Taking Musar seriously

The beginning of my taking Musar seriously was on Rosh Hashanah in the Mir in NY. It was during Musaf [a prayer on Rosh Hashana] and I had the book of a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter, The Light of Israel by Rav Isaac Blazer.
Going through the introduction, I got an idea of what it is all about. However I should add, that I was in any case attracted to the Mir in the first place because I felt it had an atmosphere of Fear of God.

At any rate, I got into it deeply. But that was in a way I can not describe now at all because I fell from that higher state of consciousness.

And I would like to add that it is possible for people to come to a higher state of consciousness and to fall to a lower state. Not just individuals, but even whole countries.


The main way I got into that  higher state of consciousness was simply doing the Musar thing as it had been originally accepted in Litvak Yeshivas--that is to learn Musar about a 1.5 hours per day and the rest of the day Gemara. I do not say that I could do that now, but that is what I was doing back then, and I found it   to be an amazing method and path.

[I admit I might have over done it. But I figure it is better to overdo it than to under do it.]



What I'm trying to say is that at the Mir in NY and also in other Litvak yeshivas, the Musar session is short. It is 20 minutes before Minha [afternoon prayer] and 15 minutes before Maariv [evening prayer]. However in Europe the Musar sessions were longer and if you added them up, they came to about about 1.5 hours per day.

I also think that the approach of the Boy Scouts is important--that is one learn good traits by action. The way the Boy Scouts do that is to learn good traits as an aspect of survival skills. [The Boy Scouts used to be more based on faith. Sadly they fell from that.]


[I should add that Rav Shach thought that the Musar movement was very important. I mainly can see the importance of Musar in terms of the ideas that it implants into one. It helps to develop a healthy world view. And people in their teens and 20's are looking for making sense of the world around them. And Musar does a great job in giving an accurate representation of what the world is actually like, and what one's responsibilities in it are.  And for me I think the main effect of Musar was to help me form my world view and correct mistakes. I did not perceive any effect on my traits--though I might have missed that.]

[So why do Litvak yeshivas learn less Musar than advocated by Reb Israel Salanter. I imagine it is because of the "law of limited returns."That law indicates that there is an upper limit as to how effective it can be. It is like drinking water. It is good for you, but there is a limit.]

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"History is just one damn thing after another." (anonymous) This to some degree helps to understand the Rambam who saw learning history as Bitul Torah, a waste of time.

"History is just one damn thing after another." (anonymous)
This to some degree helps to understand the Rambam who saw learning history as Bitul Torah, a waste of time.
Yet there is some aspect of history that I think is important because it helps to understand the USA.  English History [especially the history of England after Elizabeth.] helps to understand the issues that became part of the USA Constitution.
And the USA was until around 1960 one of the great wonders of the world. But socialists could not stand to see the good times, and came over from Europe to destroy it by means of socialism, Therefore, it is important to understand the basic principles upon which the USA was founded.

After thought:
Democracy as in the USA actually stems from England with modifications based on English experiences with conflicts between with Parliament, and the King. So it has a long history. Even in ancient Rome elections took place. So the way democracy is understood in the USA is not actually all that new and has deep roots. So I feel it is unlikely to disappear any time soon.

On running for office in Rome

[The basic formula that made America great was the combination of Reason and Revelation. That is faith with reason.]

if you take the Rambam seriously about the importance of learning Physics that the way to go about it is to guard the first hour of the morning when you wake up for that alone. T

I am no expert but to seems to me that if you take the Rambam seriously about the importance of learning Physics that the way to go about it is to guard the first hour of the morning when you wake up for that alone. That is,- to get up and start right away immediately with no time lapse between waking up and getting started. [I think however a quike coffee is OK.]. And then just to say the words and go on as I mentioned before lots of times. [That is brought down in tractate Sabbath I think around page 63. Also the Musar book Paths of the Righteous brings that kind of learning. ]

[If you have a copy of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or a Gemara,I think that is a good idea to  do them along with the Physics.  In fact I found learning Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and Tosphot to be a help to understanding Physics.]

Economic Equality

It seems if A lives a good life and B lives a vastly better life there is nothing wrong. Just the fact that they are not equal does not seem to matter at all to either one of them but only to  academic economists.

 Economic Equality seems to have nothing to recommend it as a goal except jealousy.   "Redistribution" is a kind way of saying "theft."

The problem seems to be kind of what you see in the philosophy of the Middle Ages. Axioms are picked that to them sounded good but to our ears seem strange. Then they go on to logical deductions from those axioms. But the deductions do not seem to hold water since the axioms themselves did not look solid.
Nowadays to convince young people of things the same process is done. They find some nice sounding slogan. Then draw the logical consequences from that slogan. Yet if you think about it you can tell there was nothing holding up the slogan in the first place but the fact that young people want to fit in with their peer group and the fact  that the slogan sounded nice.

critique against the Hegelian State by L T Hobhouse.

There was a well known critique against the Hegelian State by L T Hobhouse. Now it is more or less forgotten, but to me he makes some great points especially in the appendix where he brings out a major fallacy in Hegel's Theory of Right.

Edward Feser has gone back to Aquinas Michael, Huemer to Thomas Reid and the Intuitionists. But to me the best approach seems to be along the lines of Leonard Nelson. That Nelson school of thought [Kant-Friesian] anyway seems pretty close to Saadia Gaon and Maimonides--a lot more so than Hegel. [sunwall proves this on the web site of dr kelley ross]

Fries himself saw value in the approach of Hegel as he says in his history of philosophy, so i see value in the kant- fries school and hegel also.    

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But I can not help but feel sad that the basic approach of combining Torah with Physics and Metaphysics as the Rambam suggested is not implemented at least a little bit.

On one hand I can see that to learn Torah well one needs to concentrate on it like they do in Litvak yeshivas. All day, every day. But I can not help but feel sad that the basic approach of combining Torah with Physics and Metaphysics as the Rambam suggested is not implemented at least a little bit.
[As I mentioned, the other major Musar books agree with the Rambam. This you can see in the Obligations of the Heart  שער הבחינה he mentions learning the wisdom in God's creation. It is hard to see it there at first, but if you are exacting in the language you can see it.] However when one is involved in Torah to the degree that you see in Litvak yeshivas, I can see why people would not want to be distracted.

And after all, I am the biggest time waster of all-so who am I to talk? Still I can see the advantage in knowing at least a bit of Quantum Mechanics and Aristotle's book Metaphysics.
Today after Kant, I think one ought to approach Metaphysics along the lines of Leonard Nelson and the Kant-Friesian approach. [In terms of Metaphysics that means mainly Schopenhauer who is close to Plato. As such the whole thing is in fact close to Saadia Gaon and the Rambam.]

Much of philosophy has become absurd so most of the approaches are not worth the time and trouble. But I am very impressed with  Leonard Nelson. Where things went wrong seems to be when people spent just too much time and effort either defending Hegel or disagreeing with Hegel. Hegel seems to be like a kind of collapsed star-- that once one is in its orbit, there is no escape. It is like one gets trapped in that world view.





[The Rambam is tilting towards Aristotle but still remains in a Neo Plato context. So along with Saadia Gaon he corresponds well with the Kant/Fries and Schopenhauer streams of thought.  ]

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First Americans (apparently they were from Stone Age France.

First Americans (apparently they were from Stone Age France. click on link) The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World (click on link)


The basic idea depends on a computer model. People  took all the known data from that time period and feed it into the computer [the largest in the world] and they discovered the current near the glaciers of the Ice Age flowing toward North America. Plus the discovery in Virginia of a spear head that was made by a method known only in Ice Age France.
This current towards N America still exists today as you can see here off the coast of Greenland



And here are the currents from 20,000 years ago: (https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/the-once-and-future-circulation-of-the-ocean) [See: Circulation of Atlantic Ocean currents reversed 20,000 years ago]

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Musar of Reb Israel Salanter

The world view of Musar is really radical and simple. That good traits [note 1] are what really matters.
[Not that everyone that learns Musar is a decent person. I think my own parents were about the best thing I ever saw in terms of personal traits.  We attended Temple Israel [Reform] so we were not really into learning Musar. But the fact is my parents knew well that Torah is about good traits. I assume they got that from their parents.

But there is the "spirit of Torah" that I found in NY Litvak yeshivas that I did not feel as a part of Reform Judaism That being said Reform Jews are in general a lot better when it comes to the aspect of Torah that relate to obligations "between man and his fellow man."


And sometimes Musar can provide some ideological excuse. Although Musar is important, the proof is in the pudding   --good traits are what matters, not the learning about good traits.
I also went to the Boy Scouts, and there also was an emphasis on traits and self improvement.

At any rate, the message about good traits and fear of God I saw in Musar so much that at some point I got the message that: that is what "it's all about." That is, one's portion in the next world, and also in this world. Further, that holding on to good traits tends to create a force field around one-imperfect but still a kind of protection.
You might not think of Dante as an authority about Gehinom [Hell],-- but his opinion is also that the people in Hell did not have good traits.


[note 1] This is called "midot tovot". Not to lie, or steal. There are more details but that is the basic idea. Musar  goes into the details, not just in the mediaeval books, but also the Musar books that were written by the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. The books of Reb Israel helped me to get a clear idea of what Torah is all about even more than the classical books of Musar.

Since the Lithuanian Yeshiva world is as difficult to figure out as much as politics and since politics is nowhere near being an exact science, therefore it makes no sense to analyse it but rather to identify the particulars places that are worthy of support and emulation. Regardless of what ever the reason for their excellence might be.

The well known Ivy League is obviously Ponoviz in Bnei Brak and the Litvak yeshivas in NY.
But what makes them great seems to be for me an impossible question to answer.


The Litvak Yeshiva = Straight Torah. And that is the main thing which makes this kind of institution unique and important.

Litvak yeshivas

Even though people do not look on Litvak yeshivas as hippe communes they do have something in common. A kind of attempt to escape from the world and to build a private Utopia.
The flaw in the system is that it is not self contained.

There is unquestionably an aspect of utopia in the whole thing. And when it works--it works well.
And when things are going OK, you never have any reason to doubt that this is the "true path."
It is like me and my stomach. I never noticed how my digestive system is working, until  something went haywire. Same in the Litvak yeshiva world. There are plenty of good reasons to say that it in fact is about as close to utopia in this world than one can get. One learns and follows objective morality and is able to ignore the awful horrifying secular world.
The reason I am asking about it is for the cases when it does not seem to work--like for me. I am no where near being able to do an analysis on this but it begs to be done.
It is like political theory. When a state seems to be abusing people, the tendency is to attack theories that support the state. When on the other hand chaos and crime reign, one looks for justification of the State. 

What I mean is the Litvak yeshiva context was very nice for me for a while, but at some point something seems to have gone off course. And I can have no idea how to account for that.  

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U-87 G Major [U-87 in midi] [u-87 nwc]This I converted from MIDI to MP3 by Zamzar which is very different than the google converter. So I deleted a lot of the parts besides the main line and bass. This is based on the fact that in this converter the other parts do not seem to work very well. [here is u-8 in midi format.] u8 nwc  u8 mp3
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What I have noticed in Physics and Math is that sometimes there is a key concept that everything revolves upon. I had forgotten all math for a long time and only took it up in Israel after I became convinced that it is not separate from Torah but a part of God's Law.
At the time I bought a small book that had  basic concepts of Math. On one page was the idea of of a tangent function laid out simply. To my surprise, I understood it [only after review]. Then in Hebrew University, someone showed me the basic idea of how to solve an algebraic equation, and [the same person] later the basic idea of a derivative.
Over time, I began to see that for me there were certain points of leverage or focus that made everything else clear.
It might be different according to the person. But for me, I found it useful to identify key points, and review them.


I also think that often a lot depends on finding the right book.
Furthermore, the idea of "Girsa" [saying the words in order and go on--as fast as possible] I think is important in the way it is first introduced in tractate Sabbath [I think around page 63]. ליגמור והדר ליסבר "to finish, and then to understand" [delve into it deeply].

What is Torah all about?

There seem to be  lot of opinions about "What Torah is all about." The Musar opinion of Isaac Blazer [good traits and fear of God] is not the only one. There is Abraham Isaiah  [author of the חזון איש] that the main thing is to be careful about law. The commentary on the beginning of Mishne Torah of the Rambam holds the main thing is to come to the higher awe of God. The Ran of Breslov held it is שמירת הברית [sexual sanctity]. The Torah itself puts a lot of emphasis on coming and staying in Israel in Deuteronomy פרשת היראה.

I think the higher awe of God is certainly among the major goals of Torah. But I can also see that Rav Isaac Balzer was right because I see  most of the books of the great sages of the Middle Ages and also the Reshash [Rav Shalom Sharabi] seconded his motion.

The opinion that the ultimate purpose of Torah is to come to awe of God has an important practical application. For if one merits to this awe of God, he might be tempted to push it off by ignorence of its value. So simply being aware of this idea is important.



The approach of the Gra and his disciple Reb Haim of Voloshin  is that the major way of coming to Oneness with God and Awe of him is by learning Torah. This idea is in fact mentioned openly in the Yerushalmi Gemara in Peah.כל חפציך לא ישוו בה. כל חפצים לא ישוו בה אפילו חפצי שמיים אינם שווים לדיבור אחד של תורה All the commandments are equal to even one word of learning Torah.
[This idea of the Gra I think is quite right.]]

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.. ]