New Left

My basic feeling is to notice the connections between the New Left and the Old Left of 1848. That is the militant approach to impose the dictatorship of the low class on all others. Also I recall that I would also have been a Leftist if not for learning the Old Testament along with the commentary called the Oral Law. In the Oral Law a great deal of Leftist ideas are opposed. For example the emphasis on good traits, working on improving one's own faults instead of the faults of others, and PRIVATE PROPERTY. The emphasis ought to be on personal transformation, not transforming "society." When one improves himself, then everyone around him also improves.

This did not come all at once though. Mainly it was diffused until I started taking Musar more seriously. Then at that time I started to see the whole thing about good traits {midot tovot) and fear of God as being the things that Torah requires above everything else.

(What makes sense to me to learn in terms of politics is L. T. Hobhouse in his Metaphysical Theory of the State. And I might mention that English History in itself gives a great background to understanding the Constitution of the USA.
L. T. Hobhouse in his Metaphysical Theory of the State is important because he brings a great deal of common sense to the issues.)

Bryan Caplan goes into the source of the problem in Hume

Bryan Caplan goes into the source of the problem in Hume in that Hume thinks reason does nothing but detect contradictions. He asserts this over and over again as if it is simple, yet without ever giving any kind of argument for it. It is as if he has packed the jury against reason without giving it a chance to defend itself. (To me it seems obvious that Hume got this idea from his learning of Geometry and saw there that one way reason  functions is to detect contractions.) But as Kant noted reason does more. But how? With Hegel it is by a dialectical process. With Fries it is by non intuitive immediate knowledge [non sensed and not through anything else].

Self defense and Dr Huemer

Dr. Huemer has a nice essay on self defense where he brings new points. Mainly that people have the right to defend themselves, and the police have no obligation to defend anyone as upheld in USA courts consistently.

Dr Kelley Ross also has an essay about this.

Reb Israel Salanter -the Musar movement

In the book of one of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter, Isaac Blazer, is brought the idea that there are two levels of fear of God. Fear of punishment and awe. And he brings that the lower fear is to bring to the higher fear which then leads to attachment with God.
In the prophets of old, it is clear that this attachment sometimes brought with it some kind of new revelation as with Moses who came to the highest level of attachment with God at Mount Sinai -but he did not stay there, but then brought the Torah to Israel.

The Musar movement [of Reb Israel Salanter] itself  in itself is a great idea. To get people to learn and try to keep the basic books of Ethics from the Middle Ages that encapsulated the basic lessons of how to live according to the Law of Moses.
The trouble is that it got mixed up with institutions. Real faith is personal. Torah was not meant to be a business.

One of the reasons for the divide of faith and state in the USA Constitution was the abuses of clergy in England of the Anglican Establishment. This same dynamic you can see today when people use Torah for money.

In any case, Musar itself is divided, into Musar of the disciples of Reb Israel, Musar based on esoteric literature [post Middle Ages], Musar of the Middle Ages. 
[In any case, the basic emphasis is on good traits and fear of God and pointing out that both are essential aspects of Torah.]

There is a difference of opinion about secular learning. All later Musar condemn it. Musar of the Middle Ages recommends parts of it--not all. The Rambam/Maimonides recommends Physics and Metaphysics as leading to fear and love of God.] [This same opinion you can see in the Obligations of the Heart and other Musar books of the Middle Ages that also go along with this idea. But even back then there were plenty of opposite opinions (like the Ramban/Nahmanides). But even the Nahmanides was a doctor. It seems he was against Aristotle but not learning a secular discipline for the sake of making an honest living.]

Learning Musar did in fact help orient me towards the importance of good traits and also to come to Israel. In fact, the whole mind set [paradigm-and world view] has stayed with me even after times when I have not been learning Musar.

second amendment

Gun rights and natural law

There is a lot of material on natural law. Though the start of it being stated explicitly began with Saadia Gaon.  Still the basic idea in the Constitution itself seems clear from two angles. One is the grammar of the second amendment. In grammar, the prefatory clause [being that] is subordinate to the main clause [therefore]. Second of all, the 9th amendment makes it clear that there are natural rights that the Constitution does not cover, and it limits the power of government to infringe on those rights. Though not tied openly to the second amendment, the implication is clear that natural law and natural rights are the underlying structure.

Gun rights in England were made clear by the Bill of Rights in 1689: Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law. But the USA Constitution, while depending  a lot on England for the basic ideas, is still different in particulars. 

[The whole thing began with King Alfred, but the more modern problem was with King James the Second who used the militia to collect taxes. James the Second was removed peacefully and thus came the Bill of Rights of 1689.]


In any case, I just can not see this working in Ukraine. The trouble is that different kinds of people make this whole thing improbable. See Sapolsky about DNA [at Stanford University]. 

There is a kind of similarity in witch trials in Salem and accusations of sexual harassment in the USA. Just the fact of being accused is the same as being convicted.  One can perhaps trace this to the Puritan roots of the USA. But to me it seems to be already mentioned in the Gemara itself: "Lashon hara [slander], if it does not convince completely, at least it does so by half." And this dynamic seems to be a regular human trait --nothing to do with Puritans. Just accuse someone you do not like of some dastardly, wicked deed, and you already get at least half of what you want. There is no loss.  You get everything or half. But you do not lose anything--[at least at first]. Eventually, the ball  bounces back.

[The trouble of tracing this to the Puritans is that you find it enough in England and on the Continent to suggest it was more wide spread.] 

The problem of Reb Nahman is that he has advice and ideas that are amazingly insightful, and yet the observation of many is that people that get involve in Breslov lose the desire to learn Torah, and often seem to go off on awkward tangents.
You can try to answer this question in different ways, by ignoring it, or denying the reality of the situation.
It is like the Mind-Body problem that seems to defy solution.

The great Litvak roshei yeshiva seemed to have dealt with this problem in a uniform way. They always refused the option of considering Reb Nahman anything but a great tzadik. Yet as for the issues that I have raised, they said, "It is high things." That is: too high for them to deal with. It was thought to be outside their ares of expertise. That is what I myself heard from Reb Shmuel Berenbaum of the Mir in NY, and also Rav Montag in Netivot in Israel and also Rav Issahar Meir the friend of Bava Sali and rosh yeshiva of the Yehivat HaNegev and that whole group of yeshivas that were started by Rav Issahar Meir.

In general the way it became clear to me that Lithuanian roshei yeshiva are strongly pro-Reb Nahman was that I would usually approach them trying hard to get some kind of negative comment about Reb Nahman. Any slight criticism, anything at all. But no matter how hard I tried I could never get any of them to utter the slightest negative comment about Reb Nahman.

U-86 B Flat Major I have no ear phones and so I do not really know how this sounds. Also I use a new app Zamzar.com which coverts midi to mp3 in  in different ways than the converter from google.
So if this sounds OK to you, I am pleased.

Reb Moshe and Reb Aaron Kotler were both of the opinion that דינא דמלכותא דינא "the law of the state is the law"

In the USA there are insane people that hate you if you say one nice word about Israel. Better to avoid the subject. As for the actual subject of the army [IDF]  the idea is if people enjoy a certain benefit from the State -[for example their lives which they would lose if the Arabs would attack]-they ought to contribute.
When I was at the Mir in NY and making preparations to make alyia [go to Israel] I was made aware of this and all the more so in Israel itself. The whole anti Israel thing is really a kind of antisemitism.
The whole anti Israel thing seems  like a mistake. But still I swallowed the view because that s what I thought I was supposed to think. It was only very much later that I saw Reb Moshe and Reb Aaron Kotler were both of the opinion that דינא דמלכותא דינא "the law of the state is the law" that I began to open my eyes.  [The view of Reb Aaron I saw in the introduction to a sort of Musar book that he wrote. The view of Reb Moshe I forget where I saw it.]

Their view of course is not as positive as others that consider Israel the fulfillment on ancient prophecy. But one way or the other, in terms of Torah, serving in the IDF is a good deed and also an obligation.

forms of totalitarian systems

Karl Popper hated all forms of totalitarian systems. That is great. But his blaming Hegel seems misplaced. The reason he blamed Hegel is fairly clear that he was depending on the Scribner’s Hegel Selections [and Gans’s additions]. But furthermore in fact the communists made a very big deal out of Hegel even though they specifically repudiated him.  But still they found in his writing someone that they felt they needed to fight and repudiate.
Still what is sad about this is that Hegel does seem to have a lot of good ideas.
If you hate socialism-which is a proper approach as we learned from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge and more recently Venezuela, still it makes little sense to blame Hegel. Why not blame Socialism itself?

In an case, philosophy and politics seem to be separate. Hegel and Plato both seem to have been trying to get too much out of their ideas.  It seems that when philosophers step into politics they misstep and overstep. I think in terms of politics the founding fathers of the USA saw a lot further than any philosophers.


There is a moral aspect to politics. To advocate socialism has an aspect to it that is not moral. That is even if you do not do it yourself, but if you recommend to others to deprive people of their property, that is like אבק גזילה [the dust of theft.] If you vote for such a thing that also has a aspect to it of stealing other people's property.  Even though you do not do it yourself, but to use you vote to empower the government to steal also is אבק גזילה the dust of theft. [We find this concept in the Talmud. Some things are not slander but אבק לשון הרע the dust of slander, and some things are not forbidden relations but אבק עריות the dust of forbidden relations.]

Dr Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries School] and Michael Huemer do not think much of Hegel. And I am not one to stand between giants. But to me it looks like Hegel, the Kant Friesian School and also Michael Huemer have good points. Just for one example:Michael Huemer noted that Hume's limitation of what we can know a priori is not true. Hume just assumes that all that can be known without observation is what can be derived from definitions. Hume states this over and over again without any proof or argument. And there is no reason to belive it is true. But still that does not invalidate kant of Hegel. since there is still a different kind of thinking that goes into a priori knowledge than what you can know from induction.

I might add that for some reason or other the only people that seem to pay attension to the Kant Fries School are in Poland [and maybe some in Germany]. I get the impression that for most people that are interested in Kant go with the Neo Kant School of Marburg and Herman Cohen. However, to me it seems to Friesian school is better.

low class people

Hanging out with low class people [in terms of "Midot" that is traits like honesty, compassion etc] tend to damage one's own traits. I have definitely not been careful about this myself partly as  result of naivety, and partly because in the USA it is considered that all people are equal. So I did really not get an idea of dividing people by traits.
But for myself, now I can see in retrospect that it should have been easy to identify groups that I could have avoided by simply being aware of the difference between groups that excel in traits and those that do not. The difference is obvious if you look for it.

That is to say I see "midot tovot" [That is what is called "being a mensch"] as being the main key to Gan Eden. Another way to look at this is simply to fulfill the Ten Commandments.
However the Rambam did add to this in הלכות תשובה that one's portion in the next world also depends on his wisdom.

It is easy to lose one's portion in the next world. The Musar movement of Reb Israel Salanter.

Rav Isaac Blazer -the original disciple of Reb Israel Salanter-makes a point in his book אור ישראל the Light of Israel that making it to Gan Eden is harder than most people realize. That is even with one's good deeds, it is easy to lose one's portion in the next world.
While it seems that there are are no guarantees, his implication is that by learning Musar (note 1) in order to come to have good traits and fear of God can go a long way to helping.
It is my impression that what most people think is important in this world really does not matter much. But also what people think will guarantee them a good place in the next world, probably does not work as well as they imagine.   [Even the promise  of the Ran of Breslov to come to Uman and say the ten psalms, while it probably works to some degree, but not as much as people imagine. His promise was to try and help in the next world. He did not promise that he would succeed. In the long run I think Rav Isaac Blazer was correct, that everything depends on good traits and fear of God.
[However the Rambam did add one's "wisdom" in laws of repentance as was pointed out to me by someone in the Mir. That in fact goes along with something Reb Nahman also brings from the Rambam about שכל הנקנה acquired intellect as the last stage in potential intellect and intellect in action. This is a well known Rambam doctrine that Reb Nahman brings--without however mentioning the source.]

The Musar movement I ought to mention really concentrated on action not words. The idea was to learn Musar in order to do it. The movement itself was more or less absorbed into the Litvak yeshivas started by the disciple of the Gra Reb Haim from Voloshin. (note 2)


(note 1) Musar means medieval Ethics books like the Obligations of the Heart. But now the term has been widened to include the books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. It also now refers to post medieval books like the Paths of the Righteous מסילת ישרים. The main points of these books are to define one ethical obligations. The idea of learning Musar is that by learning these books every day one eventually changes for the better.

(note 2) Dr Huemer of the University of Colorado holds that liberalism is gaining traction because it is objective morality. And that people tend to start seeing moral principles more clearly over time. This might correspond to what the Rambam was saying about the laws of the Torah--that they have reasons and the reasons are known.  One of the reasons is "to bring to peace of the state." It is possible that methods to bring this about can become more clear over time.
On the other hand,  to be able to discern the difference between right and wrong depends on learning and doing the Law of Moses. Without that, we would have no moral sense. He ignores how the Bible shaped Western Civilization and especially the USA  and it is the astounding success of the USA which is the light on the hill that others see and want to copy that causes the values of the Bible to spread,

Different ways of learning.

 Different ways of learning.
One I have mentioned--say the words in order and go on until the end of the book and then review over again. [This I have been doing for recent years]
The other I found very helpful when I was learning Gemara with the  Soncino translation was to read through the Gemara and commentary of Rashi once through the whole paragraph. Then the English. And then the Gemara again with Rashi. [This I did for about seven years-my first years in NY Litvak yeshivas.]

The third method I found helpful in Tosphot and also Physics is  to take just one section  and read through it every day from beginning to end for forty days straight.

The path of Lithuanian yeshivas is to take note of the advantage of learning fast idea  for the afternoon and learning in depth in the morning.

Religious Zionism

The Land of Israel is a difficult subject in terms of "Aliya."(Returning to Israel by exiles.)  On one hand the Torah make it clear that it is important. In the end of פרשת היראה [Section that starts "And now Israel what does God require of you but to fear him? in Deuteronomy.] the Torah says do the commandments in order to come to the land of Israel. And once you are there, then do the commandments in order to stay there.
On the other hand there is a kind of odd sort of tension that exists in religious areas. Even if you are religious yourself, if it is not the specific brand in that area, people make you feel unwelcome.
Thus it seems best to avoid religious areas.

{There also does not seem to be any real difference between newly religious and people that were born religious. The whole mind set in itself is basically hostile. This seems to apply also in the USA. Rav Israel Salanter noticed this same problem which is exactly why he started the Musar Movement. However even with people that learn Musar, the problem still seems to linger.
It all come down to one word "balance." That is to find the proper balance between בין אדם לחבירו ובין אדם למקום obligations between man and his fellow man with obligations between man and God.

Litvak yeshivas like the Mir and Ponoviz do try to bridge the gap between the different sets obligation. But to me it seems Religious Zionism is the closest to success. They learn Torah and serve in the IDF and seem to take both sets of obligation seriously--not just in words.


The fourth day of the Omer.

It was pointed out to me by the blog writer  "A Mother in Israel" the importance of Hegel, and  assume she must have been thinking that Religious Zionism is largely based on Hegel's ideas.

[The Shas party did a lot to aggravate tensions between Ashkenazi and Sephardi.]

In any case I can see clearly that to get to Israel takes a lot more than a passport and a plane ticket and just to imagine that once you get there everything will be OK. One can be faced instantly with a Sephardi that tells you you are not even Jewish. The very same yeshivas that asked you for money, will be likely to throw you out if you attempt to sit in learn in one of them. Things can go wrong in all kinds of directions by people playing on your trust and naivety.  Therefore to get to Israel seems to me to depend on trust in God and prayer and hope that it will happen in the right time and in the right way.  A lot of trouble in fact is caused by the State supporting institutions that supposedly learn Torah. This just creates a class of people with nothing to do but think of ways of undermining the State of Israel.

[טוב לאדם שלא נברא. ועכשיו שנברא מה יעשה?יעסוק בתורה The Gemara says [from Hillel] it would be better for a person not to be born. But now that he has been born what to do? Learn Torah.]

 [טוב לאדם שלא נברא. ועכשיו שנברא מה יעשה?יעסוק בתורה The Gemara says [from Hillel] it would be better for a person not to be born. But now that he has been born what to do? Learn Torah.]
 At any rate, what I wanted to suggest today was something  have mentioned before--that the path of my parents was actually pretty close to the four point seder of the Rambam. The Written Law. The Oral Law. Physics. Metaphysics. But my parents would have added learning a vocation plus outdoor skills.
But in terms of the Oral Law, I think the best thing is the Avi Ezri which is a very underestimated book. For it is the kind of book that teaches one how to learn better than anything else I have seen. [Other than that for an introduction into the Law of Torah Shimshon Refael Hirsh's Horev is great.]  ]
The Physics thing I think the Rambam would agree today would be Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory. He would agree, I think, that Aristotle's Physics is not all that accurate.
Metaphysics I also think he would agree to include Kant, Hegel, and Thomas Reid. [It is hard to know what he would decide about the differences between Hegel  and the Kant-Fries School that started with Leonard Nelson. [The actual Guide of the Rambam itself I also think is important to learn.]

[Quantum Field Theory is complex and hard. Still it seems to me to be important because it is the way to combine Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. It seems inevitable. Therefore it must be considered as a part of Nature that one is obligated to learn according to the Rambam.

I also want to mention that Quantum Field theory and the Oral Law in depth are things that people say ought to wait until one is prepared. Yet as one gets older his ability to absorb new material lessens. And in Shar Yashuv the approach was to plunge immediate into learning in depth.]
I also believe that String Theory is important to learn. But that should wait until one has mastered QFT.] String Theory is similar to QFT in that QFT underwent difficulties and even the people that put in the basic idea were really to give up on it until Feynman and other post war physicists came along.] 

U-85 D Major  [No ear phones so I can not really hear how this sounds. So please forgive my mistakes. I can barely hear it through the speaker but not very well.] 

u-85 in midi format  u-85 nwc

political systems

In considering political systems few people acknowledge the different strokes for different folks applies. When there are  lot of people with no moral conscious, a system like the USA is really just not workable. That is why Russia had to have either the czar or the USSR. In areas around the Russia Empire like the Ukraine, there are simply too many people that are criminals and are proud of it  What works for White Anglo Saxon Protestants can not work in the Ukraine [or any of the republics]. They need a strong central government and a strong police presence.  The more money they put into their police force to make it more efficient the better.

I see libertarian writings as being kind of naive in terms of the Ukraine. They write as if  a John Locke democracy would work in Ukraine as well as in the USA.  You can tell they never spent any time in the Ukraine.

It is astounding how much time and effort is spent in the USA about law and economics. The reason is simple. Most people in the USA obey the law because that is the kind of people they are. This obviously can not work in the Ukraine. What gets people to obey the law in the former republics of the USSR is the police and Fear. And even today not just in Communist China, but also in the former republics of the USSR, the systems and infrastructure that work were all built by the communists. And the buildings also and everything else included.

[It is odd that people admit the role of DNA in everything except politics.]

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication can be defended on a few accounts. One is purely legal. A חרם excommunication has legal authority. That is it has no legal authority from the state. But from conscience. It is like many other moral principles that can not be enforced by the state, and yet are still obligations.
[Still I feel it is clear that Reb Nahman was not included and furthermore I also feel that he was a true tzadik with important insights and advice. You have to see the actual language of the excommunication to see why.]

Another way it can be defended is understanding that the Sitra Akra [Dark Side] ought to be isolated and separated and expelled. The Torah excludes idolatry rigorously. Monotheism is the basic belief system of the the Old Testament.
But a third way is this: Any system that contradicts itself, makes people insane. attempts to bring others into it web of lies, ought to be sent back to the underworld from which it emerged.

[However in this world, opposite are tied together. Pleasure and pain are opposites but they are tied in such a way that when you reach for one, they other comes along in inextricably. So are wisdom and foolishness. Genius and lunacy. Holiness and the Sitra Akra the Dark Side.
To separate one from the other is one's major task in this world.


[The major ideas of Reb Nahman that I think are important to mention are the Tikun Klali--ten psalms to say on the day one had accidentally spilled his seed in vain. They are 16, 32, 41,42, 59,77, 90, 105 137 150 . Also speaking with God in one's own language as one talks with his or her best friend.]

So a commitment to walk in the way of the Gra does not imply excluding Reb Nahman's good ideas.
And Reb Nahman's idea about the Tikun Klali makes sense in terms of the Ari, Isaac Luria. Though  have not said it for a long time, it still seems to be correct. Spilling seed in vain certainly needs a correction and the actual unifications that the Ari gives for this seem to require a certain flow of the Divine light in order to be effective. But when one has sinned, that seems in itself to cut off the flow of the "Infinite Light." So Reb Nahman's idea is based on solid reasoning

Music for the glory of God

U-84 D Minor

Tur- in order to learn the laws of the Torah

[Second day of the Omer ]
To learn the laws of the Torah I think the best idea is the Tur  [son of the Rosh,i.e.Rav Yehiel ben Asher] with the two commentaries on it by Rav Joseph Karo and the Bach. After that to look at the Taz and Shach.
Now you might notice problems in the Bach. But there is something about the Bach that I find is amazing. And when you read the Bach and after that the Taz, you see that the Taz was mainly written as a commentary on the Bach. If you just look at the Taz and Shach themselves you miss the whole issues that they were coming to solve.

My own experience with the Bach was when I was doing Ketuboth. It was then that I noticed this amazing dimension of the Tur. If you do the Gemara and then the Tur with the Bach and Taz you see they were written essentially as commentaries on the Gemara. Or perhaps better said they bring out aspects of the Gemara that you normally would not see.
And even though I have heard of people that skip the Bach and just do the Tur with Rav Joseph Karo, it still seems to me that by skipping the Bach they are losing a whole new dimension of the learning.


[I had a learning partner in Shabat, and we skipped the Bach. We did the Rosh, Rif, the commentaries on the Rif, and the Tur with Rav Joseph Karo. But I felt even then that skipping the Bach left me feeling empty.]

mystic writings from the Middle Ages

Most mystic writings from the Middle Ages [and Musar also] depend a lot on Aristotle's four elements, his division between substance and form, and the 10 spheres of Ptolemy.  The unstated problem with this is that a great deal of Aristotle' Physics and Ptolemy's spheres do not seem accurate.

So what people do is try to preserve the insights while ignoring the basic world view upon which they depend. In any case,  this makes writings from the Middle Ages problematic in that one is trying to gain the accurate insights, while at the same time ignoring the world view.

Sometimes from the idea that these medieval writers could not have been wrong, one tries to find hints of modern physics in them.

What adds to the difficulty in all this is no one knows the actual Aristotelian system upon which all medieval writings are based. Or even acknowledges the fact. And thus the terms are constantly used in inaccurate ways.

For what happened in history is Descartes came along and the force of his clarity was so great, confidence in Aristotle sank. So we do not think in terms of שכל בכוח  potential intellect as being imprinted by active צורות forms. After Descartes we do not think everything has to have substance and form. For example -the mind.
The problem is all the greater because Post-Descartes thought has not led to anything that could conceivably replace Aristotle in terms of  most of the issues that are raised in these medieval books.

[Litvak Yeshivas as a rule do not think about theology at all. The only time the problem comes up is in Musar seder. Some books of Musar depend  a lot on the mystic writings of the Middle Ages and that seems to invalidate them.]

\\\\


What was done during the Middle Ages was to create a synthesis of Aristotle with Torah. Maimonides was leaning in the direction of Aristotle. Others like Rav Saadia Gaon were leaning towards Plotinus. Today after Descartes, Kant and Leonard Nelson a similar kind of effort is needed.

It is not that the efforts of the Rambam were wasted. Even the Kant-Friesian School is very close to the Neo-Platonic approach of the Rambam. But still the Rambam tends to be kind of mediaeval. Some new effort is needed.

U-82 C Major  u-82 midi U-82 nwc

Towards the end you see see that I borrowed an idea of Mozart which is this: When you have a song in 6/8 time in triplets [3 eights one after the other] sometimes it makes sense to delete the first note. This you can see in Mozart's piano violin sonatas. [Or at least that is where I noticed this idea, though I am pretty sure that Mozart used this idea in many other pieces.]

honor one's parents

To honor one's parents I think involves two things obeying and walking in their ways.
To obey nowadays does not sound so good but it is in accord with nature. When we are born we understand soon to obey our parents and their sense of reason because we understand that they know better than us before our own sense of reason is full.
But to walk in the ways of one's parents is  made hard by the fact that many parents are jerks.

How would I even begin to imagine how to walk in my parent's ways? Volunteer for the U.S. Air Force? Go to the California Institute of Technology {Cal Tech}?  Hard to conceive of that now. It is more so complicated by the need to learn Gemara which I could only have done in N.Y. Litvak Yeshivas like the Mir or Shar Yashuv.
[Not to mention that to marry a nice Jewish girl was among their priorities, and it is hard to figure out how that might have happened in any kind of context outside of the Mir. I mean, I knew Paula [Hebrew name Lea] in California in high school, but for her to make up her mind to come after me was obviously dependent on the fact that I was in an authentic Litvak yeshiva. That is clearly what sparked her interest in me in the first place.


I assume these and similar kinds of questions attend on anyone who seriously contemplates the question how to go about כיבוד אב ואם honor of one's father and mother?

The simplest thing is when what one's parents say corresponds to objective morality and objective truth which certainly was the case for me.

One of the really surprising things I noticed in the former USSR is that people were no where near as happy to see it gone that I had thought they would be. Almost anyone I ask says "Things were better then." I think a lot has to do with DNA and also with faith.
The USA system is based very much on England; and the Constitution works well with a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) population. WASP means both faith and DNA. But areas were the USSR was in control are not WASP.  Nowadays, for anyone to guard their property in former republics of the USSR, they need to have 24 hour-a-day guards. [And every home must have a guard dog] There is simply a large percent of criminal DNA.
So as a practical measure, every business, every place where there is anything of value, people need to hire 24 hour a day guards. I never saw anything like it in the USA or Israel.

In a deeper sense, the Ari [Isaac Luria] does mention that some people are simply evil. That is,-- they may have in the outer portions of their soul external good, but deep in their core is non- eradicable evil. That is 99% of them is good, but the inner core of evil is not visible and is in actual control.
During the USSR people were afraid of the State. Now they are afraid of everyone.


Another point about Anglo Saxon areas. People write about natural traits in a totally different way than in other countries. Thomas Reid writes to the effect that even children have a natural tendency to speak the truth. He obviously never spent any time in a  Muslim country.

Q theory of everything.

[First night of the Omer]
It is not good to have a theory of everything. If one does it takes away his credibility even in things that one would assume he has some expertise in. Maybe even unjustly. Still the very claim in itself goes to show lack of judgment.

If Isaac Newton had claimed to have a a theory of everything, he would have accomplished nothing. It is rather by the fact that he limited himself to gravity, that he made one of the most significant contributions to human understanding in all history.
My theory of everything is to dismiss without merit all theories of everything

If the ideas seem right, but the logical result seem atrocious then one might reconsider the original idea.

Dr Huemer has an idea about logic that if the premises seems right but the conclusion seems absurd, one might take a second look at the premise. Danny Frederick expanded this to include systems. If the ideas seem right, but the logical result seem atrocious then one might reconsider the original idea.
[Danny Frederick and Dr Huemer were thinking of communism.]
Sherlock Holmes mentioned something like this also in explaining his way of reasoning.
That is he said his was reasoning backwards.

In any case I mentioned this once to my learning partner once as a critique on any system that leads to results that do not seem good.

This is the opposite of all philosophy which tries to start with a something that vaguely seems OK at first glace, an odd   premise, and reach absurd conclusions.  But they figure they have won the argument because you grudgingly conceded the first premise.


The fact is some philosophy does make sense. Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Maimonides Plotinus, Aquinas, Anselm, and a modern philosopher Kelley Ross all see very far..
Where things seem to go wrong is when people take them too far or follow them in wrong ways.
One of the wrong ways of going about philosophy was pointed out by Leibniz about the followers of Descartes. They were followers in the sense of following his system, but not continuing his kind of reasoning. Another problem was pointed out by Thomas Reid of taking the logic too far as happened with Aristotle in thinking in analogies,  or with people taking Descartes idea of the Mind as the beginning.
You might based on that simply dismiss Hume and Locke, but Reid notices important ideas they had.
You really can not go back to straight Neo Plato though that looks pretty great as you can see in Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, and Aquinas. Things have made some progress since Kant with Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross.

Thomas Reid  to me looks very much like the Kant Fries school except for the fact that his epistemology is not clear as Dr Kelley Ross wrote to me. Sometimes Reid seems to be like Hegel that even sense perception. is thought. Other times he says it is immediate.

Passover versus leavened bread.

A pot or pan that has not been used for leaven for the last 24 hours is נותן טעם לפגם  and"gives a  damaged taste." From the Torah one can use it. (But דרבנן it needs boiling).


The top of a stove needs nothing because every time you use it, makes it OK. [Not to mention the inside of an oven which needs nothing at all in the first place.]

The best way to make unleavened bread is to buy flour and water and mix it and fry it like a pancake. The major thing to be careful about is to do it immediately. Once water and flour have come into contact with each other you have 18 minutes left to cook or fry it. However, the mix must be thick to be thought of as bread; and  to use only a little oil on the bottom of the pan. Otherwise it is cake.
[Another reason not to use oil is a molecule of oil is hard to break down. It can cause over strain on the intestines.]



15 days from the new moon turns out to be Friday night.[The calendar people use was invented by Meton in Athens, and is not from Sinai. And it is usually off by a day or two.]

Night starts 72 minutes after sunset [to the vast majority of Rishonim] The beginning of twilight is 58.5. [You might be strict to stop work after 45 minutes because in Israel it looked to me that that was about when middle stars became visible. However in the Rocky Mountains and in the mountains around Southern California  it looked to me that stars kept coming out even much later--until the middle of the night the sky seemed to be much more filled with stars than around 90 minutes. So you might rely on doing work until 58.5 minutes.]

For wine the best idea is to buy grapes and get one of the small crushers that are used for garlic. But this takes a good long time to get up the volume. One cup is the size of 1.5 eggs.;which means one needs the volume of 6 eggs. [If one does not have enough grapes for that he can do מזיגה --put in water.] [The amount of water you can put in and still have the blessing be Pri Hagefen is astounding; one part wine, 6 parts water.]


It is best to do everything yourself and to buy nothing but grapes, flour, and horseradish, nuts and raisins. 

the Rambam's approach to Aristotle

How do you make sense of the Rambam's approach to Aristotle? In what way does learning the Metaphysics of Ancient Athens bring to love of God?  Perhaps you can say, "It does not", but then you are at a loss how to see "the big picture."
Can you ignore Metaphysics? And get your world-view elsewhere? And if you do, does that in fact lead to a more accurate idea of what the world is all about?

The way to test this is to look at people that have not learned Metaphysics, and never touched a book of Plato or Aristotle. Do they seem to have a more accurate idea of what it is all about? I doubt it.  Just the opposite. They seem to have various mixtures of confused ideas.
Still what does one make of this?
If Aristotle and Plato are good  to ignore, then why would the Rambam and Saadia Gaon have written books incorporating their ideas? And creating a synthesis between Torah and Metaphysics?

[I would like to suggest here two people that had very important ideas in Metaphysics and Philosophy that are  overlooked. Leonard Nelson and Thomas Reid.]

Thomas Reid I think has an epistemology just like the Kant Fries School of Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross, but since he does not spell it out exactly people in academia are trying to figure it out. In any case I find Reid amazing.

My high school PE instructor tried to get us into shape then by having us run around the track four times--every day.

My high school PE instructor tried to get us into shape then by having us run around the track four times--every day. That was one mile.  This is  think good for other high schools and adults also.
For some reason when  got to Shar Yashuv in NY I was viably more physically fit than most other students. I am not sure of the reason, but I figure it must have had something to do with the running around the track every day for four years which I can guess was not the regular approach in NY high schools.
I am not sure, but the first time that Rav Freifeld saw me in the mikveh, and saw that I was physically fit, maybe was the time he began to think of me as a good prospect for his daughter. [Not that I was in comparison with my classmates anything at all. I ran an average mile. I forget, but it might have been around 6 minutes. There were plenty of other kids my age that were way ahead of me.

{In the end I did not end up marrying his daughter. He must have seen I was too unruly, and would not make good son-in-law of the rosh yeshiva material. The major event which stopped the whole thing was my trip to a different yeshiva. In any case, he was certainly correct that I am not rosh yeshiva material in any sense at all. My view is even though learning the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and Shas and poskim is important, that is best done privately. The whole yeshiva scene is a disaster zone except for the few great Litvak yeshivas in NY like the Mir and Ponoviz in Bnei Brak.
[That is to say I am not rosh yeshiva material because I do not think the whole project is so great in the first place. Only a few yeshivas are great like the three big ones in NY Mir, Haim Berlin, Torah VeDaat, Shar Yashuv, and one in Israel-Ponoviz. 

U-83 D Major  U-83 midi format  U-83 nwc  [MIDI has the notes and nwc has the notes and instrumentation and the whole score. NWC (note worthy composer) is the format each piece was written in.]

All the nonsense people are forced to waste time on distracts them from what they can excel in.

Some people are enormously talented. I knew one girl like that in high school, who was brilliant in anything she put even a slight bit of effort into. [Wendy Wilson] Wendy was shockingly brilliant. The girl I eventually married also got straight A's, but Wendy's brilliance went way beyond good grades.
But I who am severely limited in brain power, I have learned  and tried very much to limit my efforts towards one thing alone. However even in this I have limited success.In Gemara I also have seen this. My learning partner with the slightest effort could see questions in Tosphot that I knew from experience eluded even great roshei yeshiva.

Still a balanced education has a lot going for it.

Some people like Bryan Caplan think the whole education system ought to be dropped.

Putting my own experiences along with some of the critique of Allan Bloom and Bryan Caplan, I would say education in the humanities and pseudo sciences [Social Studies] ought to be dropped completely. [If the humanities and social studies had any human decency, they would have closed themselves down a long time ago and stop feeding people nonsense. But of course they have no human decency in the first place, and that is why they teach those Sitra Akra (Dark Side) subjects
All the nonsense people are forced to waste time on distracts them from what they can excel in.
[However in STEM universities are doing great. The only thing is-- even there I have a complaint.--There is no reason to limit STEM to smart people. It is good even for people as dumb as I.]

So how do dumb people like me learn STEM? Easy. Say the words in order with no repetition and go on. But just one subject at a time. It is like when the Gra was asked by Reb Haim of Voloshin whether to go on or review Seder Moad he answered "Review."
So whether it is Quantum Mechanics or String Theory, the best thing is to learn the book from beginning to end with no review, but then when you get to the end to go to the beginning and do it again many times. At least four.

The reason people  are fooled by pseudo science is because they have no idea of what real science is. Give people a bit of Quantum Field Theory, and all the pseudo sciences will disappear automatically. That is the solution. Have public schools, but in science offer only the natural sciences [STEM].






 

What makes Israel difficult are the internal conflicts. Ashkenazi versus  Sephardi. Religious versus secular, etc. These conflicts are not intellectual but play themselves out on the ground level. Any one of one group that ventures into an area of the other group is guaranteed to find himself the focus of lots of attention and effort to get rid of him. These efforts are sometimes simple shunning of lack of being helpful. Sometimes these efforts are less veiled and amount to downright sabotage of one's welling place or actual physical violence.
Then on the other hand there are the occasional do good-ers who realize that this kind of thing often results in throwing out the wrong kind of people-people that in fact would be good to have around.

[This is not to say that sometimes it is  a good idea to get rid of criminal elements.]

The result of all this is often when one is making "Aliya" he finds himself in an unexpected situation where people he thought were his friends [and in fact when they came to the USA to collect money always presented themselves as his best friends] turn out to be his most bitter and determined enemies.
[It is hard to know what to make of all this. The nicest period I had was when I was invited to join Rav Ernster. He had been offered by the State of Israel a set of buildings --on condition he could fill them. So I was invited to live there and join the learning group. That was a really glorious seven years. Later attempts to make it there fell flat and were somewhat disastrous also. I was a loner and people made it clear in short order that I was not wanted.]

Outside of the great Ponoviz yeshiva  and maybe  few other places like the Yeshiva of the Gra of Rav Silverman, the main problem in Israelis simple. The religious are insane. I mean literally insane.

Of course just being insane as long as one does not harm others is not so terrible. The trouble is the religious do as much harm as they can.

learning Gemara and Naphtali Yeager in Shar Yashuv [NY]

I realize there are two ways of learning Gemara.  One way really started with Naphtali Yeager in Shar Yashuv [NY] which is for lack of  a better word "the hedgehog approach." This is very recent, but I imagine it goes back to some distant beginning, but was forgotten. It is a kind of tenacious putting your nose to the ground, and once you grab something, not to let go--no matter what.
The other way is well known. It is the eagle approach. Or what I like to call the global approach. This is called by the name of Reb Haim [Soloveitchik], but it also goes back in time to previous beginnings. It reached it climax and peak perfection in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. Some people I imagine still think the Reb Haim is better than Rav Shach, but I just can not see that.
The first approach I had almost completely forgotten about until I encountered it again in David Bronson. [It forms the basis of my book on Bava Metzia.] I have no idea if anyone else in the world learns like that, but I have heard that some people do (here and there), and they call it לחשבן את הסוגיא "to calculate the subject."

How does either of these two approaches have anything to so with Rishonim (mediaeval authorities) or "later on" people [later on means after circa 1520] like the Pnei Yehoshua or  the Kezot HaHoshen, I do not know. I was exposed to all four approaches, and yet never really got the hang of it. The people that come after the Rishonim {mediaeval commentaries} seem to occupy their own particular niche. Certainly you can see a big difference between the Pnei Yehoshua and the book חידושי הרמב''ם of Reb Haim.
Though I found the slow prodding approach of Naftali Yegger and David Bronson to be excruciating, I still think it has the most going for it. [In the Mir in NY, the hedgehog approach was completely unknown.They were all absolutely into the "global approach." Only in Israel did I hear that in some isolated spots the "to calculate the sugia" path was known and practiced.

You might ask then what does this all mean in practice? I would have to answer the the "to calculate the sugia" approach-the hedgehog, needs a high IQ. Since I am not smart, then without a genius leaning partner, it just is not possible. The best idea after that is the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and the entire school of Reb Haim, that is him and his disciples. [Even my book on Bava Metzia is just answering questions raised by David Bronson, but I never would have been able to see the issues at all without his raising the difficulties. ]


[What one might do is this. To get the book of Reb Haim Soloveitchik and the Avi Ezri and Naftali Troup and just go through them straight.  In a separate session to just go through the Gemara  itself with Tosphot, Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua.. ]

The Civil War

To me, the war between the states [the Civil War] is a very important part of American history because its tells me a lot more about the USA than the Constitution or any other part of USA history. To erase it means to erase half of the core principles  of the USA.

My basic idea about the USA come from history before the founding fathers. That is the way I conceive of it. I mean I look at the war between Sparta and Athens and realize how tragic that was. Then I look at Rome. Then England in the 1700's. I see in all this- conflicting principles each one important in itself yet when put together they all conflict. Then I look at the USA Constitution and realize the effort put into it to get a synthesis between conflicting principles. But to see the results I look at the civil war to understand what happens when the synthesis falls apart.

I may not be explaining this properly but I am just trying to give a rough idea of how I think of the USA.

[There are a great deal of principles and ideals that go into the making of the USA Constitution. The most important idea comes from the Talmud--the idea that the commandments have reasons that are known and knowable. Natural Law. Though never said openly in the Talmud in that many words, it was expressed simply thus by Saadia Gaon and Maimonides. Thomas Aquinas developed this further. Finally  John Locke came along and Parliamentary system in England with its own range of disastrous civil wars and conflicts. So to put all the ideas into a workable system I see as one of the most remarkable successes  in Human history. ]


[The odd thing here is that the philosophical foundations of Aquinas and John Locke a a bit weak. Aquinas as all medieval  thought take things as axioms that just do not see right. John Locke also. The obvious thing to do would be to look at more rigorous and exact philosophical thought--the German Idealists. But that does not seem to get very far. The puzzle is this: Why does the USA system work, and not just work but seem to work a thousand times better than anything else. Even though other systems seem to be base on much more exact and rigorous thought?  ]

Not that Marx was all that rigorous.The best thing in terms of Philosophy is the Kant Friesian school based on Kant and Leonard Nelson and that is certainly supportive of American Democracy and individual rights.

However to me everything seems to depend on DNA. I simply can not see that a USA kind of democracy would have been able to deal with the problems in czarist Russia. Nor in any population with a large percentage of criminal DNA. For societies that are not WASP, clearly something else is need to keep the peace. To me it is clear  that nothing would have or could have worked in Russia except a czar or the USSR. Nothing even close to the American system could have or can work. The trouble is simple. Too many crooks. When there there just too much criminal DNA in the blood,  you need an absolutist central government.

Hell, or Gehinom. [A great deal of human activity is to get distracted from the all important subject of Hell. That almost everything of what goes on in the world are tricks from the Sitra Akra/Dark Side to distract people from what really matters.]

גהינום Gehinom is really a very important subject. After all eternity is a long time to be tormented by demons in hell. Especially for people like me that have a low tolerance for pain. I must have mentioned once before my basic idea of Gehinom [hell]  and how to avoid it mainly comes from Reb Israel Salanter and his disciple Rav Isaac Blazzer. In one word it can all be summed up : Midot.

"Midot" means basically what my parents meant by the words "to be a mench." The basic idea is rather simple. Do not lie, do not cheat and do not steal.

[In high school I saw the same idea in one of my favorite books, Dante (The Divine Comedy ), who lays out the structure of Hell quite clearly. Later I saw the same basic idea in the very great  Musar book ראשית חכמה [Beginning of Wisdom]. [In the back in the additions, not in the book itself.]

In any case the idea is incredibly simple --have good traits--or else suffer the consequences.
And I have to add that in fact you can see this by implication in the Rambam. He gives the basic reasons for the commandments of Torah, and one is "midot" (to have good traits). The implication is that  what is going to matter in the long run--when one arrives at the seat of judgement in Heaven. What is going to matter then is not how strict one was in rituals whose only purpose is to remind one to have good traits. What is going to matter is midot tovot (good traits).
[A great deal of human activity is to get distracted from the all important subject of Hell. That almost everything of what goes on in the world are tricks from the Sitra Akra/Dark Side to distract people from what really matters.]

Even though keeping Torah is very important, I still feel once in a while to warn people about the religious world which pretends to keep Torah, but in fact is quite opposite to Torah.  A few words of warning I guess ought to suffice since this is not a very happy subject for me. Still the warning still is written in Torah, אל תעמוד על דמך רעיך. [Thou shalt not stand by as the blood of your neighbor is split.]

Which amazingly enough is in the same context as the commandment not to speak lashon hara/slander. The obvious implication is sometimes you need to warn people about some unknown danger even though it might seem to be lashon hara. (That is n my mind the reason for the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.)

So  run from any group that  displays its religiosity. The more they appear religious, the worse they are.

If they display religiosity or claim religious authority, you know something is rotten in them that is just waiting  to crawl out of them and attach itself to you.

Background -to Rabbainu. Tam twilight starts 58.5 minutes after sunset and night 72 min. The morning is the same. dawn עלות השחר is 72 min., and נץ החמה is an hour before sunrise.
The Gemara in Shabat has a long description of how the sky changes at the beginning of the night. The way the Gemara describes it makes no sense if you think the night starts at 13.5 minutes after sundown. There are then no changes in the sky that the Gemara talks about.. But if you think like Rabbainu Tam, the Gemara makes perfect sense as you can see by this coming paragraph which I wrote having in mind an audience of people that know the Gemara in Shabat.




I was in Israel a few years and  I saw something that confirmed the approach of ר''ת concerning the time the night starts. That is, for the first 59 minutes after sunset, nothing dramatic changes in the sky. The sky  becomes  dark. Then right at 59 minutes something dramatic happens. A kind of dome forms over the area where the sun went down. Then that dome itself begins to sink until at exactly 72 minutes it sinks below the horizon, and the sky is dark. You can see how this corresponds to the גמרא in שבת. There is also something about what you call average. The word average has no meaning except as compared to something else. Thus the number 5 is average between 0 and 10, but not average compared to 100 and 1,000,000. So to be able to determine or measure what is an average star you need to see what all stars in the middle of the night. Once you see all the stars that can be seen by the naked eye, then you pick three medium stars. Then you learn how to identify them by learning thoroughly the map of the sky. One needs to learn to identify the constellations and the place of each star in a constellation. Then after you know what is a medium star, you go out and see on some night when it becomes visible. Three are visible at 72 minutes.

However stars that are seen a half hour after sunset when you compare them with other stars in the middle of the night are not medium stars. They are giants compared to all the others. They are what the גמרא calls large stars. Large stars do not tell you when the night begins. Only three medium stars.
In terms of stars, I also saw something there and also in desert regions in Israel. No stars are seen at sunset. None. So if twilight begins at sunset, where are the two medium stars? According to the גמרא, twilight begins when one average star is seen, not large stars which can be seen before then. So it is curious that at sunset, no large large stars, nor average stars are visible. That seems to knock the idea of בין השמשות  beginning at that time.

הייתי בישראל כמה שנים וראיתי משהו שאישר את הגישה של ר''ת בדבר הזמן שמתחיל הלילה. כלומר, עבור 59 הדקות הראשונות לאחר השקיעה, אין שינויים דרמטיים בשמים. השמים הופכים כהים. ואז ב59 דקות קורה משהו דרמטי. סוג של צורות כיפה נעשה מעל האזור שבו שקעה החמה. ואז כי הכיפה עצמה מתחילה לשקוע עד בדיוק 72 דקות הוא שוקע מתחת לאופק, והשמים כהים לגמרי. אתה יכול לראות איך זה מתאים לגמרא בשבת. יש גם משהו על מה שאתה קורא ממוצע. למילה "ממוצע" אין שום משמעות מלבד לעומת משהו אחר. לכן מספר 5 הוא ממוצע בין 0 ו10, אבל לא ממוצע לעומת 100 ו1,000,000. אז כדי להיות מסוגל לקבוע או למדוד מהו כוכב ממוצע אתה צריך לראות כל הכוכבים באמצע הלילה. ברגע שאתה רואה את כל הכוכבים שניתן לראות בעין בלתי מזוינת, אז אתה בוחר שלושה כוכבים ממוצעים. אז אתה לומד לזהות אותם על ידי לימוד יסודי של מפת השמים. אחד צריך ללמוד לזהות את הכוכבים ואת המקום של כל כוכב בקונסטלציה. ואז אחרי שאתה יודע מה הוא כוכב בינוני, אתה יוצא לראות באיזה לילה כאשר הוא הופך להיות גלוי. שלושה גלויים ב72 דקות. עם זאת, הכוכבים שנראים חצי שעה אחרי השקיעה, כאשר אתה משווה אותם עם כוכבים אחרים באמצע הלילה הם לא כוכבים ממוצעים. הם ענקים לעומת כל האחרים. הם מה שהגמרא קוראה כוכבים גדולים. כוכבים גדולים לא אומרים לך כאשר הלילה מתחיל. רק שלושה כוכבים ממוצעים. במונחים של כוכבים, ראיתי גם משהו שם גם באזורים מדבריים בישראל. אין כוכבים נראים בשקיעה. אף אחד. אז אם בין השמשות מתחיל בשקיעה, איפה הם שני כוכבים בינוניים? על פי הגמרא, בין השמשות מתחיל כאשר כוכב ממוצע אחד נראה, לא כוכבים גדולים אשר ניתן לראות לפני כן. אז זה מעניין כי בשקיעה, אין כוכבים גדולים, ולא כוכבים ממוצעים גלויים. זה סותר את הרעיון שבין השמשות מתחיל באותה עת.. הרדב"ז (דוד בן זימרא) כתב שהדעת בפסחים התקיימה לפני שחכמי ישראל הסכימו עם חכמי אתונה. בתחילה החזיק חכמי ישראל השמש בשקיעה נכנס לפרוזדור ואחר כך בלילה עולה מעל השמים. החכמים מאתונה החזיקו שהשמש הולכת מתחת לכדור הארץ בלילה. הדעה על משך הזמן שבין שקיעת החמה הראשונה ללילה שהיא ארבעה מיל הוא על סמך הדעה של חכמי ישראל בטרם ששינו את דעתם.

I was in Safed a few years and made it a point to be near the grave of Rav Isaac Luria around sunset.

And pretty much every day I saw something that confirmed the approach of Rabbainu Tam concerning the time the night starts.

That is for the first 59 minutes after sunset, nothing dramatic changes in the sky except for it slowly getting  darker. Then right at 59 minutes something dramatic happens. A kind of dome forms over the area where the sun went down. Then that dome itself begins to sink until at exactly 72 minutes it sink below the horizon and the sky is consistently dark. [You can see how this corresponds to the Gemara in Shabat.]


There is also something about what you call "medium." The word medium has no meaning except as compared to something else. This the number 5 is medium between 0 an 10 but not medium compared to 100 and 1000000. So to be able to gauge what is a medium star you need to first get an idea of what all stars look like in the middle of the night. Once you see all the stars that can be seen by the naked eye, then you pick three medium stars. Then you learn how to identify them by learning thoroughly the map of the sky. That is to learn to identify the constellations and the place of each star in a constellation. Then after you know what is a medium star, you go out and see on some night when it becomes visible. Three are visible at 72 minutes.
However stars that are seen a half hour after sunset when you compare them with other stars in the middle of the night are not medium stars. They are giants compared to all the others. They are what the Gemara calls large stars. Large stars do not tell you when the night begins. Only three medium stars.



In terms of stars I also saw something there and also in desert regions in Israel. No stars are seen at sunset. None. So if twilight begins at sunset, where are the two medium stars? According to the Gemara twilight begins when one medium star is seen, not large stars which can be seen before then. So it is curious that at sunset no large large stars, nor medium stars are visible. That seems to knock the idea of twilight beginning at that time.

The main task in life is to find the right principles to hold onto, the right subjects to learn, the right books to read, the right institutions to support.

The Obligations of the Heart {חובות לבבות} holds there can be individual obligations that are not required of everyone. So the above list can be divided into personal obligations and obligations that are upon all.


My own search has resulted in some conclusions and some areas remain ambiguous.
Right principles:  Speak the truth no matter what you think the consequence may be. This provides an אור מקיף Surrounding light or surrounding force field that evil can not penetrate. Obviously being careful about Lashon Hara is important but to me it is unclear when it is required to warn others.
Right subjects: The Oral and Written Law (Gemara, Tosphot and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri), Math Physics, Music.
Institutions is a hard one.  I am very impressed with the Mir in NY and the other great Litvak Yeshivas in NY and Ponoviz in Bnei Brak.

[Though the Rambam emphasized the Metaphysics of Aristotle, I just can not see why. Though I have great interest in the subject, I can not see much that comes out of it. From what I can tell the best thing in Metaphysics is Leonard Nelson's continuation of Kant which in Europe is called the Critical school and in the USA it is called the Kant-Friesian School. The reason this stream of thought gets no attention in academia, I think is that they are a little over the top when it comes to criticizing Hegel or Heidegger. תפסת מרובה לא תפסת they grab too much. That is: they claim Hegel has nothing to say; and that simply is not the case. They ought to satisfy themselves  that they have an important continuation of Kant's thought that answers many of the problems and also makes considerable progress.


The Ran of Breslov also emphasized "תיקון הברית" sexual purity and it seems to me  he was quite right about that. He also recommended what he called the תיקון הכללי. That is if one has spilled seed in vain to say that same day these ten psalms in order without interruption 16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150.  (and to intend the Divine name אל אלהים in full which is אלף למד אלף למד הי יוד מם)

My feeling about marriage.-- good genes and DNA

My feeling about marriage.

And a lot depends on good genes and DNA. I mean to say that perhaps some aspects of her traits might be hard --but DNA is stronger than picked up  traits. So if her DNA is good then you might overlook attitudes picked up from her environment.

This was obvious to me when I was very young. The issue might be race. After all, some races have a predominance of criminal DNA. It might have to do with faith. But in elementary school and high school, I realized that determining good genes from bad genes is not simple. There are not a lot of obvious signs.
This is why in Anglo Saxon countries an emphasis was placed on looking at the family of the prospective bride. But in high school, how could I tell who came from a good family? To to be honest, I looked at the only criteria that was available to me: good grades.

[Though I can not tell how much this had to do with whom I picked to hang out with. A lot of who my friends were seemed to depend more on who picked me. That was certainly the case with my first set of friends--the string quartet. They definitely picked me -not visa versa. I even remember the exact moment. We were on an orchestra tour in Vancouver. And the elite of the high school, the top brass-invited me to sit down with them. I still have no idea why. I was mediocre in grades, and also in playing the violin.

Later, the actual girl I did marry, in fact had a straight A average (and came from a very fine family), but our relationship in those days was with zero romantic interest. We were simply friends. Only after I disappeared off the horizon because I went to Yeshiva in NY, did her interest in me begin to take on a different kind of aspect.

The irony is that by that time I was not looking at genes or DNA, but whom was the Rosh Yeshiva's daughter [whom I did not get].  So I actually married someone that was very much along the lines of my original intention--good family and good DNA (thank God). That was in spite of the fact that at that time I was not looking at that at all.

The Mishna {Bava Metzia page 100-a} brings a case:  a person bought a cow. It is discovered that it gave birth to a calf.  We do not know when it gave birth before or after the deal. So who owns the calf?
The Gemara asks why is there a question? Just say it belongs to the person whose domain it is in?
Answer: It is in an alley. Question: Lets give it to the first owner? Answer: הא מני סומכוס It is Somhos [or Rather it is Sumhos].
[Sumhos holds money in doubt is divided. The Sages on the other hand hold the law is: "Taking money out of its domain requires a proof.] If the version of Gemara is "Rather it is Sumhos," that means it is retracting its the answer of the alley. But if the version is  "It is Sumhos" is right then, that implies that we would not give it to the first owner because the mishna is like Sumhos. That leaves the answer of the alley in its place. That mean Sumhos would agree with חזקת רשות







If your version of the Gemara is Bava Metzia [page 100] is הא מני סונכוס or אלא הא מני סומכוס is going to make a difference if  סומכוס agrees with חזקת רשות or not.
If you hold הא מני סומכוס that means סומכוס agrees with חזקת ממון חזקת רשות

The Rashbam is פוסק the law is like סומכוס.
This is related to Bava Batra page 34 in this way. The Rashbam holds there is  migo for the person that grabbed the נסכא דר' אבא, he can disagree and claim that he never grabbed anything. Instead he admits that he grabbed it but he claims the object belongs to him. Rav and Shmuel decided the law is the person that grabbed it can keep it. The Rashbam holds the reason is that there is a migo. But it seems to me that there is a further  reason for the Rashbam. That is, that there is חזקת ממון.
Otherwise why would this migo be strong enough to leave the object in the possession of the one that grabbed it.
But you could argue that חזקת ממון here really would give the object to the person that originally had it. So it could be that סומכוס does not go with חזקת ממון and here they would split the amount the object is worth except for the Migo.
This would depend on the Tosphot in Nida if חזקה מעיקרא ו חזקת השתא שוות or if חזקה מעיקרא is stronger. If חזקה מעיקרא is stronger it seems that would apply in this case also of the נסכא דר' אבא that we would say the חזקת ממון would go to the first person from whom the object was grabbed.






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The משנה בבא מציעא דף ק' ע''א  brings a case in which a person bought a cow. It is discovered that it gave birth to a calf.  We do not know when it gave birth. Before or after the deal? So who owns the calf?
The גמרא asks why is there a question? Should not it  to belong to the person whose domain it is in?
Answer: It is in an alley. Question: Let's give it to the first owner? Answer: הא מני סומכוס. It is סומכוס [or Rather it is סומכוס].
[סומכוס holds money in doubt is divided. The חכמים on the other hand hold the law is: "Taking money out of its domain requires a proof.] If the version of גמרא  is "Rather it is סומכוס," that means it is retracting its the answer of the alley. But if the version is  "It is סומכוס", that implies that we would not give it to the first owner because the משנה is like סומכוס. That leaves the answer of the alley in its place. That mean סומכוס would agree with חזקת רשות
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If your version of the גמרא is בבא מציעא דף ק' ע''א is הא מני סונכוס or אלא הא מני סומכוס is going to make a difference if  סומכוס agrees with חזקת רשות or not.
If you hold הא מני סומכוס that means סומכוס agrees with חזקת ממון חזקת רשות

The רשב''ם is פוסק the law is like סומכוס.
This is related to בבא בתרא ל''ד in this way. The רשב''ם holds there is  מיגו for the person that grabbed the נסכא דר' אבא, he can disagree and claim that he never grabbed anything. Instead he admits that he grabbed it but he claims the object belongs to him. רב and שמואל decided the law is the person that grabbed it can keep it. The רשב''ם holds the reason is that there is a מיגו. But it seems to me that there is a further  reason for the רשב''ם. That is, that there is חזקת ממון.
Otherwise why would this מיגו be strong enough to leave the object in the possession of the one that grabbed it.
But you could argue that חזקת ממון here really would give the object to the person that originally had it. So it could be that סומכוס does not go with חזקת ממון and here they would split the amount the object is worth except for the מיגו.
This would depend on the תוספות in נידה דף ב' ע''ב if חזקה מעיקרא ו חזקת השתא שוות or if חזקה מעיקרא is stronger. If חזקה מעיקרא is stronger it seems that would apply in this case also of the נסכא דר' אבא that we would say the חזקת ממון would go to the first person from whom the object was grabbed.


המשנה בבא מציעא דף ק" ע''א מביאה מקרה שבו אדם קונה פרה ונתגלה כי זו הולידה עגל. אנחנו לא יודעים מתי זה קרה. לפני או אחרי העסקה? אז מי הבעלים של עגל? הגמרא שואלת למה יש שאלה? הלא זה אמור להיות שייך לאדם אשר בתחומו  הוא נמצא? תשובה: זה בסמטה. שאלה: בואו לתת אותו לבעל הראשון? תשובה: הא מני סומכוס. זהו סומכוס [או אלא זה סומכוס]. סומכוס מחזיק כסף בספק מחולק. החכמים סוברים מצד שני שהחוק הוא: "אם לקחת כסף מתוך התחום שלו דורשת הוכחה]. אם הגרסה של הגמרא היא. 'במקום זה הוא סומכוס,' הכוונה שהיא חוזרת בה מן התשובה של הסמטה. אבל אם הגרסה היא "זהו סומכוס", הכוונה כי היינו נותנים לו לבעלים הראשונים משום שהמשנה היא כמו סומכוס. זה משאיר את התשובה של הסמטה במקומה. זה אומר סומכוס יסכים עם חזקת רשות.


אם הגרסה של הגמרא היא (בבא מציעא דף ק" ע''א) הא מני סונכוס או אלא הא מני סומכוס הוא עושה את ההבדל אם סומכוס מסכים עם  חזקת ממון (חזקתרשות) או לא. אם הגרסה "הא מני סומכוס" זה אומר סומכוס מסכים עם חזקת ממון (חזקת רשות). רשב''ם הוא פוסק החוק הוא כמו סומכוס. זה קשור לבבא בתרא ל''ד בדרך זו. הרשב''ם מחזיק יש מיגו עבור האדם  שתפס את נסכא דר' אבא, (הוא יכול לטעון שמעולם לא תפס כלום). במקום זאת הוא מודה כי הוא תפס אותו אבל הוא טוען החפץ שייך לו. רב ושמואל החליט שהחוק הוא האדם אשר תפס אותו ניתן לקחת אותו. רשב''ם מחזיקה הסיבה היא שיש מיגו. אבל נראה לי שיש סיבה נוספת עבור רשב''ם.  אחרת למה  המיגו הזה  חזק מספיק כדי להשאיר את החפץ ברשותו של האחד שתפס את הנסכא. אבל (מצד שני) אפשר לטעון כי חזקת ממון כאן באמת תיתן את האובייקט לאדם שבמקור היה לו הנסכא. אז זה יכול להיות כי סומכוס לא הולך עם חזקת ממון וכאן הם היו חולקים  את כמות הכסף ששווה הנסכא אם לא היה מיגו. כל זה  תלוי תוספות בנידה דף ב' ע''ב אם חזקה מעיקרא וחזקה של עכשיו שווות או אם חזקה מעיקרא הוא חזקה. אם חזקה מעיקרא חזקה נראה כי זו תחול במקרה זה על של נסכא דר" אבא כי היינו אומרים חזקת ממון תלך לאדם הראשון שממנו האובייקט נתפס.

There are a few valid basic interpretations of Rav Isaac Luria Ashkenazi. The Gra, the Ramhal, Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira [grandfather of Bava Sali], and the Reshash [Shalom Sharabi]
The Ramchal has a concept that the השתלשלות  of the עולמות refers to time.
That means that Being in order to reveal itself creates and then uses time to reveal existing things.
Time is the window into existence.


[Most people know of the Ramhal [Rav Moshe Haim Luzato author or the מסילת ישרים Mesilat Yesharim]  one of the most basic and essential Musar books].

But to get attached to authentic Torah, the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and the Gra are very important.

Reb Nahman made a point about being connected with the "authentic tzadik"--which is in fact an  insightful observation.

[Reb Nahman also had some other very important ideas like התבודדות talking with God  in one' own language as one speaks to a friend, and learning fast.]

Music for the praise of God

U-81 B Flat Major

The Avi Ezri of Rav Shach;- authentic Torah. Reveals the essence of Torah.

Since I love package deals, and learning the whole Oral Law is time consuming,  my recommendation is to learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach which contains the basic core of what it means to learn Gemara.
This way in learning even just a few pages one gets the idea of what it means "to learn Torah."

You really do not get this by learning just Gemara and Tosphot unless you are blessed with the ability to see beneath the surface. With Rav Shach however, it is all laid out in front of you.

You might try also Reb Haim Soloveitchik's חידושי הרמב''ם (which people call "Hidushai Reb Haim"), but I found Rav Shach's book to be better for me.
The great thing about Rav Shach's Avi Ezri is it is authentic Torah. It reveals the essence of what learning Torah is all about.

[I myself am generally incapable of that deep kind of learning. I was exposed to it at the Mir but even there I never got the hang of it. Then when I was learning with David Bronson, I saw him spontaneously uncovering the issues in the Gemara and at that point I began to be able to address the issues and sometimes even answer the questions. But unless you yourself have that kind of head or have a genius learning partner, the only way I know of getting into this kind of depth is with the Avi Ezri. You need a special kind of ability to see beyond the surface level of things to be able to do this on your own.]
[There are other books that can help fill in the big picture; i.e.,  Reb Haim's disciples and Reb Naftali Troup. But the Avi Ezri goes deeper and is also clearer.]

And can virtue be taught?

What is the proper education? And can virtue be taught? And does  education need re-adjustment as one leaves high school or college?

When I was young, I had a book about Abraham Lincoln that emphasized the fact that he was self taught,-- and that is definitely how I think about this issue.

However that is not to dismiss the need  for good learning partners.

In any case. my basic idea about education is that it does not stop after one leaves high school or college. Plus the basic structure I think should revolve around the four point system of Maimonides The Written Law (Bible), The Oral Law (Gemara and Tosphot), Physics, Metaphysics (by that the Rambam is referring to Plato and Aristotle).
My parents would add to this survival skills, outdoor skills, and learning a vocation. But Rav Shach I think would agree with all the above except the last one. From what I understood he held one should just sit and learn Torah until one gets married and at that point to simply take whatever profession that presents itself. And he certainly held one is allowed to receive the stipend that the State of Israel offers to anyone that wants to simply sit and learn [in some מסגרת or group].

[Allen Bloom and Allen Sokol have already pointed out the vacuum and emptiness of the humanities departments of universities .Allen Sokol wrote a paper of shear utter nonsense and it was accepted and published by a prestigious Philosophy quarterly. magazine-mainly because the jargon was right.

[The Metaphysics of the Rambam does not contradict the idea of learning the Ari and the Remak [Moshe of Cordoba ]. After all the Ari is really a more detailed version of the Neo Platonic System of Plotinus.]

[I can not say what the Rambam is getting at with his emphasis on Metaphysics. Though I am interested in the subject I can not see how coming to love and fear of God depend on learning Aristotle! But I say to myself that I figure the Rambam was a little more bright than me.]

[From what I can see universities are doing very well when it come to Physics for those who are talented but for those people like me that are not talented I think the best idea is to learn (like the Gemara says in Shabat 63 דרך  גירסא) to learn by just saying the words and going on.]

[The Gra held one ought to learn the Trivium and Quadrivium as mentioned by his disciple Rav Baruck from Shkolov who translated Euclid. ]

Praise be to God, the creator and source of all being.

U-80 mp3 U-80 midi   U-80 nwc

The Mir Yeshiva [of NY] approach

The Mir Yeshiva approach entails a large degree of humility. That is to say the awareness we really do not know how to teach or learn morality nor any of the big issues. The point is simple, "Learn Torah and act on what you have learned." There is no claim to supernatural powers or supernatural understanding of hidden things.
In fact most roshei yeshiva have a simple line they all say when asked about any subject what so ever that is not directly contained in the Gemara: "It is high things/ הויכע זכין." That is;- they plead  ignorance

But besides the basic line "Learn Torah", Reb Shmuel Berenbaum did have a few other things that were important to him,-- and he would say when asked. He held strongly of being in seder [session]. He held strongly about not speaking bad about anyone. That is he was not particularly interested in something was actually lashon hara [slander] or not in terms of the legal definition. And he held strongly of doing kindness when anyone was in need.

[On the other hand the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication seems to indicate that sometimes a few words of warning are in order.]





But for politics, philosophy, or anything else -  the general approach was "We do not know. So let's just sit and learn."




[I am not saying that this is my approach. I have opinions about everything under the sun. But I think the Mir approach is probably better. To me it seems the Rambam and Saadia Gaon thought the Neo Platonic approach was important enough and essential enough to Torah to write about it.]

Reb Shmuel did not hold highly however of university education. I asked him once about that and his answer was it is OK if it is to make a living.

The grandchildren of Rav David Abuzeira go to a yeshiva in Bnei Brak named after Avraham Kalmonoviz the founder of the Mir in NY --so I figure that is saying something.

Bava Batra 34

The case of the נסכא של ר' אבא is that a person grabbed an object from another person and one witness saw it. The person that grabbed the object said, "Yes I grabbed it but it is mine." R, Aba holds the law since he can not take an oath he must pay. מתוך שאינו יכול לישבע משלם. He can not take an oath because he  agrees with the witness that he grabbed it.

The Ri holds in the case of the נסכא של ר' אבא that there is no migo because if he would deny that he grabbed the object he would have to take an oath. [The Migo here is he could deny that he grabbed the object and we would believe him.  So we should believe him when he admits that he grabbed it but he claims the object belongs to him. The reason the Ri says this is not a good migo is that if he would  deny that he grabbed the object he would have to take an oath.]The Rivam holds there is a migo because otherwise why would Rav and Shmuel disagree with R. Aba? And the Rivam holds the reason R. Aba  does not go with the migo is because of גזרת הכתוב. So then what could the Ri answer to this?  I think the Ri would answer that the reason Rav and Shmuel disagree with R. Aba is not because of a migo but because of חזקת ממון.

The fact of the matter is that the Ri you can see holds that Rav and Shmuel do not think like סומכוס.
The Rashbam does hold the law is like סומכוס but you can see here that it is unlikely that the Ri would agree.

( I am just mentioning this because you can see this relates to Bava Metzia pg 100. The Ri you can see holds the person that originally held the object is not called מרא קמא here because there is a doubt if it belonged to him. But in any case if the law would be like סומכוס that would מרא קמא would not help anything anyway and they would have to divide. So at least we can agree that the Ri is not holding like סומכוס]





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The case of the נסכא של ר' אבא is that a person grabbed an object from another person and one witness saw it. The person that grabbed the object said, "Yes I grabbed it, but it is mine." ר' אבא holds the law since he can not take an oath he must pay. מתוך שאינו יכול לישבע משלם. He can not take an oath because he is  agrees with the witness. The ר''י holds in the case of the נסכא  של ר' אבא that there is no מיגו because if he would deny that he grabbed the object, he would have to take an oath.
[The מיגו here is he could deny that he grabbed the object and we would believe him.  So we should believe him when he admits that he grabbed it, but he claims the object belongs to him. The reason the ר''י says this is not a good מיגו is that if he would  deny that he grabbed the object, he would have to take an oath.]
The ריב''ם holds there is a מיגו, because otherwise why would רב and שמואל disagree with ר' אבא? And the ריב''ם holds the reason ר' אבא  does not go with the מיגו is because of גזירת הכתוב. So then what could the ר''י answer to this?  I think the ר''י would answer that the reason רב and שמואל disagree with ר' אבא is not because of a מיגו, but because of חזקת ממון. However the ריב''ם would not hold that חזקת ממון would be a good answer because the object was originally in the possession of the other person.

The fact of the matter is that the ר''י you can see holds that רב and שמואל do not think like סומכוס.
The רשב''ם does hold the law is like סומכוס but you can see here that it is unlikely that the ר''י would agree.


המקרה של נסכא של ר' אבא הוא שאדם תפס חפץ מאדם אחר, ועד אחד ראה את זה. האדם שתפס את האובייקט אמר, "כן תפסתי אותו, אך הוא שלי." ר' אבא מחזיק את החוק הוא שהוא לא יכול להישבע, ולכן הוא חייב לשלם. "מתוך שאינו יכול לישבע משלם." הוא לא יכול להישבע כי הוא מסכים עם העד. הר''י מחזיק במקרה של נסכא של ר' אבא כי אין מיגו כי אם הוא יכחיש שהוא תפס את החפץ, הוא יצטרך לקחת שבועה. הריב''ם מחזיק ישנה מיגו, כי אחרת למה רב ושמואל לא מסכימים עם ר' אבא? וגם הריב''ם מחזיק שהסיבה שר' אבא לא הולך עם המיגו היא בגלל גזירת הכתוב. אז מה יכול הר''י לענות על זה? אני חושב הר''י היה עונה כי הסיבה שרב ושמואל לא מסכימים עם ר' אבא הוא לא בגלל מיגו, אלא בגלל חזקת ממון. אולם ריב''ם לא יחזיק כי חזקת ממון תהיה תשובה טובה כי האובייקט היה במקורו ברשותו של האדם האחר.

אתה יכול לראות שהר''י סובר כי רב ושמואל לא חושבים כמו סומכוס. הרשב''ם מחזיק בשיטה שהחוק הוא כמו סומכוס אבל אתה יכול לראות כאן כי אינו  סביר שהר''י יסכים

Music for the glory of God.

U-79 D Major

The King of Judah, Ahaz, invited the king of Assyria to fight against Israel [the Ten Tribes] and Syria. But the policy of Assyria did not change after that. Even though the original alliance was a success, the later king of Assyria just continued his war against Israel until he exiled Israel into the land of  Medea [East of Assyria]. After that the kings of Assyria just continued their old policy and then invaded Judah, and then finally tried to conquer Jerusalem itself. The event  the Assyria army being wiped out at that point is well known. But the fact that Assyria was first invited in by the King of Judah is less well known. [See Kings 16]

Be careful whom you ask for help from. Alliances are important but with whom to make an alliance is something not simple.  [Since reading Thucydides I have been aware of how important alliances are. But the events surrounding the fall of the Ten Tribes shows how much care  one needs in determining with whom to form an alliance. ]