster, economic collapse, foreign invasion etc.

Sometimes these resets are mild, sometimes they are severe. And they are technology agnostic. Whatever technology of the time is co-oped by the women as a force multiplier. But there is a case to be made that this instinctive hypergamous instinct in women is what keeps humans moving forward, never resting on our laurels, continually de- stabilizing human societies when we get a bit lazy.

How many generations does it take to tear it down. Back in the 1930's a professor at Oxford and Cambridge – J D Ulwin – set out to prove how female equality would benefit society. He didn't find what he expected to find and to his credit he published his findings. He studied 85 societies and  found that whilst not every society that has died has had female empowerment, every society that has tried female empowerment has died.

Tellingly no society with empowered women has lasted more than 3 generations. The young women entering the smp today are, broadly, the third generation. The whole cluster.. of feminism will implode on their watch. Plan accordingly

Every woman has a lifetime allotment of NO.

Each time she says it or implies a no via rudeness or cruelty uses up her store.
Then one day she hits the last No and the MAN flips the switch.
 She is beyond her quota. She is of no importance.

And its not retrievable by being nice. It is a paradigm shift. a solid impression.
Just as the wife goggles gave her the bank of NO, that made him put up waiting for the nice girl inside he knew was there.

Once the bank is dry the goggles are smashed replaced by a new set. A cast iron impression on one thing and one thing only. SELFISH BITCH.

A man is programmed to sacrifice, to endure for others. What can be the ultimate unforgivable in that mindset….Selfishness.

So one that selfishness arises once past the last NO, he then sees all she has done, all the NOs in a new light, of selfishness. And forever more she is a SELFISH BITCH.

Thus not worth his time. In fact not worth even looking at. and so
SHE CEASES TO EXIST….FOREVER.

 Its not a slow slide or a NO gauge winding down.
It is sudden. Immediate. Irretrievable.

How many generations does it take to tear it down. Back in the 1930s a professor at oxford and cambridge – J D Ulwin – set out to prove how female equality would benefit society. He didnt find what he expected to find and to his credit he published his findings. He studied 85 societies and (to summerise) found that whilst not every society that has died has had female empowerment, every society that has tried female empowerment has died.

Tellingly no society with empowered women has lasted more than 3 generations. The young women entering the smp today are, broadly, the third generation. The whole clusterfuck of feminism will implode on their watch. Plan accordingly

from this link

s30 B flat major   [s30 in midi format]

s30 in nwc format

Cuckolding

Cuckolding  is in fact very serious. It comes under the category of ניאוף. [adultry]The definition of adultery in the Torah is sexual intercourse with a married woman or a betrothed woman by anyone other than her husband.   It makes the woman forbidden to her husband. The children are ממזרים bastards, [and can not marry an Israelite woman]. If the act is done in front of two witnesses there is the death penalty for both the adulterer and adulteress. [Leviticus 18 and 20]

Gentiles are entirely unaware of this. They try to piece together  a coherent idea of what the Torah holds based on random readings and scraps from place to place. Clearly that can not work.They do this based on Luther. That was a reaction to the problem that the Catholic church which had started out sincere and  had become a self perpetrating bureaucracy. So on one hand he was doing a good thing- but it left a lot of misunderstandings. Since then it has been up to debate what the simple meaning of any verse is. How the individual wants to understand it? How the author meant? How the people reading it thought it meant when it was written? Etc.

The rise and fall of Navardok yeshivas.But besides the great Litvak yeshivas in NY, the system has become a self perpetuating bureaucracy.

I mentioned a few times some critiques on the yeshiva system nowadays. These institutions started out sincere and great based on Reb Chaim from Voloshins's model of separating the yeshiva from the "Kahal" and authority of the local religious authorities. [Before that the local yeshiva was simply the local synagogue where teenagers learned during the day and the local home owners put them up with a place to sleep and meals].

But besides the great Litvak yeshivas in NY, the system has become a self perpetuating bureaucracy.
So Avi Preder suggested a return to the basic Beit Midrash Model, [i.e., study hall model].

Based on what I have seen and heard from many people, this makes sense.  Too many people have been burnt by the system as it is in place today.

So what I suggest is a "Musar Beit Midrash." That is a kind of permutation from the "Musar Yeshiva" to a Musar Beit Midrash where the main emphasis is development of good character.

[This all came up because I was thinking about the rise and fall of  Navardok yeshivas and thinking about the amazing effect they had on the students that learned in them.]



[I am I admit not sure how this would work in Israel. The Ponovitch yeshiva which is the greatest yeshiva in the world still goes by the old yeshiva model, and that might be the only practical way to go about things in Israel itself.]


[But what would happen if you don't pay people to learn Torah? All the yeshivas would empty out. I say that is a good thing. The only people then that would learn Torah would be the ones that do it for its own sake. Torah Lishma.]

s29 G Major

s29 G Major  s29 in midi format

So who do you trust to have a true and clear idea of what the Torah says? The Rambam or them?

On a related not to the previous blog entry I wanted to add that books that claim to be teaching the worldview of Torah are almost always teaching their worldview in the name of Torah.

After all people smart enough have already done the job of telling us the basic השקפה thought structure of the Torah--the Rambam and Saadia Gaon. And there is no book on השקפה today that agrees with anything they wrote. In the religious world, no one dares touch the Guide For the Perplexed of the Rambam or the אמונות ודעות of Saadia Gaon because the world view of the religious world is in fact directly opposed to everything the Rambam wrote in the Guide and Saadia Gaon.

So who do you trust to have a true and clear idea of what the Torah says? The Rambam or them?

And it is not as if the Rambam is hard to understand. The trouble is that he is infinitely easy to understand. The religious just don't like what he has to say.

"Outside books".[ ספרים חיצוניים

 "Outside books".[ ספרים חיצוניים] The  way the Rif and Rosh understand this is that outside books are books that explain the Torah not according to קבלת חז''ל. There are lots of books in the Ultra-Religious world that would come under the category of ספרים חיצוניים outside books according to that definition.

I did not go into detail because I am not sure where to draw the line. [Almost all religious books nowadays explain the Torah not according to the tradition of Chazal {the sages of the Talmud}] They always add mizvot that are not from Torah nor the Talmud. Always. And they subtract things the Chazal (sages) say are important. And they pervert the meaning of Torah to always mean that their cult is the right one. [And the things they add are always related to OCD things like mikveh or food preparation or graves of tzadikim or sexual hangups or to advance their cult. They say keep Torah but add this such and such. This is opposed to the Torah which says "Thou shalt not add nor subtract to the things that God has commanded you in the book of the Law."
(No offence intended towards Reb Nachman who was a great tzadik. Rather the critique  here is directed to those groups that make a cult out him.)




The back topic  starts with a mishna in Sanhedrin: "These are those who have no portion in the next world... R. Akiva added, 'One who reads outside books'." The Rambam does not poskin [decide]like R. Akiva. He brings in Laws of Repentance all the things that one loses his portion in the next world for and does not include the statement of R Akiva. But to the Rambam there are books that are forbidden ספרי עבודה זרה books on idol worship.  This is brought in Laws of Idolatry.

Does the Rambam have the version printed in our Gemaras outside books are "Books of Minim?"

"Minim" Rashi there says means "books of idol worship." Is this perhaps what the Rambam is thinking? Minim we know has a specific definition and it does not mean idolatry?
[We know the Rambam is not just borrowing from Aristotle but also says that the command to learn the Oral Law includes the two subjects of Physics and Metaphysics as understood by the ancient Greeks. So he is certainly not thinking of Aristotle of Plato as being forbidden.


One person was involved in a cult (the Adi Da group) and left it. He died in  a plane crash a few months later. But he left a few writings and interviews which explain the problem. He called it "consciousness trap." Books that seems to have everything right and even great advice--but there is some consciousness trap hidden inside them.

[כל הפורש מעבודה זרה מיד מת  who ever separates himself from idol worship immediately dies. That is there is no escape. As for that fellow who fell into that cult I can only say that some people have come into the world to reveal some great secret and once they reveal it they are gone. It is almost as if they gave their life in order to bring some great knowledge into the world.

Like President Kennedy brought the awareness of jogging into the world. So that fellow who fell into that cult- perhaps he existed just to tell us all some of the dangers of cults and how to be afraid of things we ought to be afraid of.




In any case, if there are people out there that want to know what I think are kosher Torah books: the Written and Oral Law [the two Talmuds and midrashei Chazal]. There is little in mysticism that I think is kosher. The only kosher things would be the Arizal himself and Yaakov Abuchatzeira, nothing else. Everything else I would burn [just like the Gra did in Villna] as being books using the Chazal to create cults of idolatry.\

___________________________________________________________________________

 ספרים חיצוניים. The  way the רי''ף  and רא''ש understand this is that ספרים חיצוניים are books that explain the Torah not according to קבלת חז''ל. There are lots of books in the חרדי world that would come under the category of ספרים חיצוניים outside books according to that definition.

Almost all religious books nowadays explain the Torah not according to the tradition of חז''ל  the sages of the Talmud. They always add מצוות that are not from Torah nor the Talmud. Always. And they subtract things the חז''ל say are important. And they pervert the meaning of Torah to always mean that their cult is the right one.



The back topic  starts with a משנה in סנהדרין: אלו בם שאין להם חלק בעולם הבאה האפיקורסים וכו' רבי עקיבא אמר גם הקורא בספרים חיצונים The רבב''ם does אינו פוסק כרבי עקיבא. He brings in הלכות תשובה all the things that one loses his portion in the next world for and does not include the statement of רבי עקיבא. But to the רמב''ם there are books that are forbidden ספרי עבודה זרה books on idol worship.  This is brought in הלכות עבודה זרה.

Does the רמב''ם have the version printed in our גמרא outside books are ספרי מינים?

רש''י מפרש מינים להיות עובדי כוכבים  Is this perhaps what the רמב''ם is thinking? מינים we know has a specific definition and it does not mean idolatry.
We know the רמב''ם is not just borrowing from אריסטו but also says that the command to learn the Oral Law includes the two subjects of פיסיקה  and Metaphysics as understood by the ancient Greeks. So he is certainly not thinking of Aristotle of Plato as being forbidden.


One person was involved in a cult  and left it. He died in  a plane crash a few months later. But he left a few writings and interviews which explain the problem. He called it "consciousness trap." Books that seems to have everything right and even great advice--but there is some consciousness trap hidden inside them.

[כל הפורש מעבודה זרה מיד מת  who ever separates himself from idol worship immediately dies. That is there is no escape. As for that fellow who fell into that cult I can only say that some people have come into the world to reveal some great secret and once they reveal it they are gone. It is almost as if they gave their life in order to bring some great knowledge into the world.


) סנהדרין. פרק חלק. ספרים חיצוניים. האופן שבו רי''ף ורא''ש הבינו את זאת הוא כי ספרים חיצוניים הם ספרים המסבירים את התורה ולא על פי קבלת חז''ל. יש המון ספרים בעולם החרדיים  שיגיעו תחת הקטגוריה של הספרים חיצוניים. כל הספרים הדתיים כמעט כולם בימינו באים לפרש את התורה ולא על פי המסורת של חז''ל. הם תמיד  רוצים להוסיף מצוות שאינן מן התורה ולא בתלמוד. תמיד. והם רוצים להחסיר דברים שחז''ל אומרים שהם חשובים. והם סוטים המשמעות של התורה תמיד לומר כי הפולחן שלהם הוא נכון. את הנושא מתחיל עם המשנה בסנהדרין: אלו בם שאין להם חלק בעולם הבא האפיקורסים וכו' רבי עקיבא אמר גם הקורא בספרי חיצונים. רבב''ם  אינו פוסק כרבי עקיבא. הוא מביא בהלכות תשובה כל הדברים שאחד מאבד את חלקו בעולם הבא ואינו כולל את הדעה על רבי עקיבא. אבל  להרמב''ם ישנם ספרים אסורים, ספרים על עבודת אלילים. זה מובא הלכות עבודה זרה. האם לרמב''ם את הגרסה של  הגמרא שלנו "ספרי מינים"? רש''י מפרש מינים להיות עובדי כוכבים. האם זה אולי מה שהיה רמב''ם גרס. אבל מינים אנחנו יודעים את ההגדרה הספציפית וזה לא  עבודה זרה. אנחנו יודעים את רמב''ם הוא פשוט לא רק לווה מאריסטו אלא גם אומר כי הפקודה כדי ללמוד את התורה שבעל פה כוללת את שני נושאים של פיסיקה ומטאפיסיקה כפי שהם היו מובנים על ידי היוונים העתיקים. אז הוא בהחלט לא חושב על אריסטו ואפלטון כמי אסור.
ספרים חיצונים יש להם  "מלכודת תודעה." ספרים שנראה שיש להם את הכל נכון ואפילו עצות נהדרות - אבל יש מלכודת תודעה, חלק חבוי בהם.

Religious people often display the basic set of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) behavior that is characteristic of very sick schizoid personalities.

Without Musar [the Ethics of the Torah], religious people display the basic set of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) behavior that is characteristic of very sick schizoid personalities. That is what is the top of the list with obsessive compulsive disorder? Obsession with bodily cleanliness, food preparation, obsession with holy places and sexual obsessions.  When people are religious, but without Musar, they become infected with  schizoid personality traits. They get obsessed with mikveh, with extra restrictions on food preparation that have nothing to do with Torah, they get obsessed with graves of tzadikim (and even graves of not tzadikim) and sexual obsessions e.g. with zniut and the like.
And they think their obsessions with these things makes them tzadikim, and they expect to get paid for being tzadikim. What got me fed up with them is after they spend all their time and effort on their obsessions (which have nothing to do with Torah), they have no time or energy left to be decent human beings.

I also found their idol worship highly annoying, [That is worship of their so called tzadikim.]

In terms of the beginning of the night I added this thought to what I had already written:

לתרץ את קושיית של נוגנבוער על ברמב''ם קידוש החודש פרק י''א הלכה ט''ז הרמב''ם קובע ניסן ג'  בשעה 18:00 כבסיס בשנת 1,178  והוא אומר שהשמש הממוצעת היה ב 7/3/32. אם הולכים בחזרה שני ימים מוצאים המולד האמצעי היה ניסן א' 6:23 בערב. אבל אם מסתכלים בפרק ו' איפה שהוא מסביר איך למצוא את המולד הממוצע, יוצא המולד בניסן א' ב7:40 בערב.
שמעתי  שויסנבערג תירץ את זה על ידי שהשקיעה הייתה ב6:14  ועוד הוא מוסיף עשרים דקות לראות את הלבנה, אבל עדיין נשארות חמישים דקות בלי הסבר.
 דָּוִד אמר: התירוץ הוא, שאם היה מולד ממוצע אחד, זה היה קשה. אבל יש שנים,- יש המהירות הממוצעת של הלבנה סביב הגלגל הגדול. ויש מהירות של הלבנה סביב הטבעת הקטנה. בשביל שהלבנה קבועה בתוך הטבעת הקטנה, היא הולכת במהירות יתירה כשהיא הולכת בכיוון גלגל הגדול. והיא הולכת לאט כשהיא הולכת בכיוון להיפוך. אגב הרמב''ם כתב שהחישובים שלו הם רק השערות, שלמעשה המולד באותו יום היה ב5:57 בערב." אגבת נראה שהרמב''ם פוסק כמו רבינו תם בעניין שקיעה, שאם לא כן והוא מחזיק המולד בשבע וארבעים, אז זה ניסן ב'.אבל אם הרמב''ם מחזיק שמן השקיעה הראשונה עד הלילה תשעים דקות אז המולד חל בניסן א

I want to add that the Radvaz also has a teshuva [letter] saying that the Rambam holds by Rabbainu Tam. I did not see his reasoning at the time but it might be what I have written here

An answer for the Rambam

[Link to book on Shas]  Link to book on Bava Metzia chs 8 and 9
For an introduction: There are 43 things one needs to brings a sin offering for, One is eating forbidden fat. If he ate a piece of fat and his wife comes in and asks, "Where is the forbidden fat I left on the table?" then he has to bring a sacrifice. If he ate one piece then another in one span and then knows about the first and brings a sacrifice, the second is included. If he ate two pieces and then remembers the first, and then eats a third and then brings a sacrifice on the first, the third is not included. "Knowings divide." In the way I explain the end of the Halacha; if he eats the first and second and remembers the first and then eats the third and remembers the second [so it is not all one span], then bringing on the second takes care of all three.



I wanted to answer a question in the Rambam laws of sacrifices for accidental sins. 6:11. My basic idea is this. He ate the first and second kezait (size of an olive) in one span of forgetfulness. Then he remembered the first one. And then ate a third kezait (size of an olive) in the same span of forgetfulness as the second one. [same as the beginning of that halacha]. But then (and this is the essential difference and the essential point.): At that point he remembered the second kezait. And he brings a sacrifice for the second Kezait (size of an olive).


The major difference in my new way is that he brings a sacrifice for the second Kezait not the first, and in that case the first and the third are included.  The Rambam did spell this out clearly. And also is the important point that there are two knowings. The first knowing is after he ate the first two and then he knows about the first Kezait (not the second), So when then he eats the third the second and third are in one span of forgetting. But it is not all one span.

The way to think of this  is where is the center of gravity? If one the acts of knowing then it is true the first and third are not in one span. But if the center of gravity is on the sacrifice then it is clear. He brings a sacrifice on the second-so you ask is the the kezait included? Yes, because it was in one span of forgetting with the second. Now you ask is the third included? You also have to answer yes, because it also was in one span of forgetting as the second. Therefore when he brings a sin offering for the second the first and third are both included.
[I forget who brought up the fact that this Rambam is hard to understand maybe it was the Beit Yoseph or maybe Rav Shach. We stumbled upon it when we were learning Rav Shach's Avi Ezri]

[In short the Rambam says he knows about the second. But that does not mean before he ate the third. That is the source of confusion.]
[I do not know why David Bronson did not answer the Rambam the way I just did, or even if he would accept it. ]

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מבוא: יש ארבעים ושלשה סוגים של חטא שצריך להביא עליהם חטאת . חלב אחד מהם. אז הנה יש לנו מקרה שבו היה כזית חלב בתנור . בן אדם נכנס ואכל אותו. ואז אשתו נכנס ושאל, "איפה הוא כזית חלב ששם בתנור?" הוא צריך להביא חטאת. אם הוא אכל חתיכה אחת ואחר כך עוד אחת בפרק אחד ואז יודע על הראשונה הוא מביא קרבן, והשניה כלולה. אם הוא אכל שתי חתיכות ולאחר מכן זוכר את הראשונה ואז אוכל שלישית ואז מביא קרבן על הראשונה, השלישית אינה כלולה. ידיעה מחלקת. בדרך שאני מסביר סוף החוק: אם הוא אוכל את כזית הראשון והשני וזוכר את הראשון ואז אוכל את השלישי וזוכר את השני [כך שזה לא כל העלם אחד], אז מביא על השני ומתכפר על כל שלושתם .
רציתי לענות על שאלה בהלכות שגגות ברמב''ם פרק ו 'הלכה ט' והלכה י''א. הרעיון הבסיסי שלי היא כזאת. הוא אכל את כזית הראשונה ושנייה בפרק אחד של שכחה. ואז נזכר הראשון. ואז אכל כזית שלישית באותה התקופה של שיכחה של השנייה. זה אותו דבר כתחילת דין זה. אבל אז (וזה ההבדל המהותי ואת הנקודה החשובה.):  בשלב זה נזכר בכזית השני.  והוא מביא קרבן עבור השני.  הראשון והשלישי כלולים. רמב''ם כתב את זה בבירור.  הנקודה החשובה היא שיש שתי ידיעות. הידיעה הראשונה היא לאחר שאכל שני הראשונים ואז הוא יודע על  כזית הראשון, ולא על השני. לכן, כאשר לאחר מכן הוא אוכל השלישי, השני והשלישי הם בפרק אחד של שיכחה.  הדרך לחשוב על זה. איפה מרכז הכובד? אם מרכז הכובד הוא בידיעה, אז זה נכון שהראשון ושלישי אינם בפרק אחד. אבל אם מרכז הכובד הוא על הקרבה, אז ברור. הוא מביא קרבן על השני. אז אתה שואל "האם כזית הראשון  כלול?" כן, כי זה היה בפרק אחד של שיכחה עם השני. עכשיו אתה שואל, "האם השלישי בכלל?" אתה גם צריך לענות "כן", כי זה גם היה בפרק אחד של שכחה כמו השני. לכן כאשר הוא מביא קורבן חטאת עבור השני הראשון והשלישי שניהם כלולים.






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Here is what I had written about this subject beforehand and as you can see I tried to answer the questions on the Rambam and then my learning partner David Bronson showed that my answer then did not work. Now I am answering this question in a new way.


) הלכות שגגות ברמב''ם פרק ו' הלכה ט' והלכה י''א. אני מביא כאן שאלה על רמב''ם. אבל לפני כן אני מחויב לעבור את הנושא. מבוא. יש ארבעים ושלשה סוגים של חטא שצריך להביא עליהם חטאת . כלומר  עז נקבה או כבשה. חטאת ניתן להביא רק לשוגג. אז הנה יש לנו מקרה שבו הייתה כזית חלב   בתנור. בן אדם נכנס ואכל אותו. ואז אשתו נכנסה ושאלה, "איפה הוא כזית החלב ששמתי בתנור?" הוא צריך להביא חטאת. אם אוכל חתיכת החלב, הוא מביא חטאת. אם הוא אכל כזית ולאחר מכן ידע שהיה חלב, ואז אכל כזית נוספת ולאחר מכן ידע על השני שהיה חלב, יש לו להביא חטאת על כל חתיכה. לא רק זה, אלא אם היו שתי ידיעות, היינו שהוא אכל כזית חלב, ואכל עוד כזית חלב, ואז הוא ידע על כזית הראשון ואחרי כן  ידע על כזית השני, הוא מביא שתי חטאות.  אתה לא צריך שתהיינה הידיעות בין שני מעשים של אכילה. שבת דף ע''א וכן ברמב''ם הלכות שגגות פרק ו': הלכה ט'. כלומר הרמב''ם החליט כמו רבי יוחנן שידיעות מחלקות, לא כמו ריש לקיש שהקרבת הקורבן היא מחלקת. כפרות מחלקות.
אם הוא אכל שני כזיתים כאחד בהעלמה אחת, ולאחר מכן ידע על כזית הראשון. לאחר מכן, באותו פרק הזמן של שיכחת השני אכל כזית שלישי. כשהוא מביא חטאת לחתיכה הראשונה, הוא פוטר את  הכזית השנייה. זה משגגות ברמב''ם פרק ו' הלכה י''א.  כל זה מהרמב''ם שגגות ו:י''א הוא אוכל שני כזיתים של חלב  בהעלמה אחת. ואז הוא יודע על כזית הראשון. לאחר מכן, באותו העלמה של כזית השני, הוא אוכל כזית שלישי.  הידיעה מחלקת הראשון מן השלישי. הוא יידרש חטאת לכזית הראשון, והשני ייכלל גם אם הוא לא יודע על זה עדיין. אם במקום זאת הוא הביא לשלישי  גם השני ייכלל. סוף ההלכה הוא זה: אם הוא נזכר בכזית השני, ומביא חטאת לזה, אז הראשון ושלישי יהיו כלולים, וכשהוא זוכר אותם הוא לא יידרש להקריב עוד.  בטעות חשבתי להסביר את סוף  הלכה י''א. חשבתי שהמקרה דומה לתחילת ההלכה אבל בהבדל אחד. הוא אכל כזית ראשון והשני, ואז נזכר בכזית השני, ולאחר מכן באותה העלמה של כזית הראשון אכל כזית השלישי. עכשיו הוא מביא חטאת לכזית השני. הראשון ושלישי מתכפרים לפי שהם היו  באותה העלמה כשני, אבל זה לא אותו הדבר כמו העלמה אחת על כולם. בדרך שלי כזית הראשונה וכזית שלישי נמצאים  בהעלמה אחת, וכי העובדה שלא היתה ידיעה שנייה עושה את  כל זה העלמה אחת. בדרך זו היא לא מקרה טריוויאלי שכל השלושה כזיתים נאכלו בהעלם אחד. החטאת באה אחרי כזית השלישי נאכל, ואז כשהוא נזכר בכזית הראשון והשלישי הם ייכללו. המוטיבציה לגישה שלי היא העובדה שאם במקרה שבו יש רק שני כזיתים, והוא אוכל כזית ראשון וכזית שני בהעלם אחד, ולאחר מכן זכר כזית ראשון ומביא חטאת לכזית הראשון לבד, כזית השני כלול באופן אוטומטי משום שלא היתה ידיעה שנייה לכזית השני. אבל אם הוא ידע על כזית שני לפני החטאת, הוא יצטרך להביא עוד חטאת כי הידיעה השנייה עושה הפרד.

למחרת: אמרתי להחברותא שלי את הרעיון.  אמרתי שכזית הראשון וכזית השני מחוברים. ולאחר מכן כזית שלישי וכזית ראשון מחוברים. לכן כזית שלישי מחובר לכזית שני באמצעות גשר דרך כזית הראשון.
הוא ציין כי זה לא יכול להיות נכון, כי אז זה יעבוד לתחילת ההלכה,הלכה י''א, כלומר, כאשר כזית הראשון וכזית השני היו בפרק אחד, ואז הוא נזכר בכזית הראשון ולאחר מכן אכל כזית שלישי באותה העלמה של כזית השני, במקרה שרק  הראשון והשני  מחוברים, וכשהוא מביא חטאת על  הראשון, אז כזית השני מוכלל. אז ברור כזית השני לא יכול לגשר בין  השלישי וראשון. אז כזית הראשון לא יכול לגשר בין השלישי והשני. וחוץ מזה הוא ציין כי הגמרא עצמה אומרת  גררא אחת אמרינן, שתי גררות לא אמרינן. ויתר על כן זה שכל ישר. אם הוא אכל הראשון ואז נזכר בו ולאחר מכן אכל כזית שנייה, אז כזית השני הוא לא באותה העלמה. אז במקרה שלי גם. כשהוא נזכר כזית השני זה עושה כזית השני וכזית השלישי בהעלמות נפרדות.

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The soft sciences I do not think are science at all but propaganda dressed in the clothing of science. But for the hard sciences, I do not think they contradict the Torah.

This all came about from the Enlightenment project of depriving kings and priests of their power and replacing them with scientists. It was inevitable at that point that once science gained the upper hand, there would be just as much abuse that had existed before in the priesthood, in kings and princes. Whoever wanted power could dress their illusions as science.


The best approach then, based on the (Rambam) Maimonides, is a balance between learning Torah and the true sciences-- Physics, Math, and STEM. The trouble however remains that the Enlightenment tried to address. Abuse of religion and politics. Abuse did not change its basic nature because it switched to science, and going back to religion does not change it ether. The Evil Inclination retains its power. As my brother put it: "people are people... are people."

The need for Guru

A lot of religious groups take advantage of the human need for a shaman, a holy man, a guru. The man that can play this role gets an amazing amount of benefits including the "Lift" of being adored by countless numbers of women much more than their own husbands. And the people that follow get the benefit of having a "Shaman" holy man. It matters little what religion involved because they all are trying to make profit by this human dynamic.
The first order of business of the Guru is the castrate all the other males--that is to make them into Beta Males where their wives listen to the shaman, guru or pastor; not their husbands.

And since being part of a group (a social super-organism) is central to all humans --and since the most effective and powerful super-organism is the one centered on the Alpha Male--one can not very well avoid this dynamic.

The best idea thus is to find the group that most accurately goes by objective morality. To my mind that is the Litvak Yeshiva [yeshiva based on the path of the Gra]. But that is really just based on my own positive experience in two of those kinds of places. Shar Yashuv and the Mir--both in NY. I admit other people may have had a worse experience, and I myself had some reason to think they are not all of equal quality after seeing many others  besides those two in NY.



But I try to support any group that I see as doing good work and I see their vector is towards objective morality and the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

Trust that God will provide.

  I see my level of trust has gotten so low that I need something to imbed trust in Hashem back into my soul. It did occur to me  that some of the major tests that I have gone trough in life and that did not turn out well was because I did not have trust.

How to put this? Some of the best decisions I think I made were because I trusted in God and some of the worst decisions I made were based on lack of trust.

That to me means that this is an important issue for me. I mean it might be that it is a particular area that I need to work on.

In short, going to NY to a very good Lithuanian yeshiva, Shar Yashuv was at least based on some degree of trust that God would provide. That was in fact an important move because I highly doubt if I would ever have been “able to learn” without the few very crucial years I spent there and learned with the great Gaon, Naphtali Yegeer.

Later going to Israel also was based on a certain degree of trust that God would provide for my needs and the needs of my wife and children.

And leaving Israel was clearly based on a lack of trust.

So I am beginning to see this is an important issue.

Jesus said to keep the law of Moses

Jesus said one has  to  keep all the commandments of the Written and Oral Law.
["Not one word of the Law of Moses will ever be nullified." "The Pharisees sit on Moses seat. so all they say to do one must do."]


I was never able to see in the actions or words that are recorded in the name of Jesus anything but a call to keep the holy Torah, and avoid hypocrites. There is nothing to indicate otherwise to me.

But it occurred to me  a few day ago why Christians do not see things in this way?

It depends on your starting point. If you start with Paul and  the Book of Hebrews, and then work backwards towards the four gospels, then you can see how Christians take the words of Jesus and get them to fit into the worldview of Paul.

I feel that my approach is more accurate, but I can see why Christians see things differently based on their starting point.

As my brother put it, he (Jesus) is  comparable to R. Shimon Ben Yohai.  Same message same kind of expressions. (I was thinking more along the lines of R. Hanina Ben Dosa, the miracle worker, who also was highly misunderstood.) Maybe it makes sense to go into this in detail, but I am pretty sure I am not the first person to notice this. [Daniel  Defoe also noted that Paul never said Jews need not keep the Law and he goes into great detail about that.]

I can't look anything up but perhaps I should write a drop off hand to make it clear what I mean.
(1) Heaven and Earth are still around therefore one has to keep all the Mitzvot, since "Heaven and earth will pass away but not one jot or title of the Law of Moses."

(2) Being the "son of Man" (as Jesus said he is) is not the same as being God.

(3) Nor is being the son of God the same as being God. The angels are called בני האלהים [children of God] in Job. In Genesis the בני האלהים "children of God came upon the daughters of man and gave birth." All the Jewish people are called the "children of God" in Exodus. They are called "בני בכורי" "my child, my first born" when Moses was telling Pharaoh to let them go. "Let my son, my first born Israel go!"
(4) Revival was a miracle done by the prophet Elisha in Kings and also Eliyahu the prophet and that does not indicate either Elisha or Eliyahu were God.
(5) When someone called Jesus, "good," he said, "Do not call me good. Only call God 'good.'"
(6) Contrary to the book of Hebrews, the Law of Moses is the life and the good. "These are the commandments that one should do and by doing so he will live"--Leviticus.  "I place before you this day life and the good, and death and evil. Therefore choose life to walk in the commandments of God"-Deuteronomy.

The prophets end with "Remember the Law of Moses" Malachi.

The commandments do not sound like they temporary as long as one wants "the life and the good."


I should mention that in spite of all this people that make a show of keeping the commandments and expect to get paid for doing so as the ultra religious do are also not keeping the law of God and there is good reason to run from them.

(7) The book of Hebrews makes it clear that the Law of God is a burden and bad thing. It could not be more clear even if he had wanted to be. That is in direct contradiction to everything it says in the Law of Moses about the Law being a good thing. And in contradiction to Jesus himself that the law will never pass away. Therefore you have to say that the approach of Jesus and that of the author of the book of Hebrews is not the same.--as long as words mean something.

(8) Mixing dirt and water on Shabat is subject to an argument among the rishonim. See the Rosh [Rabbainu Asher]. So there is no reason to think Jesus was violating the Shabat.

(9) Eating grains from attached sheaves on Shabat is not violating Shabat if the sheaves are ripe already are no longer getting sustenance from the ground.

(10) Swearing by the altar in the Holy Temple is an argument among the sages of the Mishna as brought in Tractate Nedarim and Jesus was going with the opinion of R. Yehuda. Not that he was disagreeing with the sages.

These are merely a small sample of what occurs to me off hand about this. But you can already see where I am going with all this. Churchianity has nothing to do with Jesus. If one wants to follow  Jesus he need to learn and keep the Law of Moses and the Oral commentary.

And just to lay my cards on the table what I am suggesting is for people to learn the whole written law in Hebrew {That is the Old Testament} word for word. Plus the Oral Law which also is very easy if you simply start at the beginning of Tractate Brachot and just say page after page as fast as possible until you have finished the two Talmuds the Sifra Sifri Mechilta Tora, Kohanim and the Midrash Raba and Midrash Tanchuma.(I personally prefer to do this kind of thing with Rashi and Tosphot but you do not have to. You can do instead just the simple basic oral law itself with no commentary if you want.)

Or for beginners that do not know Hebrew what they could do is to get Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch's Horev which gives  a great introduction to the Torah.

The setback to all this is that the t groups that claim to be keeping the Law of Moses are all terrible cults, and it is not my intention for people to get involved in any of those horrific, demonic cults. For this reason I have tried to mention on this blog the importance of Litvak {Lithuanian}yeshivas based on the path of the Gra and Rav Elazar Menachem Shach and to avoid all the cults. Or to learn Torah at home.

Appendix:

I should mention:I grew up in John Birch society area. It was basically WASP and very nice. I kind of had a glimpse of Old American Values, and it was a really nice world. So I have a certain degree of respect for those kinds of values. But the values of Jesus and the Talmud are exactly the same, -only Paul comes out making a different religion.
   

Where do you see this in the Talmud? Mainly in books of Musar. The Talmud itself is not concerned with the larger issues of morals and compassion but with law. It was the later Musar books that condensed the basic world view of the Torah into simple forms that you can see this. The idea of compassion being central in Torah is clear in Musar and the sermon on the mount is mainly word for word what you find in Reshit Chachma at the end where is brought ancient teachings from the second Temple period.

So even though Christians have a great deal for respect for Jesus -and that is a good thing-still their interpretations of him seem to me to be very much contrary to everything that Jesus himself thought and said.

 Mark Twain has an essay that is very favorable towards the Jewish people and his ideas are accurate  as per his time. But things nowadays seem different. As the world has changed so the situation with Jewish people.  My own impression about this kind of thing is what Reb Shmuel Berenbaum, used to say:"Learn Torah." 

That is to say there are issues that sometimes I have some idea about. and other times I don't. Lots of issues have arisen in my life in which clarity was lacking. I have found the best advice is to learn Torah. The issues facing the Jewish people today seem very different from the ones that people were asking Mark Twain about. 

On modern day issues, I have some clarity. He mentioned about Dr Herzel in his characteristic ironic way. I am basically impressed with Zionism and the State of Israel.  Today when Ultra-Religious people disparage the State of Israel, I feel they are simply anti-Semites.

 Mark Twain's ideas also relate to Jewish pride. I have encountered that a lot, and it is hard to say much about it. Some people think that being Jewish makes them morally superior or mentally superior. Maybe in Mark Twain’s days, but nowadays that seems false.

But on the subject of Jewish nationalism—the idea of nationalism is gaining nowadays momentum. That means even people that are for a kind of renewal of American nationalism see the kind of Jewish nationalism the State of Israel was built on is a good thing.

I do not have strong feelings about this. I feel what is important to a Jew is the Oral and Written Law of God. Not Jewish identity.

Still the idea (of nationalism) is not bad. Anti Zionism is a mistake that the entire Religious community shares, but is mainly embodied in the writings of the Rav of Satmer. I think he was a great man, but made a very serious error. And that error has become  a part of the Ultra Religious world—to be anti Zionist, or at least cold about the State of Israel.

 My parents supported the State of Israel.

Nationalism itself has support from Howard Bloom and Hegel. The group—the super organism is certainly important to people.  But in what way I am not sure. In the Torah itself, keeping God’s laws are what is important,-- not what group one belongs to.

Most yeshivas are part of the problem

Most yeshivas [but not all] are part of the problem, not the solution. They turn out kids barely wet behind the ears, who then expect to automatically be prepared to serve a congregation, or other people. Which they can’t. I’ve tried telling them this before, that serving God is not a career. You don’t go to school for it. They will not suffer to hear. Instead, I’m the problem.

 There are however the great Litvak yeshivas  that realize that learning Torah is not a supposed to be a business to make money from.

The Guide of the Rambam

The Guide of the Rambam states that stars have knowledge. This is rather easy to understand based on Quantum Mechanics and the two slit experiment. The electron knows when there are two slits and when there is just one. So when there are two it acts as a wave and interferes with itself producing an interference pattern.  When there is only one slit, it knows to reduce itself into a particle. Matter has Daat. This is easily explained with Neo Platonic thought.

The approach to marriage that seems best to me is the way that it basically worked for me. I put off going to university for some years and instead decided to go to a Lithuanian kind of Yeshiva. In yeshiva things were on the fast track to lead to marriage. Every week there was at least one "Vort." [announcement] I felt left out but from many indications the Rosh Yeshiva was planning on me for his son in law. So other offers were dried up. In the meantime I kept up a friendship with a girl I knew in Beverly Hills High school.  I explained to her on the phone a few times what Torah is about and she got all excited about it, and started herself implying she was interested in a shiduch [marriage] with me. Eventually I took the second girl -the one from California. But marriage then was of a different nature than it is today. Though this is hard to explain. The basic idea is you have two people going into a relationship in which the rules and obligations are clear and accepted by them and by everyone around them.
This is very difficult to explain in a modern context.

I am not saying this is better or worse than Marriage in the modern world. But my point is that it is "Rule Based." where the rules are very well spelled out.


It is not just that you and your wife accept the rules of the Torah. It is that the whole world around you also does.



What are the rules? Mainly you have to spend  about a year on each major tractate in Nashim [Mishna] to get an idea. That is one year on Ketubot, one year on Kidushin, another on Gittin, etc.

There is also I have to mention the invaluable Sidur of Yaakov Emden which has a part in it which goes into marriage in detail.


The main reason why I emphasis a Lithuanian yeshiva is that that is the kind of place where as a rule the Sitra Achra is excluded. That is they go mainly with the Gra and Rav Shach and keep out the Dark Side. I mean to say in the large context of the Religious world, the Sitra Achra is in control. (This is why people that become religious in general become bad people and lose whatever good character they may have had beforehand.) So in terms of those who try to keep Torah most are infected by the virus of the Sitra Achra without their being aware of it. So to get any benefit out of Torah in a way that one does not lose more by becoming an agent of the Dark Side, this is only possible in a Litvak environment.

[I should mention that Reb Nachman himself was very aware of this problem and warned about it. But the only group that got his point is the Na Nach people.]

The Rambam (Maimonides) has a V shaped approach to history.

The Rambam (Maimonides) has a V shaped approach to history. That is Adam Harishon [אדם הראשון] starts out on top and then falls with his descendants. Then starts the slow climb. The first step in the climb is נימוסי היוונים the laws of Ancient Greece, [Sparta and Athens]. The Rambam says these were revealed to Avraham Avinu (אברהם אבינו Abraham the patriarch).  Natural Law. This step he says is necessary for the next step -Matan Torah.
Maimonides in part III chapter 34 of the Guide: concerning the Natural Law discovered by Avraham: "Indeed all things proceed from one deity and one agent and "have been given from one shepherd" (Prov. 30:12-13) ...In view of this consideration, it also will not be possible that the laws be dependent on changes in the circumstances of the individuals and of the times, as is the case with regard to medical treatment, which is particularized for every individual in conformity with his present temperament. On the contrary governance of the Law ought to be absolute and universal, including everyone..." 

The Rambam also gives reasons for the commandments. To him many of the commandments are to bring to natural law.

This seems like a contradiction. I noticed this before but the way I approach this is thus: There are two levels objective morality [that exists separately from the observer], and numinous value (luminous, holy value).
Both exist in each command of the Torah. Not one kind of value in one command and another in a different command.

So in doing a command like learning Torah there is one aspect of value ones gains, but the higher level of value only comes with proper attitude. To learn "Torah Lishma," for its own sake and not for money. 

So when we have the argument between rabbi shimon ben yochai and the sages about דורשין טעמא דקרא that means to r. shimon we go by the known reason for the command and when that does not apply then the command does not apply and nor is there any higher reason of numinous value in such a case. But the sages say we are not דורשין טעמא דקרא meaning that though the reason for the command based on natural law does not apply still the numinous value still applies

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The רמב''ם has a ט shaped approach to history. That is אדם הראשון starts out on top and then falls with his descendants. Then starts the slow climb. The first step in the climb is נימוסי היוונים  that is the laws of Ancient Greece, Sparta and Athens. The רמב''ם says these were revealed to אברהם אבינו .  Natural Law. This step he says is necessary for the next step מתן תורה.
The רמב''ם also gives reasons for the commandments. To him many of the commandments are to bring to natural law.

This seems like a contradiction. The way I approach this is thus. There are two levels objective morality , that exists separately from the observer, and   luminous, holy value.
Both exist in each command of the Torah. Not one kind of value in one command and another in a different command.

So in doing a command like learning Torah there is one aspect of value ones gains, but the higher level of value only comes with proper attitude. To learn "Torah Lishma," for its own sake and not for money. 

So when we have the argument between ר. שמעון בן יוחאי and the sages about דורשין טעמא דקרא that means to ר.  שמעון בן יוחאי we go by the known reason for the command and when that does not apply then the command does not apply and nor is there any higher reason of numinous value in such a case. But the sages say we are not דורשין טעמא דקרא meaning that though the reason for the command based on natural law does not apply still the numinous value still applies

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 לרמב''ם יש גישה  להיסטוריה בצורת ט. כלומר אדם הראשון מתחיל על גבי ההר ואז נופל עם צאצאיו לגבעה. ואז מתחיל בטיפוס האיטי. הצעד הראשון בטיפוס הוא נימוסי היוונים היינו  חוקי יוון העתיקה, ספרטה ואתונה. רמב''ם אומר אלה נגלו לאברהם אבינו. חוק הטבע. הרמב''ם אומר יש צורך לצעד הזה  לשלב הבא של מתן תורה. הרמב''ם גם נותן טעמי המצוות. לו רבים מן המצוות הם להביא את לחוקי טבע. זה נראה כמו סתירה. הדרך שאני מתקרב לזה כך. ישנן שתי רמות. מטרה מוסרית, שקיים בנפרד מן הצופה, וערך זורח, ערך קדוש. שניהם קיימות בכל פקודה של התורה. לא שיש סוג אחד של ערך בפקודה אחת, ואחת בפקודה שונה. אז לעשות פקודה כמו ללמוד תורה יש עליות מוסרית, אבל הרמה הגבוהה יותר של הערך מגיעה רק עם גישה נכונה היינו ללמוד "תורה לשמה" לשמה ולא עבור כסף.  עכשיו יש לנו את הויכוח בין ר. שמעון בן יוחאי והחכמים על דורשין טעמא דקרא. זה אומר  ר. שמעון בן יוחאי  אומר  הולכים לפי הסיבה הידועה עבור הפקודה, וכשזה אינו חל אז הפקודה אינה חלה.  והסיבה הגבוהה של המצווה אינה שייכת במצב כזה. אך החז"ל אומרים שאנחנו לא דורשין טעמא דקרא, כלומר אם הסיבה הפקודה המבוססת על חוקי טבע אינה חלה, עדיין הערך הגבוה עדיין חל.

There is kind of Achilles heel in yeshivas. Some trip wire that people fall for. I am not sure what it is exactly but it perhaps is  a kind of superiority complex.

It is hard for me to recommend yeshivas.The reason is they purposely try to recruit people from university and say to come to the yeshiva to learn Torah all day. Then when one does this, and things are not working out for him as well as he expected, they treat him like dirt.
It is like the just want to recruit the beautiful people [college students with rich parents] because it gives them a good image, so as to be able to con and scam more people in giving them charity. Because after all is said and done, that is all it is about. They pretend it is a living, but all it really is is charity.


The idea of learning Torah is to come to two things objective morality and numinosity. But this does not happen if on learns for money. That is why the yeshivas are not effective any more in creating good character.

Torah is only effective in bringing to objective morality when it is learned for its own sake--not as a means to make money.

When people learn Torah for money that creates a kind of vicious personality. They have a need to show that somehow they are more deserving of people's charity than others. So if others are also learning Torah, the first groups has to show they are somehow superior. And if someone comes along that also wants to learn Torah that creates a situation where the first groups feels the need to put down and be rid of the second guy. It is rare to find much god in this system.

The only yeshivas I can truly recommend and think they are learning Torah for its own sake are the well known Litvak yeshivas Ponovitch, Mir, Brisk,Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat.