Tosphot.I would have to say how you deal with Tosphot probably depends on your situation. If you have a learning partner with a high IQ, that is probably the best thing.

It is hard to know how to deal with Tosphot.
I have avoided this subject because it seems to me that people in a Litvak yeshiva would have to go about Tosphot in a different way than me.
Since I anyway try my best to divide my time between Torah and Physics, that gives me a kind of space to deal with Tosphot in my own way which would not work for people in a Lithuanian Yeshiva. Since my time is limited anyway what I usually do is just to take one page of Gemara and go over it with Tosphot for about a month. That means I am trying to review each Tosphot every day.  That is from where the ideas come from that I wrote in my two small books on Bava Metzia and Ideas in Shas. The fact that I was doing a lot of review on those Tosphot or on Rav Shach or Rav Haim Halevi helped me to come to the ideas that I wrote down there.
But when I was a  Litvak in a Litvak yeshiva doing Gemara all day, I clearly was not doing that. I was just reviewing each  Tosphot about twice, and then go straight to the Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua. I would try to get the basic idea and then simply go on. [Understanding the Pnei Yehoshua and Maharasha as you can imagine took me a lot more  review than just twice. Sometimes I had to get up to about 15 times of review before I would get the idea.]
And then there was the time I was learning with my learning partner who has an IQ many magnitudes above me, and he would prepare, so when I got to the learning session he had already thought  of some of the difficulties with Tosphot.

So in conclusion  I would have to say how you deal with Tosphot probably depends on your situation.
If you have a learning partner with a high IQ, that is probably the best thing. If you are in a Litvak yeshiva, then in fact it probably makes the most sense to try to make progress. Learn the Tosphot, Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua a few times and then go on. Also have a separate session in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. [That is I think the best idea with the Avi Ezri is just to plow through it straight since Rac Shach usually explains the issues clearly before he gets to his basic new idea. It is probably the clearest sefer on learning Gemara in depth that I have ever seen or ever heard of]

learning Torah.

I see the Hafetz Haim has a section of his book that deals with the importance of learning Torah.
That is after the first two sections of the Hafetz Haim he has the section Guarding of the Tongue.
In that section he has a whole subsection dealing with learning Torah. With that I agree wholeheartedly. The trouble is nowadays the world of Torah has been penetrated by the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side]. That makes the issue difficult to resolve. I experienced this myself with the religious world which imagines itself to be keeping Torah.
What might seem like the best solution would be to stick with the straight Litvak yeshivas that more or less try to follow the European Model of what a Lithuanian Yeshiva is supposed to be. But I have found that even though that might be the best solution available, still in many places the Dark Side has managed to find entrance.

There is another kind of approach that people learn the Gemara Rishonim, Tur and the two books of Rav Joseph Karo, the House of Joseph  בית יוסף and the Laid Out Table and take exams for the Rabanut in Israel. From what I can tell this a good approach if one really intends to learn Torah not for money but rather accepts money in order to learn Torah.

Still since  many people have been severely hurt and burnt by Torah Scholars that are demons,  it makes more sense to me to learn Torah at home and just to avoid the religious altogether.

I figure there must be some kind of measuring stick to tell the difference between the real thing Torah of holiness and the torah of the Sitra Achra. Mainly my suggestion would be to follow the Gra and Rav Shach to the letter.

[Just to repeat a point I have made before. I do not think Rav Nahman from Breslov is included in the letter of excommunication that was signed by the Gra. See the book that brings down the entire letter and be exact in understanding  its language.]

Rav Nahman from Breslov did not hold a very high opinion of Torah scholars that are demons.

ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א סימן כ''ח
כי תלמידי חכמים שדין יהודאין הם מקבלים תורתם מהשדין שיש להם תורה נפולה מאלפין נפולים ובאלפין אלו כתיב בשלמה :"וידבר שלשת אלפים משל ויהי שירו חמישה ואלף", כי שלמה זכה להם בקדושה, אבל תלמידי חכמים שדין יהודאין מקבלים מהם דרך הקליפות
Likutai Moharan Vol I:28

"For Torah scholars, that are demons, receive their Torah lessons from the demons who have a fallen Torah from the fallen letters of "א" ("Aleph"). And on these fallen letters it says by King Solomon, 'He spoke 3000 parables, and his song was 1005.' For King Solomon merited to them in holiness, but Torah scholars, that are demons, receive them by way of the kelipot [the dark side]."

Later on in Likutai Moharan Volume I: 61, Rav Nahman goes into detail about the problem of "Semicha" ordination --that is when these Torah scholars that are demons receive from each other ordination.
"These Torah scholars that are demons can not guide themselves, much less so anyone else. And they take honor for themselves to claim to be able to lead everyone. It is important not to give them honor or power or ordination. The Torah scholars that are demons themselves are not all that guilty since they have a strong evil inclination.  But those that give them ordination will have to answer for their crimes in the future." [Likutai Moharan Volume I: 61] [Here Rav Nahman is mentioning not just the problem with demonic Torah scholars, but also the problem of giving them power. In  the last Tora lesson that Rav Nahman ever said in his life II:8 he also brings this up and also in II:1. There is says that these demonic Torah scholars are the cause of all sexual sin-because they bring that kelipa [evil force] into the world.]



The idea behind all this is simple, that since they get their persuasive abilities  and charisma from the Dark Side, they have vast powers to deceive. They can lead whole communities down the path to Gehinom (Hell). And their powers have only grown stronger since Rav Nahman said these things.
[And since the leaders are evil, the entire religious world is corrupt. To make people religious used to be thought of as an important goal , but most people's sins occur because they are religious. As Rav Nahman also said people will have to repent on their repentance.]

[The practical approach to this is hard to know. For me personally I just do my best to avoid them--but that only started because of personal experience and hard learned lessons. If I had been smart I would have listened to Rav Nahman in the first place without having to learn this the hard way. ]
So how do you tell whom to avoid? I try to take the safe approach and simply avoid all of them. I just will not go anywhere near them.] The few people that are aware of this problem are ignored. So it does not do much good to say anything about it. I guess people have to learn the hard way.

I might mention that the great Litvak yeshivas of Europe were generally immune to this problem since they were learning Torah for its own sake and also Musar. That mostly provided some kind of  force field against the powers of the Dark Side. Nowadays I am not so sure. To me it looks as the entire religious world have been snatched up by the Dark Side because of their following Torah scholars that are demons.


The main reason why it is allowed to make this known publicly is מפרסמים את החנפים נפני חילול השם or to be more specific in the Hafetz Haim there is the permission to tell people about wicked people even if their wickedness is not yet known because when people look into the matter they will discover that in fact everything that was said about those wicked men is true.  חפץ חיים כלל י' הלכה ב

Now the Hafetz Haim is speaking over there in Klal 10 about בין אדם לחבירו (between man and his fellow man) issues. You do not see all of those seven conditions in Klal 4 where the Hafetz Haim is writing about בין אדם למקום (between man and God) issues.  In any case, I think it is clear that when Rav Nahman was warning people about religious leaders, that he fulfilled all the necessary conditions about when and how it is permissible-- and even required to warn people about a danger to their physical or spiritual health.
There are five conditions for בין אדם למקום [between man and God] issues in the Hafetz Haim Klal 4 halacha 7 in the באר מיים חיים paragraph 32. (1) to see the crime himself, (2) to think if the crime was really against the Torah, (3) not to make it worse than what it really was, (4) to intend for תועלת some benefit, (5) not to say one thing behind their backs and something else in front of them.

These are different than the conditions for speaking about between man and his fellow man in three ways. there is no requirement of rebuke, no requirement of accomplishing the benefit in some other way if possible, that damage should not be caused more that what would be caused according to the law of the Torah. And the not hiding oneself condition does not exist in the between man and his fellow man arena.

In any case, the only people that I know of that are aware of this problem are the Na Nach group, and it ought to be more well known.

The difficulty here is that there is an obligation to be good, and also to influence others to be good as brought in the Obligations of the Heart [שער הביטחון פרק ד]. [He says there that one does not get into heaven without that last thing]

Another place where you see in the Hafetz Haim that people make a show of their religiosity and yet are dishonest are not in the category of being Jewish is in שמירת הלשון חתימת הספר דף רל''ג.
This is what he writes there: ובעוונותינו הרבים יש אנשים שנזהרים בכל עניני דת התורה כדין ואיסור גזל קל בעיניהם להונות לבני אדם בכל מיני תחבולות וכהאי גוונא, ומורגלים בזה מאד ולא ידעו  כי בנפשם הוא. ויוצא על ידי זה מכלל רעך ועמיתיך מלבד מה שהוא פסול לעדות על ידי זה וראיה ממה שאמרו חז''ל [ע''ז כו.] רועי בהמה דקה [שמורגלים לרעות בשדות אחרים] לא מעלים ולא מורדים, והיינו שאם נפלו בתוך הבור אין להעלותן אף שבשאר איש ישראל יש על זה לאו מיוחד "לא תעמוד על דם רעך" שמחויב להעלותו וגם לשכור אנשים להעלותו כדאיתא בסנהדרין ע''ג . אבל בזה מפני רשעו אין להעלותו
The Hafetz Haim writes : "There are people who are careful in all religious matters according to the most strict opinions but the prohibition of theft and fraud is light in their eyes. They trick and defraud people with all kinds of methods. They are very much accustomed to this. They do not know that by this they are not considered Jewish; they have left the category of being one one of Klal Israel even though in externals they are very religious."
It is too easy to put on religious clothing, and thus to signal virtue. Myself I make it a point to not look religious at all. " מה ה' אלקיך דורש ממך... והצניע לכת עם אלקיך" The prophet says, "What does Go ask from you except to walk modestly with God"--that is not to advertise how religious you are.

The point of Rav Nahman was to indicate how the Dark Side has infiltrated the religious world. So for one's moral and mental health the best idea is to avoid it unless a lot of people would wake up. And how would that be? It could be you could have places that learn strictly according to the Gra. That would help a lot. But I know only one place in Jerusalem that goes by the Gra in every detail{Aderet Eliyahu}. But if other places did that, that would help a lot.
[Litvak yeshivas are close to the path of the Gra, but as far as I can see, they are no where near close enough.]

ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א' סימן ח': אך דע שיש רב דקליפה והוא בחינת עשו כמו שכתוב בעשו יש לי רב והוא בחינת אלופי עשו וכמו שתרגם אונקלוס רברבי עשו בחינת הרב דקליפה s it says in Genesis that Esau said "I have a rav." And that is on the level of the leaders of Esau.

Spiritual leaders get a negative review in the major book of Rav Nahman from Breslov.
This is scattered throughout the ליקוטי מוהר''ן. And I have known this for while but now that I have access to the book of Rav Nahman I think I should write down a few of his comments. and then translate.
[Volume II:8] כי כשמתקרבין חס ושלום  למנהיג של שקר על ידי זה באין חס ושלום לאמונות כזביות כי מנהיג של שקר הוא בחינת נהיא השקר
"When people  come close to a spiritual leader who is a lie, by that they come to false beliefs. for a spiritual leader who is a lie has the very essence of the false prophets."
[This problem was clearly a large concern of Rav Nahman because it comes up so often in the ליקוטי מוהר''ן. Today the problem was just gotten worse.]

[I have mentioned before that this also comes up in the Talmud and the Ari. However nowadays you do not hear about it much except from the Na Nach group.]


[That is the from very last Torah lesson that Rav Nahman ever said during his lifetime.]


But to go in order here is his statement in [I:8] ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א' סימן ח': אך דע שיש רב דקליפה והוא בחינת עשו כמו שכתוב בעשו יש לי רב והוא בחינת אלופי עשו וכמו שתרגם אונקלוס רברבי עשו בחינת הרב דקליפה
"Know that there is a rav of the kelipa and he is the essence of Esau [the brother of Jakob], as it says in Genesis that Esau said "I have a rav." And that is on the level of the leaders of Esau.

Then later in I:12
ולבן הוא תלמיד חכם שד יהודי [עיין זוהר שמות ג: פנחס דף רי''ז] שתורתו להתיהר ולקנטר  ותלמיד חכם כזה נבלה טובה הימנו
Laban was a Torah scholar who was a demon, for his Torah was to brag and argue, and  on a scholar like that it says "" dead meat is better than him."

If someone would have the time it would be a good idea to collect all the statements in the sages of the Talmud חז''ל that also warn about this problem.

The Hafetz Haim concerning before a blind person do not place a stumbling block

Can a person transgress לפני עור (before a blind person  do not place a stumbling block.) an infinite number of times? The Hafetz Haim brings down from the gemara in Bava Metzia that a borrower does transgress this because if he would not borrow then the lender would not have anyone to transgress not to take interest. The Hafetz Haim then applies this to slander. If one would not listen to it then the one who says it would have no one to talk to. But then the talker causes the listener to transgress לפני עור(before a blind person ...). So he is transgressing לפני לפני עור(before before a blind person ). Now the listener is causing the speaker to transgress לפני לפני עור (before before a blind person... ) so he transgresses לפני לפני לפני עור (before before before a blind person ...) .

So by speaking slander [לשון הרע] just one time one transgress לפני עור an infinite number of times! One for causing the person to hear lashon hara. And once for causing him to transgress before a blind person. And once for causing him to transgress causing the listener to transgress before before a blind person...

[I think I must have thought of this years ago. But just today I was borrowing the book Hafez Haim and thought of this again.]

__________________________________________________________________________________



Does a person transgress לפני עור  an infinite number of times by speaking לשון הרע once? The חפץ חיים brings down from the גמרא in בבא מציעא that a borrower does transgress this. The reason is this. If the borrower would not borrow, then the lender would not have anyone to transgress not to take interest. The חפץ חיים then applies this to slander. If one would not listen to it, then the speaker would have no one to talk to. But then the speaker causes the listener to transgress לפני עור. So he is transgressing לפני לפני עור. Now the listener is causing the speaker to transgress לפני לפני עור, so he transgresses לפני לפני לפני עור. So by speaking לשון הרע just one time, one transgress לפני עור an infinite number of times! One for causing the person to hear לשון הרע. And once for causing him to transgress לפני עור. And once for causing him to transgress causing the listener to transgress לפמי לפני עור...

האם אדם עובר על לפני עור מספר אינסופי פעמים על ידי דיבור אחד של לשון הרע? החפץ החיים מביא  מן הגמרא בבא מציעא  שהלווה עובר על זה. הסיבה היא זו. אם הלווה לא היה לווה, אז המלווה לא היה לאף אחד  לקחת ממנו ריבית. החפץ חיים אז מחיל זו על לשון הרע. אם אחד לא יקשיב לו, אז הדובר לא יהיה עם מי לדבר. אבל אז הדובר גורם למאזין להפר לפני העור.  עכשיו המאזין הגורם שהדובר עובר על לפני לפני עור, כך שהוא עובר לפני לפני לפני עור. אז על ידי דיבור לשון הרע רק פעם אחת, אחד עובר על לפני עור מספר אינסופי של פעמים!

Music for the Glory of God [all in midi format.]

V-13 A Major Midi file (v13 nwc )  V-21 D Major (v21 nwc)  V-14 F Major ("nwc) V-20 E Flat major (" nwc)

V-22 G Minor ("nwc) V-23 A Major (" nwc) V-24  ("nwc)

V-25 D Major (v25 nwc)

V-26 A Minor (v26 nwc) V-27 G Minor (v27 nwc)

V-28 E Minor    (V-28 nwc)

 V-29 G Major  (V-29 nwc) V-30 F Major (V-30 nwc)

V-33   (v-33 nwc)  V-34 (v-34 nwc)

Quantum Reality. So Kant was right? Time is just a way to measure things?

So Kant was right? Time is just a way to measure things?

[Computer overheats quickly so I can not see the whole thing--but I got the idea.]

Nearly a hundred years ago there was a really bitter debate about the right interpretation of Kant. There was the Marburg school and opposed to it was Leonard Nelson  That is the Kant-Fries School.. I have to admit I think that Nelson was right but the bitterness of the debate surprises me,
The simplest way to understand it is the concept of immediate non intuitive knowledge.That is things that you know not through any thing but direct awareness. And also not through the senses.
My own feeling about this is more or less  is this: I looked at the Kant Fries web site of Kelley Ross and was astonished at his insights--so I more or less decide to follow that point of view even though other Kantian school also had some good points.

You might wonder what is the need for Kant? After all Musar [Medieval Ethics ] is already a perfectly good synthesis between Torah and Plato/Aristotle. The reason is mainly because of some good points that were raised by Descartes that no one answered very well until the Kant Fries approach came along.

Search for Certainty

Billington in his Fire in the Minds of Men mentions the visceral search for certainty after the French revolution. And draws parallels from that period to the 1960's. 

To me it seems the world nowadays is also in this search for certainty mode.

My feeling about this is that one should learn  Math and Physics  and hard core  natural sciences if one is in search for certainly and a stable frame of reference. Also the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and the Musar of the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter.

{The search for certainty means of course a world view that encompasses everything. And though Musar [the Ethics of the Middle Ages] does not openly present a philosophical world view but still it is built on a synthesis of neo Platonic thought and the Gemara. And that seems to me to be about the bet thing out there.]
The fact that Medieval thought was a synthesis of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus contributed highly to the advance of Western Civilization.

And least you say that Physics and Rav Shach are hard, let me just say you need to simply say the words and go on.  And also to lean in small segments. That is just set out to do one page. Then when you have finished put in a place marker and the next day start from where you left off.

But how can we tell nowadays what other lunatic ideas have taken over our minds?

Toxo Plasmosis is a parasite that causes the mouse to think the cat is attractive.
Dr Sapolsky  from Stanford asks in the video where he talks about this "Who knows what else is out there?"

You see a similar things with wasps and caterpillars. It is not just that the wasp uses the caterpillar's body as a hot house for its eggs, but that the mind of the caterpillar is taken over as you can see in this article.

This brings to the larger problem of the fact that the Dark Side can take over people's minds. People can become possessed by forces not of their own making.

[The force of the Dark Side I got an impression about by reading about the many revolutionary movements of the 1800's. The main idea there was that just by throwing out the "System", and all authority, everything would somehow become peachy. People would just work for altruistic reasons. There would never be a worker who slacked off. Now it is easy to see the lunacy of the political movements of the 1800's. But how can we tell nowadays what other lunatic ideas have taken over our minds?

For this reason it is a good idea to have a simple and small set of principles that one sticks with at all cost --principles that can protect one from the Dark Side. [e.g., the Ten Commandments].

medieval Musar [Ethics]

In medieval Musar [Ethics] learning Torah is not considered equal to learning the wonders of God (פלאי הבורא), as you can see in Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות in  שער חשבון הנפש. In particular in number 23 which is different from number 24. 23 is about the wonders of God and 24 is about learning Torah.
This is seen in almost all Musar books from the Middle Ages.
The idea I think is that inside of the Work of Creation is hidden Torah. [This you can see in the writings of the Ari and also Rav Nahman of Breslov in his book vol. II:78. In fact, this comes up often in the writings Rav Nahman of Breslov.]

After the Enlightenment  this aspect of Torah was lost or forgotten. Thus almost all Musar books written after the Middle Ages denigrate all secular learning. Some just put it on a low level or even barely permissible down to downright forbidden.

The reason I think this is important is that I believe there are aspects of Torah that are hidden in the work of Creation that one misses if he learns only what is the standard fare of the Oral and Written Law.

Thus my basic impression of a proper learning schedule is (1) to learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and or Gemara with Tosphot. (2) Physics/Math. (3) Musar/ Ethics. 

Music for the Glory of God

V-11 D Major
V-12

 V-15 C Major   V-16 F Major



V-17 C Major  

בבא בתרא ע''ו

I was looking at my notes and I realized what I had written was kind of stupid. I simply did not understand that the question of the ר''י was based on the sages of ר' יהודה הנשיא; not the first  opinion in the teaching on ר' נתן, On the other hand I also realized that there is a possible way to answer for ר' תם.That is in two steps. One is that perhaps the גמרא did not want to speculate that the argument between ר' יהודה and the sages is in  an alley because that would mean that ר' יהודה הנשיא would have to say that מסירה [handing over] works in an ally even when the owner said "Go and pull." But the ר''י could answer that the גמרא is speculating anyway and modifying the sages. So why not modify ר' יהודה instead. But there is a more powerful answer for ר' תם why the גמרא does not want the argument to be in the alley. The reason is because then the statement of ר' יהודה would have to be this: he is מוסר the object from the alley into the public domain. That is just like the גמרא concludes that the sages have to means he pulls the boat from the public domain into the alley. But then the ר''י could answer this. He can answer that in any case to ר' תם if מסירה is better than pulling then ר' יהודה can easily say that it works in an alley even without his doing מסירה from the alley into the public domain.
But then ר' תם could turn that argument against theר''י and say that if pulling is better than מסירה then why does the גמרא have to conclude to the sages that he pulled from the public domain into the alley. After all, if pulling is so much better than מסירה, then let it be effective in a public domain also!


השאלה של ר''י התבססה על החכמים של ר' יהודה הנשיא; לא הדעה הראשונה בהוראה של ר' נתן. גם הבנתי שיש דרך אפשרית כדי לענות בשביל ר' תם בשני שלבים. האחת היא כי אולי גמרא לא רוצה לומר כי הטיעון בין ר' יהודה וחכמים היא בסמטה שהרי המשמעות היא כי ר' יהודה הנשיא היה צריך לומר כי מסירה עובדת  גם כאשר הבעלים אמרו "לכו ותמשוך." אך הר''י יכול לענות כי הגמרא  ממילא עושה שינוי בדעת החכים. אז למה לא לשנות ר' יהודה במקום זה. אבל יש תשובה חזקה יותר עבור ר' תם מדוע הגמרא אינה רוצה שהטיעון יהיה בסמטה. הסיבה לכך היא כי הרי האמירה של ר" יהודה היה צריך להיות זה: הוא מוסר את האובייקט מהסמטה אל המרחב הציבורי. כלומר בדיוק כמו הגמרא מסכמת כי החכמים צריכים לומר שהוא מושך את הספינה מן המרחב הציבורי אל הסמטה. אבל אז ר''י יכול לענות על זה באופן זה, בכל מקרה אם ר' תם תקין שהמסירה עדיפה ממשיכה, אז ר' יהודה יכול לומר בקלות כי זה עובד בסמטה אפילו בלי  שהוא עושה מסירה מהסמטה אל המרחב הציבורי. כלומר בדיוק כמו הגמרא מסכמת כי החכמים צריכים לומר שהוא מושך את הספינה מן המרחב הציבורי אל הסמטה. אבל אז ר''י יכול לענות על זה. הוא יכול לענות על זה בכל מקרה שלדעת ר' תם אם המסירה עדיפה ממשיכה, אז ר' יהודה יכול לומר בקלות כי זה עובד בסמטה אפילו בלי שהוא עושה מסירה מהסמטה אל הרשות הרבים. כלומר בדיוק כמו הגמרא מסכמת כי החכמים צריכים לומר שהוא מושך את הספינה מן המרחב הציבורי אל הסמטה. אבל אז ר''י יכול לענות על זה. הוא יכול לענות על זה בכל מקרה כדי ר' תם אם המסירה עדיפה ממשיכה אז ר' יהודה יכול לומר בקלות כי זה עובד בסמטה אפילו בלי שלו עושה מסירה מהסמטה אל הרשות הרבים. אבל אז ר' תם יכול להפוך הטענה נגד ר''י ולומר שאם משיכה עדיפה ממסירה, אז למה יש צורך לגמרא להסיק לחכמים שהוא הוציא מן המרחב הציבורי אל הסמטה. אחרי הכל, אם משיכה כל כך הרבה יותר טוב מאשר מסירה, אז תנו לזה להיות יעיל גם המרחב הציבורי גם.

Gemara Bava Batra 76

I was looking at my notes and I realized what I had written was kind of stupid. I simply did not understand that the question of the Ri was based on the sages of R. Yehuda; not the first  opinion in the teaching on R. Natan, On the other hand I also realized that there is a possible way to answer for R. Tam.That is in two steps. One is that perhaps the Gemara did not want to speculate that the argument between R. Yehuda and the sages is in  an alley because that would mean that R. Yehuda would have to say that mesira [handing over] works in an ally even when the owner said "Go and pull." But the Ri could answer that the Gemara is speculating anyway and modifying the sages. So why not modify R Yehuda instead. But there is a more powerful answer for R Tam why the gemara does not want the argument to be in the alley. The reason is because then the statement of R. Yehuda would have to be this: he is moser the object from the alley into the public domain. That is just like the Gemara concludes that the sages have to means he pulls the boat from the public domain into the alley. But then the Ri could answer this. He can answer that in any case to R Tam if Mesira is better than pulling then R. Yehuda can easily say that it works in an alley even without his doing mesira from the alley into the public domain.
But then R. Tam could turn that argument against the Ri and say that if pulling is better than mesira then why does the gemara have to conclude to the sages that he pulled from the public domain into the alley. After all, if pulling is so much better than mesira, then let it be effective in a public domain also!

בבא בתרא ל''ו ע''ב

בבא בתרא ל''ו ע''ב

 עולא מחזיק שהדין הוא that the law is a tree needs to be more than שש עשרה אמות away from the border of a neighbor in order to bring the first fruits from it. The idea is that  any closer than that is like the tree is deriving sustenance from the neighbor's field and it is not פרי אדמתך "the fruit of your field". The גמרא  tries to find from where this law comes from. At first they suggest the משנה of עשר נטיעות. But that does not work because that only gives you up to שמנה אמות for each sapling.  Then they find another משנה about three trees in an area אלפיים חמש מאות אמות. But if we are thinking (that is the גמרא is thinking) that the law of עולא comes from the משנה about שלש נטיעות in a field that is אלפיים חמש מאות square אמות then why did not עולא mention that if the fruit bearing trees are not actually full grown but just נטיעות, then the amount of space between them and the boundary of the neighbor is less. That is just שמנה אמות. The reason is that is the distance that come out of the משנה about ten נטיעות for the field of אלפיים חמש מאות square אמות. In another words עולא should have more lenient with  נטיעות. That is,  that נטיעות do not forbid up until 16 אמות but only up until 8 אמות?



בתרא ל''ו ע''ב בבא. עולא מחזיק  שהחוק הוא עץ צריך להיות יותר משש עשר אמות רחוק מהגבול של שכן על מנת להביא את הביכורים ממנו. הרעיון הוא שכל מה קרוב מזה, הוא כמו העץ שמקבל מזון משדה השכן וזה לא "פרי אדמתך" (פרי השדה שלך). הגמרא מנסה למצוא מאיפה החוק הזה מגיע. בהתחלה הם מציעים את המשנה של עשר נטיעות. אבל זה לא עובד כי זה רק נותן לך עד שמנה אמות עבור כל שתיל. ואז הם מוצאים עוד משנה, שלושה עצים באזור אלפיים חמש מאות אמות. אבל אם אנחנו חושבים  כי החוק של עולא נובע מן המשנה של שלש נטיעות בשדה כי הוא אלפיים חמש מאות מרובע אמות, אז למה עולא לא הזכיר כי אם עצי הפרי הם לא מלאים  אלא רק נטיעות, אז את כמות השטח ביניהם לבין הגבול של השכן פחות, כלומר רק שמנה אמות. הסיבה לכך היא כי הוא המרחק שמגיע מחוץ מן המשנה של עשר נטיעות עבור השדה של אלפיים חמש מאות אמות בריבוע. עולא צריך להקיל עם הנטיעות, כי נטיעות אינן אוסרות עד 16 אמות אלא רק עד 8 אמות.

Gemara Bava Batra page 36

בבא בתרא ל''ו ע''ב תוספות. עולא אומר הוא עץ בבעלותו של אדם שהוא בתוך י''ו אמות של גבול של שכן אינו יכול להביא ביכורים מהעץ בגלל השורשים שהולכים שש עשרה אמות. הגמרא מנסה למצוא מאיפה זה נובע. אם משנת עשר נטיעות (שתילים) בשדה חמישים על חמישים זה משאיר לכל אילן עם רק תשע אמות. אז הם מנסים עוד משנה עם שלשת עצים הגדלים באותה חמישים על חמישים, וכי מיתברר שזה קרוב

Ula said a tree needs to be more than 16 amot away from the border of a neighbor in order to bring the first fruits from it. The idea is that any closer than that is like the tree is deriving sustenance from the neighbors field and it is not פרי אדמתך "the fruit of your field". The Gemara  tries to find from where this law comes from. At first they suggest the mishna of עשר נטיעות. But that does not work because that only gives you up to 8 amot for each sapling.  Then the find another mishna about three trees in a area 2500 square amot.




It occurs to me to wonder if we are thinking (that is the Gemara is thinking) that the law of Ula comes from the Mishna about 3 trees in a field that is 2500 square  amot then why did not Ula mention that if the fruit bearing trees are not actually full grown but just נטיעות then the amount of space between them and the boundary of the neighbor is less. That is just 8 amot. The reason is that is the distance that come out of the Mishna about ten נטיעות for the field of 2500 square amot.
In another words Ula should have more lenient with  נטיעות and said that נטיעות do not forbid up until 16 amot but only up until 8 amot?

"Sidur HaReshash" [Shalom Sharabi]

There are two "Sidur HaReshash"[note 1] both of which I prayed with for years.[2] I knew the large one was more accurate but I never was able to get my hands on it until I was in Mea Shearim and found the address of the family that printed it.
Both of those sidurim I found very helpful I should add.

The only thing I really do need to add to this is that there is a great need for "devekut" attachment with God when you pray with either sidur because of the simple and well known fact that unifications in themselves do nothing unless the Divine Light is there to fill up the unifications.

But Devekut "attachment with God" is  some which everyone needs to strive to get to. There are a few places in Deuteronomy which you see that attachment with God is a positive commandment.

{note 1} The Reshash is Rav Shalom Sharabi from Yemen and then later in Yerushalim. His grandson wrote the larger Sidur. In terms of praying with the intentions of the Ari, the only thing I ever found to be practical is either of those two sidurs. It goes without saying that this ought to be done only after one has finished Shas at least once-preferably twice. People outside of Israel might find it hard to get either of these two sidurs.

[2] That is not to imply I pray with it nowadays. I feel for myself that trying to do those unifications without the proper degree of devekut and Divine light would only cause damage. However for people in a Litvak yeshiva environment where there is already a certain degree of "השראת השכינה" dwelling of the Divine Presence because of the learning Torah, --in such a place these unifications could do a great deal of good. 

The Mind Body problem, Dr Michael Huemer noted that no one has come anywhere near giving a decent answer to it.

I am not sure  understand why the answer to the mind body problem should not be simple, that is people have a soul. As Allan Bloom made note of that after the Enlightenment people became secular. So the problem is the Mind body problem --not the mind soul problem.

Maybe that is not scientific enough nowadays but to me it makes sense.

To some degree Kant actually answered it in that way by claiming to the self to be the dinge an sich - the unknowable self that is beyond reason of perception.

I do not mean to belittle the Mind Body problem, but as Dr Michael Huemer noted that no one has come anywhere near giving a decent answer to it. Maybe the  whole perspective is wrong.
The problem with the mind body problem is the elephant in the room--Life. the mind is not the same thing as life. The answer to the mind body problem is to add the one missing ingredient: Life. So you have Mind Body and Life and then the problem never arises.

The reason this simple answer got ignored was that Descartes had a true critique on the Aristotle concept of perception, an the result was to throw out all of Aristotle.  Not just the faulty parts.

religious fanaticism

The way to look at this is to draw a parallel to the "Fire in the Minds of Men" of the 1800's when people were thinking that overthrowing the old order would usher in Utopia. This is very much the same with religious fanaticism.

The way to combat this tendency is by learning Musar [Ethics] of the Middle Ages where the basic approach of the the Torah--straight Torah is outlined without adding and without subtracting anything.

Utopias have a vast and expanding literature and this virus  infected both the secular revolutionists and religious fanatics.

The religious world is insane. There is some kind of evil force at work in the religious world.

The major problem in keeping the laws of the Torah strictly is that the religious world is insane and very much into idolatry of tzadikim. It is apparent there is some kind of evil force at work in the religious world.. Therefore keeping the Torah privately is the only real way to go about it.

When this became apparent to me I also understood that keeping the commandments as strictly as they ought to be kept also was not possible. So I made use of previous knowledge about how to be lenient.  However being lenient in many laws may also cross the line.

This predicament I am sure is widespread among many people who wish to keep all the commandments properly but are aware the religious world uses commandments as traps to catch prey with.
. 

בבא בתרא עמוד י''ח ע''ב. בתוספות ד''ה מכלל

 בבא בתרא עמוד י''ח ע''ב. בתוספות ד''ה מכלל

תוספות had to explain the משנה like אביי that the owner of the mustard can put his mustard by the boundary and that the owner of the bees can also put his bees there because that is the only way the question of the גמרא makes sense.
But after the גמרא reaches the conclusion of רב פפא in רבא, then the only way for the answer of the גמרא to make sense is כל הקודם זכה first come first served. That is who ever was first at the border can stay and the other has to move his object 6 hand breaths away.
In any case the way תוספות understands the question of the גמרא is based on that fact that the question of the גמרא is thinking the משנה is going like אביי. Then the תוספות changes the assumption in the end of the גמרא because that is the only way the answer of רב פפא in רבא makes sense.

The reason the answer of the גמרא has to be that since neither neighbor did anything wrong since it is a case when half the field was bought there is no reason to demand the bees to be put far from the border.

בבא בתרא עמוד י''ח ע''ב. בתוספות ד''ה מכלל
תוספות נאלצו להסביר את קוששית הגמרא שהולכת לפי אביי כי הבעלים של החרדל יכולים לשים החרדל שלהם על יד
הגבול, וכי הבעלים של הדבורים ניתנים גם לשים הדבורים שלהם שם כי רק באופן הזה השאלה של  הגמרא מסתברת.

. אבל אחרי הגמרא מגיעה למסקנה של רב פפא אליבא דרבא אז הדרך היחידה עבור התשובה של הגמרא להיות הגיונית היא כל קודם זוכה.  מי שהיה ראשון בגבול יכול להישאר והשני צריך להזיז ששה טפחים האובייקט שלו משם. בכל מקרה דרך שהתוספות מבינים את השאלה של הגמרא מבוססת על העובדה כי שאלת הגמרא היא לחשוב שהמשנה הולכת כמו אביי. ואז התוספות משנים את ההנחה בסוף הגמרא כי זה הדרך היחידה התשובה של פפא  ברבא הגיונית.

I was looking over my notes on Bava Batra 18b and I think I need to add some clarity to the basic idea. that is this: Tosphot had to explain the mishna like Abyee that the owner of the mustard can put his mustard by the boundary and that the owner of the bees can also put his bees there because that is the only way the question of the Gemara makes sense.

But after the Gemara reaches the conclusion of Rav Papa in Rava then the only way for the answer of the Gemara to makes sense is כל הקודם זוכה first come first served. That is who ever was first at the border can stay and the other has to move his object 6 hand breaths away.
In any case the way Tosphot understands the question of the Gemara is based on that fact that the question of the Gemara is thinking the Mishna is going like Abyee. then the Tosphot changes the assumption in the end of the Gemara because that is the only way the answer of Rav papa in Rava makes sense.

The reason the answer of the gemara has to be that since neither neighbor did anything wrong since it is a case when half the field was bought there is no reason to demand the bees to be put far from the border.


These are my original notes:


) בבא בתרא עמוד י''ח ע''ב. [בתוספות ד''ה מכלל] יש משהו בתוספות בבא בתרא עמוד י''ח ע''ב שהוא קצת קשה להבין. ביסודו של דבר הנושא הוא המשנה שבה החכמים אומרים אחד צריך לשמור על מרחק ממשרה המשמשת כדי להשרות כביסה רחוק  מירקות של שכינו. גם חרדל מדבורים. ר יוסי מאפשר את זה האחרון כי הבעלים של חרדל יכולים לומר לבעלים של הדבורים "למה להגיד לי להתרחק מן הדבורים שלך? אתה צריך להרחיק את הדבורים שלך מהחרדל שלי, כי הם גם עושים נזק." אביי אומר אם השכן לא שם שום דבר על יד הגבול עדיין אז אפשר למקם חרדל או כל דבר אחר על יד הגבול עד שהשכן שם מה שהוא שם. רבא אומר שצריך לשמור על מרחק מהגבול בכל דברים שיכולים לגרום נזק  גם אם השכן לא שם שום דבר בקרבת מקום. אז איך רבא מתאים עם ר' יוסי? בשלב זה תוספות אומר שהגמרא מחזיקה שאביי הוא בסדר כי בעל הדבורים שם את הדבורים שלו על הגבול ולאחר מכן כוונתו של ר' יוסי היא כי שבעל החרדל יכול גם לשים את זרעי החרדל שלו על הגבול. רב פפא אז עונה על השאלה על רבא וכותבת המקרה של המשנה הוא כאשר אחד מן השכנים מכר חצי שדהו לשכן השני. זה מתכוון כי חרדל היה שם ראשונה ואז הוא מכר חלק מן השדה לבעלים של הדבורים. ואז כאשר ר' יוסי אומר מותר הכוונה שהחרדל יכול להישאר במקומו  ובעל הדבורים חייב לשמור על דבורים שלו שישה טפחים הרחק מהגבול [הגם שהם הניזוקים]. ותוספות שמים דגש על זה לומר הבעלים של הדבורים לא יכולים לשים את הדבורים ליד החרדל. הדבר שקשה בשבילי לי להבין הוא אם זה איך תוספות לומד בסופו של דבר, אז למה לא כאשר הוא הסביר ר' יוסי לפי אביי, שהוא לא אומר "ר' יוסי מרשה לו" הכוונה שהוא מאפשר לדבורים להישאר במקומם שהם נמצאים, והוא חייב לשמור את החרדל ששה טפחים משם?[היינו לומר שהכוונה של רבי יוסי היא ראשון ראשון זכה?] תירוץ: תוספות משנה מה המשמעות של ר' יוסי. לפני המשפט של רב פפא, המצב בוא שהדבורים ליד הגבול ואת החרדל ניתן לשים לידם. אחרי המשפט של רב פפא המקרה של המשנה הוא כאשר חצי השדה נרכש, ותוספות כותב המקרה הוא שהחרדל הוא ליד הגבול, ובעל החרדל יכול להגיד לבעל הדבורים להרחיק את הדבורים ששה טפחים מן הגבול (לפי שיטת רבי יוסי). חלק מהסיבה היא שהוא מדייק בשפה שר' יוסי משתמש בה, וחלק אחר של הסיבה היא כמו שתוספות כותב כי לפני רב פפא זה חייב להיות ר' יוסי הוא מחזיק שהבעלים של הדבורים עשו משהו לא בסדר לשים את הדבורים ליד גבול. אחרי רב פפא אף אחד לא עשה משהו לא בסדר, כי השדה עדיין לא נמכר. שפת גמרא היא זו: בעל החרדל אומר לבעלים של הדבורים "למה תגידו לי להרחיק את החרדל שלי, הרחק את הדבורים!" אם החרדל היה שם קודם, זה מתכוון שהוא אומר למעשה להרחיק את הדבורים. אם הדבורים היו שם קודם, פירוש הדבר שבעלים של החרדל אומרים שגם הם יכולים לשים את חרדל ליד הגבול. לכן, אחרי שהגענו  לפירוש של רב פפא ברבא, חייב להיות כמו שתוספות כותב כל אחד שהיה בגבול בראשונה יכול לומר לשני לשמור על מרחק ששה טפחים מהגבול.

the religious world has sunken deeply into the worship of tzadikm -not all that different from the worship of sticks and stones.

The worship of tzadikim [saints]seems to me to be not a very good idea. One reason I say this is I notice in the Obligations of the Hearts חובות הלבבות this idea that not to make up new "עבודות"--services.
The problem seems to be that the religious world has sunken deeply into the worship of tzadikm, and that I think is really not all that different from the worship of sticks and stone.

[This comes up in the Obligations of the Hearts a few times but one place that really made the point clear to me was when he talks about sticking with the path of one's parents]. There is no question that my parents and their parents and their parents before them would have thought that this worship of tzadikim that is so prevalent in the religious world is absolutely ridiculous and not the straight path of Torah at all.

The only people apparently that were aware of this problem were the Gra and Rav Shach. Other than that it seems the religious world have replaced the worship of God.

Now if I am right about this it means that the general set of rules about idolatry apply.

That is to say that one is not allowed to derive pleasure from idols nor the worship of idols. And since the worship of tzadikim is in fact idolatry that whole set of rules would apply.

I saw that the Hafetz Haim goes into the problems involved with deriving any kind of benefit from idols in section 6 of the Hafetz Haim.

[What this means is that in general one can not get pleasure from looking at idolatry, nor any other kind of pleasure.]

Music for the Glory of God

V-15  V-4  V-5  V-7 V-8 V-9 V-19

 these are in midi because i had no access to a mp3 converter 

Reb Nahman being in fact a very great tzadik

In spite of Reb Nahman being in fact a very great tzadik, there is a tendency to get off track. That is as long as people remain in the straight Torah path --the Litvak yeshiva, they tend to gain a lot by the ideas and writing of Reb Nahman. But there is a point when they "become Breslov" that there is a pronounced tendency to leave off learning Gemara and to get involved in other stuff. And sometimes that other stuff leads one to get even more off track. I saw this actually happen with people countless of times.

I never heard of  a great Litvak Gadol beTorah ever even hint anything other than the fact that Reb Nahman was a very very great tzadik. But that is very different than "becoming Breslov". It is just not the same thing.

I did ask Leibel Berenbaum about this issue specifically.

John Searle has a powerful refutation of relativism [relativism about truth]

John Searle has a powerful refutation of relativism [relativism about truth] which is based on dis-quotation. And after the first step of dis-quotation he shows how relativism results in incoherence and an infinite regress.

[This does not work however to prove moral objectivism. That is why people like Kelley Ross and Plato and Michael Huemer go about proving that in different ways.]

[His essay used to be on his Stanford web site. I don't know if it is there anymore so here it is for reference:

Relativism
last date corrected: November 7, 2001
The Refutation of Relativism

There are many different versions of relativism: ethical relativism, conceptual relativism, and epistemic relativism are three.
In this paper, I will be concerned with only one version of relativism, relativism about truth.  As a preliminary formulation, I will define relativism about truth as follows: Relativism is the theory that the truth (or falsity) of any
proposition is always relative to certain sorts of psychological
attitudes on the part of the person who states, believes or otherwise judges the truth of the proposition. This is a bit vague but I think the idea is clear enough. A proposition which I state is true only relative to my interests or my point of view. Thus according to relativism so defined, a proposition might be true for me but false for you.

Relativism is thus more than a syntactical claim that statements of the  form "S is true" are disguised relational statements.
It might  be argued that such statements, though in their surface grammar they are in one place subject predicate form, are in fact two place relational statements.  They are not of the form "a is f" but of the form "aRb".  For example, this is claimed by  the correspondence theory of truth. According to the correspondence theory,  statement p is true iff p corresponds to a fact. This gives a  relational version of truth but it is not a version of relativism about truth,  as I am using that notion or as it is standardly understood by those who think of themselves as relativists.
Relativism about truth, so construed, is opposed to absolutism about truth. Absolutism, I will define as the view that there are a very large number of truth claims whose truth is in no way dependent on the feelings and attitudes of the people making or assessing the truth claim.
I deliberately use the word "absolutism", because it is so politically incorrect, suggesting as it does some terrible form of oppression.  I think this is, in a way, appropriate, because truth often is oppressive in the sense that there are many truths that we would rather not believe or accept, for
example, the truth that the people we most love are all going to die.

There is a standard, and I think powerful, refutation of relativism. Here is how it goes: You can't even state relativism without denying it. Suppose you say 1. All truth is relative to the interests and perspective of the person making the truth claim. or 2. There are no universally valid truths. or
3. There are no absolute truths. It looks like in each case you have to exempt the claim itself from the scope of its application.  But then you have given up the claim, for the claim was supposed to be universal in in its application.
1 is supposed to be interpreted in such a way that if I accept it then I need not accept any truth claim which it is not in my interest to accept. But then what is to prevent me from thinking it is not in my interest to accept 1?
The difficulty with 2 and 3 is even more obvious.
Is 2 supposed to be interpreted so that it applies to itself or not? Either way you get inconsistency. If you say there are no universally valid truths except the truth that there are no universally valid truths, then you have already allowed for an exception and no reason has been given why there will not be other exceptions. If you say there are no universally valid truths including the claim that there are no universally valid truths, then you have contradicted yourself. You have said the claim both is and is not universally valid. 

Such arguments seem powerful, and I do not see how a relativist could answer them. Until fairly recently relativism was mostly espoused by adolescents or other people inspired by Nietzsche or others outside of mainstream intellectual life. Recently it has reared its head as part of postmodernism.

Why are the relativists not worried by the incoherence of their position? I don't know, but I think it is because they think they are possessed of an important insight, which is not touched by these logical worries.
The insight has to do with the perspectival character of all knowledge claims.

The idea is that all claims are made from a point of view, from some perspective
or other and there is no superior or master perspective from which to judge all other perspectives. The relativity to perspectives is all the relativism they need and the fact that the judgment "all judgments are perspectival" is itself perspectival does not seem to them a decisive refutation.

I think the situation with relativism is much worse than they or anybody else has said.  The problem is not just that you can't coherently state relativism, the problem is that if you are a consistent relativist, you can't coherently state anything.

Suppose you want to say that "it is raining" or that "two plus two equals four" or that "Denver is the capital of Colorado" or pretty much anything.  How do you do it if you are a relativist? Suppose you say that it is raining (now, here). On a normal interpretation you are saying it is raining as opposed to It is not raining. That is, your utterance stakes out a territory in the space of possibilities, and thus excludes certain other territories. That is what you mean when you say it is raining. But how is it supposed to work if you are a relativist? You are supposed to intend you utterance "It's raining" in this way:   "It is true that it is raining, but that truth is relative to my point of view. So it is true for me, but it might not be true for you." And what is true of rain will be true of everything. So for example, if I say "2+2= 4", what I really means is, "It's true that 2+2=4, but that truth is relative to my own views.  So it's true for me, but it might not be true for you."  And so on with all other cases.

But now we immediately have a difficulty with the logical law that for any statement S, that statement is true if and only if P, where for the letter S you substitute an expression identifying the statement, and for P you substitute the statement itself.  Thus, to take a famous example, "Snow is white is true" if and only if snow is white.  This law
is sometimes called "disquotation" because the sentence or statement quoted on the left-hand side occurs on the right-hand side with the quotation marks dropped, hence disquoted.
The trouble is that disquotation makes not just truth but the rain itself, and everything else relative to me.  So now I have to say, "It is raining, but only relative to my point of view. (RMyPV).   And that is consistent with
   It is not raining, relative to your point of view (RYourPV)."
Once you grant that truth is relative to me then because of disquotation anything at all that can be ascribed \fIexists\fR only relative to me. Relativity about truth immediately implies relativity of all of reality.

There is no intermediate position of truth relativism or semantic relativism between absolutism and ontological relativism, the view that everything that exists only exists relative to my feelings and attitudes. The relativist has to give up on the idea that when he says it is raining he must mean that it is really raining as opposed to not raining, because it is only raining F His PV and maybe not raining FMyPV. The relativist began with the apparent insight that the real world can only be described from different points of view. The initial picture was that there is a real world, but our representation of it is always going to be relative to a point of view, because all representation is from some point of view or other, and this supposed to give him  a relativism of truth but not of reality. But now he has to give up on his original idea that there is a real world that can be described from this or that point of view, because if truth is relative to his point of view then disquotation makes the (existence of) the real world dependent on his point of view.  Well couldn't he just accept that? Isn't that what the relativist should really want--that all of reality only exists from his point of view? Is that a coherent position?
I don't think it is. Just as there was no coherent position of semantic or truth relativism between absolutism and ontological relativism, so there is no coherent position of ontological relativism short of total solipsism. And the reason is that the people with points of view and the points of view themselves now have to be relativized to points of view. If you go back and look at our original definition of relativism, the idea was to define truth only relative to people and their points of view. We then discovered that the relativity of truth implied the relativity of reality. But the original assumption behind our definition was that there really were people with different points of view, and that was an absolute assumption. Now we discover that relativism does not allow for the absolute existence of anything, not even people and points of view.
So when the relativist says, You and I both exist with our points of view and maybe from your point of view it is not raining, even though from my point of view it is raining, he must mean "You and your point of view can only exist from my point of view."
     What is going on here? I think it is this. The relativist would like to reduce all utterances to the expression of preferences. Thus the model is, for example, the statement
"chocolate tastes good," said by me, need not be inconsistent with the statement, "chocolate does not taste good" said by you. Because I might mean chocolate tastes good to me and you might
mean chocolate does not taste good to you; and these are consistent positions.  The good taste of chocolate only exists relative to tasters. Now why can't all utterances be like that? Why can't "it's raining" be read as "it's raining to me" and thus consistent with "it's not raining to you", just like the taste of chocolate? The answer is quite simple. The relativity of the goodness of the taste of chocolate only makes sense given the absolute existence of the tasters and the goodness or badness of their taste experiences. When you say "chocolate tastes good," that is relative (we are assuming that is how you intended it). But when you say chocolate tastes good to me, thus identifying the relativity of the first claim, the claim of relativity cannot itself be relative. If it is relative, it cannot ground the relativity of the first claim.  There is a deep point here that I want to make fully explicit: the relativity in question, relativity to preferences, attitudes, etc., is only intelligible if there is something that is not itself relative.  It makes sense to say that my utterance of "chocolate tastes good" is true relative to me, but that is only because my existence and the way that chocolate tastes to me are absolute.  There is nothing relative about either of them.

To see the slide of relativism into incoherence let us go through the steps. (1.) Assume all truth is relative to preferences of the asserters of the truth. If S asserts p then p is true only relative to the interests of S.  (2.) By disquotation, if truth is relative then reality is relative. (3.) If reality is relative it is relative to the existence of people and preferences   (4.) But if everything is relative, then existence of people and preferences must itself be relative. To what? There are two possibilities. Either we say (a)that people and preferences only exist relative to people and preferences or we say (b) that from my point of view, which is the only point of view to which I have access, people and preferences exist only relative to me.

Let us go through each of these:
Consider (a) first.
Proposition 1. It's raining has to be interpreted as Propostion 2: "Its raining but only relative to preference 1". -But of course proposition 2 is as relative as 1. It can only be interpreted as Proposition 3. "Proposition 2 is true but only relative to preference 2". That is, "It's raining relative to preference 1", but only relative to preference 2. -But Proposition 3, must itself be relative, as is stated by Proposition 4. "Proposition 3 is true but only relative to preference 3." -Thus its raining relative to preference 1, relative to preference 2, but only relative to preference 3.
The infinite regress follows automatically. Why is the regress vicious? Because it makes it impossible to give statement of anything. For any relativistic statement there must always be some other statement behind it which generates its relativistic interpretation, but that other statement is as much in need of a relativistic interpretation as was the original.


So let's try possibility b. If truth for me is relative to my preferences and thus everything that exists, exists only relative to my preferences, then you and your preferences exist only relative to my preferences. That is solipsism. My solipsism is coherent, but it makes it impossible to say anything to anybody else because there is nobody else and no public language to say anything. Your solipsism is immediately refuted by me, but that is because my existence is absolute and not relative to any preferences, mine or anybody else's. A consistent relativism makes it impossible to state anything because there is no end, there is indeed a vicious infinite regress of relativisms to relativisms.  The way out of this, that is an implicit in the first person point of view of the relativist, is to insist that the relativism terminates in his existence and preferences.  But then that is a form of solipsism, because everyone else exists only relative to his existence and preferences.
.PP
But then, why couldn't a relativist be more democratic?  Why couldn't he stop half way and say, "Well, what's true for me is true relative to my preferences and what's true for you is true relative to your preferences, but all of us are created equal, so all of us have an equal right to their preferences."  The trouble with that is that it is an  explicit denial of relativism.  It is a form of absolutism.  It says that people and preferences have an absolute non-relative existence.  But then, if people and preferences have an absolute existence, why not all the other things such as mountains and waterfalls, rainstorms and prime numbers.  If I grant that you have an absolute existence, then why not your clothing, your house, your car, your dog, and a whole lot of other things? 

Gates of Repentance of Rabbainu Yona and Lashon Hara [Slander]

In the Gates of Repentance of Rabbainu Yona you can see that lashon hara [slander] that is true is only forbidden because of collateral damage.  The Hafez Haim more or less agrees with this  as you can see in the seven conditions by which one can say lashon hara. [If the Hafez Haim would have decided like the Rambam then lashon hara that is true would be more strict]
It occurs to me this might be the reason for Tosphot in Bava Batra page 39B.
What I mean to say is that I saw in the Hafez Haim that he answers that Tosphot saying that it is talking about אבק לשון הרע the dust of lashon hara and in particular something that can be interpreted in a few ways. So Tosphot says it is OK to say it in front of three people because he knows it will get back to the person he was talking about so he will be careful to say it in a way that is clear he means it in the complementary way.
This always seemed to me to be forcing words into Tosphot that he does not say. To me it makes more sense to say he is speaking the truth and because it is in front of three he will be careful not to mix anything wrong in his words.

[If you go with this approach of R. Yona then the Gemaras that the Hafetz Haim brings in section 10 make a lot more sense. In those Gemaras it looks that different amoraim said things not very complimentary about other amoraim. The Hafetz Haim in each case has to find some reason why it was OK. But if you go with R Yona, it seems simple. You can say the truth as long as your intention is for some permissible practical benefit.]


[In any case, I think that I have been too lenient in terms of laws of lashon hara and I hope to review the Hafetz Haim to remind myself of the many details.]

I might mention that in the Mir Yeshiva in NY, the issue of lashon hara was a fairly big subject. One of the grandchildren of Rav Miller started a seder in which two laws of the Hafetz Haim were learnt every day after the morning prayers. Other things that were important there were being in the regular sessions.[that is learning Torah during the set times]. Another big issue was trust in God because that was the nature of the yeshiva. People were not going to university and so automatically the subject of trust came up.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

The whole subject of Rav Avraham Abulafia (note 1) is kind of complicated.  Professor Moshe Idel at Hebrew University wrote  few books about him but that is only touching on the surface.
Reb Haim Vital not only quotes him but in the fourth volume of Shaarai Hakedusha brings only the practices and unification of Rav Abulfia in terms of coming to the Divine Spirit.
[Rav Vital wrote a Musar book on Ethics. For a long time only the first three sections were printed because the last section was all about the idea that if one has fulfilled  everything in the first three sections then it was time to devote oneself to unifications. No  one printed that last section until recently. It turns out that that last section has mainly unifications from Rav Avraham Abulafia, not the Ari.
[Just for public knowledge  I ought to mention that Reb Haim Vital wrote all the writings of the Ari--i.e. the Tree of Life, Fruit of Tree of Life,  the other Eight Gates, plus a record of his visions and that above mentioned Musar sefer. The redaction was done by his son Rav Shmuel Vital.
The main people that continued this line were the Reshash [Shalom Sharabi], and Rav Yaakov Abuhazeira.[You might add Rav Moshe Haim Luzato also. ]

I myself did learn some of this to some degree but no longer.--However I would definitely like one day to get through the entire set of the Ari,  the Reshash, and Rav Yaakov Abukatzeira's books at least דרך גירסא [just saying the words fast and in order with no repeats. ] at least once.


(note 1) Rav Abulafia was born I think around 1240. He was a unusual  medieval mystic and wrote a set of books that were published only a few years ago. He was subject to severe criticism by the Rashba and others. He went to debate the pope at the time but that was because he had a negative view of the catholic church, not that he had a negative view about Yeshua himself. Since the Talmud itself brings this idea of a savior from the house of Joseph and another one from King David it was common in the Middle Ages to have that opinion.

המשנה בתחילת בבא בתרא

The משנה בתחילת בבא בתרא writes that since the שותפים both build the wall if it falls it belongs to both. תוספות  asks why not say המע''ה? The ר''י answers because it was not clear from the start that it belonged to either one. One can ask that the משנה in תחילת בבא מציעא holds המע''ה even in a case of  lost object.
I mentioned a different reason why the law would not be המע''ה. That is because they are forced to build or they agreed.
It occurred to me  that תוספות wants the משנה in בבא בתרא to be able to go like the חכמים that hold המע''ה. They could have said the משנה is like סומכוס. That is in fact what happens often in בבא מציעא. For example the משנה on page ק' in בבא מציעא. Also in בבא קמא. The משנה there writes law about a ox that gored a cow and the calf is found next to it. The גמרא brings in the name of שמואל that that משנה is like סומכוס.


המשנה בתחילת בבא בתרא כותבת כי מאז שהשותפים חייבים לבנות את הקיר אם הוא נופל הוא שייך לשניהם. תוספות שואלים מדוע לא לומר המע''ה? ר''י עונה כי זה לא היה ברור מההתחלה של מי הוא היה שייך. אפשר לשאול כי המשנה בהתחילה של בבא מציעא מחזיקה המע''ה גם במקרה של אבדה. הזכרתי סיבה אחרת מדוע החוק לא יהיה המע''ה. זאת משום שהם נאלצים לבנות או שהם הסכימו. עלה בדעתי כי תוספות רוצה שהמשנה בבבא בתרא להיות [באפשרות] כמו החכמים שמחזיקים המע''ה. הם יכלו אמרו המשנה הוא כמו סומכוס. זה למעשה מה שקורה לעתים קרובות בבבא מציעא. לדוגמא המשנה בדף ק" בבבא מציעא. גם בבא קמא. משנה שם כותבת החוק על שור שנגח את הפרה ועגל נמצא לידה. הגמרא מביא בשם שמואל כי המשנה הוא כמו סומכוס

Tosphot says in the beginning of Bava Batra needs a bit of explanation.

I do not have a Gemara to be able to look up anything. But it occurs to me that what Tosphot says in the beginning of Bava Batra needs a bit of explanation.

From what I recall, the Mishna writes that since the partners both build the wall, if it falls it belongs to both. Tosphot  asks why not say המע''ה [to take money from where it is already one needs a proof]?[That is -just give it to the guy in whose domain the wall fell.] The Ri answers because it was not clear from the start that it belonged to either one. In my notes on this I wrote the Mishna in Bava Metzia holds המע''ה even in a case of  lost object.
I mentioned a different reason why the law would not be המע''ה. That is because they are forced to build or they agreed.
It occurred to me today that Tosphot wants the Mishna in Bava Batra to be able to go like the חכמים that hold המע''ה. They could have said the Mishna is like סומכוס.

Nationalism has a complicated history;-- much more that people realize. I was once asked about this idea and I said at the time that it does have some support from the Zohar as there כנסת ישראל [congregation of Israel] is used most often as a nickname for the Divine Presence.
That is the שכינה (Divine Presence) is thought to be the חיה (life) or unifying soul of Israel.

In any case, the history started with the French Revolution. By the time of Napoleon III, communism socialism was opposed to nationalism. In any case Napoleon III was the first to create a kind of synthesis of nationalism along with socialist policies than have come to be part and parcel of the modern state. 

But the whole going to "kivrei tzadikim" [grave of the righteous] has gone way past the fine line.

There is a kind of fine line. I think going to the grave of Reb Nahman to say the ten psalms is fine. But just that one can step over an invisible line.
But the whole going to "kivrei tzadikim" [grave of the righteous] has gone way past the fine line.
However to a small degree it is allowed and even mentioned in the Gemara itself on as a practice that is legitimate.



In fact I noticed today that someone quoted the חיי מוהר'ן קס''ב [Life of Reb Nahman. 162]  where Reb Nahman said that he wanted to return to Israel and to die there. That is he did not in fact want to be buried in Uman. Rather --if it had been his choice he would have returned to Israel and to stay there until he died and to be buried in Israel.

The basic idea of idolatry to the Rambam is what is what is considered going to God through a middle man. The actual worship of the middle man is only a derivative of the main principle which is using the middle man to get to God. I went into this in my litttle booklet on Shas.
Reb Haim from Voloshin also goes into this in the נפש החיים
[I used this fact to explain a difficult Rambam as I might post here.]

I tried to learn this subject in Sanhedrin pages 63-65. My basic conclusion from all that was to stay away from the religious world since according to that Rambam, they are all doing idolatry.

I did not act on that at the time but eventually what the Rambam was saying started to make sense to me.



) סנהדרין סא: הרמב''ם פסק שעבודה לאמצעי גם כן נחשבת למינות. בפירוש המשנה הוא מסביר העיקר החמישי שעבודה לשום דבר חוץ מן השם היא עבודה זרה. וזה אפילו אם כוונתו היא שהאמצעי יקרב אותו להשם יתברך. (ושם הוא מסביר שהאיסור מכיל כל דבר מהמלאכים עד הגלגלים ועד כל דבר מורכב מארבעה היסודות. כוונתו כל דבר מן הרוחניים ודברים שנעשו מן ההיולי (כמו שחשבו לגבי הגלגלים), וגם דברים בזה העולם שנעשו מן ארבעה היסודות. ובמשנה תורה הוא מוסיף שהאיסור מכיל כל דבר שנברא.
כשלמדתי את הרמב''ם בהלכות עבודה זרה, לא היה ברור לי מהוא עיקרו ומהותו של עבודה זרה. ראיתי שהוא מביא את העניין של לקבל כאלוה, וחשבתי שזה מהותו של ע''ז. אבל אחר כך ראיתי את הגמרא בסנהדרין סב: אתמר העובד ע''ז מאהבה ומיראה אביי קבע חייב רבא קבע פטור. והבנתי שאם מהותו של ע''ז היא לקבל כאלוה אז אין מקום לשיטת אביי שגם בלי זה הוא חייב. ואין מקום לכל המחלוקת. ואז הבנתי למה הרמב''ם התחיל עם הסיפור של דור אנוש. לפי דעת הרמב''ם עיקרו של ע''ז הוא לשבח ולפאר או לעבוד שום נברא בתור אמצעי כדי לקיים רצון הבורא או שיהיה האמצעי מליץ טוב בשבילו או שהאמצעי ישפיע איזה טוב אליו.
הקדמה: בתחילת הלכות עבודה זרה הרמב''ם כתב שעיקר עבודה זרה היא לעבוד או לפאר אמצעי כדי להתקרב לבורא יתברך. וכן הוא כתב הפירוש המשנה פרק חלק. בפרק ג' הוא כותב שהעובד מאהבה או מיראה אינו חייב אלא אם כן הוא מקבלו עליו כאלוה. הרמ''ך שאל למה הוא חייב כשזורק אבן למרקוליס בלי לקבל עליו כאלוה? החברותא שלי תירץ שכוונת הרמב''ם היא שחייב חטאת בגלל עבודה זרה בשוגג. והוא לא כיוון שחייב סקילה. אני רוצה לומר שהתנאי לקבל עליו כאלוה הוא רק במצב של עובד מאהבה או מיראה. ובדרך כלל העובד רק בתור אמצעי חייב בגלל שהעובד אמצעי הוא עיקר עבודה זרה.






Ideas in Bava Metzia.   Ideas in Shas

Rav Avraham Abulafia was one of those people who were not exactly politically correct.
The major story with him is fairly well known. He was a mystic from the Middle Ages and is quoted extensively by later mystics like Rav Haim Vital, the Remak and Rav Haim Azulai. etc.
He went to debate the pope and the pope sent police to arrest him on his way there. But anyone who tried to lay a hand on him did not survive long.

But he was subject also to criticism by the Rashba and others.
Thus his books were not published for 800 years until recently someone finally published the whole set.

The first person to pay any attention to him in recent years is Professor Moshe Idel who did his PhD thesis on Rav Abulafia and also wrote lots of later books dealing with his approach. Then later that fellow from Mea Shearim went into the basement of Hebrew University and started the long and arduous process of writing down the medieval script into legible Hebrew letters and publishing his books.

What is lacking is for someone to redact his system. To condense it and explain it. For what was published was simply to write down in legible script the manuscripts in medieval script. No real analysis has been done yet.

Even though it is common to give students advice, "Think for yourself. Examine the issue on your own and come to your own conclusions," if your friend comes to you complaining about stomach pains would you tell him to study the issue on his own and come to his own conclusions, or would you tell him to go to a doctor?

Faith in the wise has a good argument going for it from Dr Michael Huemer. Even though it is common to give students advice, "Think for yourself. Examine the issue on your own and come to your own conclusions," if your friend comes to you complaining about stomach pains would you tell him to study the issue on his own and come to his own conclusions, or would you tell him to go to a doctor?

I never thought thinking for oneself made sense when it come to learning and understanding  Physics.

So faith in the wise is an important principle but the real issue is how to gain the proper degree of common sense to tell who is really wise or an expert in a subject and on the opposite end of things who is faking it?

Soft subjects are just too easy to fake. The hard sciences are much harder to fake.

The ease of faking expertise in easy subjects is what makes the experts worth while staying away from.


The greater the reputation one has in the easy stuff, the greater likelihood is the guy is just the best faker among mediocre fakers.

[But still faith in the wise I think is important. There was a time I was in great need of good advice, and I decided to take a Torah lesson of Rav Nahman from Breslov Vol. 1:61 and just say it through every day for as long as it would take for me to get to a good decision. That is a lesson that discusses the problem of not knowing the right direction.

I was looking at the history of Communism and it seems to me that in spite of it being really ridiculous, still I think it comes from an awareness of abuse on the part of princes and priests.

I was looking at the history of Communism and it seems to me that in spite of it being really ridiculous, still I think it comes from an awareness of abuse on the part of princes and priests.
That is:  it is  a reaction.
John Searle pointed out that not just moral relativism but the larger relativism itself is incoherent. It depends on reality itself being relative. Thus not just the truth of "It is raining here and now" as a statement, but the very fact of the rain in itself. ["There is no intermediate position of truth relativism or semantic relativism between absolutism and ontological relativism, the view that everything that exists only exists relative to my feelings and attitudes."]

The further most obvious problem with Communism is the question: "Who hires the worker?" The obvious answer is the boss. No one is born with the label "worker" printed on their forehead. They only become a worker because the boss hires him. If you kill all the bosses, then there are no workers.



So what kinds of abuse caused people to fall for incoherent doctrines? You have to say there was a lot. Not just that, but Communism itself seems to have been a necessary antidote against the types of criminal populations that were under the rule of the USSR.

So the clear and true points of critique against socialism are seeing just one side of the picture.
I have mentioned before that the Ran (Rav Nahman) from Breslov made a note of the terrible and horrific abuses that were done in the name of the holy Torah. He considers many of the great and well known religious authorities to be demons. תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים

So what you end up with is: there really is no big answer for the human dilemma. We all ought to simply keep and learn Torah and Musar as best we can.

That was in any case the answer my learning partner David Bronson suggested. I had mentioned some of the problems with abuse in the religious world and he agreed but then suggested that since that is the case we ought to simply learn Gemara and try to be decent people ourselves instead of looking at what is wrong with others, or trying to correct the world.

[You would be right if you think that that is not the most satisfying answer. If you would in fact like to do something in the right direction, I would think that the basic Musar Movement of Reb Israel Salanter makes the most sense.--that is learning Ethics and books of Morality from the Middle Ages before these issues got to be muddy.]

In the Litvak yeshiva world there is a general goal of learning Torah. This not for the sake of making money.

In the Litvak yeshiva world there is a general goal of learning Torah. This not for the sake of making money. In fact, it is considered close to sinful to make money by means of learning Torah.
So then what do people think about when they think about "Parnasa"--making a living?
It is known that there is an argument between the trust of the Obligations of the Heart and Navardok.
However it was pointed out by Rav Joseph Horviz of Navardok that the Obligations of the Heart also recognizes the idea of trusting in God without doing any effort.
What I noticed today is that in the very end of שער הביטחון the obligations of the heart brings this idea of trust in God with no effort as a higher level than trust with effort.

It used to be understood that learning Torah is  a kind of attachment with God. However Saint Simon began the approach in Europe that working is a higher goal-in fact the highest goal. This got to be embedded deeply into people. But from a Torah point of view, learning Torah is higher- but not as work.

[Saint Simon and Hegel were not responsible for the chaos that engulfed Europe after the French Revolution. But their systems were used to justify the various revolutions that plunged Europe into darkness. Marx used both.]

[Marx  used the labor theory of value and the principles of Saint Simon and a modified form of Hegel to weave together his approach. In high school I was barely aware of the thinking behind Marx though I read his Manifesto. Mainly I have to say I just as very unimpressed with most 1800's thinking. None of the revolutions promising Utopia seemed to make sense to me.]

On the other hand I understand very well the reasons that Europe went in for all those crazy theories. They were tired of abuses by priests and kings. It is in fact a point of interest that none of these revolutions made  a dent on the USA, England or Switzerland the three countries with a strong Protestant force.

mysticism

My impression is that mixing up mysticism with Musar was not a good idea. [That is almost all post Zohar Musar].
But I do not mean this in the sense of critique on the Ari'zal. Rather the tendency is to get off track.

And after all, there is a very different sense of what Muar means when it comes from the rational schools of thought of Saadia Gaon and the Rambam -as opposed to the mystic schools of thought of the Ramban/ Nahmanides and almost all subsequent Musar.

To me it seems I myself got off track. And that would not have happened if the straight Litvak yeshiva I was in had been straightforward about saying that the Mystics just got too much stuff wrong. Not that they got everything wrong, but enough to make it no worthwhile.

There were great tzadikim like Rav Yaakov Abukazeira who came to great "maddragot" [levels] but that was not from learning mysticism but from simple service towards God.

[I do not want to turn this into a critique on great tzadikim, but rather to emphasize that no one became a tzadik through learning mysticism. They became tzadikim because they served God simply.Straight Torah. No frills.

[Even books that are thought to be relatively free of mysticism like the Mesilat Yesharim open the door to the mystic stuff. It is hard to know what to make out of this.I certainly do not what to be critical of the Ramhal but in point of fact, the mystic stuff sends people on tangents--often not very good ones.

Dr Edward Feser suggested that Aristotle's approach [and Aquinas] solves the Mind body problem.

Some people like Dr Edward Feser have suggested that Aristotle's approach [and Aquinas] solves the Mind body problem. Then I saw on his site a link to here http://faculty.fordham.edu/jaworski/

But based on what I saw in Thomas Reid and Dr Michael Huemer I do not know how this can help.

Here is the link to the book:Hylomorphism-Mind-Body

The reason that I think this can not work is that people are made of atoms. Atoms do not have mental states.

Normally I have a lot of confidence in Medieval thinking. But in this case I am wondering because I am thinking they might be ignoring the point made by Berkeley.

חובות הלבבות שער היחוד פרק ו

In Obligations of the Heart, [1:6] Rav Bahayee Ibn Pakuda says if something has a beginning it must have an end because if something has no beginning it can not have an end.

Here in this diagram I have tried to work this out.

E=End; B=Beginning; NB=No Beginning; NE=No End.

Idealism

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) (one of the key figures in Idealism) after WWI, repudiated the whole thing.  Brand Blanchard more or less still defended it.



But what people did to try to replace Hegel with something better seems to have been a flop,



Post Modernism, Existentialism linguistic philosophy analytic philosophy. All sand traps.--as noted by recent more sane people like Kelley Ross.

My suggestion is to take a new look at Leonard Nelson and the Kant-Friesian School of thought.

[In fact the whole academic world in the US seems to have become a lot more sane after the vacuous stupid philosophers of the twentieth century.]

One of the greatest mathematicians in history, Gauss, thought of Hegel negatively. But Ernst Kummer had a specifically Hegelian view point from what one can tell from his speeches.
And there is another connection with the world of math in Felix Klein who married Ann Hegel the daughter of Karl Hegel the son of Hegel.

Obligations of the Heart [Hovot Levavot]

I noticed that some things in the Obligations of the Heart [Hovot Levavot] need more study.

In the first section Gate of Unity, chapter 5 he says there is a general form that is the sub-layer of accidental forms and forms that are part of the essence. [The last would be like wetness is an essential form for water] That is a new concept I have never heard of.

There also seems to be problems. If some thing has no beginning it can have no end he says as an axiom. But then he derives if it has no end then it had no beginning. That is a kind of logic used by Rava in the Gemara but then the Gemara itself asks on Rava. I brought this up with David Bronson once and he showed me that Gemara. [If it is raining it is wet outside. But if it is wet outside that does not mean it is raining. Someone might have turned on their sprinklers.]

I also noticed the Obligations of the Heart also mentions Creation Ex Nihilo right there is chapter 5.

[That is an essential aspect of Torah. This is contrary to the religious who try to change the approach of Torah without telling people that that is what they are doing. They claim "Everything is God." That is not Torah-besides being false.

Also it is hard to understand why the Obligations of the Heart would in chapter 4 say Aristotle was wrong about the fifth element and then in chapter 5 claim there is the Iyuli?

I assume there is some background he is building on of Post Aristotelian philosophers.

the difference between the holy and the fake is hardest of all.

The problem with the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side] is not well defined. The reason is that every area of value has an equal and opposite area of value that looks in externals to be the same thing.

It takes a kind of special talent in any given area to be able to tell the real thing from the fake.
That is the reason the Sitra Achra has taken over the Jewish Religious world. The warnings of the Gra and Rav Shach went unheeded.


It is perhaps possible to learn to exercise caution by learning from other areas of value where the difference between right and wrong reasoning can be more clear.

The main trouble seems to be this. If u take areas of value to start with pure form with no content [logic] and work up towards content with little or no form, the difference between the real thing and the fake becomes increasingly difficult to tell.

As it is said about talent: It takes a genius or at least a lot of talent to recognize a genius.

So with Formal Logic where the statements can stand for anything, what determines the  right answer is  only the form. But Math is not reducible to logic. It has more content but less form. The right and wrong can not be reduced to pure form. [Godel] So it is harder to tell a true proof from a false one.

Then you get into areas with more content  like the physical sciences and it gets harder to tell.
Then in music, art , human affairs and justice which are more content and less form the real test of quality is harder. The rules are no longer clear.
Then when you get into areas of holiness, the difference between the holy and the fake is hardest of all.

learning math and Physics

Once you accept the idea of my parents and the Obligations of the Heart and the Rambam about the importance of learning math and Physics for their own sake and not just because of talent or making a living then comes the question of how to go about it. (note 1)

My idea is to first do גירסה --say the words from the beginning of the book until the end. Then review that same book four times in the same way. 

(note 1) You can see this idea hinted to often in the Obligations of the Heart and other Musar books from the Middle Ages. Later musar books however ignore or dismiss this idea entirely. My feeling is that the rishonim [mediaeval authorities] got this right.

 [note 2] That was at the beginning of my taking up Mathematics after forgetting it for years. Also in NY that is what I was doing as I was trying to get into higher math. But then with all the running around and lack of concentration and just plain getting old I decided it was time to just do "saying the words and going on" since that was the only way I could hope to get the big picture.

small remnant of people that in fact strive to uphold the Torah for its own sake

באשר משפטו שם פעלו Where judgment is, there should be also be mentioned his good deeds.
AS I mentioned in a few blog posts the religious world is insane. And the more they make themselves out in externals to look godly and holy in their dress, the more you can be certain that God is far from them.

Still there is a small remnant of people that in fact strive to uphold the Torah for its own sake= the Litvak yeshivas like Ponoviz in Bnei Brak and the great NY Litvak yeshivas.
So while I am busy criticizing the insane religious world, I can not help but praise and support the exceptional people that are in fact doing a great job.

Prophecy is called a "burden" in the Old Testament. Some prophets begin their words with"the burden of the Lord." So when I have tried and failed to pick up that burden by myself and failed, I ought to go and help others to pick up that burden and then maybe together we can manage to raise it up.

Monotheism of the Torah. He made the world from nothing. Not from Divine light. He is not the world, nor is the world God.

Monotheism of the Torah is relatively easy to define. That God made the world but is not the world. This is easy to see in all book of Torah from the Middle Ages. However the religious world have been in the habit of denying this and claiming the world is condensed Divine Light.

They do this in a sneaky way by pretending to follow Torah by means of external rituals. They believe these rituals make them right and righteous about everything they do wrong.


The basic system of Torah is that God is one and He made the world from nothing. Not from Divine light. He is not the world, nor is the world God.
Since the religious deny this, I refuse to have anything to do with them. [Not to mention almost everything the religious do is in direct opposition to the Torah].

Furthermore, God has no substance nor form. He made substance and form, but they do not apply to Him. So nothing can have the substance of God since he has no substance. Again this is in direct opposition the the religious. Another reason to stay away from them.

[This point that God has no substance nor form nor even any kind of spiritual substance is a point made by the חובות הללבות Obligations of the Heart in the beginning of his book when proving God is one. That is where he whittles down the number of causes to one First Cause. The step right before that is that God made Form and Substance. The step then that God who made these is not either one, but is their cause, and thus he is One--not a composite. ]

Creation ex Nihilo [from nothing] is not the same as creation from condensed Divine Light.

I have had a few thoughts about the Obligations of the Heart but have not written down as they occurred to me.
One thing that comes up in the beginning of the book and also in the end in the final prayer  is Creation from nothing.
This is not a major theme there, but in the Guide volume 2 this is a major issue.(note 1)  It is one of the prime tenets of Torah that the world was created from nothing-not  from Divine Light. Not from anything. Just God's will.
However the religious that think they believe in Torah, deny this. That gives just one more reason to avoid the religious.

Another theme I saw  in the very end about bringing merit to many. That idea I recall also in the disciple of Israel Salanter  (Rav. Isaac Blazzer).  Also in Joseph Yozel Horwiz of Navardok. In  Navardok the idea of bringing merit to many people was understood to mean the Musar Movement.
[I recall this was also brought up in the famous אגרת המוסר the Letter of Musar that started the Musar Movement.]


The proof in the beginning of the book seems to ignore the fact that there are different kinds of infinity. [א]

Learning math comes up in שער הרישות in the very end.



(note 1) The Rambam makes this the major theme in volume 2 of the Guide.