Rav Avraham Abulafia

It was a few years ago that I was sitting in Hebrew University and looking at micro films of old manuscripts of Rav Avraham Abulafia and I came across some positive statement  about Yeshua [Jesus]. That was on the day before Hanuka. I kind of froze in my seat because I was not sure what to think of that. I knew that the Rashba [An important Rishon] did not hold of Rav Abulafia at all. But I also knew that the Remak (Rav M. Cordovaro) and Rav Haim Vital were quoting him as legitimate. Also the Chida brings him (Rav Haim David Azulai). It got to be the night of Hanuka and I decided to go with Rav Abulafia even though I knew that would send me on a trajectory that was far from what I had been doing until then.

Why did I decide that? because I figured the Rashba was more of an expert in his particular field of Gemara, while Rav Abulafia was more of an expert in his area.

[Besides that I had been learning the books of Rav Isaac Luria and  Rav Nahman of Breslov already for a few years so I anyway had a kind of mental framework in which it is possible to understand the importance of true tzadikim. I also had been looking at the book of Rav Haim Vital in which the root souls of lots of different tzadikm is brought. That is the book where the Ari was explaining to Rav Haim Vital that the soul of Rav Haim Vital was from Emanation. [Most souls are from Creation]. So I already understood that there can be souls that stem from Emanation.]


I ought to mention that in the meantime someone from Mea Shearim came to Hebrew U. and put all the books of Rav Abulafia into readable script and printed them and you can even buy them in regular Hebrew.

Appendix

[1] Just for some background --the Rashba was a Rishon that had serious issues with Rav Abulafia. But even before I was looking at the manuscripts I was aware of the Rav Haim David Azulai who stood up for Rav Abulafia and that gave a lot of support in that direction. If the Rashba would be expressing an opinion about some passage in the Talmud, that would be more important. But in terms of his opinion about Rav Abulafia, that seems to me to be out of his range of expertise.]

[2] The idea of certain souls being from Emanation is brought down even before the Ari. However Rav Isaac Luria -the Ari- goes into a lot more detail than you can find anywhere else. So there is nothing particularly damming about saying a great tzadik has a soul that is from Emanation (i.e. Divine).

Jordan Peterson

Constellations of belief

Constellations of belief is why people will hold to a given belief even when it goes against common sense--because it is connected with a group he wants to be  apart of or because it is part of a belief system that does have elements of truth.

This is how people fall into evil, but it is also how people fall into good. The reason is there is "out there" lots of constellations of belief. And in no given place is "all truth". That gives a wide range of free will.

In this statement I am trying to give a reason for people holding to things that do not seem to make a lot of sense like the Trinity--because of other things that go along with it like the Golden Rule.
But as Dr Michael Huemer pointed out it is often group identity that determines people's beliefs.

I have had a hard time with this exact subject. And I have no golden rule such as common sense or Reason as to how to judge in this area.
However I do have my own set of rules that I try to hold to in terms of belief systems and rules of conduct. The top one is tell the truth no matter what the consequences are [unless it is a case that can cause harm to others]. I believe that telling the truth always gives me a certain degree of common sense by which then I can tell what world view systems make more sense.

As for world view issues I missed the anti reason movement in the West almost totally. I found rational philosophy to make sense and almost never even saw the 20th century post modern stuff until I already had been learning Plato and Spinoza in High school and elementary school.
But pure Rational philosophy almost has to lead to Kant. It is not just problems in Spinoza himself but also the points raised by Berkeley and Hume. Almost by force one is lead to Kant to find some middle ground. But does that then lead to Hegel as a lot of people thought? I am not sure. To me it seems Hegel is good for Metaphysics and Leonard Nelson is good for epistemology.


 People that are not happy with Hegel I think come from  legitimate complaints about German Nationalism which they think was inspired by Hegel or from complaints about Communism.
But even though Communism as a theory is clearly wrong I can see how it was needed to bring peace and stability to the Russian Empire. You really can not see this unless you have been in former republics of the USSR and see how things really are. If you would be there you would understand what the czars and the USSR were facing. It is nothing like ruling mild mannered white Anglo Saxon Protestants!

[I should add that Kelley Ross also has a Metaphysical approach that is different than Hegel, which is as important as the whole Kant Fries School. But to me it just does not look all that different than Hegel's Metaphysics.]

finding truth in a given world view system

There is a certain n point when you give up finding truth in a given world view system. This is like a person with great expertise in tax laws who has worked for years as a lawyer and a tax accountant.  Then he hears about a politician who has come to town that is going to give  a speech about taxes. So he goes to listen. He expects to hear some relevant  argument about the local tax cuts to conservation groups that  have been harassing the logging industry or such similar themes. But he hears nothing of the sort. All the politician talks about is how he is going to lower taxes and increase spending for teachers and health care etc,. That is nothing related to the issues. Then he goes into the book the politician has written and also finds nothing. So at some point he decides that politician has nothing to say that is relevant to tax issues.

That is like me when I a trying to make sense out of the big world I live in and I hear some promises of any given world view. Then I find out they have nothing to say about important matters.

One reason I think I was particularly attracted to Rav Nahman's of Breslov lessons is that I saw there real insights and advice as to human problems which I did not see in Musar. [Though Shar yashuv in Far Rockaway and the Mir in NY were for me amazing places to learn Talmud, I still found myself feeling empty until I found the books of Rav Nahman.]

Hegel and McTaggart for Metaphysics and Leonard Nelson for "How do we know stuff?" ( i.e Epistemology)

The blogger Mother in Israel mentioned once on her blog about Hegel. I was pretty much against Hegel at the time since I had been learning the Kant Friesian School of Dr Kelley Ross . But for some reason that I have forgotten I started looking at Hegel again. [My first time had been in NY when I borrowed the Cambridge Companion to Hegel].

It is a lot easier to understand Hegel (I must say) if you look at McTaggart. The is an important point that McTaggart makes in his commentary on the Greater Logic right away in the very beginning.It is that The Dialectic is not meant  to derive all laws of Physics by pure Logic. There is an interplay between empirical evidence of Reason.


[Dr Ross expands on the format of the Kant Fries School of Leonard Nelson. Nelson was mainly against the Neo Kant School and had little to say about Hegel.]

To me it seems tragic that Neslon and Hegel are not learned much. It terms of making sense of the world they have much to offer.

What were the sacrifices that Hezekiah [in Chronicles] brought after he cleaned the Temple?

What were the sacrifices that Hezekiah [in Chronicles] brought after he cleaned the Temple? Some might have been burnt offerings. The אלים [sheep over a year old] may have been peace offerings. (They could not have been burnt offerings since if they are sheep they need to be less than a year old.) But what were the sin offerings that he brought of the Tribe of Judah? From what I recall that must have been for just the majority of the tribe of Judah. I mean to say that a sin offering for the whole congregation I seem to recall can be for a single tribe.
[They certainly were not for individuals because they were seven male goats. The sin offering for an individual has to be a female goat.]

book of Kings

In the book of Kings all you really see with King Ahaz (the father of Hezekiah) is that he found a nice altar in Damascus and then asked Uriah the Priest to build one like it in the Temple. But in Chronicles it took the priests and Levis two weeks to clean out the Temple when Hezekiah began his reign. That seems to indicate that the whole Temple area was completely unusable. Also you can see this from the fact that Hezekiah did not want to bring the Passover in uncleanliness as he could have if the Temple had been usable.[ Instead he made the 14 of Iyar the Passover as the Torah requires for people that did not manage to make the first one.

The problem that I see about the selling of Joseph is that in the very beginning of chapter 39 it says the Ishmael[s] sold him to Egypt.

The problem that I see about the selling of Joseph is that in the very beginning of chapter 39 it says the Ishmael[s] sold him to Egypt. But in the  actual events it says the Tribe of Medyans in 37;36 sold him to Egypt. [Not one to the other and then to Egypt.]

But what I think is that the actual selling is attributed to the Mediyans indirectly.

The Trinity

In the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] we find a few people whose souls were from Emanation--or what would be called "Divine".
But this only really works if you have a Neo-Platonic world view.  In some sense this does not really fit with Aristotle.
[But even with Neo Platonic Thought in itself there are plenty of problems reconciling Christian beliefs. and that is the reason I think Aquinas went to Aristotle.]

In any case what prompted this blog entry is I saw this blog jesus-god-and-an-inconsistent-triad/
and I see that there is a great deal of debate about this.

A further way to deal with this is Kant-simply to say that when Reason ventures into the realm of the dinge an sich [the thing in itself] it gets caught in self contradictions.

In any case I have not thought that believing in the Trinity is in itself any great problem because of the Talmud about the Barber that gave a haircut to Sanherib [I forget the page but I think it is around pages from 98-101. But I might be wrong. In any case it is somewhere in that area] and also the Tosphot in Avoda Zara which deals with this exact issue. [Not that I understood Tosphot very well, but I made a point of learning it with my learning partner so that  I at least get it as well as possible. From what I recall there were a few different ways that Tosphot deals with it.]

[I would normally not be writing on such a contentious issue if I would be having more time to learn Gemara and Rav Shach. But as you know things have been in chaos with me since May and especially my recent arrest. So I suppose it might take some time until I can get down to be doing any kind of serious learning of Gemara or the Avi Ezri for some time--until a miracle appears.]


It is a well known fact, amply borne out by the history of the discussion of the topic, that as soon as one goes beyond the automatic recital of traditional creedal phrases one inevitably leans either in the direction of modalism – the “persons” are simply the different aspects of the divine being and/or activity – or tritheism – there are really three Gods, albeit very intimately connected in some way. (“Swinburne and Christian Theology,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 41 (1997) , p. 54).

St Augustine is the source of some great ideas

St Augustine is the source of some great ideas that got into the work of Jewish scholars during the Middle Ages. However when people borrow from him or any Christina source, the source of the idea is usually not given. But even more than specific idea there is his whole Neo Platonic approach which became part and parcel of approved Jewish thought--mainly starting with Saadia Gaon.

One of the well known ideas of Augustine is that time is a creation. But there are many more.

Torah scholars that are demons. Is there any solution to this problem?

Rav Nahman of Uman made a point about Torah scholars that are demons in a few places. But does not really give a reason for why they appear nor for how to avoid them. Though that is already a remarkable fact that he had the courage to pull the wool out of people's eyes about the problem.
[The idea of Rav Nahman is that the actual human soul of these people is slowly replaced by a demon. The cause of this is unclear, nor is it clear what to do about it.]

I have thought that the problem is that Torah has been made into a paying profession and that invites the demonic Torah scholars in the first place. But  it is not so clear --that answer I mean. It was pointed out to me that the Keseph Mishna brings a defense for the practice of paying for a rav.

So one answer seems to be out, but then what is the trouble? From where does it come and what is possible to do about it? Just hide?
What a lot of secular Jews did at the beginning of the Reform Movement was in fact to simply get away from the religious world. They clearly say the problem so the majority of the Jewish people decided to get out and avoid the Torah Scholars that are demons.

Still that does not seem like the best solution either since we are all obligated to learn and keep Torah.

One other suggestion I have had is to pay attention to the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication. I mean to treat it as valid in term of actual law. But I have not been totally convinced by that myself since even in the Litvak world which attempts to go with the Gra to some degree there also seems to be this same problem, although it is to a lesser degree.
And besides these two solutions nothing occurs to me.

[I have mentioned before the approach of just getting a few tractates of the Talmud and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and then just learning at home. In fact this seems to be the only possible solution to this problem. After all even in Israel the Dark Side is spreading rapidly -especially in religious areas, so there in fact is no where to escape from it. All one can do is learn Torah at home. And that was always what my learning partner in Uman was telling me, about how great it is to be in a place where there is no religious control.]

יאשיהו King Joshiyahu

יאשיהו King Joshiyahu from what I can see did the most thorough job of getting rid of idolatry throughout all Israel, but after him everything went downhill fast. He was the last of the good kings descended from David. The thing that made him unique was he went all through the Land of Israel, not just Judah.

The story of most of the kings of Judah that were descended from the house of David is a disappointing story, because it all seems to go downhill after Solomon,

modern progressivism is modern "regressivism."

Modern progressivism is modern "regressivism." So what can you do? The Litvak Yeshiva solution is simply to go back to the Middle Ages--and that in fact makes a lot of sense on one hand. But it does not answer the very questions that led to dissatisfaction with scholasticism and religion in the first place.

So my solution is more modest--to find a world view that works for me and helps me make sense of a confusing world.

So I try to hold to a kind of common sense approach of Reid towards philosophy-as are some modern day philosophers like Kelley Ross, Michael Huemer, maverick philosopher and others.

Common sense and balance and to be a mensch are definitely the values of my parents. So what that means in a practical sense is to learn from the greats of the Middle Ages,and also advances from the Enlightenment. How to make sense of the contradictions? Use common sense and balance.

Just to be clear, though I am no expert, I did the usual adolescent reading of Nietzsche, the Communist Manifesto,  and all the usual progressive stuff.  Being not so smart, I could not really see what was wrong with their arguments, but it all seemed way too shallow as compared to other reading I was doing, Plato, Spinoza, Dante, etc. [Now it would be fairly straightforward to see what was incorrect in Marx Freud, Nietzsche etc. But that is not the reason I did not go after them. The reason was they all seemed so "19th century like" obsolete and irrelevant. As if making revolution and sex free was going to solve all mankind's problems. They seemed -forgive the expression--naive.
Just the opposite with Plato and Dante etc. They seemed extremely relevant and deep and penetrating into the core of issues.

You do not have to be an expert

Winston Churchill said something along the lines that everyone needs at least one hobby [or more] I forget the quote. But this brings me to what I have been trying to say about Math, Physics, and Learning Torah. You do not have to be an expert. And besides that Torah was never meant to be a paying profession anyway. And even though one can get paid for math and Physics still than does not mean you need to be an expert.

There is such a thing as doing something "Lishma" for its own sake.

The way to understand this is by the Gra [the Gaon of Vilna]who brings the Jerusalem Talmud that says that every word of learning Torah is worth more than all the other commandments of the Torah put together. [The Jerusalem (jerusalem Talmud) brings this from a verse כל חפצים לא ישוו בה(all desired things can not be compared with God's Wisdom)]
The way to get to the idea that that includes math and Physics is through the rishonim. Most books of Musar from the period of the Middle Ages have physics and metaphysics as being a part of God's Wisdom.


I also have to say that if you learn  bu just saying the words and going on, you will eventually understand a lot more than you can even imagine now. See Talk 76 of Rav Nahman of Breslov.

[I might add that Rav Nahman also makes a good case for why Torah is no supposed to be a paid profession. Even though he does not discuss the issue directly, still he points out the problems created by such a system. In fact, my learning partner in Uman was always telling me how wonderful it is to be in an area with no religious controls.]

to learn in depth

The main way of learning Torah that I think is the best is one that most people coming into the Litvak Yeshiva world find impossible to accept --that is to learn in depth even before you have gone through Shas even once. I mentioned this one time to David Bronson and he agreed with me. The reason is simple experience. If people do not learn "how to learn" [that is how to get into the depths of Talmud] right away, then they never get it.

And I admit my first years in Shar Yashuv were frustrating for this very reason. There was a great insistence to get into the depths of learning the Gemara and Tosphot even before you had even finished the tractate itself.

But how to get into the depths of learning is hard to know. I have mentioned Rav Shach's Avi Ezri which is of course an amazing masterpiece. But the type of learning of Rav Shach is different than what they were doing in Shar Yashuv. Not that they conflict, but they are simply different.
The path of Shar Yashuv was more along the lines of what is called in Israel "calculating the sugia" (sugia means the subject matter right on the page, but it also can mean that subject as relevant to other places in the Talmud.]: getting Tosphot--every word, and not going on until you do. Rav Shach and Rav Haim Soloveitchik are more interested in global issues: how does one sugia compare to another?

Modern pseudo scientists. The pretense of being able to understand the human soul and to diagnose its ills and cure them is as old as medicine itself.

For some reason people think that going to witch doctors will cure their nervousness or arrays of mental problems. Clearly this cure has never happened nor will it ever. Psychology is just a way to milk people out of their money by pretending to know something about the human soul.
It was clear to me that the steam engine model of the human psyche of Freud never had the slightest chance of being accurate. But even more modern models are just as absurd.

[This in itself gives a good reason for people to learn Physics and Math--so that by being exposed to real science they can tell what is pseudo science.]


[I ought to mention that the  pretense of being able to understand the human soul and to diagnose its ills and cure them is as old as medicine itself. And the people that were thought to know something about that were usually on the religious side of things. So the fact that they really knew nothing about what they pretended to know opened to way for modern pseudo scientists to pretend the same thing. Same pretense in new clothing

Rather the Torah comes to reveal objective moral values that are already "out there."

I wanted to defend my point of view a little so that it does not seem like I am just picking up pieces of conflicting philosophies. Even though I am not trying to build any kind of system, I still have a basic world view that I think needs defending.

[This is meant to be a continuation of previous blogs where I mentioned the philosophers that have influenced me.]

So in short:I think there are universals and universals are perceptible by reason. That is reason knows more that how to discern  contradictions. That is about the sum and size of it. Moral values are simply out there and reason applied to moral values perceives them just like reason applied to math perceives certain rules.

So that means that my concept of Torah is like Saadia Gaon and the חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart that things are not moral because the Torah says so. Rather the Torah comes to reveal objective moral values that are already "out there."

Michael Huemer has a web site paper of how there is no such thing as pure empirical knowledge.You always bring some a priori into it. And I am grateful to Dr. Huemer for his clarity in stating these ideas more or less in the form I just gave them.
But this basic orientation of mine started when I was younger than now. Probably even before high school. But at least I recall I was doing a good amount of reading philosophy in high school.-and even had organized a little group with Wendy Wilson and Roland Hutchinson learning Chinese Philosophy. In any case, I was pretty convinced even back then that something was seriously horrific with Post Modern Philosophy [even though I did not know exactly what.] But I can see why I though to learn Torah in the Mir in NY rather than have anything to do with the terrible stupid philosophies of the twentieth century.


[If the Philosophy departments had been teaching Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, that would have made me more interested but in those days, the world of philosophy  was really full of pseudo intellectuals].


At any rate, you can see in my short three sentences  version of my philosophy that I take the back line of Plato Aristotle, Hegel, Leonard Nelson.--a world that Mind and Being are complementary.And also that reason perceives much more than contradictions in language. Outside of this, most 20th century philosophy I understood even when I was in high school is just lunacy expressed in fancy language.

Russia does not want a Ukrainian naval base in the Sea of Azov

My impression is that Russia does not want a Ukrainian naval base in the Sea of Azov and that Putin was thinking that the Ukrainian flotilla going into the Azov sea was a prelude towards making a base there.

It is kind of the same reason that Kennedy did not want Soviet atomic missiles in Cuba. But I think Russia is even more sensitive about guarding its perimeter--even more than the USA.

Russia thinks that Ukraine can be unpredictable because it has two different kinds of populations. One set is the actual ethic Russians or Russian leaning people that long for the values that made the West Great.The Peter the Great values.[And those people include lots of ethic Ukrainians, not just Russians]. The other set of Ukrainians are the low lives that steal at any and ever opportunity they can find and that population is just starting to show it murderous tendencies after the thawing out period after the USSR.So Russia knows these tendencies are real. It is really frightening to see what lays under the surface in Ukraine, once Russian rule is gone.


I am not sure how to explain another thing I saw in the Ukraine. Almost anything good there was built by the USSR. And the people that are nice and good were often those with Russian blood or at least highly leaning towards Russia.

Kant Friesian School

In terms of the Kant Friesian School of Thought of Kelley Ross, I do not see why there is made such a big difference between that school and Hegel.  Hegel is mainly about Metaphysics and the Friesian School is mainly about epistemology. These are two different areas. And Hegel never claimed to have any answer to the Mind Body problem. He simply is not concerned with it and thinks its is not related to the structure he is trying to build. Clearly he thinks there is no problem in the first place--like Thomas Reid already said.
So we have with Leonard Nelson an answer to the question. Why does that have to cancel out Hegel?

[A difference is supposedly about the dinge an sich[thing in itself]. To Hegel one gets to knowledge about the thing in itself through a dialectical process--it is not by just pure reason as McTaggart makes clear.[It is pure reason applied to Being] And in fact that is how we know stuff. We reason things out sometimes over eons and ages based on a back and forth dialog between what we see and measure and what we think is the reason for what we see.

It is not just by non intuitive immediate knowledge. That kind of knowledge does give a starting point however.



You might think this is not so important to you but  it is to me. I do not have an overwhelming interest in philosophy as a discipline but I do have a need to make sense of the world I live in. And I find a few philosophers that help me do that. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel, Kelley Ross. They certainly do not say the same thing, but each one for me adds one extra piece to the puzzle. [I also should add Rav Nahman and the Gra --but not as philosophers but more in the way of filling in the missing pieces. With Rav Nahman I learned the importance of שמירת הברית sexual purity, the tikun klali, learning fast and other things. From the Gra I learned trust in God and the importance learning Torah. From the חובות לבבות (Obligations of the Heart) I learned the importance of learning natural sciences. That however took some time to sink in until I saw the same thing in other rishonim (medieval authorities))] I do not assume any one person has everything right. I try to use common sense to put together a coherent world view.

I ought to mention that Gauss had a very positive thing to say about Fries and David Hilbert had a whole file devoted to documenting his efforts to help Leonard Nelson.

Patriotism and Nationalism:

That one's country comes first is as sound an idea as that one's family comes first: each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families.  If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare.  If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.

From here:maverick philosopher

Homosexuality

It is more simple if you start with the Old Testament and then work backwards from there. That is what Aquinas does as far as I recall. He starts out that the laws of the Old Testament are binding in the areas of Natural Law. Only the rituals are not in his view. That leaves  the sexual relations in Leviticus 18+20 in their place. This is somewhat similar to R. Shimon Ben Yochai that we go by the reason for a verse, not the letter of the Law. And to the Rambam and all the Medieval Authorities we know the reasons for the verses and they are all natural law except for the Red Heifer.


 So if you would take the Rambam literally along with R. Shimon Ben Yochai, you do not end up all that different than Aquinas.--Though it is hard to imagine how this is possible, but it still is simple logic.

The reason this is more or less like Aquinas is the Rambam says that most of the laws of sacrifices and rituals are certainly Divine, but rituals were given because the the  tribe of people that he names that were in the Middle East at the time that did the opposite. And the sacrifices were given because of the weakness of human nature that people will sacrifice anyway so we might as well do it for God.

The reason that sex issues are unclear today is that Protestants start in the opposite direction from Aquinas. They assume nothing is binding unless they can find it in the New Testament. And that simple fact is from where all the confusion begins--since even if you find something forbidden in the NT, it is easily cancelled, by some other verse.
I have tried to tell Protestants for  a long time that ignoring Thomas Aquinas is not a good idea-but I can not think of any instance when I got through to anyone.

My own appreciation of Medieval thought probably goes back to Beverly Hills High School when I used to learn Dante. But especially in the Litvak Yeshiva World the Middle Ages is considered far superior to anything and everything that came later.

My own feeling about Philosophy however is more based on Kant and Hegel and Neo Platonic thought. But I was and am still highly influenced by The Gra and the Litvak approach to straight Torah which I really hope to get back into some day,
I ought to mention that Hegel has no epistemology. He just by passes the Mind -Body problem. So I do also depend on Leonard Nelson and Immediate non-intuitive knowledge for my world view]

Homosexuality, Idolatry, Murder

Rav Nahman was especially interested in correction for sexual sin which people had been interested in before him. Masturbation (spilling seed in vain) was the specific issue he was addressing, but the fact is that all sexual sin more or less come under the same heading.

The Ari, Isaac Luria, has a few unification for that purpose, but the thing about unifications is they depend on a precondition of attachment to the Divine. Without that they do nothing.

So R Nahman did his own prayer and and service towards God and received the idea of the Tikun HaKlali, i.e. the ten psalms to say that same day that one has sinned. That means the day starting at night and ending 24 hours later at 72 minutes after sun down.

The ten psalms are 16,32.41,42,59,77,90,105,137,150. (With intending the Divine Names אלף למד
אלף למד הי יוד מם)

What promotes this is that I see there is a lot of ignorance out there in terms of sexual issues.

So I thought to write a bit about it. 

The main thing to know is that in Torah there are levels of how severe any particular sin is.
It starts with an איסור עשה,  לאו, לאו שיש בו מיתת בית דין. The first level is a negative command derived from a positive command. Then straight negative commands. Then Negative commands that have the death penalty. Those are usually connected with when it says in the Torah "That soul will be cut off" but not always. It is useful to know this because it gives a simple way of knowing what the Torah considers more severe and what is less severe.

So one one hand we have the argument about a girl friend between the Rambam against all the other rishonim. But though to the Rambam a girl friend is forbidden it comes only as a negative derived from a negative. That is one is supposed to do Kidushin and then Hupa. [The other rishonim allow this but here I am just giving an example of where that category comes up.]
The next level is all the times it says in Torah do not do something but gives no punishment.
The next level is where there is a death penalty attached like in Leviticus 18 and 20. That includes homosexuality [Leviticus chapter 18: verse 22 and chapter 20 verse 13]. But those particular sins have an extra degree of severity because they come under the category of יהרג ואל יעבור, Be killed rather than transgress. That does not apply to any other commands except three: Idolatry, Murder, and the sexual acts of Leviticus 18 and 20.

I hope this short review is helpful for people. [I do quote Rav Nahman because I do not think he came under the (חרם) excommunication signed by the Gra.] That brings up this other issue about idolatry;- that was clearly the main reason the Gra signed the letter of excommunication. And that certainly still applies.

[Having a good idea of the actual legal status of any sin is helpful also, because a lot of times you find statement about the severity of some sin that gives  you the impression that that is the worst of them all. Yet later you find that the legal status is nothing. So you know the previous statement was meant in a spiritual sense.]

Idolatry you know is severe for the reason that it is emphasized in the Torah itself. But also because it is the main thing that the prophets stress. What ever failings the kings of Judah may have had the prophets always stress only one point--did they or did they not do idol worship?

Jordan Peterson tackles gender roles: Don’t ‘socialize little boys to be more like little girls’

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/11/01/jordan-peterson-tackles-gender-roles-dont-socialize-little-boys-to-be-more-like-little-girls

Religious freedom in the USA I think is built on the model of England during the 1700's.

Religious freedom in the USA I think is built on the model of England during the 1700's.

That is to say that the Pilgrims were not all that tolerant. And it has been pointed out that the Indian that saved the Plymouth Colony was a Catholic. [Squanto was a Roman Catholic.]

Rather, the American Model is taken almost in full from the English Model after 1668. I do not know why in fact this is not emphasized more in USA schools- because to me it seems important. The Constitution is surely a work of genius and perhaps even Divine inspiration. However it did not spring into existence out of thin air.

[There is a limit to tolerance as John Locke brings up in his Two Treaties.] 

I have been looking at Kings and also Isaiah Jeremiah and I had a few thoughts and questions.
First in Jeremiah 18:9 it looks like a positive decree can be turned to a negative one. This seems to go against what the Sages say about the verse in the Torah about how to tell if someone is a false prophet.

Second: to me it is not clear the case with Atalia the wicked queen that ruled over Judah for seven years until she was overturned and the rightful ruler was placed on the throne. It says she was the daughter of Omri who was the father of Ahab. I am thinking perhaps the verse means the granddaughter  because Ahab was at the time of Jehoshaphat. His son was Yoram who married a daughter of Ahab.
Also in the end of Isaiah 56 it looks hard to know whom it is talking about. The non Jews there have they become full Jews? It does not look that way. The reason is the last verse. My house will be a house of prayer for all the nations. Yet in a few verses back they are bringing burnt offerings and also זבחים which means peace offerings


There does also seem to be a limit to religious freedom in Kings. Hezekiah did a lot of effort to get rid of idolatry from the area he was king over --Judah and Benjamin.  Yoshiyahu later made the most powerful effort in that direction throughout all Israel==even areas he was not king over.

When the Rambam says that learning Physics and Metaphysics are a fulfillment of the commands to love and fear God,

When the Rambam says that learning Physics and Metaphysics are a fulfillment of the commands to love and fear God, it is simple to understand what that means in terms of Physics. The things that lead up to Quantum Field Theory and String Theory.
But when he says Metaphysics, it is harder to know what is included. On one hand he makes it clear he is referring to what the ancient Athenians were talking about. So he must mean at least the Metaphysics of Aristotle. But today I think you would have to expand that to Plotinus, Kant, Hegel and Leonard Nelson.

The Old Testament view of Homosexuality.

 The Old Testament view of Homosexuality.. In short it is that there are three things that if one is given a choice "transgress this or we will kill you" that one must choose to be killed rather than do that sin. These three things are גילוי עריות שפיכות דמים ע''ז- the sexual sins of Leviticus 18 and 20, murder, and idolatry. The reason that this is relevant is that homosexual acts are in that category. This seems to me to be relevant to Catholics also from what I recall from my little bit of reading of Aquinas. In Aquinas natural law of the Old Testament still applies to Catholics.

[I was borrowing Aquinas's Summa from a Catholic Church and sadly enough had to give it back before I could do any more study of it than just a quickie review. But from what I recall Aquinas was making a distinction between Natural Law in the Old Testament and Ritual Law. And he was saying that Natural Law still applies to everyone.]
This view of Aquinas is close to R. Shimon ben Yochai that we go by the reason for the verse. דורשים טעמה דקרא. And according to the Rambam[Maimonides] we know the reasons for the verse and he gives them in the Guide for the Perplexed  and the reasons for the verse in the Guide are all Natural Law.



In the Catholic world there is outrage at the dismissal of a group of bishops that wanted to establish some ground rules. To me that seems like a good thing. Outrage at evil I think is healthy. Self criticism is a great thing.
Outrage at evil you can see when the tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out because of their failure to hand over the murderers of a fellow's girl friend.  [The basic idea was they were protecting the murderers. So all Israel went to war with them]

Cosmological argument

The Cosmological argument

from Plato’s Laws, 893–96; Aristotle’s Physics (VIII, 4–6) and Metaphysics (XII, 1–6).
Also said later by Al Kindi so it is sometimes called the Kalam's Cosmological Argument.
See this paper that brings Plato's view-on pg 253.
People will also recognize this from the Obligations of the Heart.


This is in fact the same argument I have written at the top of this blog. But I usually go to Anselm's Ontological Argument which was proved by Godel.
But even the Cosmological argument I think of in a different way. That is I think of the the beginning of time and space and the laws of physics, not of the beginning of the physical universe.

An evolutionary psychologist

An evolutionary psychologist cannot be as smart as a good theoretical physicist, otherwise he would be one.

The problem with psychologists is not that they are not so smart as they think. It is rather that they are idiots.  


An "idiot" here I use here in the sense of someone of someone with an average I.Q. or lower that thinks they are a genius.

But to be fair this applies to just about anyone in the ludicrous "social sciences". Now there is an oxymoron  if I ever heard one

How to raise kids

However my feeling is that it is always best to start with basic texts--not watered down versions.

Honor of parents

Honor of parents goes on even when they have left this world. At least you can see that with Yonadav ben Recab. He was a friend of Yehu and he helped Yehu in wiping out the house of Ahab--which was at the time the son of Ahab and Ahaziahu the king of Judah. Ahazia was the grandson of Jehoshaphat.
So when Jeremiah came to his descendants and asked them to drink wine that was a long time after he was gone--and still they listening to their great grandfather rather than to  a prophet. --and they were praised for that and received an astounding promise from God for that.

So just for the record I wanted to state that my parents raised me in a more or less secular fashion. My brothers and I went to public school. [Though public school in those days was completely different than nowadays. Nowadays there is no question they would have found some private school at all and any cost.] Torah was considered very important in our family but not to make a public show out of. Nor to make money off of it.
The values of Torah were more or less summed up in these few simple instructions: Be a Mensch. [That is always to the right and moral thing.] Marry a Nice Jewish Girl.
Though Torah was encouraged, my decision to go to yeshiva was frowned upon, because they thought that yeshiva's even the best of them do really represent accurately what Torah is about. They thought in spite of the hype, that yeshivas are there to make money.

This leaves me now as it did then in a kind of quandary. For the great Litvak yeshivas I went to were clearly learning Torah for its own sake--that is Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. But I never succeeded in convincing them of that fact. And subsequent events showed that in fact they probably saw more clearly than me. Still it is hard for me to imagine how I ever could have gotten into authentic Torah with being at least for some time in an authentic Litvak Yeshiva.

"a wise man sees evil and hides", so my approach is just to avoid the religious world

In the Torah nothing really compares to the problem of idolatry. And the religious world is so full of that, that I avoid them to  a great extent. I still can not understand why the Gra is ignored in this regard. It is--after all- not as if he did not understand the issues.

Not just him, but they ignore Rav Shach also.

Since the verse says "a wise man sees evil and hides", so my approach is just to avoid the religious world because there is obviously no hope they will ever wake up.

sexual immorality. The sexual thing is mainly about things the Torah considers very evil are thought nowadays to be fine. And things that are actually perfectly OK in Torah are thought to be terrible sins.

NICE COMMENT ON A BLOG "All that really had to be said was that almost everyone at some point in their life is tempted to sexual immorality. It is a common temptation and a common sin. In fact, it fills the world with sinners. If it fills the world with sinners, then it must also fill Hell with the condemned. That form of sin is tremendously displeasing to God who, for the reason of impurity only and none other, destroyed cities in Old Testament times. Now that is some talk worthy of any traditional outlook."

 I would agree but also add that idolatry is also on the top of the list of things that God is unhappy with. And the religious world is full of it.

In any case just for information's sake, generally in the Old Testament: the forbidden relations in Leviticus are on a whole different plane than other kinds of relations. For example the prohibition of a mamzer bastard marrying into the congregation of God is a prohibition, not a כרת [being "cut off from one's people"] 

Moav and Ammon are along the same lines. Just prohibitions. Sex with an unmarried girl is required to marry the girl unless she or her father object. If they object, then he pays the normal amount of a Ketubah 200 zuz. 

Most of what people consider sinful in terms of sex is very different from the view of God. For example the menstruating woman problem is right in there in Leviticus 18 and 20 among the עריות. Homosexuality is also right there among the prohibitions one has to give up his life rather than transgress.

People also get confused about the betrothed unmarried girl in Deuteronomy and why is she any different than the unmarried girl in Exodus? The reason is this betrothal is not what people think nowadays. It is marriage. That is marriage always has two parts. קידושין ונישואין. Kidushin and Nisuin (or what is called Hupa). The Kidushin [betrothal] makes her already married, but they do not live together until Nisuin.
I hope this makes things clear. I ought to add that Rav Nahman brings problem of spilling seed in vain from mystic books and brings his own correction for that [to dip in the ocean -total immersion.] and ten psalms. But that is not a prohibition anywhere near the scale of things actually forbidden in the Torah.  The sexual thing is mainly about things the Torah considers very evil are thought nowadays to be fine. And things that are actually perfectly OK in Torah are thought to be terrible sins.  


[The so called sex change is not a change in sex. It is extending skin to make it seem something it is not or the opposite.]

comments about homosexuality just for the sake of clarity

I thought to add a few comments about homosexuality just for the sake of clarity. However I have to repeat that I really learned these issues long ago and I have forgotten almost everything. Even when I started looking at the Talmud again, it was with David Bronson and we were doing Nezikim [Civil Damages] not Nashim [Women].
So just to be clear, any and all homosexual acts come under the set of Idolatry, Murder, and Forbidden relations in Leviticus 18 and 20. [When threatened with the choice of transgressing one of them or being killed one has to choose being killed.]
The things that people can get mixed up about these things are many.
 One thing is a homosexual act with a minor under three is also gets the death penalty. The reason is sex with a minor is also sex.
Also I wanted to add that not all sexual relations in the Torah get the death penalty. The reason is there are plenty of things that are brought down in Exodus and Deuteronomy that are simply prohibitions. --Not prohibitions with death attached to them. [The general rule is in Torah if it does not say any particular punishment then it is just a prohibition. For it to be anything more severe, it has to say so.]
And in fact there is one exception in the forbidden relations in Leviticus that does not get death that is sex with a nida [menstruating woman who has not gone to the ocean or a river after seven days]. [She needs to check also! If after 7 days she bleeds up to three days then she needs 7 clean days. But that is rare. The three days in a row thing I think goes up to the 18th day of the cycle. If she sees on day 19 that is the start of a new nida cycle and is not related to the previous cycle.]

I really have no idea why these things are unclear to people. The only reason I can possibly think of is that perhaps people do not learn enough Gemara. Or perhaps if they are learning Gemara maybe they do not spend enough time of the tractates that are from Seder Nashim like Ketuboth or Yevamoth.
I admit I also have not leaned these either for along time. But I am grateful to Rav Freifeld of Shar Yashuv that the few years I was in his great Lithuanian yeshiva, the yeshiva was learning these tractates (those years).
So perhaps that is the answer to all these modern day problems? Everybody ought to sit down and learn Ketuboth and Yevamoth. Then all the confusion will disappear!

In answer to the issue of faith-I can only say that I go with the idea of Leonard Nelson of Immediate Non Intuitive Knowledge (Faith). This is the only way that see that knowledge about moral values is possible. But once you accept the Divine Inspiration of the Bible, then these facts are provable and can be derived rigorously from the verses.

recent issues of homosexuality

The reason I have not commented on the the recent issues of homosexuality is that I learned the tractates on "Women" too long ago to remember much that could add any clarity. I would think that anyone who wants to understand the issues ought to open up any of the major tractates on Women (note 2) like Ketuboth or Yevamoth?

I thought it should be needless to say that it is a יהרג ואל יעבור (Do not do it even at the cost of your own life) kind of prohibition.(note 2) But for some reason it seems a lot of people have forgotten this. (That is it is in the category of the three kinds of things one must not do even at the expense of losing one's life.) גילוי עריות שפיכות דמים עבודה זרה. they are idolatry, murder, and the sexual relations brought down in Leviticus 18 and 20. [the reason for two chapters on sexual sin is you need a verse for prohibition and another for punishment. most of the sexual sins there are about close relatives and all those get the death penalty including homosexuality. an exception is sex with a  woman during her period up until even days and then she goes into a natural body of water. the punishment there is not death but 39 lashes. ]
Perhaps the confusion about these issues is a result of people not learning enough Gemara [Talmud].

But to some degree I can understand why people avoid the religious world where Talmud is learned. There is simply too much idolatry there.
_________________________________________________________________________________
note 1 a sixth of the Mishna deals with marriage and sexual issues and it is called "Women".

note 2. An example of this kind of prohibition is murder. That means that if someone tells you to murder someone else, or else be killed yourself, you must not murder -even if it costs you your own life. This applies also to idolatry. If you are being forced to do idolatry, or sacrifice your own life, you must not do idolatry even at that ultimate cost. This applies also to the sexual relations of Leviticus 18 and 20. So in our example if someone says to you, "You must have homosexual sex or we will kill you," you must allow yourself to be killed because that is in the category of  עריות.

weed

"There are numerous active ingredients in marijuana, the primary being the psychoactive molecules tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), which have not well-understood cascading physiological and psychological effects, but amongst them are a deleterious influence on behavior, memory loss, diminution of will-power, mood changes, paranoia, hallucinations, raised heart rate and blood pressure, as well as a strong link to psychosis, especially schizophrenia, primarily amongst younger users.

There is its alleged gateway effect to other “harder” drugs, while no one quite knows how long it resides in the body, where it accumulates in the fatty (lipid) tissue of the brain. And the stuff nowadays is significantly more potent than what was available a half-century ago, and is increasingly so. The “munchies” are the least of our worries."

"Come out here; I'm being killed out here," he screams.

Timothy Treadwell is a good lesson about how it happens that I and others can do stupid things for a long time and somehow things seems OK. Then one day the whole thing explodes in your face.

He thought he had a good working friendship with bears. And for a long time it seemed he did. He got away with it for an unusual amount of time. But when one does dumb things, eventually it catches up with him.

Around noon on Sunday, October 5, 2003, Treadwell spoke with an associate in Malibu, California, by satellite phone; Treadwell mentioned no problems with any bears. The next day, October 6, Willy Fulton, a Kodiak air taxi pilot, arrived at Treadwell and Huguenard's campsite to pick them up but found the area abandoned, except for a bear, and contacted the local park rangers. The couple's mangled remains were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine, and right forearm and hand, with his wristwatch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt. A large male grizzly (tagged Bear 141) protecting the campsite was killed by park rangers during their attempt to retrieve the bodies. A second adolescent bear was also killed a short time later, when it charged the park rangers. An on-site necropsy of Bear 141 revealed human body parts such as fingers and limbs. The younger bear was consumed by other animals before it could be necropsied.^{[citation needed]} In the 85-year history of Katmai National Park, this was the first known incident of a person being killed by a bear.^[12]

A video camera was recovered at the site that proved to have been operating during the attack, but police said that the six-minute tape contained only voices and cries as a brown bear mauled Treadwell to death The tape begins with Treadwell yelling that he is being attacked. "Come out here; I'm being killed out here," he screams. ^[13]That the tape contained only sound led troopers to believe the attack might have happened while the camera was stuffed in a duffel bag or during the dark of night. In Grizzly Man,^[2] filmmaker Herzog claims that the lens cap of the camera was left on, suggesting that Treadwell and Huguenard were in the process of setting up for another video sequence when the attack happened. The camera had been turned on just before the attack, presumably by sound activation, but the camera recorded only six minutes of audio before running out of tape. This, however, was enough time to record the bear's initial attack on Treadwell and his agonized screams, its retreat after Huguenard tells Treadwell to play dead and when she attacked it and its return to carry Treadwell off into the forest.^[5][12]

fine line of keeping Torah and learning Torah but avoiding the insane religious world.

It is hard to know how to walk to fine line of keeping Torah and learning Torah but avoiding the insane religious world. Probably the best thing is to learn Torah at home. There is something quite definitely "off" in the religious world.

What is exactly the issue I am not sure of. I was discussing this with David Bronson in Uman after he first got there. We discussed this exact issue for about an hour for a few days in a row and came to no conclusion. At that point he made a suggestion that instead of wasting our time on seems to be an unsolvable problem let's sit and learn gemara. [Talmud]

And that is what we did for a few years until I returned to Israel for a year and a half. That is from where my book on Bava Metzia came from.  Then I went back to Uman for Rosh Hashanah and stayed again for an extended period --and that is from where the second book on Shas came from.

But that does not mean the original problem has been solved. The religious world is still just as insane and in fact getting much worse at an exponential rate.

The issue is hard for me even to attempt to approach. But my basic thinking is that it is a matter of  balance. That is to learn and keep Torah is important but with balance.  Not the insane way the religious world does it.

There is something nowadays that is odd when it comes to marriage.

I wish some marriages were stronger nowadays. But to get to that point it is important to keep definitions accurate.

Adultery ניאוף is sex with a married woman. See Leviticus 20:10 when it defines adultery as sex with a married woman.


 Sex outside of marriage is mentioned in Exodus where it says if one has sex with a unmarried girl he must marry her unless her father objects. If it would be adultery then both would get the death penalty as it says in Leviticus.  זנות prostitution is a different issue. It is sex for money. However there is the case of a woman who is specifically for one man but not married . That is a girl friend. This is allowed in the Old Testament. That is פלגש Concubine.
The Patriarchs had girl friends. And also Caleb Ben Yephuna the friend of Joshua also[Chronicles I 2:46] [The Gra brings the example of Caleb.]
To argue that all sex outside marriage is adultery is not accurate.

In the Shulhan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo is brought the debate between the Rambam against most other Rishonim. The Rambam says what you find in the Old Testament refers to kings. But that is hard to defend in the case of Caleb ben Yephuna. The Ramban wrote that more authentic copies of the Rambam have that the girl friend is allowed.

There is something nowadays that is odd when it comes to marriage. Fragile, yet like being in an oven. For previous generations I can see it was the basis of everything. But nowadays it is like soggy toast.

I think it is fine to depend on the opinions of the vast majority of Rishonim that hold a girl friend is permissible, But I admit I never did any deep learning in this subject.

the philosophers I think are the most important

Even though I mentioned a few days ago the philosophers I think are the most important I wanted to add a few that I have had great benefit from.
The important ones: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Reid, Kant, L. Nelson.

But to add to that list I want to mention Rav Nahman from Uman who does a very good job in defending faith (not saying I agree with everything there, but his insights are amazing). Also Steven Dutch, Kelley Ross (Friesian School), Michael Huemer, the Rambam's Guide and also David Hartman's book on the Rambam, The Madragat HaAdam by Joseph Horvitz from Navardok, and Isaac Blazer's the Light of Israel, the Nefesh HaHaim by Rav Haim from Voloshin.

These are not all exactly philosophy but more like books that deal with world view issues.


[My basic world view orientation you can see is Neo Platonic. That should  clear from the top list. But also the bottom list. Jewish thought --especially Musar of the Middle Ages and also Rav Nahman are all thoroughly Neo Platonic--even when they are not aware of it.

My philosophical bent was apparent even to my peers in high school. But to repeat what I have said before, my interest is in finding the Truth, not in philosophy per se. Thus after I found the school of though called the Kant Fries School, I am basically satisfied and feel free to learn Gemara, the Avi Ezri and and Math. I do feel a need to keep searching for philosophical problems.

[If at least Leonard Nelson was in English I might spend more time of him.]

Progress in Math and Physics by just saying the words

It is known that the way to learn Torah in the Talmud is by saying the words. Not just reading them. They bring this from a verse חיים הם למוצאיהם אל תקרי למוצאיהם אלא למוציאיהם That is for the sages to discover this idea they add a yod to the word "to them that find them" To make it into to them that say them with their mouths.
[The verse is "It is  life to those that find it" in proverbs." The hint is "It is life to them that say it"

Once I discovered the opinion of the Rambam about Physics and Metaphysics being part of the mitzvah to learn Torah, I simply applied the idea of saying the words to Math and Physics also. [In terms of Metaphysics however I never really found a text that I could use in the same way.]

[I had seen this opinion of the Rambam hinted at plenty of times in Medieval Musar but I never really accepted it for a few reasons-. One was I was involved in Torah learning at the Mir in NY and I really did not want to hear anything about "secular subjects". But after some time, I began to see the point of the Rambam.]
I am not saying this will make you a genius in math, but I have found it to be very helpful. I certainly made more progress in math and Physics by just saying the words a in order and going on than I would have by my previous approach which was "This is too hard for me so I might as well drop it and try something else." Needless to say this later approach did not get me very far. So before you ridicule this approach of (1) saying the words approach and going on in order until you finish the book,--just think of how much progress people make in the other way (2)"This is too hard so I might as well drop it".


In the "Guide" itself the benefit the Rambam see in both Physics and Metaphysics is Love and Fear of God.  Knowledge in these areas creates a different kind of person.

Furthermore if you look at the Musar book אור צפון Hidden Light by a disciple of Rav Israel Salanter you will see that Love and Fear of God internally are not always visible or perhaps never viable externally,

Rav Nahman of Breslov and Uman also mentioned this important approach--saying the words and going on.--along with a lot of other great advice.

“If it suffices to accuse, what will become of the innocent?

Ammianus Marcellinus relates an anecdote of the Emperor Julian which illustrates the enforcement of this principle in the Roman law. Numerius, the Governor of Narbonensis, was on trial before the emperor, and, contrary to the usage in criminal cases, the trial was public. Numerius contented himself with denying his guilt, and there was not sufficient proof against him. His adversary, Delphidius, “a passionate man,” seeing that the failure of the accusation was inevitable, could not restrain himself, and exclaimed, “Oh, illustrious Caesar, if it is sufficient to deny, what hereafter will become of the guilty?” to which Julian replied, “If it suffices to accuse, what will become of the innocent?”²


I saw recently a story about the Gra that two witnesses came to him about a certain case. I forget the case but it was about something sexual. And it must have been significant enough for the Gra to agree to listen. He told one witness to stand outside while he listened to the other. Then they brought in the other witness. He said the exact same testimony. As soon as he finished speaking the Gra said "They are liars."
The people that had brought them did not understand how he was so sure. Afterwards he explained.
 The Mishna says when two witness come you examine them and if their testimony is found to correspond then they are believed. The Gra asked why does the mishna add that about being found to correspond?Why not just say the testimony corresponded? He said because it has to be "found." It can not be the same exact thing. No two people seeing the same event or hearing the same person talk will report the same details.

Foundationalists like Michael Huemer.

Non Intuitive Immediate Knowledge-- has a lot of support from people not in the world of the Kant Fries School at all. Rather what are known as foundationalists like Michael Huemer.  In the world of foundationalism there are considered foundational ideas. It is not all that different from Leonard Nelson.

The thing about Michael Huemer and that general school is that they are not really addressing the problems that began with Berkeley and Hume.

So to address the actual issues you really need Leonard Nelson. But it still ends up that a lot of the arguments from the foundationalists work well to support L. Nelson.

For a simple example. Let's take Hegel's argument against immediate knowledge. He goes into the true fact that you have to know something about what you are believing in the first place, and thus it is not really immediate. Well Dr. Huemer says a good answer to that. He says that Reason recognizes universals, but that perception comes only after you understand the concepts that are involved. So to apply that to Immediate Knowledge is simple. It is is immediate even though one has to understand what is being discussed before one can know it to be true.

Leonard Nelson for some reason is a minor footnote in the world of philosophy;- but that says more about the lack of substance in the world of philosophy than it does about Nelson. Judging by the general stupidity of philosophy in the 20th century, it is a compliment to Nelson that he was never accepted.


[Personally I found the importance of Leonard Nelson to be that it helped me with faith--non intuitive immediate knowledge. But later I found a lot of other reasons go with that school of thought.]

Suppose you are sitting in class...Defense of Faith.

What makes the school of thought of Leonard Nelson based on Kant and Fries interesting is this. Suppose you are sitting in class and the teacher asks a hard question in a subject you know fairly well. You are about to raise your hand to give your answer, but a second before you do the two smartest kids in the class raise their hands and the teacher calls on them. They both give the same answer and it is in completely different from your answer. So my question to you is this. Are you now going to raise your hand and give your different answer?

That is the situation with the Kant Friesian school of thought. I am sitting in class and looking at Hegel and he looks pretty good to me, or some other philosopher. But then Gauss raises his hand and says Jacob Fries has got the right idea. Then I am getting nervous. So I hesitant to raise my hand. The David Hilbert raises his hand and says Leonard Nelson who founded the Kant Friesian School got it right. Essentially the same answer as Gauss. Now I am for sure--not going to raise my hand. No force on earth could get me to raise my hand at that point.

The point is  actually close to the actual events. My interest to to find a coherent self consistent [not self contradictions] world view that makes sense and has external consistency with the actual world we live in. It is not to be learning philosophy. So once I settle on a point of view that works for me, I am satisfied and think that I can now go to the beach or to the local study hall to learn Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. I do not have to be doing philosophy all the time.[I am also contemplating starting a session in the Shach in the book of Rav Joseph Karo. That is the commentary of the Shach on Hoshen Mishpath and Yore Deah.]

A major point I gained from the Kant Fries School is the faith is a kind of perception unlike reason and unlike the senses, and it is valid. This  more or less coincides with what Rav Nahman was saying about faith--that it is a kind of perception unlike other faculties.

This makes sense also from the standpoint of Thomas Reid that we have faculties of mind more than just pure logical reasoning and sensation.  This point was raised by Michael Huemer also that Hume assumed all that reason can do is perceive contradictions. Hume learned a little Euclid and  got convinced that all the type of reasoning he found there is all the mind can do. He never shoed this to be true. He simply asserts it as a given fact--over and over and over again. I don't know. Maybe reason does more than that? maybe it perceives universals?

You can ask why not simply go back to the scholastics like Ed Fesser suggests. The reason is that there do seems to be issues in the Middle Ages. The main issue is that the beginning axioms do not seem accurate. But after the Enlightenment when beginning principles seem better, but then the logic falls apart.

"Immediate non intuitive knowledge."

Rav Nahman praises faith a lot in his magnum opus. [His main work]. But at some point I had a crisis in faith realizing a great deal of problems in Torah. There were some problems that I could answer by reference to the Ari/ Isaac Luria. But the need to answer too many questions was troubling. I discovered on the Internet a letter called a letter of an Apikoros which raised some of the issues.
Then a few days later I was looking for information on Spinoza, and discovered on the web site of Kelley Ross the idea of "Immediate non intuitive knowledge." [What one knows not by the senses and not through thinking or through anything.] This is the Kant school of thought that was specific to Leonard Nelson.
That helped solve a lot of my difficulties. But it was more than the fact of my own faith that I wanted to defend or at least justify to myself. There was also my own experience of attachment with God that I had had in Safed that I knew was not by sense perception nor by reason

What makes it interesting in particular is the fact that David Hilbert was very supportive of Nelson. The fact is the the beginning of that approach was Fries,- and in an similar way we find that Gauss was very positive about Fries. However the Fries approach was just the beginning. Nelson is a lot more rigorous.
Just because it helped answer a lot of my questions does not make it right; however it does look right to me except my quibble that reason does not know immediate non intuitive stuff; rather it recognizes it.
The basic reason this school of thought of Leonard Nelson makes the most sense to me is hard to explain. I think the reason is that it answers most difficulties in the best way that I can see.
[The problems raised by earlier philosophers that do not seem well answered by them or by any others, seem best answered either by Nelson himself, or Kelley Ross. If I would be thinking more about this issues nowadays maybe I would go into this in detail. But now I am just not worrying that much about world view issues. If I would be I would go through Kant and Nelson in German. But once I got their basic idea, I do not concern myself with it much more.]
Most philosophers have some really great important point but then it gets obscured by the tremendous amount of nonsense they write after   that.

Mainly my reasoning is this: the Middle Ages were best at logical thinking, but the axioms were not very strong. Later on people were more creative but fell into circular reasoning. Hume and all the others. Steven Dutch made a whole long study on Hume showing this. Locke also has circle reasoning, besides the fact that pure empirical has strong counter examples.  Spinoza has a one problem of an\ prime axiom that seems untrue. But as Reid noted they all made some progress. Kant was pretty good but probably Reid was better. But Thomas Reid still does not answer the questions. That seems to have been left to Leonard Nelson based by the insight of Fries.  Much of 20th century philosophy is beyond despair. So after Nelson, I just can not see any further improvements.
[So the best people to learn (in terms of philosophy) I would say would be Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Reid, Kant and Leonard Nelson.]




Some of the most obvious questions that people have on the Torah have not seemed to me to be any problem. The reason is that I started learning the writings of  Rav Isaac Luria in my 20's and that gave me a different kind of orientation. I mean to saw if you look at Rav Luria you will see the literal explanation of the verses is nothing like what most people mean by literal explanation.

The Gaon of Villna

The Gaon of Villna [the Gra] said the ten  sections (פרשיות) of the book of Deuteronomy are parallel to the 1000 year period starting from 1240 until 2240. That is called the אלף הששי the sixth thousand year year. That puts the 100 year period of כי תבוא in 1940. So it comes out that the Holocaust would have started in 1939 corresponding to the last section of  that section of the Torah--the section of curses.

It also come out that the thousand years before that were parallel to the book of Numbers. And the thousand years before that parallel to the book of Leviticus. So Leviticus would have ended around 240. Then two sections before that would have been in 40 AD. That would correspond to the curses in Leviticus and that comes out to be the exact time of the destruction of the second Temple.
  [There are only two sections of curses in the Torah and it is remarkable that both come out on the exact dates of tragedies. The Holocaust in particular.]
  You can learn a few more things from that insight of the Gra. For example the verse in כי תצא where he said his name is hinted at: אבן שלמה יהיה לך Eliyahu ben Shelomo. What you can learn from that is the full verse "Perfect weights and  a perfect measure should be to you so that you will have length of days." Meaning if you stick with the teachings of the Gra, you will have length of days.
The basic teachings of the Gra are actually simple. Learn Torah and trust in God.

Sihon who was conquered by Moses was the king of the Emorites.

Sihon who was conquered by Moses was the king of the Emorites. That means his area was part of the region promised to Israel--the region of seven Canaanite nations. So why was it considered חוץ לארץ? [Outside of the promised land?]
Now on one hand it is true that the borders of Israel are defined and the Jordan river is one of them. So from that aspect that region is outside of Israel. Still it seems odd. This is not a "kashe" a question. It is more like a comment about an odd fact.

My own feeling about philosophy is that I gained the most by learning Musar [Medieval Ethics]. If I would have to recommend a philosophy book it would not be a book of philosophy at all but rather the basic canon of Musar books from the Middle Ages.

To me it looks like the world is divided into secularism and religious-ism. [That is not religion, but religious-ism-- the idea that salvation lays within religion.  Secularism is similar in thinking salvation lays in socialism and stealing money from the rich  in order to make the poor rich and the rich poor. ]

I do not like either alternative very much. Growing up in a more or less secular world, it seemed to me less and less that any kind of secular approach had "the answers" for the big questions. At the time there were lots of alternatives. Existentialism, Socialism, "shrink"-ism. All claiming the Truth.And able to convince millions of their claims. To me it all seemed ridiculous--and still does.

BUT the solutions of the religious world seem ridiculous from other directions. But at the time I thought I had found absolute truth in religion.  I needed a few knocks to burst that bubble.

Now I think my parents had it right from the start--balance, menschlichkeit--being a decent human being before anything else. The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

In terms of a world view that includes more than that however, I would have to say that the medieval scholastics did what I think is the best job--that is to combine Reason and Faith. This started mainly with Saadia Gaon but it was a general approach of the middle ages, (e.g. Rambam, Aquinas, Anslem,...)
But then Reason itself came under attack by the school of idealism. That started with Descartes that divides Mind from Body. No one had an answer to this and Hume just pushed the knife in deeper. Because of this problem, Kant is important. 

My own feeling about philosophy is that I gained the most by learning Musar--especially the book of Navardok the Madragat HaAdam which talks about trust in God.
It is hard to get over the feeling that there is little or nothing in philosophy that is very insightful. The best of them all clearly is still Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.
I found a lot of common sense and benefit from three modern day thinkers: Kelley Ross, Steven Dutch, Michael Huemer.

A great king of Judah went on a seek and destroy mission to destroy idolatry and idolaters.

In most of the kings of Judah and Israel the issue of idolatry comes to the front. Yoshiyahu יאשיהו was one king that went on a seek and destroy mission through all Israel to find and destroy any and every drop of idolatry and or idolaters that he could find. Not just in Judah. [At that point the ten tribes had been exiled, but he went anyway all through Israel to get rid of all idols and idolaters that he could find.
[Go and check the verse.מלכים ב' כ''ג You will see that he went personally on this mission and he went all through the land of Israel.Chronicles II 34:7 וינתץ את המזבחות ואת האשרים והפסילים כתת להדק וכל החמנים גדע בכל ארץ ישראל וישב לירושלים ] You can ask why did he feel the need to go out on this seek and destroy mission? Maybe he could have stayed in his palace in Jerusalem and sat and learned? But as I mentioned above the issue of idolatry was then and is now too great to ignore.
[He was the great grandson of חיזקיה][In verse 19 it says he went also to Shomron and did this thought that is not in a area of Judah. Also in verse 20 it says he sacrificed the priests of idolatry on their own altars. Kings II 23:19-20. See also Chronicles II 34:33 referring to the same seek and destroy mission.




The trouble with this is that "idolatry" is today almost a useless label. It can mean anything to anyone. It can simply be used as a way to insult.
So I did spend a great deal of time with David Bronson learning the exact meaning of idolatry in tractate Sanhedrin.

My basic conclusion is that the the religious world is deeply into idolatry, and now I try to avoid them.

The issue really was addressed in the letter of excommunication that the Gra signed. But since that letter is universally ignored, there does not seem to be much one can do. Rav Shach also is more or less ignored. So if these two Torah giants are ignored, then what can a little nobody like me do?
[I ought to add that neither the Baal Shem Tov himself, nor Rav Nahman from Breslov were included in the excommunication. It was directly  towards the disciples of the Magid of Mezritch. In fact the fact Shem Tov himself is mentioned in a praiseworthy fashion in the sidur of the Gra.]



But it does occur to me what regular people like me can do. We can insist on it. Even though others think it is a small point, but those like me that know--can insist. We can refuse to have anything to do with idolatry what so ever. What seems like a small difference can be a big difference if one insists.

world of Litvak yeshivas

Learning Torah in an authentic way refers to the the intensity of learning. It might have some relation to learning in depth or perhaps learning fast like I have been saying. But the thing that makes the Litvak yeshiva special is the intensity--the feeling that every word of Torah is more precious than diamonds. On one's own I think it is hard to get the idea of what this is about. But once one has been in an authentic Litvak yeshiva for a couple of years, then even later the feeling and sweetness of Torah never really leaves one.

My own experience in the world of Litvak yeshivas was quite amazing. I believe that my future wife only came to me because of that context. She must have felt that I was involved in something outstanding and I guess she wanted to be a part of it. [She began writing to me when I was still in Far Rockaway in Shar Yashuv and then came to NY herself when I was at the Mir.

I mean to say that there is something "holistic" about the Lithuanian learning Torah world--that is that encompasses everything--all aspects of life. It is far from being just about learning Torah. It is about being a mensch, good morals, being  scrupulous in honesty in money matters. But learning Torah is the focal point that everything turns on.