I was at the Na Nach Nachma Nachman from Uman [in Israel]  place today and did some learning. Then I went to take a nap and when I woke up I had an idea that might help R. Shimshon [a grandson of Rashi].
The question that the Radvaz raised on R Shimshon was that if in the grain stack there is half tithes and half secular grain then how can one take a tithe for it. The answer is that he takes double and calls a name only on a half.
That is like this. In the Mishna in Trume 4 we have a mishna that goes like  this: המפריש מקצת ת''ום מוציא ממנו תרומה עליו אבל לא למקום אחר One who separates only a part of truma or tithe [maisar] takes out truma from it but not to another place. RS [R. Shimshon] says the idea is that the separation is valid but he needs to complete the amount.
The is the basic background. Now the question is let's say that now the stack is half tevel and half secular. So how can he take tithe? [This question is of the Radvaz.]
The answer is this. Let's say that you have 100lbs of grain and one takes 5 lbs for tithe instead of ten. So now the stack is half tevel and half hulin. So what to do is to separate another 10 lbs and to say: "the five lbs of tevel in this ten lbs is now tithe for the rest of the 50 lbs of tevel that are in the stack." Then the stack is now completely  taken care of. but your ten lbs is now half tithe and half secular. Then you could give the whole thing to a Levi. You would lose a little bit of your own grain but tehstack would be okay.

This answer clearly helps R. Shimshon. However there is still the Rambam left to try to answer for. The problem in the Rambam is the exact same one that comes up in R Shimshon but the answer I gave for RS does not work for the Rambam. The issue is this. In Truma 3 law 7 the Rambam brings that same mishna but holds the separation is not valid at all.  But in law 6 he says one who intends to separate 1/60 but instead took 1/61 --the separation is valid but he finishes the required amount. As Rav Shach points out in the Avi Ezri we see that the difference between law 6 and law 7 is that is law 6 he intends to finish the amount. In law 7 he does not. So in law 7 the separation is not valid.
The answer for the Rambam I think is that here he talks about truma alone and in that there is no problem of amounts. If he continues the process it is valid even if he takes just 1/60-1/61. And in fact in laws of tithe the Rambam does not bring up the issue of when he intends to take more. So in that case as far as I can see he would say the same thing as I wrote up above for R Shimshon.

[The police still have my computer so I am still borrowing. I am not upset with the police because they easily could have put me away for ten years if they had wanted to. Instead they had compassion on me and that same night I was arrested, the officer Moshe Cohen asked me two questions. One was to make a search and the other he mentioned perhaps my son would be willing to sign for me. So we all went (about ten police officers) and the police actually did not search because Moshe my son answered the door and said there was nothing to search for and then they asked if he would be willing to come and sign for me and he said yes. That was one of the greatest moments in my life when I heard my son willing to stand up for. me. Still I am sad that I have not written any music or ideas in Torah.]

I had a thought also about something that Rav Shach [on laws of Truma ] I know does talk about in the Avi Ezri. [I do not recall what he said].
The mishna says one who takes only a fraction of the truma or tithe takes out truma from it but not to a different place. R. Meir said also to a different place. R. Shimshon says the idea is it is truma or tithe but he needs to finish. Example: 100 lbs tevel. He takes 5 lbs tithe. It is tithe but he takes another 5 lbs. The idea is to R Shimshon that the original stack is mixed with tevel and hulin but when he takes more tithe we says he is taking from the tevel.
 Rashi says something similar on a different topic in Gitin 47b.   Jew and gentile own crops together. Tevel and hulin are mixed to R. Yehuda Hanasi. Rashi says you take a tithe and assume you are taking tevel.

The answer for R Shimshon at this point is unclear. I tried last night to think about it but came up with nothing. I ought to mention the person that asks on R Shimshon is the Radvaz. Sometimes it takes a long time for me to come up with an acceptable answer for the baali Hatosfot.

Bava Mezia 101a

I have had a few ideas that I have not written down in Talmud. Most I forget but at least for now I would like to write down a few things.[Most of the ideas were written in Uman.]
I think i had some idea in bava Kama but I forget it.]
Bava Mezia 101a.  My idea here last night as I was drifting off to sleep was that the Ri [R. Isaac the grandson of Rashi] can answer a very obvious and essential question in the Gemara that I think both Rashi and the Rambam would have a lot of trouble answering. The question is this: why change R. Yehuda? He said the serf would have to give a tithe for any field in Israel and then for seemingly no reason the Gemara changes it to only a field that he once owned and then sold (to the Rambam) or was simply stolen (to Rashi).  While the Gemara was right to change to "there is possession" but that gives no reason to the Rambam or Rashi to change the opinion of R Yehudah.

I assume either Rav Shach or Rav Chaim Soloveitchik answer this somewhere but as far as I can see right now, the Ri is more sensible. {Anyway as D. Bronson always told me "Tosphot is always right."]

Just for background information: The Mishna says that a renter from a gentile in Israel has to take the tithe and then pay the rent. He can not pay the rent with un-tithed fruit. R. Yehuda adds a serf also. The Gemara starts out thinking like Rabah that a gentile has possession and a serf is like a renter. Then it changes both. The Ri says it changes both because one depends on the other. But the Rambam and Rashi hold those are independent variables.

I already wrote something about this in my little booklet on Bava Mezia but this idea I think is new.

I have more time but my back is hurting. So to be short let me just mention that that rambam hold "there is no possession" and yet hold like the Gemara's conclusion in Bava Mezia 101 about R Yehuda and so clearly he holds like Rashi that the conclusion of the Gemara does not depend on whether there is or there is not possession.

about Ukraine

My basic feeling about Ukraine is that things were better under the rule of the USSR. There seems to be a kind of inherent anti semitism  which was held in check during the time of the Soviets but has recently come to the surface. In the last place I was staying there there was a tunnel dug for the sake of immediate escape that the Jewish family that owned the house had dug. If you have ever been to the Ukraine you can imagine how hard that must have been since the levels under the ground are mainly made of hard solid granite. That tunnel was a mile long (from the river Ostashivka until some escape route towards  the town center.) and was still standing a hundred years later. So the pogroms before the soviets took power were serious enough for that Jewish family to be really terrified.
[To this day I still have no idea how that family could have dug that tunnel without electricity. and only with shovels.]
So when I read Hobhouse and his critique of the Hegelian State, I take it with a grain of salt. I realize that there are times and places where a strong central government is needed.

Frankly I have to admit I was also terrified when I was there. The attacks on me were getting more and more frequent and violent.

[Besides that there was the odd fact that almost every person that I asked in Uman how things were during the time of the USSR, every single one told me things were better. You can ask anyone in Uman that lived during the time of the USSR and all of them will tell you the same exact words "Things were better then."]

[Because I still have no computer I have to be short. And to be fair L.T. Hobhouse realizes himself that the balance between government and the individual is a hard problem to solve. And he also realizes that all social questions come about because some kind of problem has arisen.

The trouble to me seems to be that Wasps in the USA assume everyone is like them. They think importing an American kind of democracy into the Ukraine would make everything hunky dory.
They ought to try renting a room for a while there and then find out what things are really like.

My feeling about Tora

My feeling about Tora is that the basic approach of the Gra and Rav Shach is correct.--and to a large degree I feel it would have made a lot of sense to stick with their basic ideas of learning Torah in depth and trust in God. However I did get involved in Breslov. That helped in many ways, but it also seems to have gotten me off track. It would be nice to find a kind of middle path in which one could partake of the great insights of Rav Nahman, and yet stay within the context of the straight Lithuanian Yeshiva world.

So nowadays I try to find the path of balance- Gemara Tosphot, Rav Shach's Avi Ezri, Math, Physics and exercise. That seems to work for me.

The path of balance certainly was the approach of some Rishonim-- as you can see in some of the Musar books of that period.

As for the actual fact that sometimes the right path is unclear -I go with Kant-- that reason has a limit. When it gets into areas of values (dinge an sich) it gets into contradictions. In any case, as far as I can I would like to get back to the straight Torah path of the Gra and Rav Shach. Besides that I have no idea why they both have been ignored to a large extent except to pay lip service to them.
And for some reason my efforts to get back into striaght Tora have always been foiled. Maaybe I simply do not have the merit to be able to sit and learn Torah? Or is there some deeper reason?

Side note --if you go by the actual new moon, then passover falls on April 18 at night. That is the first day is April 19)

My feeling about Philosophy is that Dr Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer are simply not that far apart. If it is a matter of reason knowing things (as per the Kant Fries school) of Reason recognizing things like universals (as per Michael Huemer) I just do not see the difference as it applies to me. I can see however in philosophy itself there is a big difference. but not so much in practical application.

That is reason recognizes universals. Among universals are objective moral values that do not depend on the observer.[Even though as one of the critics of Michale Huemer pointed out [Danny Frederick] there is a difference between universals as predicates and universals as laws of either math or morals. Still it seems to be both schools of though as very close.[ That is the Kant Fries and the Intuitionists.]

Daughter of an Am Haaretz.

I noticed in the Rambam on the mishna [Sanhedrin chapter 9]that he says it is a sin to marry the daughter of an Am Haaretz [person ignorant of Mishna and Talmud.] I had thought that it is simply not advisable.

I wonder if I had taken this advice how things might have turned out differently.
For when I was discussing marriage with my future wife she asked what would happen if there would be no parnasa [money]? And I said I would go and find a job. [The background here is that I was in the Mir Yeshiva in NY at the time and we were planning on my continuing to learn Torah.]
This might very well be the reason that in fact later things fell apart. I might have answered like the sages said in the Chapters of the Fathers one who accepts on himself the yoke of Torah there is removed from him the yoke of the government and of making a living. I might have said if there is no money then I am not learning Torah hard enough and thus I should work harder on learning.

I am not saying eveything about the Litvak world that revolves on the Gra is right. I realize there is an array of values. But what I am saying is that I had found the one thing that worked for me. Learning Torah at the Mir. It seems to me that it was a failure on my part not to be committed to this approach at all cost.

[Nowdays I have a wider constalation of values but for me to list them here would make no sense since many of them apparanetly conflict one with the other. My question is how to resolve this conflict? ]

The dialect of Hegel unfolds in time.

 I want to consider the possibility that the dialect of Hegel unfolds in time. This clearly is not like McTaggart, but I think that it makes sense. That is the basic process is really what you see in the Neo Platonic school of Plotinus. But with Plotinus is is logos which is bringing things about. But in any case the idea is this whole vast process of Hegel is unfolding in time. And this helps a lot. It helps to understand the main problem of this generation of disappointment. For example me. I went very deeply into the Litvak Torah world, but as is usual with the process of thesis anti thesis I found things not perfect. So what needs to be done is to get to the synthesis that finds what is right is both the thesis and antithesis.

The Mishna in Bava kama 36

The law of the Torah is an ox that has not yet considered  to be expected to gore only pays half damages. An ox gores 4 other oxen one after the other but still remains "tam". Each one was worth 200. [It perhaps did it not one after the other exactly] R Meir says the last one gets the whole amount and if anything is left over it goes the one before that etc. R. Shimon says the order is 100/100. The next time the division is 100/50/50. The next time 100/50/25/25.

In another case R. Ishmael considered the damaged ox to be a debtor.But R Akiva thinks the owners of each ox become partners with the owner.

The problem our Gemara brings up on page 36 is who is R. Meir going like? It concludes like R Ishmael. [I would expand on this but I have no computer and and just borrowing a friends for a few minutes.] The next opinion of RS is like R Akiva.

But if it is like RI then the first owner of the first damaged ox should get the whole sum, not the last. The Gemara says each owner of the subsequent ox grabbed the ox to hold it until he gets paid.

The Rif says R Shimon agrees if he grabs it he is a paid guard and he agrees with RM.
Both R. Ephraim and Rav Zarahia the Baal Hamaor degree with the Rif. As you can easily see why. If he would be right then there was no reason to say the opinion of RM is like RI. It could be R Akiva also.

The answer that I think makes sense here is the debate in Pesahim 30. A lender is not paid back on time so he gets some property of the borrower. So when is he considered to own that property? This is a debate over there but the Rif must be thinking that our gemara over here in Bava Kama is like the opinion the lender owns the property only after he collects it. But the Rif is thinking that the ox is different. It becomes a pledge and is owned from the time of the goring and if so then there would be no difference between R Akiva and R Ishmael and so in truth R Shimon who is like R akiva in our case is talking about a different case than R Meir.
Sorry I can not explain this in more detail. If you look it up it will be more clear. Anyway you can see this idea of mine in Tosphot Bava kama pg 33. where Tosphot brings it for a different reason.

The Rambam uses every opportunity to say that one should not use Torah to make money. So why has it become such a bussiness? I am not sure but today i met a girl from Brazil who recently arrived in Israel who mentioned that a lot of people in Israel are having trouble with making ends meet. [making enough to get by.] So the fact that a lot of people do not work but rather use Torah to make money makes little sense.

One thing I saw in my first yeshiva in Far Rockaway was the opinion of the Gra that every word of Torah is worth more that all the other commandments of Torah.He brings this from the Yerushalmi Talmud. And that fact sunk deeply into me. The only thing that has changed much is that because of the opinion of Maimonides and other rishonim is that I include Physics and math in the category of Torah.

When it come to Torah I try to spend time in the local Na Nach (Breslov) group's place. That seems to be the only place I can learn Torah.

But if I could I would try to have a balance between these separate areas of study.
But when it comes to Physics i try to use the approach of Rav Nahman of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on. I would try to show this from Rav Nahman's main books but I have to go since i have no computer and I am just borrowing a friend's.



[Maimonides also includes the Metaphysics of Aristotle in the category of learning Torah but I have not been able to spend much time in that area. And modern philosophy seems to have gotten off track in that area.]

Where you see clearly the approach of Maimonides about the importance of Physics is in the story brought in the very last chapter of a volume in the Guide [I forget which]. Where the people around the palace of the King are the people that learn Talmud and the people in the palace are the physicists.and philosophers.

I myself had never even noticed this until I saw it quouted in a book by David Hartman

Rav Nachman emphasized not to masturbate but this can be taken too far in that people think this is worse than actual things that are forbidden in the Torah.Even though Rav Nahman was certainly right that it needs a correction to say the ten Psalms [16,32, 41, 42, 59, 77,90, 105 137, 150.] but still it is not an actual prohibition in the Torah.

The way to learn Torah is to say the words and go on.

The way Rav Nahman said to learn Torah was to say the words and go on. [See Conversations of Rav Nahman 76. Also there are places like the Le.M I perek 12 which indicate the same idea::דע כי על ידי אמצעות הדיבור יכולים לבוא לתבונות התורה לעומקה. The LeM is the major work of Rav Nahman. 

This approach I found to be the only way I could learn Physics and Math also.

But it took me a long time until I stated applying this method to Physics. My parents had always been very pleased when I showed interest in Physics, but until I saw this in the חובות לבבות and also Maimonides the message did not really sink into me.

 But I should add the idea of review ten times as away of doing one's in depth sessions. This I heard in Shar Yashuv by Rav Freifeld. And the in depth session should be in the morning and the fast sessions in the afternoon as they do in all Litvak yeshivot.

I have found it best to learn in the local Na Nach synagogue. I tried a Litvack place for a while but that did not work out very well. [Na Nach is agroup of Breslov people that follow Rav Nachman from Uman.]

the mishna in Bava Kama the beginning of chapter 4.
The basic order is this you keep on dividing the amount by half. But instead of it going to the last one it always goes to the first one. In that way each Nizak (person that was damaged) keeps slipping down one notch.

[Just for background information the mishna says if an ox gores another ox then they divide [as it says in the Torah] the sum of the goring ox. So if both were 200 and the gored ox is now worth nothing, then each gets 100. If it gores again then the last one gets 100 and the two early ones get 50 each. If it gores again the last one gets 100, the earlier one50 and the last two 25 each.

The problem I think there is with philosophy is that it got involved in trivial questions. It nowadays asks how do we know stuff  epistemology and metaphysics It denies completely.
Originally it was asking what is the meaning of it all?

One thing that always turned me off to philosophy is when they start talking about language. The reason I see this as a waste of time is that there is a serious difference between language and real facts.The difference is this: real facts are objective. They exist even if there were no people around to notice them. Language on the other hand is completely and absolutely subjective. The words one says and that one hears have no meaning at all except for what people attach to them. There is nothing objective about it at all.

Still there are nowadays some real remarkable thinkers in philosophy.  Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer.

Hegel and Heidegger were certainly thinking about the big picture but besides Heidigger, twentieth century philosophy got to be a real wasteland of triviality.

Rav Shmuel Berenbaum once gave a talk in the Mir in NY that when one marries a woman there are two kinds of acquisition that happen. One is marriage and the other is monetary acquisitions.
He used this idea to asnwer some questions that I forgot. However I had a few thoughts about this. One is that this idea actually comes from the Gemara in Ketuboth itself between Abyee and Rava.

The other thought I had is to ask how can this fit with the Rambam who holds that when two people make an agreement to make partnership and have witness and sign an document that nothing happens since there is nothing upon which the acquisition can occur. אין קנין חל על דבר שלא בא לעולםץ So for a while I thought Rav Shmuel was only talking according to the opinion of the Raavad. But then it occurred to me that there are obligations that happen just because of a persons status.

I am rushing to write this so I am being too short I know. Anyway I think that the Rambam was only talking about a partnership in which there is no physical acquisitions. But with marriage there is on someone upon whom the obligations occur. It is a case of קנין דקל לפירותיו

I had a lot of thoughts about this but I have no time to write. But I did want to add just one short thought: that all the things that the husband acquires are all rabbinical laws --see Ketubotthis chapter 4 and 5. Not that this makes any difference but it is a point because perhaps one can say that  kind of acquisition can occur by means of a Torah kind of Acquisition.

Bava Metzia 115. Tosphot first words "widow" on page 115.

I have an idea on a way to answer the question the Maharasha asks on the Maharshal. The main idea is based on the statement of Shmuel on page 113 that a messenger of the court can not go into the house of the borrower to take a pledge when the time to repay the loan has come and the borrower has not yet paid. Rav Joseph asks on Shmuel from two verses about a widow and a mill stone that one can not take either and it uses the word לא תחבול "do not take the pledge of a widow". The word implies going into the house. The Gemara answers for the widow and millstone the messenger of the court transgress two prohibitions while for any other borrower only one prohibition.

The Tosphot asks why does the Gemara not ask from the mishna on pg 115? and they answer that the answer would be the same as it gives for the question of Rav Joseph.
The Maharshal says Rav Joseph is asking from two braitot. The maharsha says the question of Tosphot is not like the Maharshal thought to be on Rav Joseph but on the later Gemara that does ask from two braitot.

As you know I have no computer to be able to spend time writing this so I can only write in short my basic idea. My idea is this. That we can answer for the Maharshal thus: the Gemara would not have wanted to ask from the Mishna after the question of Rav Joseph from two verses because in fact the answer would have been the same as the answer for Rav Joseph while the question that the Gemara in fact asks later from a braita the Gemara makes progress--it discovers that there is an argumentbetween the Tenaim about the opinion of Shmuel. Therefore it makes more sense to say the question obn Tosphot is in fact on Rav josph himself.

Sorry if this is not clear enough but if you look up the Maharsha you will see easily my point here.

book of Esther

In the book of Esther it never says to people that live in walled cities to make Purim on the 15th. All it says is Jews that live in unwalled cities make it on the 14th and then right away goes on to say that Mordecai sent letters throughout Peria to make Purim on the 14 and the 15th. It says nothing about Jews that live in walled cities. This might account for the fact that Rav Nahman of Breslov said that Shushan Purim is also Purim.

[The way I noticed this is because right after the verse saying that Jews in un-walled cities make Purim on 14th you expect it to say something about Jews in walled cities. But instead it simply skips the subject.]

[a wife that refuses her husband] is not well known Mishna Ketuboth פרק אף על פי

The law of a מורדת [a wife that refuses sex to her husband] is not well known so I thought to bring some of the details.[Even though there is a lot of things in this subject that are confusing to me.] In the Mishna itself you only get the bare outlines of the subject. But in the Tur and the Shulhan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo you get a lot more details--surprising details in fact.
The first thing that is a surprise is that this law applies to a woman that wants a divorce.
So since I have little time and no computer [except on borrowed time from a friend] I would like to write the basic ideas.
The first category is a woman that refuses her husband but wants her ketubah. and she says מאיס עלי.[That is she claims she is not able to live with him anymore because he is wasting all his money or that she simply can not have sex with him because of disgust.]
That category gets the regular law of a rebellious wife that loses her ketubah. [There is a announcement in the local synagogue that she is a rebellious wife and she will lose her ketubah for four weeks. then after 4 weeks some say she loses her whole ketubah right away and some say only after 12 months.
The next category is she does not ask for the ketubah. She still get the same law but she does not have to live with him. In the first category she is forced to work for him.

In any case this is certainly one of those areas that are sensitive and sadlly no very well known.


[During those four weeks there seems to be a degree of confusion how much she loses of her ketunah every week. Or at least I can not figure it out. It seems to be 7 dinars [a dinar equals silver of the weight of 12 barley beans. That is a dinar in the time of the Talmud. But a dinar of the Torah is 8 times more. But it seems that everyone agrees it is a dinar of the Talmud period. The problem that I am having here is the next opinion in the mishna that says she loses a "tarpik" and the Rav of Bartenura explains that to be a tarpik of the Torah. So I can not figure of if he is thinking the dinar also is of the Torah of not.]

[I had to go through this kind of thing myself and the sad thing is that my wife was talked into getting rid of me by the religious leaders that present themselves as being pro family values. So I saw first hand what a lot of people say about the Jewish religious world--that it is evil and insane and just the opposite of Torah values. Rav Nahman of Brslov already said as much but I simply did not pay attention to him until the facts presented themselves to me in the most harsh way possible. The religious make a big show of righteousness but the facts are very different.]

When I was growing up you never saw a book by Hegel or any of the German idealists around in libraries of in bookstores. Never. In my high school library I recall there was some side writings by Kant but not any of the three Critiques.

But lots of the post modern garbage was out there. Lots.

Thinking back to it I think people were blaming Kant and Hegel  for WWI and WWII.

Why I mention this is that even though Hegel has problems still I think that McTaggart deals with a lot of them very well. And as for Kant I think that there also are plenty of problems but I think Leonard Nelson and the Friesian School of Kelley Ross deals with them very well.

Possession by the dark side from a biological perspective

The problem of possession by the Dark Side is not something that people think much about nowadays. And even when Rav Nahman from Breslov mentions the problem with religious leaders as being in general possessed by the Dark Side, few people really connect the dots.

I also would not think much about it except I saw recently a book by Daniel Defoe that goes into this problem and as I was thinking about it I was reminded about Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle.
And then it occurred to me the whole thing about toxo-Plasmosis.That even in the physical realm there is such a thing.If I would have a computer and be able to blog I might have written about this but now since I can's I simply am recommending that people pay a bit more attention to what Rav Nahman [Breslov and Uman] was saying because it has a strong basis in evidence and also makes sense beyond what it seems like at first.

To see the idea of possession by the dark side from a biological perspective see the lectures of Sapolsky at Stanford.

Howard Bloom approaches the subject from a different angle--that of the super-organism.
In the Middle Ages this was also a large subject. Even in Rouen where the trial of Joan [Jeene] of Arc was there were multiple trials on the issue at the same time. How can you tell if someone's visions are from the realm of hiliness or not?

I feel that sometimes you see in  life that everything is going well for a good long time and then everything falls apart. You can see this with Joan of Arc who had astounding success --for a while. A 17 year old girl declared war on the one of the  powerful Empires in the world and won. She said she would raise raise the seige of Orleans--and did so. She said she would have Charles VII crowned King in Reims and led him through enemy territory and had him crowned King of all France. And then she was captured and burnt at the stake. But somehow even in her fall there was something astounding. The trial was recorded almost word for word. Without that all there would be today would be an unconfirmed legend.

Now I do not think that I or anyone else can compare ourselves to Joan of Arc but still there is a lesson to learn from all that--that things can go great for sometime and then suddenly stop. But even in that time of fall there is still the compassion of God and helps in hidden ways.

an idea from the Ramban [Rav Moshe ben Nachman]

I hope that someone that has learn authentic Torah will start a blog. I am clocking out of blogging out of force of circumstances.I have no computer is it is only on rare occasions I can borrow from a friend.

Even if the police decide to give me back my computer, that does not mean I will be able to go back to writing music or ideas in Torah like I used to do in Uman. I realized even before I got to Israel that it was likely that things would be hard here. But to have my own daughter making false allegations against me was not expected.

In any case since I have a few minutes here I would like to take the opportunity to write an idea from the Ramban and a question I have about his idea.

In Bava Metzia there is a case of a person that loses an object and before he gives up on it someone else picks it up with intent to keep it. That is he decides to steal it. But then later after the owner has given up on it he decides to give it back to the owner. The Gemara says at that pointy he is simply giving back a present-. not fixing the original sin of theft.
The Baal HaMeor asks on this that the Torah holds there is a way to fix theft -and that is to give backthe object. השב תשיבם לאחיך.
The Ramban answers that that is only on regular theft. But here it is a case of an object that has been lost and then taken in theft. The difference is that theft is not owned by the thief if the owner gives up on it. But my question is that I am not sure why that makes a difference.[ The Ramban is saying the fixing of theft by giving it back is only as long the act is continued. But here the act is over so the is no correction.]

Dr Michael Hueemer has a tremendous amount of great ideas non his site. However I have not been able to see his point about no state having any authority.  A British philosopher Danny Frederick also has criticized this idea of Dr Huemer. The idea of government being a contract also has brought both of their critiques. But looking at the war between Sparta and Athens I can see that contract theory  and agreement to follow a certain form of government makes a big difference.  

Shulchan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo. I can see why my learning partner did not think to learn it unless one knows the Gemara. [It was written to be a review of the Tur and Beit Yoseph which brings the Gemara and Rishonim.]

I have been seeing interesting things in the Shulchan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo recently. I can see why my learning partner did not think to learn it unless one knows the Gemara but I have been seeing that there is a lot of interesting things there even when one has not leaned the Gemara. For example a few days ago I noticed the question is there is such a thing as giving up an obligation like a loan? This is brought in Choshen Mishpat 164 in the Taz and the Ketzot HaChoshen that are arguing about the law that the Rema brings there that there is such a thing as giving up on a loan--not forgiving it but giving up. The Rema brings a case that a Jewish town made a loan to the prince and the prince promised to reduce the taxes in return. In the end he did not reduce the taxes and the town gave up on the loan. Then the prince much later died and his son paid back the loan. I was not going to write about this but the subject is certainly interesting but also complicated and I have no had time to delve into it. 

If one has crops that he has not taken any tithe from and he puts let's say wine in a jar and closes it and calls it maasar sheni [the second maasar] then the jar itself becomes maasar sheni. [Tractate maasar sheni 3. mishna 12]

Both the Mishna Rishona [a commentary by a person named Ephraim Isaac] and the Tiferet Israel ask on this from tracatate Msaasar sheni 1 mishna 4 and 5. There it says if you buy a closed jar of wine of maasar sheni in Jerusalem the jar goes out from the category of the second maasar to become secular.

To me it seems there is a difference between calling a name of maasar sheni to crops that have not been tithed yet and buying something with maasar Sheni. So I do not see any question in the first place.

The Tiferet Israel answers this question from the mishna in which one sells closed jars in a place where one usually buys open jars, but that answer depends on there being some connection between calling a name and buying.
 

[The problem that the Tiferet Israel deals with is why are the jars not consecrated? But to me it seems the reason is the same that when buys a animal with the money of the second tithe that the leather is not consecrated.] 

There is something I noticed in Ketuboth. I had done Ketuboth as well as I could when I was in Shar Yashuv [That is Rav Friefeld's yeshiva in Far Rockaway.] Though I was just a beginner then, I still did it with most of the Tosphot and Tosphot HaRosh and some Tur Shulchan Aruch along with it. So when I got to Israel and discovered that courts were awarding מזונות ]alimony to divorced women it seemed strange to   me. There is on one hand an award of money to a widow until she collects the Ketubah. But from everything I recalled in Ketuboth that does not apply to a divorced woman. She gets the Ketubah and that is all.

A woman gets married. Her מעשה ידיה [money she makes by working] and any objects she finds go to the husband.

A woman gets married. Her מעשה ידיה [money she makes by working] and any objects she finds go to the husband. So why does the Rashba in Ketuboth in the chapter that starts האשה שנפלו say what she finds is נכסי מלוג? [Or at least that is how the Tosphot Yom Tov quotes the Rashba].

 נכסי מלוג is property she owns before the marriage. The husband gets the profits of the property, but she retains the title.

A woman owns property she brings into the marriage, but not wat money she makes while married nor any portion of her husband's. The reason a woman wants a  divorce is supposed to be that she no longer wants a connection with her husband. But nowadays the opposite is the case. She gets a divorce in order to hurt her husband as much a possible through children, money and any other means necessary.

[I wish this was clear to people. There are three kinds of property. Property the woman owns as she comes into the marriage but is not written into the ketubah. The husband can use it. Or if it is property that one gets rent from, that is owned by the husband.  But the property itself is owned by the woman. If the marriage ends, she gets that property. The same thing applies for property written into the ketubah, except that if it goes down in value, and the marriage ends, the husband has to make up for that loss in value. The third type of property  is what a woman makes while married. That is owned by the husband in full.

Obviously she does not magically own her husbands property just by the fact of being married to him.

Even though Dr Kelley Ross is very critical of Hegel, still in his comments he made a very important remark about what Hegel was trying to do--to finish what Socrates had started. [I only have a few minutes on this friend's computer so I can not expand but to me it seems crystal clear]. Dr Ross [the Kant Fries School] would not have put it in that way but I am sure that is what he meant.


Since i seem to have a few more minutes let me just add that Socrates was expert in finding the hidden contradictions in every single position offered by the people he was talking with. But not in a systematic way.  But he did have a system --or at least that is what we see in the dialogues of Plato. So Hegel was making Socrates into a system and also certainly held from the Neo Platonic View in which the Good emanates the Logos which emanates Nature.[It is the same system as the Arizal except the Ari goes into more details.

Another thing about Bava Kama. An ox [tam] gores another. Each are worth 200. Since it is the first time you the owner of the gored ox gets 100. If the ox does it again to another ox it the two owners get 50 and 50. If again then 50, 25 and 25. So my question is what happens then next time? I can not figure out what kind of progression the mishna is getting at.

L.T Hobhouse wrote a scaling critique on Hegel's idea of the State. But looking at what he wrote before World War I you can see he was leaning towards socialism. This seems to me to be the case with Bradly also--the most famous Hegel scholar before WWI. WWI changed his point of view drastically also to the degree that as far as I recall he ended his days denouncing Hegel and everything that he had written defending him.

[My own feeling about this is that I think Hegel was more of a philosopher than a political thinker. In terms of politics i think England got it right to a large degree in the 1700's and then the founding fathers of the USA made their improvements on that system.]

There is something odd that I can not figure out. If an animal devours some part of a persons's crops then in the Gemara in Bava Metzia it says you measure one part from 60. That is you do not measure just the amount of that one small area because that will be too expensive if someone would buy it alone. Nor do you measure by the whole field. Rather you go by 60 times that area and then take 1/60 of the crops value.

The question I gave came up a week or two ago when I was looking briefly at the Mishna in Bava Kama where it has the exact same case but it says you measure the amount of a field needed to plant two seahs.[Not like the Gemara in Bava Metzia.] I recall learning that part in Bava Metzia with David Brosnon and then for some reason I looked at the Aruch Hashulchan and saw how he explains Tosphot over there But I do not recall anyone mention the mishna in Bava Kama.

psychotherapy is ridiculous.

Implicit in the Oral and Written Law is a world view of what makes people tick. But to get a full picture it is best to learn Rav Nahman of Breslov who makes the assumptions explicit.

One important point is that mental illness comes from sexual sin. And that there is a correction for that. The Tikun Klali. [Ten psalms 16,32,41, 42, 59,77.90.105,137,150]
See this person write on the problems with the modern approaches
psychotherapy is ridiculous.

In Torah there is a fall of man and of  all creation. So it is not exactly that man is inherently evil but also not inherently good. What is possible to suggest is that there are new stages of consciousness that come into the world at certain periods-- but along with them come the forces of evil to stop the good.
At that makes sense if you see things like  Hegel that the In God there is the Idea [Logos] which is the source of Being. So that is where the center of gravity is--in Logos. The Divine Reason brought down in Plotinus. But with Hegel it is an ongoing process.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

With Rav Avraham Abulafia it is possible to understand some of the good and some of the evils of Christian history. That is if you take Jesus as being from Kindness which fell into Foundation in Emanation, חסד שנפל בכלי של יסוד then a lot becomes clear. At least to me anyway. But the fact that he was from the root of Joseph, at that time meant that that was only a preliminary phase.

In any case you need to look it up in Abulafia's books and also Profesor Moshe Idel to get the whole picture. 

In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence

"אין עוד מלבדו" Or there are no gods besides God.
In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence.

average good physicist has an IQ of 160

I am realizing something true that was talked about on the Reference Frame the most important Physics blog that I know of. and there they discuss IQ and how the average good physicist has an IQ of 160. [That is top level but not in particular up in Mount Olympus.] Undergraduate Physics is more alone the lines of 130.]But my point is built on the idea of learning all aspects of Torah which to many Rishonim include the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and metaphysics--and learning Torah is not just for the smart people. Personally I admit I can not imagine any time in the future when people will learn Physics and Math for their own sake even without understanding just for the sake of the commandment to learn Torah. But that is my opinion anyway and it is what I attempt to do as well as I can with my low IQ. But even a person as dumb as a grasshopper like me--if you keep with it, you eventually understand.
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Here is the commentWell, Edward Witten is easily profoundly gifted. With IQ 160 (SD15), one doesn't breeze through Jackson's Electrodynamics in a week after a history undergraduate degree or take up calculus at age 10. 160 is the average for first-class, but non-revolutionary, physicists - people like Ivy physics professors. For a physics PhD in general the average IQ is already 133 (SD15), so for a string theory PhD, the average would be like 145-160 (SD15). 

The thing is people with low IQ's like me tend to read laymen's versions of Physics. But that is not an option since most laymen's stuff about Physics is profoundly wrong. If you really want the real thing, then you have to learn the real thing. The is no alternative.

I once had a way of putting together Rav Nahman's ideas that helped make clear why Physics and Math are important. I forget now however the main gist of my argument. It I think was that the highest light of creation is the hidden statement where no holiness is easily found. Thus in my own way i understand Physics the be the laws of God in Creation itself, while Torah is the laws of God as referred to human action.

[The most famous source about learning Physics is the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות he was not alone. The thing is he goes about it in such a way that it is easy to miss what he is saying. It was more helpful for me when I saw the idea in Maimonides who makes it a lot more clear,]

In my two Litvak yeshivas, it was thought that learning Gemara makes one smart. And that intellect is somewhat fluid. The more you learn Torah the smarter you are. Nowadays this seems in accurate. Still I did see something in learning that I think has to be called help from Heaven. That sometimes a good idea would just come to me out of the blue. Also my two small books on Talmud  to me seem to be gifts from Heaven-since I was never on the level to be writing ideas in Torah in the first place. But somehow it just started after I was learning Gemara in Uman with a friend.

I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education.

String Theory--Origins

[I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education. Mainly I saw this in some books of Musar of the Middle Ages. But the message never got through to me. Eventually I started seeing the point. But the way I go about it is different. For me the best way to go about is is to say the words and go on as brought down in the Gemara itself and also in Rav Nahman's Conversations 76.

The two main places in Musar i saw this were the Obligations of the Heart and Sefer HaMidot by Benjamin the Doctor. Later I saw that even in Rav Nahman's view there a difference between false "wisdoms" that he was against [rightfully so] and true wisdoms
[Besides that there is a basic idea in Rav Nahman about the ten statements of Creation and especially the  hidden statement of Creation] have deep holiness. 

Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation.

Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation. But I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of Reason that that recognizes universals.
That is a kind of faculty of reason that one knows things to be true as soon as they are understood. And these things are not based on sensory perception.

But also I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of immediate non intuitive knowledge. That was the major point of Leonard Nelson.

I found Leonard Nelson to be very important when I was trying to figure out "things"--I mean world view issues. And his idea of immediate non intuitive knowledge does seem to me to closely  connected with faith.
At the same time I was looking at ideas of Nelson [as presented by Dr Kelley Ross] I also found the web site of Michael Huemer. His idea that reason perceives more things than simple contradictions in language was also very helpful. Putting it together you get the synthesis of Faith with Reason -that is the old synthesis from the Middle Ages.

This is not to take totally the Nelson approach totally, --I still think that Hegel had a lot of important points. But Nelson's critique on the Neo Kant School I think was accurate.

[Kelley Ross also made some advances in this Kant Fries Nelson approach.]

I ought to add that the idea of Nelson [coming from Fries] of immediate non-intuitive knowledge is not the exact same thing as Michael Humer's Reason. The function of Reason for Huemer is much wider than what was assumed by Berkeley and Hume. To Huemer, Reason recognizes universals.[Universals are character traits that things have in common. But it also includes laws of nature or morality.] Immediate non intuitive knowledge is the starting points of reason that one knows without thinking about it--the existence of space and time.

When some kind of problem appears in the text of the Bible like the flood, I take the approach of Isaac Luria that placed the narrative in higher worlds [Emanation]. I think this idea goes back to Plato that there are two levels of reality--the real world of ideas and the shadow world of change.

Lots of problem arise in the religious world when you delve too deeply into it. So I try to keep things simple

With the Ari- the actual simple explanation of a lot of verses comes out to be in Emanation

King David changed a command of the Torah in a permanent way. So you have to say he held like R. Shimon Ben Yohai that we go by the reason for the verses, not by the literal meaning.

The command to build the משכון Tabernacle was not confined to the Sinai desert. If you look at the verses you will see that making the holy Ark of the Covenant and the Table for the Show Bread etc is all on the same level as building the Tabernacle with curtains of goat hairs. That is right away in the beginning of the command to build the Tabernacle, and it all comes under one large commandment ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם "They shall make for me a Tabernacle and I will dwell among them."[and then the verse explains how to build the Tabernacle.] Then look at the end of Chronicles I where King David gives the blue prints to the new Temple that he wanted Solomon to build. There is nothing there about curtains but rather walls.
So we find a later prophet can change things. What is there then that a later prophet can not change? I think it is natural Law.

I mentioned this a day ago when I brought down the Gemara in makot that later prophets reduced the obligations of the Torah until all that was left was faith. וצדיק באמונתו יחיה. If you look at Rashi over there in tractate Makot [last page] you will see he explains that Gemara literally. He says that these prophets saw that if people would have to keep all the commandments, then no one would merit to a portion in the next world. So they lessened the requirements.

The point here is I think you have to say that when the Torah talks about a false prophet, it says specifically one that says to do idolatry. [That is how the verse over there in Deuteronomy actually looks. It only refers to a prophet that says to worship idols.] There is an opinion that a false prophet is one that changes a commandment in a permanent way. But if that would be the case then King David would be a false prophet since he changed a command of the Torah in a permanent way. That does not seem like a likely scenario.
Some of the commands of the Torah it says are forever. But those are not all. Most of the time the Torah simply says to do such and such a thing without giving a time frame.


The gemara in Eruvin also brings down a number of things that later prophets changed like the fact that in the Torah it is stated that children can bear the guilt of their parents and Ezekiel changes that. And besides that he also changes the dimensions of the Temple.

Another thing which I do not think is really that important, but it still seems worth mentioning. That the place of the Temple was not stated in the Torah openly but the simple way of looking at the verses seems to indicate it should be at Mount Eval. This is because in the early verses it says to bring your sacrifices in a place I will choose. And to put the altar of God in a place I will choose. And then later it says when you cross the Jordan river you should build the Altar of God at Mount Eval and bring your sacrifices there. So God did choose a place and it is not Jerusalem. So what do you do with that? I think you have to say what the Gemara says in Eruvin, that later prophets changed things.

I ought to add that it is not uncommon to use verses to prove a point. An example is the פלגש girlfriend that the Rambam forbids to anyone who is not a king, and the Gra counters that with the example of Caleb ben Yephuna from Chronicles I 2:46 who had a few girls friends and was not a king.

after a certain age there is a clear connection between one's looks and one's character.

Abraham Lincoln said after a certain age there is a clear connection between one's looks and one's character.
The actual event was that he said something along the lines that you can tell a lot about a person';s character by their looks. They someone objected. And Lincoln answered that it has to be after a certain age for this to work. Teenagers clearly it does not work with.

I think in Eruvin that says there were things that were decreed by Moses and nullified by later prophets.

In Torah there is one place where a false prophet is dealt with--and the way to know is when he says a prophecy and it does not come to pass within the time frame given by that person. So what about Yona at Ninve? the Sages ask. They answer a negative prophecy can be nullified if people repent. So I ask from Jeremiah 18:9 and 18:10 where it says God can make a good decree and then change his mind if people do evil. But that seems to leave the criterion of the Torah with no way to be evaluated.

The only possible answer I can imagine is that there is a Gemara I think in Eruvin that says there were things that were decreed by Moses and nullified by later prophets. In particular that Gemara brings the example of punishment coming on subsequent generations as brought in the Ten Commandments. Later that was nullified by Ezekiel who said children will not die for the sins of their parents. The Gemara there brings a few more examples.

That is not the only place you see something like that. In the last page of tractate Makot you find later prophets nullifying actual commandments as explained there by Rashi. [Rashi over there says that the reason was that these later on prophets saw that if you would require of people to keep all the commandments, then No One would merit to the next world. That he says is the reason most of the requirements were nullified. Look up the Rashi if you can find a gemara.]

two schools of thought that came from Kant, Leonard Nelson and the Marburg school.

There are two schools of thought that came from Kant, Leonard Nelson and the Marburg school. [Both based on early interpretations of Kant.

If you look at Cassirer's (from the Marburg) critique on Nelson you can see an important point -that a priori knowledge has to be with the limits of conditions of experience. So it looks to me that both schools had some important points.

But what I would like to suggest is that Nelson and Hegel are not as far apart as Nelson thought. To Nelson we have a kind of knowledge that comes not through pure reason and not through experience and has no intermediate point at all: immediate non-intuitive. Though Hegel does not have that he certainly expands the role of reason itself far beyond perceiving contradictions as Kant thought. But Hegel mechanism is far different from Nelson's. It is the dialectic. Which is right I am not sure. But I think all three schools of thought are important.
[As opposed to Twentieth century philosophy which just a result Physics Envy. Empty and ridiculous.]

My search for truth ultimately led me to learn Gemara which which is an area of value of Numinosity. Still that leaves issues of world view aside. Gemara is mainly about how to keep the commandments of the Torah and does not deal with world view issues at length.

So even though it is a great thing to concentrate on one thing at a time and not get too spread out, it still leaves a lot of important questions unanswered. To some degree Saadia Gaon and the Rambam fill gaps left over.
[Though you could argue about that. There is a tendency to seek out in Rishonim hidden truths. Still there is a more relevant issue. It is that world view affects actions. From what I can see the religious world is a disaster zone in terms of decent character traits. You can not be holy if you are not a decent human being first. So in my view, the world view issues have not been addressed well.

To some degree I made up for that by learning the books of Rav Nahman who does deal with the larger issues in a powerful and relevant way.

Today my view is that learning Gemara is one important area of value, but there is a separate area of value that is philosophy. So if I could I would simply plow through the basic works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Leonard Nelson, Hegel. But there seem to be time constraints. 

The religious world is anti Torah. But they are anti Torah in a way that is disguised.

The Gaon of Villna issued a warning and then later Rav Shach. In fact on the actual letter of excommunication --the top signature is of the Gra. So why is the supposed religious world completely filled with what both these great tzadikim warned against? Because the religious world is anti Torah. But they are anti Torah in a way that is disguised. They camouflage themselves with things that seem  Torah-dik.

However, I do not think the excommunication applies to Rav Nahman for reasons I mentioned elsewhere. So I feel free to follow his good advice and even bring on this blog ideas from him.

My tendency to to make peace between scholars of I can. However there are times when you have to draw a line. The Jewish religious world though it presents this facade of holiness, is very much on the opposite side--the Sitra Achra as can be easily attested for by the countless of people that have been burnt and destroyed by it --those that were seduced by its appearance of holiness.

I usually like to make peace, but for peace you have to be able to tell when something really is a Trojan horse.

I think my own motivation for going to learn in a NY yeshiva was a philosophical quest for the truth.And to some degree I think I found that in terms of numinious value [as per the Kant Fries School]. Learning Gemara is important--but I lost a sense of balance. Getting involved in the religious world tends to make one crazy.

beginning of Reform Judaism.

Rav Nahman was the only one that warned about the Dark Side in the religious world openly. The more I see of it, the more I am alarmed. But it is hard to know what to do. I thought at one point to mind my own business, but it gets worse at an exponential rate and it is "in your face".

Even if you just try to avoid the religious world in total, they still get in through the cracks.

This is probably not a new problem as you can see in the Bible and the false prophets of Ahab. further warnings are given in the Gemara. But Rav Nahman was the first to pin point the issue: "Torah Scholars that are Demons." That would be  right in the beginning of his major book in section 12 and 28. But it comes up in lots of other areas. So what does it mean? In a practical sense I think the meaning is clear. Avoid the religious world. But could Rav Nahman have meant that? Maybe when he was alive he was able to warn his disciples about whom to avoid. But nowadays? How can you tell?

So it is possible to understand the reasons for the beginning of Reform Judaism. It was probably for these exact reasons.

I was thinking of King Yoshiyahu who got rid of all the idolatry in Israel during his reign. He must have been alarmed at the same kind of phenomenon that I am seeing nowadays.


[After I wrote that above essay, it occurred to me why Rav Nahman used the terminology of demons for religious leaders. He must have been referring to their malevolence. -I mean to say that clearly Rav Nahman was basing himself on the Zohar and the writings of the Ari where the subject of Torah Scholars that are demons comes up. But my question is why did Rav Nahman choose to concentrate on that issue and in such a way that sounds not nice? It must be that he noticed what i noticed. In the Jewish religious world the leaders tend to rejoice in doing harm to innocent people that they feel they can hurt without repercussions. While being extra nice to secular Jews they think they can get donations from.

The main subjects emphasized by the Rishonim -that is the Oral Law, the Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.

The main subjects which I would like to do are the main one emphasized by the Rishonim especially the Rambam--that is the Oral Law, the Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.

As I am having trouble getting through the basic material I thought at least I might share the idea with others in case they might succeed where I have not.

The Written Law--that is clear.

The Oral Law is the actual written account of the written law in the two Talmuds. Sifra Sifri, and the  Midrashim. But even though I did manage to get through Shas -a lot of it was done without Tosphot. If I could go back and try again today I would do every single Tosphot.

Physics --even though the Rambam was talking about the Physics or Aristotle still I think it applies to today's  also. So that would go through classical, the Quantum, and then Strings. Strings is important because it seems to be the only way to make sense of things like quarks.

Metaphysics would be Plato Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant Hegel.

The way I would do this would be the idea that is brought in the gemara and a book of Musar the אורחות צדיקים and Rav Nahman's idea of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on.

To that I would like to add the idea of שיעורים כסדרם sessions in order. That is you take one book and go through a few pages, then put in a place marker and then take a different book and go through a few pages, etc.
[Not all the above sessions every day. You have to work out how it might work for you. For example you might want to get through the Jerusalem Talmud with the commentaries. So that is something like 40 minutes on one page alone. Then you might want a session in Physics. That might be a math session in Algebra which is a part of Physics. As Michael Humer noted--there are no bare facts. Nature expresses herself in Math and by math. As Heidegger put it: nature itself allows herself to be understood only by a priori knowledge. (And that is a puzzling fact all and in itself.)


But the main goal is to try to finish Shas and all the Oral Law and Physics and metaphysics at least once,

Jacob sent Joseph to see his brothers from Hebron to Shechem. That is about a week of hiking at least! What were the brothers doing up in Shechem? And why send Joseph by himself halfway through the land of Canaan to get a news report?

Eliyahu and Elisha crossed the Jordan River before Eliyahu was taken up into Heaven. They were coming from Jericho. So they crossed into an area that was outside the original border or Israel as defined in the book of Numbers. But was that area occupied by the tribe of Reuben and Gad?

Who was the king of Israel in the time of Elisha? Yoram the son of Ahab? Or Yehu?

Jacob sent Joseph to see his brothers from Hebron to Shechem. That is about a week of hiking at least! What were the brothers doing up in Shechem? And why send Joseph by himself halfway through the land of Canaan to get a news report? And it is not as if the Canaanites were all the friendly by that time after what had happened in Shechem.