Allen Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind.

Mirans • an hour ago

Take a step back, forget about the lurid details and look at the big picture. We are now living in the gray area between republic and tyranny. It could be defined as the tyranny of the masses, otherwise known as democracy. If more than 50% of the population does not care if their rulers are gangsters and pedophiles it means that the Constitution and more generally the rule of law is invalidated. If Hillary wins there's nothing to prevent her from purging the FBI, the NYPD and any other law enforcement agency that stands in her way. When the rule of law Is replaced by the "over 50%" rule any revelations, no matter how outrageous, get drowned in the general apathy, indifference and even downright hostility of people who don't want to be taken out of their comfort zone. When democracy self destructs it will be replaced either by a republic or by tyranny.

Avraham rosenblum  Mirans • 36 minutes ago

That was argued by Brett Stevens in his blog Amerika. I however still hold the Constitution of the USA is possible to salvage if Trump is elected.

Mirans to  Avraham rosenblum • 25 minutes ago

I agree, but only if there's a complete government overhaul, a radical change in the immigration process and the education system and a drastic reduction in the power of government agencies that are not bound by the Constitution. The problem is not just the Clintons, it is that there are too many people that have made compromises.

donnieboy64  Avraham rosenblum • an hour ago

we are way beyond that. within two years there won't even be a border between america and mexico. within eight years the two nations will most likely be one.

Avraham rosenblum  Mirans • 5 minutes ago

That was the point of Allen Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind. The thesis of the book was the conflict between the Enlightenment and Anti Enlightenment--concerning political systems and his answer focused on American education! It is a subtle point and easy to miss.

At the very end he was recommending the Republic of Plato. My own approach is based on the Oral and Written Law of Moses. But in any case to get education back to classics was I think his idea of a possible solution.

I still hold by this reason and faith approach from my end which means the Rambam's approach. [i.e the Oral and written Law plus Physics and Metaphysics] And Christians could try the same from their end with Aquinas. I still believe that good education and gaining good character can go a long way. That is if everyone does their part then the USA can be salvaged.

That is an approach I learned from Shmuel Berenbaum. When he encountered human problems his answer was to :"Learn Torah". In the context of Maimonides that means his four point method the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and Aristotle's Metaphysics.

The Dark Side is now accepted as a legitimate part of Torah.

I try to grade institutions on a % basis.  That is-- I do not think any of them are perfect. But if I think they are above the 60% level. then I say they are worth supporting. And in fact I try to support any institution that I think is doing good, even if I do not agree with their theology. And I have been doing that for a long time. 
But if I think the Dark Side is using an institution as a front (or as a disguise), then the fact that the core is evil makes the whole thing evil. 

Religious teachers that belittle husbands do not get a passing grade. In fact a good deal of the religious world I consider to be a deceptive front for the Dark Side Sitra Achra. The Dark Side is now accepted as a legitimate part of Torah. It got in by means of sincere mystics. But after the Ari (Isaac Luria) all mysticism is from the Sitra Achra.

So though Reform and Conservative Judaism are  more lenient about Halacha (Law) but at least they are Kosher; as opposed to the religious world which has been taken over by the Sitra Achra.

Advaita Vedanta versus Maimonides

My basic feeling about the Advaita Vedanta is that it does not start out with obvious first principles. It wants to claim a strong thesis without proof and that thesis is by no means obvious. On the contrary, in Math, people start out with certain given axioms, but which are not counter intuitive. Rather axioms that seem obvious and almost do not even need to be stated. Like the shortest distance between two point is  straight line.


Besides that there are idolatry and Sitra achra [Dark Side] problems with Eastern Religions and all mysticism.The only thing I see as being a valid set of values is the Torah  system with no mysticism mixed in.
Mysticism is how the Sitra Achra managed to penetrate the Torah world
_______________________________________________
To this Brett Stevens answered to me:

Brett Stevens says:

11/05/2016 at 7:53 pm

My basic feeling about the Advaita Vedanta is that its does not start out with obvious first principles.

It starts with a vision, from which first principles are later implied throughout the documents.

As far as its thesis, idealism is it; it supports this with metaphor instead of conventionally structured argument.

This is probably the best introduction for it I can imagine:

http://www.amerika.org/texts/the-perennial-philosophy-aldous-huxley/

That, and Evola, maybe a bit of Schopenhauer.

______________________________________






That was the version of the book that I read many times over. I still have to say that I was not convinced. The closest I saw as an argument was Spinoza and even there I was not convinced. [He assumes nothing can affect a substance. That stacks the deck for his approach. But it is not a obvious first principle.] [On the other hand it clear substances can affect each other.]

Brett Stevens says:

11/06/2016 at 8:20 am

You would probably more want to read The Upanishads, but the point Huxley makes is that these ideas are not presented in philosophical format. They are merely descriptions and metaphors, like most religious writing. I found Spinoza convincing with a few caveats, so detoured to Kant. From there, Schopenhauer and from that, the Bhagavad-Gita.

Avraham:
I did a bit of the Upanishads and Sutras. But took a different path than you. From Spinoza to Maimonides, Kant,  and Schopenhauer.  I have great respect for Spinoza and I can understand why you would think he is true. I think it was a combination of things that took me on a different track. (1) Leibniz (2) my own critique on him based on my understanding of Substance based on Aristotle. From my  side of things it find it hard to imagine taking either the rationalists or the empiricists based on Kant's Critique. To me it seems there simply is no choice for anyone except to go with some school of thought that takes Kant into account. That means some school of German Idealism.

So I settled on the Kant school which seemed to make the most sense to me. You really have to combine it with Schopenhauer. You also need to be able to read through the chatter of later 20th century philosophical pseudo intellectuals.]
If I try to explain what I like about Kant it would probably go like this. I hate when stupid philosophers talk about science. I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs. Even the really smart ones like Edward Feser. The only one that did his homework is Kelley Ross and he shows very well how Kant's system works well with Quantum Mechanics. 

Torah values

I hold from Torah values very highly, but not from the religious people that claim to be following these values. The "world" of the religious I do not think reflects Torah values very well.


For example there is a lot of effort to make secular Jews religious, but no loyalty to these same Jews. That is an attempt is made to show great friendship ["love bombing"] in order to acquire their friendship, but no real friendship really exists. It is important not to pretend friendship where none exists. Especially this is so since the point of pretending to be friends is to take people from their real family and friends whom they can depend on an replace them with false friends on whom they can not depend.
This is not a minor problem, but permeates the entire religious world. It is the elephant in the room that everyone tries so hard to ignore.






It is hard to know how to deal with this problem--especially since I do believe very strongly in Torah values the Oral  and Written Law.
It is hard to know why the word that apparently claims to be following the holy Torah suffers from this kind of moral blind spot.
And to me this seems like  a major failing-not some minor flaw. 

What I personally conclude years ago is the religious world in fact has nothing to do with Torah and it does not reflect Torah values at all but rather reflects rituals that are exaggerated and not from Torah. 

The only places that I saw were more or less adhering to Torah values were Lithuanian kinds of Yeshiva s with the surrounding communities--that is yeshivas built and run on the principles of the Gra and Rav Shach.

Wiki leaked email: the voting machines are rigged to change Republican votes to Democratic votes.

 The Wiki leaked email between John Podesta and the brass at Smartronic discussing the rigging of machines at the direction of Soros. There is no "may" about this. We have already had multiple reports from Illinois, Texas etc of machines changing GOP votes to Dem votes AS THE VOTER WATCHES. And of course all these reports are blown off as "glitches".....apparently that's the new term the DNC and Media whores use for CHEATING.

Weiner should be up for the saint of the year award.

Weiner should be up for the saint of the year award.


No wonder he called the file "Insurance policy." He was aware of the danger of the Clintons and wanted to make sure what happened to anyone that crossed them did not happen to him.


........all 30,000 of the "missing" Hillary emails are on Weiner's laptop, plus hundreds of thousands more that were deliberately ditched and we never knew existed in the first place, evidencing not only lying about the content of the 30,000 emails but the existence of hundreds of thousands more?

What if among the authenticated email traffic is John Podesta saying, just days before the Clinton campaign was compelled to produce said material they they had to "dump those emails", apparently proving intent to obstruct justice?

What if all of the emails that came from big public cloud providers are provably, to a near-forensic standard, to be exactly as WikiLeaks has presented them and could not have been tampered with because those providers digitally sign every email that comes from them and those signatures all validate back against those cloud providers, and those emails are thus in fact already known to be authentic?

s63 d minor  s62 G major

Sometimes you see in Mozart he will extend a theme from four measures to five  of or some odd number. That is not teh same a a minuet where he will go to six measures. The fact is when Mozart does this it makes sense. So I have some defense for doing the same thing in s62.

But the Torah is not about spiritual experience.

The so called ‘New Age’ movement has been around for a long time now. (To be accurate, since the Garden of Eden). I did not realize the extent. 

 I myself was drawn to mystic goings-on of various sorts.

As I began to learn Gemara [Talmud], I was astonished by how much had changed during my years in the wilderness. 

 I have seen 'new age beliefs' and 'spirituality' from the inside. 

 They believe that those seeking ‘spirituality’ at Eastern Religion psychic fairs are going to the wrong place and should be coming to Torah for spiritual experience.

But the Torah is not about spiritual experience.

The Occult just got to be too much a part of how Torah i presented. [It might be the best idea to simply avoid that aspect for it seems to lead people almost automatically into the Sitra Achra Dark Side.]


[With no offence intended towards the Ari himself, still I think the whole mystic trip is a bad LSD trip.] My concern is with intention to get in contact with the spiritual realm comes evil spirits that trick and deceive and give powers from the Dark Side.


The trouble seems to be השחתת המידות destruction of good character traits when one gets involved. If good character was not an essential part of Torah then this would not matter. But it is. You can see this in the Sefer HaChinuch which brings in easy to understand form all of the 613 commandments of the Torah and good character counts for a lot of them. For example there are two separate commandments about אונאת ממון and אונאת דברים. Not to defraud someone in money and another one not to hurt another person by means of words.

I think it is best to allow the pseudo Torah mystic stuff fall off into oblivion. [You could possibly go back to the Zohar itself to find the beginnings of the problem.]

In the Guide, the Rambam has an approach in which reason and revelation interact and inform each other and modify each other.

My approach is based on Maimonides (Rambam). That is the rules of the Torah are meant to be obeyed-literally. However, in the Guide (מורה נבוכים) (Guide for the Perplexed), the Rambam has an approach in which reason and revelation interact and inform each other and modify each other. 

There was also an approach developed by Saadia Geon that when the literal meaning is impossible (according to Reason) then we must understand it as an allegory.   

The Maimonides approach was of a first level of Natural Law, and then a higher level of Law that can only be known by revelation.


Reform Judaism I think was too much influenced by the Reformation in which the laws of the Torah were considered superfluous. Or perhaps Reform just decided the halacha is like R. Shimon Ben Yochai that we go by the reason for each law.  This come up in Bava Metzia at the end of ch 9 and in Yevamot. And though people think we do not poskin by R. Shimon still there is a contradiction in the Rambam concerning this. And there is a long Mishna Lamelech which I think tries to answer this problem.     

The amount of time and effort that have gone into my two little booklets on Bava Metzia and on Shas surprises me. I would not have thought that it would take the amount of time that it did. And even if I had spent that time, but not have had my learning partner David Bronson, I am certain nothing would have been written.
The whole project started around ten years ago which is when I started learning with David. I had been out of Gemara learning in depth for some period of time so when I sat down with him and started learning again it surprised me greatly the depth of his questions and answers. It reminded me of my first yeshiva Shar Yashuv when I was learning Ketuboth  and heard amazing depth from Naphtali Yeger.

This gave me an insight into Gemara learning and also has a side benefit that I realize how long and how much effort is needed to approach Physics and Math also.

People get the idea in school that if they do not get something right away that they are not fit for it. I realize now that that is wrong Some subjects simply take a long time and lots of effort.

It took a lot of trials also. You have to get through a lot to be able to see the truth and  value of the Torah.

Reb Nachman and Rav Shick's pamphlets

You find at the beginning of Rav Shick's pamphlets that they are "based on Reb Nachman's teachings and they are interspersed with statements from the Old Testament and the Sages."  What is that supposed to mean is a mystery to me.

More than that. The whole religious world holds all kinds of practices that are supposedly based on Torah.

IF YOU CHALLENGE THEM TO PROVIDE SUPPORT they say "it's totally from the Torah! It's one hundred percent from the Torah!". This avoids the real problem, which is that the teaching is merely BASED ON THE TORAH, and not actually Torah.

What's the difference, I hear you ask. Well, have you ever watched a movie that is "based on the novel by...." whoever. And if you have read the novel, you find to your disappointment that the movie that is BASED upon it misses out a lot that is stated, and implies a whole lot more that isn't in the book. It's drawn from the book, it's based on it, but it's NOT the book!

[I have a high opinion of Rav Shick in terms of sincerity. And as an approach to Reb Nachman, it is the only sane one out there. Still because of my respect for him I feel the right to critique him. I would not bother with him otherwise.] 

The trouble seems to be השחתת המידות destruction of good character traits when one gets involved.

the Law of Moses.

Socialism and Communism really are not from the Law of Moses. Not the Oral or Written Law. Someone  mentioned that when people lose their faith (God forbid) then they become socialists. That explanation made a lot of sense to me.  The right to private ownership is much embedded in the Law of Moses.

[Though I was raised as a Reform Jew, clearly there were aspect of Reform that my parents did not hold with like the social justice bit. One way to understand Reform is that Natural Law is a part of Torah.  But Natural Law is  a bit ambiguous --to say the least. When Kant and Hegel got on the scene things became I think even more obscure. I think it was natural to get blown away by Hegel and that is what I think cause a lot of people to go for Socialism. Hegel still is formidable.] In any case I think I would have naturally gravitated towards socialism if not for seeing that the Torah has a different point of view. 


My own view is that Hegel should really not be the focus of attention. Rather when it gets to be time to learn the subject of Metaphysics the best would be Aristotle Plato and Kant. But only after finishing Shas with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha, and Maharam from Lublin.

Oral and Written Law, Physics, and Metaphysics.

In math we have necessary and sufficient conditions for certain solutions to apply for some differential equation.  In a parallel vein I have the idea that the approach of Maimonides  is necessary and sufficient. That is the Oral and Written Law, Physics, and Metaphysics. [These last two are  necessary because the Rambam considers them to be what the Sages of the Talmud called מעשה בראשית ומעשה מרכבה the Work of Creation and the Work of the Divine Chariot that are both refereed to in the first mishna in the second chapter of tractate Hagiga. The Rambam is not thinking all secular knowledge is a good thing Rather he has a specific reason for emphasis these last two subjects.

His approach to this Physics and Metaphysics is scattered over many places in the Mishne Torah and the Guide and also in the commentary on the Mishna. The basic idea is that while most people think the Gemara is referring to kabalah the Rambam clearly disagrees. Saadia Geon wrote a commentary on Sefer Yetzira and the Rambam was familiar with everything that Saadia Geon wrote. Still niether him nor Saadia Geon thought the Kabalah was the Work of Creation and the Work of the Divine Chariot.

The problem I have is that the religious world seems to me to be "off the derech (path)." The fanatic religious people from Israel seem to me to be clinically insane. But even the more down to earth rational approach of New York seems a bit off. And I can not figure out what the problem is.  At best I have a workable solution for myself. I try to stick with this basic approach of the Rambam which was clearly also the approach of my parents. But in what way the religious world has gone wrong seems to me to be a mystery.

Some people seem to believe the Rambam gives a blank check to all secular disciples.-even those that are obviously pseudo science. Other think the only added things outside of the Oral and written Law are Kabalah. The Rambam clearly disagreed with both of these opinions.

[Incidentally I met a fellow  who had the entire Mishne Torah of the Rambam as one book. I do not remember if it was the Yemenite version of Rav Kapach. He also had with him the letters of the son of the Rambam  print by the Rav Kook Institute, However at this point in my learning the Oral Law I would prefer to learn the Gemara straight with Rashi Tosphot and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.]

Jewish religious teachers desire control.

Religious teachers desire control.

Their statements are subtle but the reality is to get you to accept their interpretation as a continual revelation from Hashem {God}  and the need for you to come under their control. The religious teachers present themselves as gurus to Jewish people. To people that are supposed by them, unable to know the truth and understand the times by the Law of Moses, but in need of intense and constant clarification by the religious  leadership of what God is saying to us by what He didn't say. 


The trouble is that people are afraid of calling these religious groups by their proper name: cults.


Besides that above mentioned thought I had a few more thing I wanted to say today that are kind of relevant. One is that cults vary by measures. So for example Litvak yeshivas might seems to exercise  some measure of control but that does not make them a cult but rather human institutions that do their best to teach and keep the Written and Oral Law of Moses. That is legitimate. In my first yeshiva Shar Yashuv there were even more aspects of control, but it was not a cult but rather an effective institution designed and built to further the learning and keeping of the Torah. I have to say I think the level of learning was at least as great as the Mir Yeshiva in NY.

The other thing I wanted to add is that sometimes even a rel cult can be a lot better than other cults. It is all a matter of perspective. So if someone is involved in some Buddhist group that does not bother me when I realize there are many much worse things.  

 So I am trying to defend the idea that the Torah was given by God to be necessary and sufficient. No need for frauds. No need for magic "sugulot." No need for Occult teachings.Using mitzvot as "segulot" magic means of getting God to do our will is just as much Occult as witchcraft.

To claim a revelation or a miracle represents an attempt, essentially, to add new content to the Torah.

    Many today would affirm a stern rebuke to kabalistic pretenders: "The pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of  Ruach Hakodesh [Divine Spirit] is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing." 
 What is the reason ? Simply because, in history, miracles have come to signify the additional revelation of qualitatively new  doctrines, principally, in Torah. To claim a revelation or a miracle represents an attempt, essentially, to add new content to the Torah.
    The modern conflict over the cessation of miraculous gifts has antecedents as old as the fairly sophisticated arguments of Talmud. But the cessationist doctrine found its classic expression in these ways 1) The essential role of the miraculous is  to accredit normative Torah doctrine and its bearers. 2) While God may providentially act in unusual, even striking ways, true miracles are limited to epochs of special divine revelation, i.e., those within the Torah and prophets  period. 3) Miracles are judged by the doctrines they purport to accredit: if the doctrines are false, or alter authentic Torah doctrines, their accompanying miracles are necessarily counterfeit.


The role of miracles in the religious Jewish world is universality in order to add doctrines to Torah and to promote some kind of idol worship of some religious mad man.  The trouble is not the Sitra Achra--miracles from the Dark Side but rather miracles from the Intermediate Zone which is a mixture of good and evil.The fact that it has good in it makes it hard to discern.

I do not want to seem too dogmatic about the basic world view  of Torah. Rather it is when the world view of Torah is replaced by a completely foreign ideology of worship of people and then they call that "Torah," then I get riled up. In any case, I am happy to express these ideas here to give clarity to why the Gra signed the excommunication חרם. I mentioned this before but here I gave a little bit of insight I hope to why he signed it.

(Isaac Luria)

While I have great respect for Rabainu the Arizal (Isaac Luria) , still his path and teachings definitely lead into idolatry and the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] by means of the slippery slope. How many people have you seen that became more compassionate and decent people because of learning the Ari?

The trouble is not that it is liable to misuse and misrepresentation. Rather that it almost automatically falls into misuse and delusions.


The truth be told I have no idea how mysticism got to be considered a legitimate part of Torah. The fruits seems to be uniformly bad. What is wrong with just learning and keeping the Law of Moses straight and simple? [That is the written Law of Moses plus its Oral Commentary, the two Talmuds Bavli and Yerushalmi.]


The trouble is that there is a difference between Torah and mysticism. Torah is not about mystic experience. The whole inner essence of what it means to learn and keep the Torah is  opposite of mystic experience. And yet the mystic approach is the default position of the religious world.
[That is either to gain mystic experience; or to believe in some religious crazy person;s ecstatic experience and revelations. That nut case's delusions then become so important they take the place of authentic Torah. They become more authoritative that the holy Torah]



I saw plenty of "kabalists" and teachers but never the slightest bit of truth or even simple human decency in any of them. With no offence intended towards the Ari himself, I think it is best to avoid.

When Bava Sali came from Morocco to visit Jerusalem [cira 1970] and accepted the people for blessing and advice he gave instructions to not let any "kabalist enter."

The trouble is today all teachers along supposedly along the lines of the Ari are deceivers and frauds and know little if anything about the holy Torah or even the Ari's system. It is all part of the New Age Movement.


The basic ideas of the kabalah are not all that original. The "sparks of holiness" idea is from the Gnostics. The "Tzitzum" is from the pre Soctratics. The ten sepherot from Ptolemy, etc. That does not invalidate it, but it certainly to me makes it a lot less interesting.

And why people appeal to its authority? That is in order to get people to worship their mini gods, religious people that they follow. The do this by pretending to some secret knowledge.


 The answer to this is from the Gemara circa Sanhedrin 65. "What is the difference between him and us?" [The Gemara there brings an argument. If a  person says "serve me" he obviously gets the death penalty for being a seducer to do idolatry. The question is if someone says "yes." One opinion is the person that said "yes" was just making fun of him because "What is the difference between him and us?" The other opinion is the one who said "yes" does get the death penalty. ]

The trouble is nowadays there are too many false religious leaders that have been absorbed into the intermediate zone. The kelipa that is a mixture of good and evil.

The trouble seems to be השחתת המידות destruction of good character traits when one gets involved.


 The Zohar itself was accepted by sincere people. Still it is not from R.Shimon Ben Yochai as אם כל דא is a medieval expression invented by the Ibn Tibon family and it appears all the time in the Zohar.


Some suggest it was written by גילוי נשמת ר' שמעון. That does not seem much better because of the problem of דורש אל המתים. In any case the fact that sincere people were fooled does not mean it is legitimate.

People do have  a world view whether they like it  or not. See the CPR of Kant. Kant's ideas can be further expanded by means of Howard Bloom. That is besides the eye glasses that we must see the world by [space an time and the categories,] there are world views that we adopt. Bloom uses the idea of the meme. That is a constellations of beliefs around a central belief. This does not have to be conscious. The more pervasive and powerful the beliefs are the more one is unaware that he has them. They seem simply obvious.


You  could use this idea to provide an argument for learning Musar [Mediaeval Ethics.] That is to learn the classic books of the middle ages חובות לבבות אורחות צדיקים שערי תשובה along with the writings of the Gra, and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. That is in order to gain a Torah perspective.

Many people have been greatly impressed by  cults. Designed to be an introduction to the Torah through talks, video presentations, small-group discussions and a special weekend-away, lots of synagogues are now employing cult approaches  as part of their outreach.

Cults have been a run-away-success, and their fame has spread far over the whole world,

  Cults have been adapted so as to be accessible to young people, and have also proved versatile enough to be used in prisons, schools and places of work.

Are the popular cults leading people astray?

Synagogues in  cities and rural areas have found cult teaching sufficiently flexible for their needs. Future plans for expansion suggests that cult teaching is very much here to stay. What is more, many people claim to have been helped through going to cults  and believe they has bought them an understanding of God and how to respond to Him. Accounts of wonderful things that have happened to individuals abound; In the light of all this, surely there cannot be anything wrong with it?

With so many in today's society gripped by materialism and atheism, can cults be anything other than  good things? As young people become hopelessly enmeshed in a godless culture, should we not applaud the efforts of cults and help make them a success?

We wished that the answers to these questions could be an emphatic Yes. But closer examination of cults prevents such a clean bill of health being given. Why this concern? There are vital reasons I would like to bring to your attention.

1. The God of cults is not the God of the Abraham Isaac and Jacob. 

Cults quote from the Torah a lot. But for all this, they do not present us with the God who has revealed Himself in the Torah. There is much we could say about the God of the Torah. He is the Creator of the universe and the one who upholds it and maintains it. He is a great King and Sovereign over all He has made. We are challenged to ponder:

" To whom then will you liken me. Or to whom shall I be equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of his might and the strength of his power; Not one is missing." (Isaiah 40:25-26)



Now of course much more could be said. But you will have to search hard and long in cults to find a God that resembles the One just described. Nothing about Him as Creator, nothing about Him as a great King. He is assumed to be everything.


5. The Ruach Hakodesh (unholy spirit) of cults is not the Ruach Hakodesh  (holy spirit) of the Torah.

It is because cult's unholy spirit is the agent for giving to people an 'experience'.

The main focus for this is the cults People doing cults are told to expect all manner of things might happen to them.



This is all very interesting but it has nothing to do with the Torah.  Nowhere are any phenomena such as these attributed to the spirit of God. Cult's unholy spirit appears to work in ways that lie outside the confines of Torah. Whoever it is that people are 'introduced' to at the cults, it is not the Holy Torah.



For all their efforts, cults do not help us to know God. They do not describe the true and living God for us. They does not diagnose man's condition accurately enough. They substitutes an un-Torah view of God. To cap it all, the whole issue of Torah is grievously misunderstood.


The needs of our souls for the living waters of the Law of Moses and life-saving truth are far too precious and important to be ought down to this level. WE need the unvarnished truth of the  Law of Moses.


To leave someone believing they are in Torah when they are not is an awful prospect. Yet that is what we are risking using defective tools such as cults, 'having a form of rituals but denying  Torah  We must do better. Failure is too high a price to pay.

s60 E Flat Major  s60 in midi   s60 in nwc format

“social justice.”

An Italian priest, Luigi Taparelli D'Azeglio,  wrote a book about the need for recovering the ancient virtue of what had been called “general justice” in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, but in a new contemporary form. [ See Luigi Taparelli D'Azeglio, S.J., Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Based on Fact (1840-1843).] He gave it the term “social justice.” The term was given prominence by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati in La Costitutione Secondo la Giustizia Sociale in 1848. (Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice, p. 176. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Lecture/Social-Justice-Not-What-You-Think-It-Is#_ftn7#_ftn7)


First: many promoters have brought in the Torah to validate this practice. They claim Torah is teaching socialism. Second: The United states governmental system, is not perfect, it was based on some Torah principles and the overarching theme was to give freedom, self - governance to individuals, not government control over the minute aspects of our lives, especially on our finances. This was different than every other government existing at the time.

One of the main framers of our constitution stated: “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816).


Social Justice = Theft via the government. 

Though my family went to Temple Israel in Hollywood [which is a great place], still when the message about social justice was announced there my mother and father were cold in their reaction. They did not think that the Torah was about social justice but rather about real justice. "Thou shalt not steal,"  is an important principle even if the theft is done by means of government.

I should mention that in the Torah there is מעשר עני the tenth of the crops that go to poor people on the 3rd and 6th year of the Shemita cycle plus the fact that on the Shemita anyone can come into one's field and gather what grows by itself. 

This however is not a blank check for the government to take what it wants and redistribute it to those that vote for it.

the Law of Moses [that is the written Law and its Oral commentary in the Talmud] is necessary and sufficient.

My basic feeling about the Law of Moses [that is the written Law and its Oral commentary in the Talmud] is necessary and sufficient.
That is it is needed and nothing more is needed. 

That is all the cults that come along and say the Law of Moses is needed but there is this new thing that is also needed are all wrong. Belief in the Law of Moses [that is the Written and Oral Law] means you believe nothing else is needed. 

But that does not means it can't be misused by unscrupulous people. And that does not mean that it is a cure all for all human problems.

That does not mean the Torah is for creating a political state.

I think a lot of people went along with the Enlightenment from motives of good. There is some support for the types of governments that sprouted up as a result of Enlightenment principles. While it is becoming more obvious that those principles do not work well, that is no reason to assume everyone that went along with them were bad hearted.

The progress made in the USA and Europe when Enlightenment kinds of laws and constitutions were adopted does not seem trivial.

Socialism mainly uses Hegel for support. Other approaches use John Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Goethe, Hume, Berkeley etc and etc.. That is all the thinkers. Not some. That is to say Throne and Altar approach might be  best but it had the weight of the thinkers and the weight of the evidence against it.
 But I am not sure of what would be better than the Constitution of the USA. It seems to me if not for blacks it would work perfectly well.

Torah and Ruach HaKodesh. Unbelief in cults is a sign of faith in Torah ! [Ruach HoKodesh usually refers to some kind of Divine Spirit people assign to what they think are tzadikim. Usually this is by mistake and is simply a consciousness trap.]

Torah and Ruach HaKodesh

The question is HOW we test things. 

Supporters of a cult frequently make two pleas to people who wish to assess
or criticize it. FIRST, we are urged to approach it with an open mind. We are told to attend
meetings for ourselves - and not critically. SECOND, we are urged to judge the phenomenon by its fruits - to look at the long-term results, not the immediate manifestations. 

See for Yourself ...
However, it is far from an invariable Torah principle EITHER that we should assess claims
to God's activity personally and uncritically, OR that we must look at the fruits to make an
assessment. 
Unbelief in cults
is a sign of faith in Torah!
 
Look at the Fruits ...
Similarly the challenge to assess a cult by its fruits can be met. We need to
take seriously Torah warning about the plausibility of false prophets.

But again, as one writer has already observed, it is difficult to assess a movement by its fruits
when the fruit is still not ripe. 

 We must recognize from history that a movement may have a powerful - even beneficial
- impact in the short term and yet be disastrous in the long term because of its fundamental
Torah weaknesses.
 
A Question of System 
How then can we `test' any cult? If we cannot trust personal experience or short
term gains, what can we trust? The answer is basically a matter of system.
 
Unfortunately, system has not been a particularly strong feature of the
Jewish Anglo-American scene for some time. There is hesitancy about religious
systems which seem to claim too much. But there is an important
distinction between a systematic belief  that aims at a SYSTEM, and one that more modestly
aims at being SYSTEMATIC.


We need to recognize that systematic belief is a Torah concept. 


But we also need to recognize WHAT IS the system contained in the Torah. The
best key to this is, I would argue, the Torah approach. The particular feature of
this approach is that it recognizes and identifies in the Torah  CONTINUITY. There is the continuity of ONE great theme, from start to finish and there is
the DEVELOPMENT of that theme through Torah.
 
Only a systematic Torah approach allows us to give coherence to our experience and expectation of
God. And more specifically, only a system allows us to recognize that whilst God
CAN do anything he DOESN'T do everything. 

A Necessary Limitation
Those who reject the cults are often accused of limiting the actions of God.




GOD'S activity IS limited - by God himself - but it is limited in a way which is not simply
arbitrary but consistent with the overall framework of the Torah. Understanding that framework
will enable us to understand the limits of God's activity - not so that WE may limit it, but so that
we may limit what is CLAIMED for it. Thus when we test the cults, which makes
particularly claims about the activity of God , we need
to ask whether it is consistent with the TOTAL picture the Torah presents, particularly in relation to the life of the believer. 


 
System 



The context here is the SUFFICIENCY of the Oral and Written Law of Moses. 



And this is a NECESSARY fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, 

Torah is the NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT precondition for us to receive the
 the blessing promised to Abraham. Positively, this
means the Spirit is certainly received by hearing the Torah with faith. Negatively, it means the
Holy Spirit is only received through hearing the Torah with faith.
 








Questions come to most people in relation to suffering. At the start of our  lives we are
generally ignorant of the fact that suffering can be  a blessing. See the חובות לבבות  It has to be explained from Torah. It is usually only when this is done that we begin to realize
suffering is indeed a  blessing which we can incorporate into our experience. 


 If nothing else, one must admit that cults are packaged impressively for maximum sales. Popularity does not mean that something is true. If it did, Santa Claus would be real. Popularity does not automatically equal truth, nor can it create truth."

war against boys

Things were difficult in the USA as far as I could tell in the 1990's. That is when the war against boys started in earnest. . A kind of collective insanity seemed to be taking over women's minds. Perhaps it is biological in original as Sapolsky would probably claim.  https://youtu.be/m3x3TMdkGdQ.


That is he would claim that just like Toxoplasmosis controls the mind of rats so there might be many other parasitic organism that also get into people and control their behavior. 

S58 F Minor  s59 C Minor   [s58 midi] [s58 nwc]  s59 midi  [s59 in nwc format]

Bava Metzia ch.6

Bava Metzia ch.6 and also in Shavuot pages 43 and 44.
We have a lender that got a pledge. Shmuel says if he loses the pledge, he loses the whole loan. R. Eliezer said he takes an oath that the pledge was lost by accident, and collects his loan. R. Akiva says he loses the amount the pledge is worth. The Gemara in two places asked, "This looks like they disagree?" The Gemara answered, No. One case is when he explained, and one case is when he did not. Rashi said the Gemara means Shmuel is when no one said anything, and the argument between RE and RA is when someone did explain. In Bava Metzia the Gemara tries to get the mishna there to be like both RE and RA and can not do it. The Mishna there says the lender is a paid guard concerning the pledge.

Rabbanu Chananel says the argument between RE and RA is when no one made any conditions..

I want to say this:
כל תנאי שבממון קיים. Every condition in money is valid. So when a guard makes a condition not to be obligated, that is valid. .
So it looks like one can bring a proof to Rabbainu Chananel.

Therefore when no one said anything that is a regular loan and the lender is like a paid guard and loses the amount of the loan. But when the lender made a condition then his level of obligation goes down. Thus there is a simple way to get the Mishna in Bava  Metzia to be like Re and RA. Just say it is talking about when no one said anything and the lender would be like a regular paid guard. But if he said something, then the level of obligation goes down. So if Rashi would be right, then why did not Gemara not use this simple way of getting that Mishna to be like RE and RA --that is a case when no one said anything, and all would then be in agreement like Shmuel that he is a paid guard?

[With no Gemara in front of me I am just making a guess. I think this is what Tosphot meant to ask though the way it was written down came out that he was asking on Rabbanu Chananel as far as I recall. And the Maharsha asked on this question of Tosphot. So based on the little bit that I can recall, I am trying to explain what I think Tophot must have been asking.]