Enlightenment

The problems with the Enlightenment were noted almost as soon as it began. The solution is not clear because the weakening of faith in the Catholic Church seems to have been a major factor(or The Major Factor). Yet the Catholic Church does not seem so great today.
What the Middle Ages had that we lack is the synthesis between Faith and Reason. 




What Lithuanian yeshivas have done is to not reject the Middle Ages nor that unique approach that existed then of combining faith with reason.


Modernity has either fanatical faith without reason, or fanatical reason without faith.

In the Litvak [Lithuanian] Yeshiva world, two things stand as foundations: Rishonim [Mediaeval authorities] and Musar [books of ethics written by Mediaeval Authorities]. 

[I should admit, I have trouble understanding Rishonim. I always find it much better for myself to see what later people (Achronim) wrote about the Rishonim. This began for me right away as soon as I came to learn in yeshivat Shar Yashuv. I find, I never understand Tosphot until I look at the Maharsha, Rav Shach, or  Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's school and then look at Tosphot. Same with Musar. I found traditional books of Musar to be incomprehensible until I looked at the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. In fact, whenever God grants to me the privilege of opening up a Gemara, usually the first thing I do is to look at the Maharsha and Maharam from Lublin before anything else.]

s42 D major newly edited   s42 in midi

Musar (Books of Ethics). Reb Israel Salanter's idea of making a movement that would concentrate of learning Books of Ethics.

The curious thing about the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter is not just that they came out with different approaches all based on Musar but that each presented their approach as The Right One. In the newer Musar approach most of the aspects that were unique to the Musar movement all got forgotten.

I can not tell what to think of this. After all Musar represents different points of view.

That is even if you go back to the original set of Medieval books some go more with the Rambam Saadia Gaon approach and others with the Ramban [Nachmanides].  Later when Kabalah got thrown in, all the more so the approaches begin to differ,
Once you get to the great Musar yeshivas, Mir, Slobadka, Navardok, Kelm, it gets even more diverse.

What seems to have happened is people settled on one basic approach that they found was workable--Musar and Gemara. And with that every individual will find in Musar what he or she needs to learn from it. That is about the best I could figure out from what I saw. This Musar and Gemara approach also makes sense to me.

Or at least it is the approach that I hope to stick with. [My own approach is more or less this: Gemara Musar, Rav Shach's Avi Ezri, Physics, Math. That is based on the more rational Rambam Saadia Gaon approach to Torah.]

In a nut shell it is hard to explain why Rav Shach's Avi Ezri is so important but basically it is the need to understand Torah beyond extra forms. One needs to get to the essence of Torah.

 But the place for Torah learning from what I can tell is  in  a Litvak yeshiva where you find the spirit of Torah. Maybe Torah VeDaat or Chaim Berlin or some authentic yeshiva. But no fakes. The fake and phony yeshivas destroy the spirit of Torah and one must run from them.

Muslims- right around the 15% mark that the violence begins

I am not thrilled with Muslims and that is that. I see them as a threat to the very survival of the human race, and perhaps all life on earth. There is, as far as I can see, nothing else to discuss. They can convert to the Law of Moses, or Christianity or anything else. Just not Islam. Period.

From what I remember in history is it is in fact right around the 15% mark that the violence begins. Up until that mark, Muslims are the most exemplary of citizens. Then at the 15% the violence begins with the teenagers and  and children that one is reluctant to blame. Then there is a later mark when they take over, and Christians and Jews are expelled and murdered or convert.

The historical pattern seems to always follow the same model. You can see this in their takeover of Christian Spain and Syria and Byzantium.

I believe in freedom of religion. Muslims can convert to any religion they please. Just not Islam.

I am not thrilled with Muslims and that is that. I see them as a threat to the very survival of the human race, and perhaps all life on earth. There is, as far as I can see, nothing else to discuss. They can convert to the Law of Moses, or Christianity or anything else. Just not Islam. Period.

From what I remember in history is it is in fact right around the 15% mark that the violence begins. Up until that mark, Muslims are the most exemplary of citizens. Then at the 15% the violence begins with the teenagers and  and children that one is reluctant to blame. Then there is a later mark when they take over, and Christians and Jews are expelled and murdered or convert.

The historical pattern seems to always follow the same model. You can see this in their takeover of Christian Spain and Syria and Byzantium. 

See this ytube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axyy2RZ7RoA.

She in a powerful way describes this as coming from from the Frankfurt school. The idea was to delete American Values and in a vacuum of values they could impose their own values–i.e. Socialism and communism and one world government. This video seems to me to be the most intellectual rigorous approach to this problem that I have seen.

 I used to think it came from the KGB as mentioned by Bezmenov in his ytube video but it was pointed out to me that the KGB was too limited in resources to accomplish this by itself. Thus there has to have been inside help –as with the Frankfurt school.

A friend of mine who worked for the KGB thought the KGB did not have the ability to accomplish this vast project of deleting American traditional values all by itself. Later, he might have changed his mind. If after all, the KGB devoted a large percent of its budget for this purpose, it might have been possible.

In any case we see why the left coming from the Frankfurt school sides strongly with Islam. All its sins are a nothing to the Left. The reason is simple. To the Left Islam is the greatest ally in the destruction of Jewish and Christian Ethics. The left will side with anything they see as conducive towards the destruction of traditional Jewish Christian values.

Joan of Arch's trial

I have been troubled by Joan of Arch's trial for a number of years. Most of the trial you do not hear what the judges are thinking. Only at the end they state their condemnation but give no support for their conclusions.. In some areas things became more clear to me because other books written at the same time. [Mainly they were thinking of her voices as coming from the Sitra Achra to be a blunt as possible.]




But in the  area of dress I still can not figure out what the big deal was. Christians we know do not as a rule follow the law of Moses. So picking out one rule to condemn someone with makes little sense unless they were thinking like Thomas Aquinas about some laws still being binding because they are Natural Law.
 In any case the dressing thing does not seem to me to be as bad as the problems that arise in Leviticus chapters 18 and 20.

My own take on this is this: Thomas Aquinas was in need of getting the Old Testament and New Testament to not conflict. So he used the idea of Natural Law that Saadia Gaon came up with.

The disparagement of Divine Law has gotten deep within Western thought ever since then. To me Divine Law is on a higher level than Natural Law.
To me it seems you do not need to justify the laws of Moses by means of natural law.  Divine Law can stand by itself.

As for Joan of Arc my basic feeling is הוראת שעה. [A prophet can get a revelation to break a rule for a time for the needs of the hour and also a beit din can do the same thing--according to the needs of the time.]  She got a revelation that she needed to dress like a man and wear battle armor and go into battle and bring all France under the rule of Charles the rightful king of France. Why is that any different that Eliyahu [Elijah] on Mount Carmel or any of the prophets that had a specific prophecy to accomplish some mission and part of the prophecy involved doing things not according to the Law of Moses.

But what are the needs of the time? That is where the idea of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides becomes important. For we know the Mitzvot are given with certain goals in mind. שלום המדינה,להתרחק מעבודה זרה לתקן את המידות וכולי[Peace of the country, to get as far from idolatry as possible, to correct ones character traits etc.]

I am being short here because I did not want to get into the argument between R. Shimon Ben Yochai and the Sages in the end of chapter 10 on Bava Metzia that I dealt with in another blog entry. Mainly I recall that my idea was there is instrumental value and numnious value. To the Sages they are not connected. To R.Shimon they are. But in any case we know the Rambam is a bit ambiguous about this. He poskins in opposite ways in Mishna Torah and see his commentary in Bava Metzia about that Mishna. The commentary משנה למלך in Mishna Torah tries to solve this. [The trouble is in Bava Metzia the Rambam goes like the sages and in Yevamot [seven nations] he goes like R. Shimon.  דורשין טעמה דקרא]
God granted to me to write about this in my little booklet on Shas and the other one on Bava Metzia. But I never started out to answer questions in the Rambam--only questions in Tosphot. Along the way it happened that God granted to me answers in the Rambam also. But to answer this kind of problem I think you would have to look up  the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach or any of the people of the school of thought of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik who make it their business to answer questions of this sort.

I do not think people need my advice about Quantum Mechanics but I just wanted to share this link to what I think is the best book on QM that I have seen. I am not sure what made it so special to me but I think it is how the author goes through the calculations step by step in a way that even I can understand him.

However at the end I found the parts about super conductivity to be way beyond me.

graves of tzadikim [righteous people]

I do not hold much with the idea of graves of tzadikim [righteous people] . I was  thinking along the lines of Reb Nachman for some time that this is  a good thing but now I am thinking that it is a variation of the idea that Reb Chaim of Volsohin says about worship of tzadikim.  I mean to say that he is critical of the idea of worship of tzadikim[]
In the Nefesh HaChaim he says that the intention to attach one's soul to the soul of the tzadik is a form of idolaty. And the fact that a lot of people go to graves of tzadikim for that exact purpose seems to me to be suspicious.
I was hoping in learning the Talmud in Sanhedrin from page 60b to about 64 would help clarify this issue --which it did. But it took a long time for the message to be absorbed.

This should not be taken as disparaging Reb Nachman. Rather the problem seems to be with the people that make him into an idol. He is of course not the only example but just one example that comes to mind. And perhaps the fact that he was  a great tzadik makes it a little easier to discuss this problem in his context.

The trouble seems to be that there is a difference between what the Torah actually says and what religious leaders tell us it says, This has been a problem in the religious world ever since Jeremiah cursed the Jewish people that since we have not listened to true prophets that God will from then on give us false prophets and to them we will listen.

S40 D Minor mp3  same piece in midi format same piece in nwc

Communism and Socialism

Dr Michael Huemer has a very nice refutation of Communism.http://www.owl232.net/economics.pdf

The idea is that Communism is based the the labor theory of value and he shows that that theory is incorrect.

I myself never saw much value in Communism since private property is a prime value in Torah. It is even encoded in the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not  steal."

AS for general leftist polices Steven Dutch has a very nice new essay: http://stevedutch.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-do-some-conservatives-hate-liberals.html
The left have never seen a regulation or tax they didn’t like.
Gun control. Again, fixing a social problem by stripping rights from the law abiding.
They side with criminals instead of civilization. Want to reduce wrongful convictions? Reform the justice system to focus solely on guilt or innocence instead of procedure.
They backed corrupt labor unions that threatened workers, killed reformers, and pushed rules that defended the laziest and most incompetent workers. Just read up on the futile efforts of the NYC school system to get rid of bad teachers.

s39 A Minor

The idea of the Bell Curve is that the average intelligence of whites is very much higher than the average intelligence of blacks.

Many species of mammals  have variance in many characteristics, including quickness of perception. That does not mean that we are gorillas. The idea of The Bell Curve is that the average intelligence of whites is very much higher than the average intelligence of blacks. That is not surprising since whites and blacks are separate subspecies of humans.

I can not understand why people confuse average value with variance. Amoebas vary in abilities. gorillas also. Even in intelligence. That is quickness of perception and understanding. The variance is obvious to anyone who has had pets. So if you have amoebas that vary in quickness of perception by about 15% variance and humans also vary by that amount does that mean we are amoebas or as smart an amoeba? No. It is average intelligence which is the key factor, not variance.

Thus it is proper to say that blacks are more stupid than whites. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a simple fact of biology. However a smart black might very well be smarter or perhaps be better in other ways than some white person.

And he or she might, in fact, use their free will in ways more noble than a white person.

Marriage

 My experience is things are better when the rules are known. That was workable and in fact great until religious people started sticking their noses into our businesses.

I mean to say marriage in the context of  a Litvak yeshiva is usually pretty good. Everyone knows what to expect and what their obligation are. Everything is either already spelled out in excruciating detail or else discussed before hand and accepted by all parties.

What makes this work is not the society they live in, but the fact that both parties are loyal to the Law of Moses and want to keep it to the ultimate extent of their abilities.

This works perfectly well unless neighbors or  insane religious leaders begin to stick their noses into where they are not wanted.  And the trouble is almost all religious leaders are insane. It is the particular Achilles heel of the religious world. It comes from a curse of Jeremiah the prophet. When the Jewish people did not listen to Yermiyahu [Jeremiah] and other true prophets, God gave us a curse that he would send to us evil leaders and to them we would listen.

The truth is the laws of marriage are too much to learn before marriage. I have never heard of anyone that could go thorough Ketuboth, Kidushin, Gitin, Yevamot, etc plus the Tur, Beit Joseph [Even Ezer].

What I did, and which is I think a good idea is to do the Tur, Beit Joseph on Nida plus the sidur of Yaakov Emden. Plus Shelomo Berger at the Mir learned the Tur, Beit Yoseph with me, plus there was a rav at Torah VeDaat in NY that gave a series of classes based in his book which was a great introduction to the subject.

If one does not have a marriage based on loyalty to Torah, then you end up with modern day marriages which are slavery and nightmares.

The general Litvak marriage is founded on a mutual goal of having the husband learn Torah all his life. That is it is a marriage based on a transcendent goal.

[In short I should mention that the major difficulty is calculating the ווסת period. Outside of that things are simple. What you have is basically simple. She sees one day then she waits until she stops and then you count seven clean days. That is she checks before sun set on the day she thinks she is clean with a clean white cloth (and she must check inside in the crevices). Preferably a piece of a white linen shirt. Then she checks on days 1, 4, and 7.  Then a natural body of water on the night after day seven. Most women have a period that is slightly longer than 30 days. That means she never sees less than 30 days. If that is the case she does not have to be separate from her husband on the day 30. That means let's say she see any time from day 34 and on. Then forget about day 30. But if she has seen 3 times in a row on day 34 then she must always be separate from her husband on day 34 unless she has established a different day another three times. If  there is nothing that is established after 34 days then she simply is seperate on the same period of separation as the last period.]

I wanted to add an possible answer to a question on Tosphot that my learning partner asked a few years ago.

 סנהדרין ס''ג א' וב'. אפשר לשאול על תוספות סנהדרין סג. בהבנתו מדוע יש הבדל בין "לא תעבדם" ו"לא תעשה מלאכה". לדבריו, "לא יעשה מלאכה" אינה לאו שבכללות, כי הוא אומר לא לעשות כל סוג של עבודה. בעוד "לא תעבדם" אינו אומר לנו איזה מינים נקראים שירות. אבל אם אתה הולך לדף ס''ג עמוד ב' תוספות הופך את סוג ההנחה להפכו הגמור. תוספות מסביר את הברייתא באופן ששלושה דברים נכנסים לחלק הראשון של הפסוק "ושם אלהים אחרים לא תזכירו" ואת החלק האחרון של הפסוק "לא ישמע על פיך" הוא אומר שהוא  אזהרה למסית ומדיח. זה בסדר. אבל אז מה הם שלושה הדברים? אחד נשבע בשם עבודה זרה. ואיך אפשר לקבל מלקות לזה? למה זה לא לאו שבכללות? מכיוון שנשבע בשם עבודה זרה והזכרת שם אלילים ועוד דבר אחד כולם אותו הדבר = להזכיר אל אחר, כך שאפשר  לקבל מלקות. באיזה אופן זה שונה מ"לא תעבדם" שאחד לא מקבל מלקות על כי זה לאו שבכללות?אפשר לומר שהחילוק הוא שכל סוג מלאכה הוא קבוצה סגורה וכל סוג עבודה הוא קבוצה פתוחה בגלל עבודה דרך כבוד היא דבר שיכול להתרחב בלי גבול


Link to book on Shas


The basic idea here is this in the Torah there are punishments for sin. Sometimes the punishment is stated. But sometimes it is not. When it is not stated we assume it is lashes. But lashes can only be given when a verse forbids a particular sin, not when the verse forbids different kinds of things. לאו שבכללות. I forgot the subject but the main idea is that not to bow before an idol has a death penalty attached to it. The other three kinds of service sacrifice, burning, pouring also have a death penalty attached to them. But what about service in the way of honor? It is forbidden but there is no death penalty attached to it. Not only that but one does not even get lashes because it is a לאו שבכללות.


Tosphot says Don't serve idols does not tell us what kinds of things are called service. David asked what is the difference between this and Shabat
On Shabat one does get a penalty even though it only says, "Don't do work."

I answer here Shabat is a closed set. Service is an open set

one American identity

There was a time that what was emphasized was one American identity. But that was altered slowly in the 1960's when what teachers emphasized was to "find your roots." That was the beginning of diversity.  Eventually the very idea of a common American identity began to seem ridiculous since it was just a hodge podge of conflicting groups. (Especially victim groups.)

To me this seems sad, since American identity was founded on very important principles, not on geography.


What was important to the founding fathers of the human experiment called the USA was freedom. To deliver the human race from a condition of tyranny to one of freedom. That is not the same thing as going back to an Athenian form of government. The founding fathers were well aware the major cause of the Peloponnesian war between Sparta and Athens was the fact that Athens was trying to build up its empire much like Rome would do later. That meant basically subjugating all other cities in Hellas. Rather the founding fathers sought to form a government that would guarantee human freedom.


Freedom has been an ideal for thousands of years but it has been notoriously difficult to find a way to accomplish it in a way that does not dissolve into chaos and then tyranny all over again.

For people that seek tyranny over others the American system is a nightmare. The attacks on the basic values of  America came from one school of thought the Fabian school which later became the Frankfurt school. But these utilized different systems of thought to accomplish the goal of tearing down American society and replace it with Socialism (Marxism). One very major and successful tool was Psychology, but it was not the only one. The problem is that no one recognized the problem. The religious authorities were on the front lines to destroy American morality and they still are.

I was looking for a blog post or PDF that discussed why men should not get married. I could not find it but found some substitutes with roughly the same idea

http://www.avoiceformen.com--This might be the original essay that I saw



Important blog about how feminism has ruined marriage.

comments from here


[I should mention a good deal of the problems come from not listening to the holy Torah. But even religious teachers are infamous nowadays for ruining every marriage they get their hands on.]


"American women are selfish self-serving creatures. I use to believe marriage was necessary for having children and raising a family, not so. Marriage is death of manhood thanks to our divorce and family law. That being said there is some good women but it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack."

"Marriage as the worst thing a man can do. I was divorced in 2011. My Ex got the house even though she couldn't make the payments along with utilities. Now that is getting foreclosed on and she never refinanced in her name. The loan was still in our names jointly. I was fortunate to buy a home of my own 2 years ago before the home we lived in became foreclosed on. A major overhaul of divorce laws need to be taken. I should have been given the house due to the fact that I could afford to make payments and could have even sold it to avoid the mess. It's as if she had a certain sense of pride and wouldn't admit she couldn't do it. If there are any women reading this let it be known that i didn't cheat on her or touch her in anger. When she hit her 30's, she snapped. Cut her hair off started getting multiple tattoos right after her father passed away. Then began a facebook page at that point I knew my days were numbered. Talking about how she had never been on her own or independent. I had seen it with other men whose wives hit their 30's and 40's and go through the same thing. These men including myself worked hard, paid the bills but that wasn't good enough. It's when I saw a photo of a guy with sleeve tattoo, hair with frosted tips
she said she saw the photo on line and liked it. Which later turned out to be a Facebook friend that she reunited with that she knew when she was 15. Basically, don't get married it's a three ring circus, the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffer"ring"."


"respect?...sex is very material, its not a thought its physical, and married or not, you have no particular right to it, and if you leave yourself open to blackmail with it, it probably isn't worth having...respect through marriage comes from your "empire" of family, Space is about possession and if you let your spouse keep on taking up the space, then that's your material failure. Being weak will lead to someone, anyone, walking on you...probably as you present no challenge to them and once you have provided all the material she needs, then really, if you don't entertain each other, what is left.

"

One world government under Socialism

 deterioration of USA society.   there was a well known group of people that were determined to delete American morality and values, and replace-them with Marxist-Freudian values.

 the connection between the Fabians and later psychology to eliminate traditional american values.  the connection to the Frankfurt school that got transplanted from Germany to Columbia University in NYC.

Fabians believed in one world government under Socialism and that happiness is the standard by which a society ought to be judged not Law, neither Divine Law nor Natural Law.
They did not believe in private property. They also understood to make these changes would be gradual. 

They drew from Utopians, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Gradualism.

The problem was economic change was not popular [because people were doing well under free markets societies]. So they combined Freud with Marx to create a cultural revolution [that would lead to economic change.] The goal was to detach culture from moral values. The way to do this was by using Psychology and Freud to undermine morals. [Freud tried to show moral values have no objective basis.]
The key strategy was to influence the conscious and unconscious  mind. The academic world welcomed Socialism, Marxism and Psychology.  The problem was Christian and Jewish people in the USA were happy with Free Market society. So the idea was to tear down Western values, father knows best, family and replace it with G-d is dead, fathers are oppressive, tear down the system.
The way to accomplish their goals was to divide the USA by making victim groups 


[Religious teachers pretended and still pretend to be for family values but in fact went along with the Fabians and psychology and socialism because they think they will gain power.]
They played the victim card.
To have a classless society you need to get rid of freedom of choice, property ownership, and to wipe out white supremacy [White, Anglo Saxon Protestants].

The 1990's was when political correctness came into its own. That is obligation to be politically correct, [that is not just tolerate it.] [Disagreement not allowed.] Individual rights were understood to be obstacles to this.


Western Civilization is essentially in its basic essence Throne and Altar. But I admit that Altar (the Catholic faith) seems to have problems. In fact, the entire Christian Faith seems to have a couple of basic difficulties. 

My own approach is a kind of patchwork of ideas from my parents, and the Oral and Written Law, with a kind of paradigm based on Maimonides, the Gra, Reb Israel Salanter, Rav  Shach from Ponovitch.

s37 E flat major   e37 midi  e37 nwc

learning fast

1) Along with the idea you find in Chazal [the sages] of learning fast you could add the idea of finishing Shas and the entire Oral Law the work of Creation and מעשה בראשית מעשה מרכבה.

2) The way the Rambam understands these last to they refer to the Physics (eight books) and Metaphysics (14 books) of Aristotle.

3) The way the Rambam understood the Oral Law was such that he considered the entire Oral law to be contained in his major work the Mishne Torah. Thus the basic program of the Rambam would be easily done by going through this small set: Physics, Metaphysics, and Mishne Torah.

4) Though this is commendable, I would like to make a slight modification of this program of the Rambam. That is I think the actual Oral Law really ought to be learned in its entirety -that is the actual books that contained the Oral Law as known to the Chazal [Sages] -- (The Two Talmuds, with the Midrashei Halacha and Midrashei Agada.) Plus I think Physics has gone a bit further since the days of Aristotle. There is no exact set, but I think one should at least get through Relativity, QM, Field Theory,  String Theory. Abstract Algebra, and Algebraic Topology.

5) This might sound like a lot but it is not at all hard if one follows the program set by the Chazal, לעלם לגרס איניש אף על גב דמשכח ואף על גב דלא ידע נאי קאמר= "Say the words in order and go on."

6] Review I do like this. I finish ch 1., then I go back to review from the end to the beginning. Then I do ch 2. Then I go back and review ch 2 and ch 1.  etc . The review I usually do thus. Let's say ch 2 is divided into 10 subsections. Then I do 2.10, and then 2,9  then 2.8 etc. That means by the time I get to chapter 10 I have don ch. 1 a lot of times. But not ever subject requires this. You need to see which subject can just go straight with and which ones require more review. It is highly individual.

Several wives.If something is not forbidden then why say it is? You want to be more strict than Moses?

Not everyone with several wives in the Bible had trouble. With Jacob there was some trouble, but overall I think he did pretty well. King David’s son Solomon came from Bat Sheva who was not David’s first or only wife. Caleb Ben Yefuna had a few wives and few girls friend simultaneously and the Bible says about him the most unique phrase it uses anywhere וימלא אחרי השם He walked totally with God. “Totally” here means “completely,” or 100%.


[Nature abhors a vacuum. I see this a lot. People don't like the Law of Moses so they make up their own prohibitions, and ignore things that are clearly forbidden in the Law of God.]
The general way to understand the Law of Moses is thus: There are things that are forbidden. These always  come with the words, "Thou shalt not do such and such." There are things one must do. They always come with the words, "Thou shalt do such and such." Then there are things that are neither forbidden nor obligated.   They might be good to do but they are not obligated. There might be things that are not prudent, but they are not forbidden.

Christians try to argue that two wives is not prudent and therefore must be forbidden. However that does not follow. Also the entire existence of the Jewish people is the result of Jacob having four wives. Plus Caleb Ben Yefuna is not a minor figure in the Bible. He is well known as the friend of Joshua and the fact that he had a few wives and girl friends is not ignoble.
I am simply trying to make a difference between what the Law of Moses  forbids and that which it does not forbid. The cases of multiple wives that I know about are usually quite happy. The women are attached to some Alpha Male and are willing to put up with anything in order to be with him. And I never saw anything to indicate that the children were worse off. But people that are more familiar with Mormons might have different observations--I admit.

s35 C Major  s35 midi  s35 nwc

I do not think the world of the religious has anything to do with Torah. There seems to be no judgment that they pass on others that corresponds to common sense or human decency.

There was a time when Torah scholars were esteemed to be the very pattern of nobility. Nowadays religious teachers  always decide and judge cases brought before them unjustly, and their judgment can nor be hidden for they are well known and public. Mankind has become indignant at their strange and disgraceful sentences which they pass on good and decent men.



 Malice for the Reform and Conservative Jews and contempt for baali teshuva [newly religious] is the major factor in their considerations. Not Torah. It is the rule of the lowest IQ and highest malice towards all.


[There are blogs that are devoted towards critique on the religious world. Their critiques seem true to me, but I prefer to focus on the positive aspects of Torah, But I stay away from the religious because it seems to me they ruin everything they get their hands on, e.g. marriages, families, etc. Who has not heard the horror stories? I bet you most of them are true. I have seen this myself and the stories people tell about what religious teachers  did to them always seem to be understated. The facts if you now them up close always seem much worse than what is reported because balali teshiva are always afraid of saying Lashon Hara [slander] so they understate what was one to them.

[I do not think the world of the religious has anything to do with Torah. As far as I can see it is all one big scam. And to the extent of what we see as a long trail of broken families and broken lives and broken marriages  the guilt of the religious  is a real, dark, and formidable guilt.]


There seems to be no judgment that they pass on others that corresponds to common sense or human decency. They depend on the idea that their judgement will be forgotten or ignored by the rest of mankind.  Every marriage they ruin, every family they destroy they figure will be forgotten in time so they can retain their noble reputation.

One consideration is perhaps they are not qualified? This could be true, but to my thinking the problem is deeper. [I mean to say most of the problems comes from religious teachers that have not been in authentic Litvak yeshivas like Ponovicth, Brisk , or the Mir in NY. After all you never hear stories of bad teachers from Europe where to be a religious teacher one really need to have the actual qualifications of having been in an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva and to have excelled.
Still I have to admit I rarely [if ever] saw anything good come from religious teachers.  And nothing they said or did seemed to have any connection with the Holy Torah.

In any case, what some people do in such cases is to get cool about the Holy Torah. But it is my impression that the better course of action would be to be stronger and better in Torah and never to have any rabbi who does not come from a legitimate Litvak Yeshiva.

Individualism

Individualism seems to be a debate between Kant and Hegel. In Communist Russia, Individualism was considered as bad as capitalism.  This seems like an important issue because my basic approach is to side with Kant but I admit some validity to Hegel.

Individualism is seen by religious and totalitarian people as being the height of evil.


I think that Kant was basically an individualist. That would be the natural conclusion of his idea of the "self" which to him is quite individual. I mean to say that to Kant the "self" is in the category of the dinge an sich. That is the basic idea of his idea of aperception. That was the basis of his Transcendental deduction. I mean that we perceive our own self in a way that is not any different than how we perceive external reality. This is perhaps the most important part of Kant. And it certainly goes in the direction of self autonomy. The only person that I know of who offers argument otherwise is Hegel.

After Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden there were placed angels with swords to guard the path back.

I like to concentrate on my major sins. That is things that I am aware of that seem to  have caused bad things in  my life.
 I figure that there are a lot of requirements in the Torah, but there seems to be a level of responsibility about certain areas.
For example honor of one's parents. If one person has great parents does that imply more responsibility than if than if they were bad parents? At least, based on the book the Obligations of the Heart [חובות לבבות] it would seem so.  And for me this seems to be  a pattern. It is almost as if God gives me some kind of taste of real excellence, and then waits to see if I walk away from it.

That certainly happened with my parents. It also happened with Israel, and also with a kind of numinous energy that I felt in Israel. And last but not least it happened with learning Torah.
But going back to any of these things seems impossible. There seems to be a kind of energy that prevents one from going back to some state of excellence once he has walked away from it. [Like we see in the Bible that after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden there were placed angels with swords to guard the path back].

But I did see in three books of Musar a possible correction. The Obligations of the Heart, Reb Israel Salanter and Joseph Yosel Horvitz of Navardok all claim that even if one has sinned to the degree of leading others astray there is a correction. That  is to lead people back to the right path.

But that seems to me to be easier said than done. For example I have  a hard time advocating any yeshiva--even the great one's like Ponovitch--just because I know they are human institutions with all the drawbacks that go along with that. And honor of parents? This is just as hard to recommend since no everyone has as great a set of parents as I had. Same with learning Torah. Same with Israel.

The best I can think of is to simply try and keep Torah as best I can according to my own situation. But to imagine I can point to some ideal path seems impossible. "כל הדרכים בחזקת סכנה all paths are dangerous." It is just that certain paths are more dangerous than others,

There were a few bits of wisdom that I picked up from my yeshiva years, and from my parents.
One thing I got in Shar Yashuv was this idea: Finish Shas. [That is get through the Oral and Written Law.]
Another there were to things I picked up from Reb Shmuel Berenabum [The Mir Rosh Yeshiva in NY], 1) Learn Torah. 2) Don't speak slander (Lashon Hara.)
 From my parents I gained a great respect for Torah and for the learning of Physics and Math and for classical Music and for the value of self sufficiency.

I should give credit to David Bronson my learning partner for the two books on Shas and Bava Metzia. I was so disgusted with with the religious world [and still am] that I could not even bear the thought of opening up a Gemara  until David suggested that we learn Gemara together.  Also I would not have been able to learn without his help. He was able to find the questions and interesting points in Tosphot that I would normally just skip over. Still, if I mention an answer to a question then that means I myself answered it unless I say specifically that David answered it.

I have respect for great roshei yeshiva like Rav Shach and try to make a distinction between heads of legitimate yeshivas and fakers and frauds. But the difference can be hard to tell since the frauds also like to claim authenticity.]

Is a girl friend permitted?

The whole issue of having a girl friend  or in the language of the Bible פילגש I have noticed that a lot of people are not aware of.  This comes up mainly in Chronicles  2:46 with the friend of Joshua כלב בן יפונה. I have mentioned before that Calev Ben Yefuna was the only person in the Bible that it says the amazing phrase: "וימלא אחרי השם" ["He went totally after God"].

The basic outline of the subject  you can easily see in the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch.

The Rambam it is known is against this, and allows a girl friend only to  a king. The Gra pointed out that that can't work in the case of Calev Ben Yefuna. [who had many girl friends but was not a king.]  But the Gra has a different explanation of the whole thing. He says  a פלגש is with kidushin but without a ketubah.  The חלקת מחוקק and בית שמואל point out that even to the Rambam, a girl friend is only an אסור עשה that is a prohibition that is derived from the lack of doing something--that is making kidushin. [I can not answer for how the Rambam might have explained כלב בן יפונה.]

That is to say it is not that same thing as זנות which is a לאו a straight forward prohibition.


In any case, on the side of permission, we have at least the Raavad and the Ramban, and some say the Rosh also. The reason is the Rosh only mentions the problem of she might be embarrassed to go to the mikveh. People like the Radvaz and later achronim went through the trouble to find how many rishonim allow it, and  as far as I know there is no doubt that the majority of Rishonim allow it.

This really would not even need to be necessary to mention except for the fact that I have heard  people confuse this with adultery,-- which it is clearly not. This opinion I imagine can only have originated with people that can't read Hebrew. Adultery is a totally different story. It is an act of sex with a married woman.  It has nothing to do with a girl friend. Thus a man can have many wives, but a wife can not have two husbands since each act of sex would be an act of adultery which gets the death penalty as we see in Leviticus 20

Trump stands for traditional values.

In terms of the American elections. Trump stands for traditional moral values  and Hillary stands for socialism and as far as I am concerned that is unjust and that settles the issue.

 There is not  a way to learn one page of Gemara and come away with any kind of socialism. Theft is theft.

This however does not answer the the problem of abuse of power which seems to be the motivating factor for socialists that are sincere. 

Another point is that during the 1800's and early 1900's that most promising and convincing doctrine was that of Socialism, so it was natural for people to be convinced by the arguments. What is different today is that Socialism is not longer believable.





You could see this towards the end of the USSR when the books of Marx would sit in bookstores with thick layers of dust over them. No one that actually lived in a socialist society had any confidence that that system was just in any sense.


This does however open new horizons. If we consider that the major motivating factor for socialism was "Leshem Shamayim"--for the sake of Heaven and that what was wrong was simply that it does not reflect reality then is there a better system? If we look at all the alternatives that people came up with it seems to me that while no system is perfect, I still think the basic approach of the Constitution of the USA is about the best thing out there as far as the structuring of a moral decent society--as long as there is a Torah ethics that underlies it. 

I think it makes some sense to go into some detail about what I mean here. I see Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, etc. as mainly trying to come up with alternatives to Torah Ethics. The reason was abuses that were part of European society. So it was natural to try to come up with alternatives. This same motivation is what lies at the core of people that go along with these systems. That is judge on the scales of merit. You do not need to assume the underlying motivation of the socialism is hatred of the rich and the desire to find a rational in order to take away from them their money.


So I try to defend the Law of Moses as being the best system [that is the Oral and Written Law] and instead of ignoring the abuses I try to find ways of correcting the abuses --instead of throwing out the whole system as some people want to do.

I just do not think any kind of Marxism is very good. I think it is inherently violent. Oleg Penkovsky revealed that Krushev was actually planning on raining down a barrage of nuclear missiles on the USA until a strong reaction from Kennedy stopped him.
[It was by the U-2 and Penkovsky that the SS-4 was identified and then the S-5]


The Ultra Religious approach also seems very problematic. My feeling is the best thing is the Litvak Yeshiva approach which is basically an emphasis on moral values and learning Torah together. They might not put it in that way but that is in fact how it comes out.

a proof that the Rambam holds by Rabbainu Tam

There seems to be a proof that the Rambam holds by Rabbainu Tam in terms of the beginning of the night.It occurs to me that the Radvaz also says the same thing and brings a proof of this idea in his Teshuvot volume 4 chapter 282 I think also from what the Rambam wrote in laws of קידוש החודש

But this is my proof of this idea also from הלכות קידוש החודש


This I think is not an exact proof but simply something which points in this direction because of the obvious reason that Rosh Hodesh to the Rambam is dependent on the later calculations that are done today which come from the calendar of Meton.

I would be surprised if the Radvaz uses the same proof that I brought here. Rather it is probable that he found some other proof. That would be this is most likely to be stadard in בלכות קידוש החודש





) 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'.

The actual idea on Rabbainu Tam is this other thing I wrote elsewhere:

) בענין שקיעה של רבינו תם. רוב ראשונים פוסקים כמו ר''ת. קשה להבין את הגר''א.  אם הגר''א היה צודק, היה בהכרח לראות  כוכב בינוני אחד בשקיעה הראשונה, ואחר כך עוד אחד בתוך כמה דקות.
  זה כדי ששקיעה תיחשב להיות בין השמשות. וזה רק אחרי שכבר קודם השקיעה, היינו צריכים לראות שלשה כוכבים גדולים. ואי אפשר לדעת את הממוצע של קבוצה מסוימת אלא אם כן יודעים את כל הדברים שיש בקבוצה, ואי אפשר לדעת מה זה כוכב בינוני אלא אם כן קודם זה רואים את כל הכוכבים (שאפשר לראות אותם בלי משקפת), ואז אפשר לדעת מה זה "בינוני". ואז צריכים לבחור כמה כוכבים בינוניים, ולראות מתי הם יוצאים בליל המחרת. אני עשיתי את זה, ולפי מה שראיתי, לא יוצאים כוכבים בינוניים עד בערך ארבעים וחמש דקות אחר השקיעה בארץ ישראל.
תוספות רי''ד בשבת מפרש רבינו תם גם לשיטת חכמי יוון  (שחכמי ישראל הסכימו אתם בגמרא בפסחים)- והם אמרו שאין מסדרון (פרוזדור) שהשמש נכנס בו בשקיעה.  רב נטרונאי גאון אוחז בשיטת הגר''א. אבל רב סעדיה גאון אוחז בשיטת רבינו תם (מצוטט באבן עזרא שמות י''ב פסוק ד'). אני חושב ההלכה כמו רבינו תם. אבל יש אפשרות לתרץ את שיטת הגר''א בקושי.
הגם שאני חושב הלכה כר''ת עדיין אני רוצה לתת תירוץ אפשרי לגר''א: החלל מתרחב. ולכן לפני אלפיים שנה הכוכבים היו קרובים יותר  לארץ.ולכן היתה אפשרות לראות שלשה כוכבים בינוניים קודם הזמן שהם נראים היום. היום שלשה כוכבים נראים אחרי ארבעים וחמש דקות אחרי השקיעה. וזה עוזר לנו להבין את הגר''א שאוחז בשיטה שהלילה מתחיל אחרי שלש עשרה וחצי דקות. אנחנו מוצאים בגמרא פסחים שיש מהלך ארבע מילים מן השקיעה עד הלילה, אבל הגר''א אומר שזה מדבר על הזמן שכל הכוכבים יוצאים, ולא על התחלת הלילה על פי הלכה. ויש סיועה לזה בגלל שהגמרא הפסחים אינה מדברת על התחלת הלילה לפי הדין. והגמרא נתנה שיעור שלשה כוכבים בינונים רק לסימן, לא מה שקובע את  הלילה.

s36 E Major  s36 midi  s36 nwc

Gra made his decision to sign the excommunication

The Gra made his decision to sign the excommunication. No compromises. I have already shown many times the problems that the Gra must have seen and I can not believe that people do not still see these same things. You do not need to look into history to see what that Gra felt was wrong. You can see it today.
It is strange they everyone thinks they are smarter than the Gra. Compromise with evil can not result in anything good.
The main trouble seems to be idol worship of their leaders. But the basic belief structure comes from the Shatz which also is a problem. But what ever the reason once you accept that the Gra had the halachic authority to make an excommunication then it in itself has halachic validity no matter if you agree with the reasons or not.

The trouble is there is no spark. No one seems outraged at the constant incessant trail of abuses. They figure as long at it does not hurt them directly, "Why get involved?" And when the abuse finally gets around to them then no one else wants to listen to their tale of woes.


And the further trouble is few people really can uphold the path of the Gra and Rav Shach and Reb Israel Salanter including me. For I have my own set of obligations including honor of my parents which mean I can not stand for the Torah alone approach. [My parents were clear about Torah with a Vocation.]

[Or perhaps it could be said that Rav Zilverman in the old city of Jerusalem in what could be called a yeshiva based on the path of the Gra is following that path faithfully. Also the Lithuanian Musar yeshivas to some degree seem to be adhering somewhat closely to the authentic path of Torah though they do ignore the signature of the Gra on that excommunication. This means the exact problems the Gra meant to avoid entered into the Litvak yeshiva world. The effects of ignoring the Gra are apparent.


For some reason in Israel in fact by a lot of Litvaks it seems to me that this subject of the cherem is taken more seriously than in the USA. I noted this a few time by Rav Shlanger the Mashgiach of Porat Yoseph in talking with his older married sons. [That is the father in law of Eliyahu Zilverman.]

And I have heard that a good number of places have spouted up based on the Gra's approach. [So when you see someone walking around with tefilin on that does not mean they are a part of Rav Zilverman's yeshiva. There are from what I have heard many other places that started up in the meantime that also take the Gra seriously.]

The major reason I think the Gra signed the Cherem was that he considered the whole business to be a scam of the Sitra Achra. --a way to penetrate the world of Torah.

The after blessing

בורא נפשות רבות וחסרונן על כל מה שברא להחיות בהן נפש כל חי ברוך אתה השם חי העולמים

חי is with a Tzerei 
נפש is feminine. Therefore the endings have to fit. Not "בהם"  and not "וחסרונם."

And there is no such thing as a bracha that simply ends baruch etc without a name of Hashem as the Gra noted. Then the end has to be like the Yerushalmi. 

Computer models

Avraham: Computer models are only as good as the assumptions they are built on which are often wrong, and often leave out external factors which are more important, and they depend on expansions which miss infinities.
For example see this lecture by Arthur Mattuck concerning y'=y^2. What ever the computer does it will not find the singularity.
{I should mention that all I really know about computer modeling is based on a few books, one was Numerical analysis that dealt in detail with the Runge Kutta method  that I read through about four times I think.But the books that deal with how to program computers do not usually deal with the above mentioned problem by Arthur  Mattuck that the computer can be mislead when trying to graph a ODE.]
In fact come to think of it, I do not think I ever saw any book on computer modeling that mentions this problem.

Reference Frame:

But they are also often - and maybe predominantly - demonstrably right, accurate, if not downright ingenious, and - especially - more accurate than predictions made without any models. This is an essential point that you, like O'Neill, try to obscure.
I didn't understand what this topic has to do with "infinities".

Avraham:
I meant the Taylor expansions or Numerical method. The computer will miss infinities as you go from point to close point unless by accident the computer happens to land on the infinity itself. So all I am saying is that when the computer shows a nice smooth line the reality might be that between those two points the graph goes to infinity. That is is all I meant.

In relation to this I think Catastrophe theory might be able to dig up those infinities, but I am not sure about that.
_______________________________________________________________________________


Computer models are used everywhere and are used to defend crazy stuff. Sometimes 9/11 conspiracies sometimes global warming the list is unlimited. Here is another comment I wrote:The Reference Frame mentioned this and also Steven Dutch. My own feeling about this I wrote in a comment on the Reference Frame. My comment was to the effect that after the first few floors of a building people depend on Finite Element Theory which is great approximation but not exact. To really understand what is going on after the first few floors you need Catastrophe Theory.

How can I put this? A lot of what goes on is dependent on computer modeling which is complete depends on the assumptions you start with which often is complete absurdity. So many papers start out with “We have found…” when in fact they found out nothing at all. They mean their computer model found ….

And even if their model somehow represents reality in some way which it usually does not anyway they always depends on expansions–which can miss infinities unless you expand at the exact point where the infinity is found.

Let me try to find the links I mentioned:

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/911NutPhysics.HTM

http://motls.blogspot.com/2016/09/europhys-news-911-saw-controlled.html

Last thought. BYU is the same place that thought they came up with cold fusion with an amazingly sloppy chemistry set. I see no reason to pay attention to them.

knowing "how to learn"

It occurred to me that knowing "how to learn" is not complicated concept. It simply means "Don't skim." That is:- there is a time to skim, and that is the second seder, the afternoon session. But skimming is not knowing how to learn. Mainly knowing how to learn  means to learn Tosphot and to understand what he is saying.
It definitely does not mean to look up the Mahrasha or any rishonim or achronim or the Tur, Beit Joseph. Looking up these things is perhaps worthy and good,-- but it is not "knowing how to learn" which is to learn and understand the Gemara and Tosphot on the page.  For that reason it is the custom in any decent yeshiva to spend about a week or two on every page of Gemara because that is about how long it takes to get even the simple idea of what is going on on the page.

(Looking up achronim or rishonim is the equivalent of freshman learning.)

Knowing how to learn is what all rishonim [authorities of the Middle Ages] and achronim [authorities after and including Rav Yoseph Karo] thought people were already doing when they wrote their books. But now this essential thing is skipped and no one notices because people that teach Torah are mainly from the Sitra Achra and are not teaching Torah from the realm of holiness.

A few thoughts about STEM and the Chafetz Chaim

A few thoughts about STEM and the Chafetz Chaim

1) As far as STEM goes a computer major is probably well on  the way of taking care of the obligation to learn the "work of Creation"

 Rav Zilverman the Rosh Yeshiva of Aderet Eliyahu in the old city of Jerusalem told me once that learning engineering (electrical or other types) can be considered as a part of what the Rambam calls "the work of creation."

2) The Sefer the Chafetz Chaim is important to learn and to keep. I think I finished it at least once with the notes at the bottom of the page. -but probably not more than once.

At one point I believe I tried to get through every single book the Chafetz Chaim had written and probably got through a lot.

3)  I am in fact very impressed with Kant though I did not have a chance to learn him in high school when I was doing my philosophical research.  I have to mention that Kant was saying something stronger than the fact that human beings have a limit to their knowledge. He was saying pure reason –reason totally abstracted away from people also has a limit where it can not venture and if it does it comes up with self contradictions.

4) Simcha  Zissel of Kelm. one of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter.  held very strongly about this idea   to have sessions  in Torah that one does not deviate from at all.

diet and exercise.

My learning partner tends to focus on diet and he suggested a mixer and vegetables. He was not thrilled with fruit because of the Rambam ([Maimonides). [Maimonides thought only a small list of fruit is good like grapes and dates and a few others that I forgot. This makes sense because they are mainly sugar.]







It was not that he disagreed with exercise. Rather he was in a situation where it was not possible and so he focused on diet. He thinks every vegetable has some curative property. He might have mentioned beets to me, but if he did it was only in the general context of vegetables.

For me a mixer became impracticable. So I stick with a knife  and plain simple raw vegetables.
[A woman, (Natasha, in the Ukraine) mentioned beets with sour cream to me and I also found that beets with olive oil is good.]





He also mentioned many other things like  a raw egg. This was in fact how Jews used to have coffee or tea in Eastern Europe instead of cream. The raw egg tends to cancel out appetite for unhealthy food.

I might mention that I think people are too addicted to cooking. Not everything has to be cooked.
A girl, Barbara  from Germany mentioned to me a staple of her diet growing up was yogurt with raw oatmeal.

I should add that his basic approach comes down to what is known as the paleo diet,-but with an emphasis on green vegetables

Holocaust denial

There is a lot of Holocaust denial going around. I find this odd. My grandparents came over to the USA before World War II and so survived. But no one else in my family that was in Europe at the time did. My grandfather Yaakov had a brother Avraham with a wife and seven young children who were all murdered by the Nazis. That was not because of working too hard in  labor camp. 

Reform and Conservative are basically right [because of the most important aspects of Torah are Monotheism and בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man].The general religious world has either zero fulfillment of obligations between man and his fellow man or at a level much lower than gentiles.

I have thought a lot about the proper path in life.

Maybe too much because after all I grew up in my parents home which was  an absolutely amazing experience. The love that was between my parents for each other and for us kids was palpable. You could almost touch it in the air.
Still I was interested in philosophical questions from about as early an age as I can remember.

We were mainly Reform Jews but obviously my parents had a lot more to them than the Reform secular doctrines.

So I got interested in what formed the basis of my parents home --that is the Oral and Written Law of Moses. [The Oral Law most people think of as the Talmud but there are actually a whole set of books that compromise the actual Oral tradition: two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra Sifrei and few others.]

But to defend this tradition in an intellectual way I have to rely on Kant . Maimonides and Saadia Gaon do provide some justification, but because of the onslaught of philosophy and also archaeology I found it necessary to provide for myself  a deeper justification.

Reform itself  got way too much into the "social justice" thing--which is just another word for socialism. The  religious generally follow con men and so are not following Torah at all, and make up rituals in order to seem like they are keeping Torah, and ignore the things the Torah really does require. The religious world is in general made up of mentally ill people.

So I am thinking that Reform and Conservative are basically right [because of the most important aspects of Torah are Monotheism and בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man] but need more learning and keeping of of Torah but not like the people that make a show of religiosity to get money and power. The religious world -it's leaders are simply mad men. [That is all but the few pockets surrounding Litvak yeshivas where Torah is learned and practiced sincerely.] The general religious world has either zero fulfillment of obligations between man and his fellow man, or at a level much lower than gentiles. Honesty, working hard for a living, keeping your word, and general human decency are almost impossible to find in the religious world.


To defend the Torah, I however basically have to depend on the Rambam. That means that Torah is  to bring to objective morality. So in some way I use the Kant  school of thought imply to patch up the gaps.


Appendix. To prove that בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man is the most important part of Torah you would need the basic set of Musar books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. My first awareness of this really began my first year in Yeshiva when I was learning the Sefer HaChinuch. It was somewhat of  a shock to me to discover a lot of obligations between man and his fellow man are a major part of the Torah.

Israel Salanter tried to correct this flaw but with little success. The Musar movement itself became a kind of "frumkeit" religiosity. Not that this is desirable. The best thing is to keep all the Torah--obligations between man and his fellow man and between man and God. But if there is a choice one or the other obviously according to the Torah itself the obligations between man and his fellowman come first.

This of course goes entirely against the basic tenet of the religious that only they are kosher. To me it seems the truth is exactly the opposite.

S33 B Flat Major