The greatness of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri

The greatness of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri is that it combines an aspect of simplicity along with the basic meaning of what it means to "be able to learn". Even though I have not been able to finish it myself, still I want to recommend a way of finishing it. That is to read each chapter a few times until it is fairly clear, and then move on. So you do not have to get every single detail, but you also do not move on until you have gotten some basic idea. This is in fact how I used to learn Gemara.
 [This did not seem to work when it came to Physics in which it seemed better just to do straight "Girsa" (saying the words and going on with no review at all) a few times through the whole book from cover to cover until I could get the basic idea, and even be up to any level in which review would be helpful.]



Even though I am not much of a Litvak, I still want to leave the name of this blog as it is since I wish I would have the merit of learning Torah and walking in the path of Musar.
 Even if I can not be as good as I ought to be, at least I can want to help and encourage my friend to be as good as he can be.(This idea is from Rav Nahman.)


As for myself, I have to admit I did not appreciate the straight Litvak approach of the Gra and Rav Shach as much as I should have. But today I have begun to see what is special and important about the straight Lithuanian yeshiva approach, and also to see that as much as modeled on the authentic approach of the Gra, the better it is.

Litvak Yeshiva path

The Litvak Yeshiva path is not exactly the path of Musar. There is a certain amount of discrepancy. What would be called secular studies is one area. Another is Torah for money.
However the areas of agreement are more that the areas of discrepancy.

The secular studies area is easily divided into two parts. One part is where in fact secular studies are ridiculous.  Obviously pseudo science. And anything with the word "studies" attached to it.
On the other hand, there are areas in which the Rambam and other rishonim held they are even higher than traditional "learning Torah" i.e. Physics and Metaphysics.
But this is clearly an area of disagreement among rishonim. The Ramban/Nahmanides clearly was no fan of Aristotle. Even in his defence of the Rambam, he did not go so far as to advocate the Guide for the Perplexed itself. [I.e. I mean to say that there is a letter from the Ramban/Nahmanides defending the Rambam, but in spite of his impassioned plea for the defense of the Rambam, he did not actually defend the Guide as being "right."]



The nice thing about being in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY was the fact that almost no one was there in order to be using Torah to make money. In both places the clear intention for everyone was "Lishma" (i.e., Torah for its own sake). And besides that, there was also a kind of feeling of, "if everyone would be doing this the whole world would be a better place." There was a feeling of doing something for all mankind just by sitting and learning Torah. [You can actually see this stated as such in the Nefesh HaHaim of Rav Haim of Voloshin, a disciple of the Gra.] [I ought to add the fact that in both Shar Yashuv and the Mir I was very happy. There is a kind of "synergy" when you are learning Torah in the path of the Gra that everything seems to fall into place. Just like the sages said, "One who receives the yoke of Torah on himself the yoke of government and work is removed from him."]


I have really no good ideas about the Metaphysics. Leonard Nelson of the Kant Fries School looks pretty great to me  --but ironically enough I also think Hegel has some great ideas. Nowadays, there are some really great people like Kelley Ross, Huemer, Ed Feser. Steven Dutch I think is gone, but his web site is still up--thank God.
The way to put that all together is basically this. Moral principles are universals. And the function of reason is to recognize universals. But to start reason, you need some kind of starting point that is not itself based on reason. So you have to know your starting points, or at least accept them as prima facie unless something even more clear overthrows it.
 But reason without faith is empty. It can easily come up with all kinds on nonsense. So you need a kind of immediate non intuitive perception [faith].


[Mainly I believe that the Leonard Nelson approach makes the most sense because the transcendental deduction of Kant never really worked to be able to combine reason and perception. As Kelley Ross put it both must  have a deeper source  That is non intuitive immediate knowledge. But as Michael Huemer pointed out, that there is no reason to believe implanted knowledge has any relation to reality.  Therefore that immediate non intuitive knowledge-the axioms by which knowledge starts must be open to correction. It is not infallible. And if one asks-- that empirical facts ought not to be able to correct a priori knowledge that is where Hegel comes in handy. There is a point where knowledge itself gets to a plateau and gets above it by contrasting two points where separate series of reasoning led to and end up in a contradiction by which one starts the whole process again. Something like electromagnetism and newton that contradicted until you got special relativity,-- and relativity and quantum mechanics contradicted until you got quantum field theory and to sew up gravity you get string theory.

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Johann du Toit • 7 hours ago

People seem to think that the State can solve all fulfill all their desires and solve all their problems by simply issuing a diktat. Want free stuff? The state will provide it/ Want to end Global Warming? The state will pass a law to end Global Warming (yes, it sounds ridiculous but this is exactly what the "Extinction Rebellion" and Climate Change Alarmists seem to think will solve the problem.....along with shutting down our economies, banning private cars and air conditioners,

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/the-politics-of-sorrow

Modern intellectuals

Ed Feser:"Modern intellectuals tend to be spoiled and ungracious creatures, whose inclination to bitch and moan seems only to increase the better things get, and who seem to occupy themselves concocting ever more recherché reasons for badmouthing their society and their forebears. "

Gemara Kidushin A poor person is looking over a cake to buy it

A poor person is looking over a cake to buy it. One that comes over and grabs it and buys it himself is called "wicked."

This is brought in Kidushin Rav Gidal wanted to buy a field. R. Aba went and bought it. R. Gidal complained. R. Aba said, "I did not know you were going to buy it."
Rav Aba offered to give it to Rav Gidal as a present. Rav Gidal refused to accept it as a present because "He who hates gifts will live." [Proverbs]
But Rav Gidal would have agreed to buy it. But R Aba sis not want to sell it for money. He said that is is fist purchase of  a field and it is not a good idea to sell your first purchase,.

So neither R Gidal nor R Aba used the field and it was left fallow.

[Rav Moshe Feinstein brings this in his correspondence].

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not giving rebuke

I wanted to bring for a second time the vast importance of not giving rebuke in the thought of Rav Nahman of Breslov.
I mentioned this I think once before but probably not with the degree of emphasis that he places on this.
The idea is simple. The last Torah lesson Rav Nahman ever gave starts with this: אף על פי שתוכחה היא דבר גדול ומוטל על כל אחד להוכיח את הבירו כשרואה בו דבר שאינו הגון אף על פי כן לאו כל אחד ראוי להוכיח כמו שאמר ר' עקיבא תמה אני אם יש בדור הזה מי שיכול להוכיח ואם ר' עקיבא אמר זה בדורו כל שכן בדורות אלו.
Even though rebuke is a great thing and it is incumbent on each person to rebuke his fellow man when he sees in him something not proper, still not everyone is fit to give rebuke. As we see that R. Akiva said I would be surprised if there is anyone in this generation that can give rebuke. And if R Akiva said this in his generation all the more so in this generation. Because when one (who is not fit) gives rebuke he can make the person he is rebuking even worse.

So how do you know that this is one of the most essential fetures of the thought of Rav Nahman? Because of how this Torah lesson was given. He held that he was rising from spiritual level to a higher level because of his practice of talking with God as one talks to a friend. No formulae. Also because of his general practice of serving God by learning Torah. But he was rising from level to level at an accelerated rate. So every Torah lesson was on a higher level than the previous ones. So the very last lesson has to be thought of as the peak of all his Torah lessons. The very summit. And since its major theme is not to give rebuke, this you have to say is most important of all his lessons.

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the Mir in NY some books of Ethics

I learned in the Mir in NY some books of Ethics. That is besides the regular two Gemara sessions which went from 1000 AM until 200 PM and then from 4 PM until  8 PM. Then an evening session for students who were not married went from about 830 until 1100 or 12 AM for the students who were "masmidim" [diligent.]

So the Musar part was almost negligible. [ 35 minutes per day]. Yet, still I was affected deeply by the Musar part of the yeshiva. In particular the Gates of Repentance of Rabbainu Yona.

And in that book I recall was brought a statement of the sages that, "There are no problems without sin."אין יסורים בלי עוון

Thus, the best way to get out of his problems is not to sin. Easier said than done. Thus the disciple of Rav Israel Salanter [Isaac Blazer] brings the idea of encouraging others to learn Musar [mediaeval books of Ethics] as a cure for sin which in its turn is a cure for ones problems.

[How to define "sin" is a hard issue. There always seems to be areas of doubt as to what is the right course of action. Torah gives gernral guide lines but even with that there is always doubt. So to encourage the learning of Musar.]

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path of balance

I see the paths of great people often seems to go in opposite directions from each other.
[Rav Nahman refers to this as the argument between tzadikim.]
From what I recall this is one of the questions raised by Socrates. What is virtue "arete" , i.e. human excellence. He meant to ask this: that even though human excellence seems to vary according to the person, still is there some basic essence of "arete" [in ancient Greek] that all these great people share?
Something in common between the Gra,-- (Eliyahu of Vilna), Rav Israel Salanter, Rav Shach, Einstein, Mozart?

In Musar you find two areas of value,- moral virtue, and intellectual virtue. [Kelley Ross postulates a whole spectrum of value, -along a half circle.]

What my parents recommended was a path of balance. That is since there is a whole spectrum of virtues that are all important but each person seems to be able to excel only in one or two areas so the best idea is balance. That way you hold on to all the areas of value to some degree but you find the areas that are specific to your soul.

There is an opposite area of negative value for every area of positive value. [This is like Rav Nahman said about truth. He said there is only one truth but lots of lies. For example, if you have blue paint and someone asks what color is the paint there is only one right answer. Blue. But there are an infinite number of lies one can say. E.g. one could say it is red or green or any of the continuous wave lengths on the color spectrum. So even though in every area of value there is one true path, there are many ways of getting it wrong.

[This gives a good reason why the Gra would sign the letter of excommunication--to give warning to people like me that would not know how to avoid the dark side.]

So when it comes to Torah I would like to suggest for myself and others to be careful you go to an authentic Litvak yeshiva where you can get the real thing. [But I should add that even in the straightest of Litvak yeshivas one needs to avoid fanaticism. And also concentrate on the classes of the roshei yeshiva in order to get to a point where you "know how to learn".]

Rav Israel Salanter

Rav Israel Salanter brings the idea of bringing merit to many as being a way to bring merit to oneself in his "Letter of Musar". ["One who brings a merit to many, no sin comes to him."]

His idea of how to do this was to make a kind of library of Musar [Books on Ethics]. The difference between a regular library and this library of Musar would be that learning Musar of any Torah requires one to say the words. So it would be more like a regular place of learning Torah except that it would be devoted to Musar (books of Ethics).

The thing is this idea never took off at all. Musar was totally absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva [Lithuanian type of Yeshiva]. And to me this seems right. Musar can get people off track unless connected with the straight Litvak yeshiva approach.

[The reason however it seems that Rav Israel Salanter wanted to keep things seperate was that the Litvak yeshiva approach can also get one off track. ]

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Communism was founded on reason, and yet had become a totalitarian regime.

It was thought to be a truism a few years ago in the USA that Communism was founded on reason, and yet had become a totalitarian regime. Thus Reason is not always [or maybe very rarely] a good guide towards morality.

Whether you can find flaws in the system is not so much my point. Rather, that communism was based on the best the intellectual world had to offer, and yet was clearly causing mass murder and poverty wherever it was implemented.

So even though I did study leftist thinkers and philosophers, I was always aware that even pure Reason has limits.` And even if Reason recognizes moral principles, it does not know them automatically. You might take many examples violent tribes that still exist as mentioned in the book by Howard Bloom [The Lucifer Principle], though there are many more examples than the ones he picks.


This suspicion about the limits of human reason can give you an idea why I appreciate Dr Kelley Ross's web site about the Kant Friesian school based on Leonard Nelson. He seems to have an amazing defense of faith, i.e. immediate non-intuitive knowledge.


So on one hand, I can see the point of Dr. Michael Huemer that reason recognizes moral principles. But on the other hand, I also see that for Reason to be awoken, it need Divine revelation as the Rambam wrote in the Guide about Abraham the patriarch. Or you could go about the issue of faith with the idea of a dialectical process. A slow progress towards truth.

In the Guide of the Perplexed of Maimonides you have a allegory which makes the point that Physics and Metaphysics are above learning what we would call "learning Torah" i.e. Gemara.
It is the allegory of the king in his country. And you have there people outside the country, inside, near the palace and inside the palace. And right there the Rambam says people outside the palace are the "Talmudim" those that learn and keep the Oral and Written Law and learn Gemara all day. Inside the palace of the King in the outer sections  are the Physicists. In the inner section you have the prophets and philosophers.

So it does seem that the Rambam is making a value judgment about what is better to be spending your time at. Given a choice he seems to be saying one ought to learn Physics and Metaphysics rather than be sitting a learning Gemara.

However he certainly is not disparaging the importance of Gemara. Rather the idea is one ought to have  certain amount of time in Gemara and allot another larger section of his time to Physics.

And we know what the Rambam means because he defines his terms in the beginning of the Guide. Physics and Metaphysics he says mean the subjects so described by the ancient Greeks.

Philosophy today however I would have to say is probably better to avoid. It is known that Rav Nahman thought ill of philosophers and from what I can see today he had a point. So kind of by default I have gone more into Physics. [But in philosophy, I like Kelley Ross of the Kant Fries school, Michael Huemer, and Ed Feser.]

[Hegel to me seems important also although there is some friction between him and the Kant Fries school. See McTagart who answers some of the problems that Dr Kelley Ross raises. See Walter Kaufman on Hegel

The major advantage of the Litvak Yeshiva approach

The major advantage of the Litvak Yeshiva approach as exemplified by Rav Shach is that people do not have automatic access to moral knowledge.

This is how the Rambam understands the laws of the Greeks, natural law. He says unless it is revealed people would not know it.

So you might guess that people could guess at morality through their inherent reason, but that does not seem to be the case. Even natural law needs to be revealed.

That is what the Rambam says in regard to Abraham the patriarch--that he knew natural law but only because God revealed it to him.

But the interesting thing about the Litvak yeshiva approach is they did not accept the Musar idea in its entirety. 20 minutes before mincha and 15 minutes before the evening prayer is no where near the hours of Musar learning that Rav Israel Salanter was advocating. Probably the reason was that it can and does distract from Gemara. It shifts the center of gravity. But that would not be a problem if not for the fact that it shifts it in a way that is usually not really accurate in terms of Torah. So to learn some was looked on as a good compromise.

[It is possible that I was sidetracked by Musar, but I am not sure. In any case I did learn some of the books of the Ari [Isaac Luria] and Sar Shalom Sharabi which are commentaries on the Ari. But of all the books of mystics I found Rav Avraham Abulafia of the Middle Ages to be the most interesting.

Another important advantage is that the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication is paid attension to at least a little bit. That tends to save one from the Sitra Achra if one pays attension to it.

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Rav Shick [known in Yavneal as one of the great Breslov sages of the last generation] brought an idea of שיעורין כסדרן learning sessions in order. He attached this to the "seder halimud" of Rav Nahman of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on. [No repeats until one has finished the book].
[Rav Nahman of Breslov would not be in the excommunication of the Gra as you can see by the actual language of that letter. So I feel free to quote from him.]

The idea was to take e.g. a Gemara and just go through a lot of pages in one sitting. And then put in a place marker, and take a mishna and do the same. Go through a few chapters. Same with Rav Isaac Luria's Eitz Haim and his Eight Gates.[And the next day to start where you left off. This way you finish a lot and in the end you understand a lot more than if you had stopped on every little problem.]

This method I have used also for a wide array of subjects like math and I have found that combining these two ideas has been very helpful.

I also tried doing this with Rav Haim of Brisk's Hidushei HaRambam and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. However in those last two books I found doing review after going through one section was more satisfying since in one reading alone I would generally not understand anything but then in the next reading it would all become clear.. So I would do review and then go on. In that way I guess I was combining the idea of Iyun [in depth] and Bekiut [fast learning] togther.

[Both idea have previous sources. The saying the words and going on is from the Gemara Shabat page 63 I think. The sessions in order is from Rav Isaac Luria.

I did this also with Hegel in his Greater Logic from his Encyclopedia.

So in short what I am recommending is (1) saying the words and going on (2) sessions in order.
This learning I would say to in such a way that you get through the two talmuds with Tosphot, and the Pnei Moshe and Karban Eda on the Yerushalmi. Also the main texts of math and Physics.
Also if I could I would try to do this with Avraham Abulafia's books [from the Middle Ages]

There are moral propositions. From Michael Huemer

ETHICS IS A PRIORI

That knowledge of moral principles is also a priori follows from the following two theses:

(1) Moral principles are not observations. The content of every observation is descriptive.

That is, you do not literally see, touch, hear, etc. moral value.

(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter. Just as you cannot expect to derive a geometrical conclusion from premises in economics, or derive a conclusion about birds from premises that don't say anything about birds, you should not expect to derive a conclusion about morality from non-moral premises.

(3) Therefore, moral knowledge requires an a priori basis.

(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)

And we have some knowedge of moral propositions

As far as I can tell, this claim follows from the proposition that there is moral knowledge, just as some analogous, more general claim follows from the premise that there is any knowledge at all. For if we know some particular thing, then there are only three possibilities as regards its justification:

(a) it is infinitely regressive. That is, there is a reason for it, and a reason for the reason, and then a reason for that, and so on indefinitely.
(b) it is circular. That is, it is based on some chain of reasoning in which something ultimately is supposed to (directly or indirectly) justify itself.
(c) it is foundational. That is, the item of knowledge itself is, or is based upon, a fact that is known directly and without any argument or reason given.

We know moral principles not based on Empiricism. Empiricism--roughly, the idea that all 'informative' knowledge, or knowledge of the mind-independent, language-independent world, must derive from sense perception--has been fashionable for the last century, though less so, I think, in the past decade. I cannot do justice to this subject here; nevertheless, I will briefly report how things seem to me. First, it is so easy to enumerate what appear on their face to be counter-examples to the thesis of empiricism, and at the same time so difficult to find arguments for the thesis, that the underlying motivation for the doctrine can only be assumed to be a prejudice. Second, I think that in the last several years, if not earlier, the doctrine has been shown to be untenable.⁽²⁹⁾ Here, I will give two of the better-known counter-examples to empiricism.

First example: Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green.⁽³⁰⁾ How do I know that? Note that the question is not how I came upon the concepts 'red' and 'green', nor how I came to understand this proposition. The question is why, having understood it, I am justified in affirming it, rather than denying it or withholding judgment. It seems to be justified intuitively, that is, simply because it seems obvious on reflection. How else might it be justified?

A naive empiricist might appeal to my experiences with colored objects: I have seen many colored objects, and none of them have ever been both red and green. One thing that makes this implausible as an explanation of how I know that nothing can be both red and green is the necessity of the judgment. Contrast the following two statements:

Nothing is both green and red.
Nothing is both green and a million miles long.

________________________________________________________________


The way I wrote about this before is this: There are universals. Morals are universals. Function of reason is to recognize universals. How do we know there are universals. Prime facie. E.g. There are trees.

I did not have a chance to look at the sugia [subject] in depth, but I did look briefly at Nedarim around pages 5-6 and saw that a neder can forbid speaking to someone. You see this towards the end of the sugia about Shmuel. He says if one says מודרני ממך אסור I am forbidden to you by a neder [vow] he is forbidden. The Gemara there concludes that he would be forbidden if Shmuel holds ידיים שאינן מוכיחות הווין ידיים. [An indication or hint of a neder/vow even if not perfectly clear is  still a neder/vow.] So we see if he would say openly, "I am forbidden to you to talk or do business or sit in your four yards," these all would be forbidden.

So since the laws of herem [excommunication] derive their power from laws of vows, we see that all these things can be forbidden by means of a herem.
So why is the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication ignored? Even to the degree that it is thought to be totally irrelevant.

[And you can see in laws of vows that it makes no difference why one person might say to another: "I am forbidden to you under a vow." Since the Gra was qualified to make a decree of excommunication then it is valid for whatever reason he saw to do so.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely to me that it was a mistake.

Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages

Musar originally was not supposed to be part of the Yeshiva thing. [Musar is a movement begun by Rav Israel Salanter that holds that people ought to learn much Musar --hours in fact--every day. Musar refers to books on morality of the Middle Ages. There are about four canonical ones and after that about 30 in the penumbra.]

[The yeshiva as an independent institution was begun by a disciple of the Gra. [in the beginning of the 1800's]. [It is not known what the Gra's reaction to it was. There are different versions of the events.] Before that, there was no such thing. The local place where people prayed in the morning simply stayed open during the day and whoever wanted to learn did so. If it was more organized, then it was the rav who was hired by the home owners who was in charge.
Kollel as such was begun by Rav Israel Salanter much later around 1860.
But Musar was eventually absorbed into the Litvak Yeshiva.

I had a very good time in two excellent places--Shar Yashuv and the Mir. So the "Litvak yeshiva thing" I know can be an amazing experience and also a good way to gain objective morality.

Impeachment

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind explains the situation well. He traces it back to a basic contradiction in the Enlightenment itself.

He sees the conflict left vs right as rooted in the Enlightenment coming into some kind of blocked alley.
The main theme in his book is that we find a way out of this dead end or else civilization is doomed.

Torah with Derech Eretz. [Torah with Work].

The path of my parents was that of balance. That is Torah with Derech Eretz. [Torah with Work]. They would not have agreed to the idea of accepting money to learn Torah, but they would agree to the idea of trust in God in order to learn Torah.
These are two different concepts that are confused nowadays very often. They are not the same thing.
One thing is to trust in God that somehow he will make ends meet when you devote yourself to learning Torah.

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The Litvak yeshiva is largely based on the Gra--at least in its world view. But also to some degree in its actual workings.

That it is looks upon Torah as being a 24 hour per day, seven days a week as being the goal.

But it does this with a high degree of keeping Torah and creating good character also.

The reason or reason I do not exactly walk on that path are more or less because something it seems I lacked the merit needed for it to work for me. [That is my considerations were mainly practical. If something does not work for me, even if it is in theory the best approach, it still does not change the fact that there is something that I simply can not change about my situation.]

So I have had to depend on the rishonim like Ibn Pakuda and Saadia Gaon that saw Physics as a part of Torah. 

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Aristotle was considered well by the author of the Obligations of the Heart [Ibn Pakuda]

Aristotle was considered well by the author of the Obligations of the Heart, Saadia Gaon and most rishonim that followed Saadia Gaon. So I have a tendency to want to justify Aristotle when possible.
[Nahmanides however had a very negative opinion of Aristotle and you see that in all those who followed his lead. That is in fact a lot of the later rishonim. So you see this even in the commentary of the Mishna by the Rav from Bartenura. However the Rambam certainly held quite differently and you can see that in everything from his commentary on the Mishna to the Guide. He held Metaphysics is a part of learning Torah and he certainly meant the books of Aristotle called Metaphysics. But he probably meant to include the later commentaries on Aristotle]


Telos [goals] in Aristotle is not as far as people think from the way the world works.
Dr Michael Huemer brings that it is refuted. However at least in the way physics is usually understood nowadays is that things tend towards a minimum energy level. [i do not mean to be critical of dr huemer. Rather just to raise one point. But his essay on this or on most other subjects is usually amazingly insightful and shockingly so.]
[An example of this comes to mind in terms of atoms and electrons. They try to go towards a state where the action disappears.]




Dr Kelley Ross [of the school of Kant and Leonard Nelson] also mentions that telos [goals] is something we see in biology.

[I forget offhand the way telos fits into Aristotle's system. Mainly I think the idea is  for things to some to their essence--from potential to action. That is how he modifies the universals of Plato]

Rav Nahman does bring an interesting idea: that מסיטרא דימינא מוחא חיוורא ככספא which means from the side of kindness one's mind is made  white as silver.

He expands on the idea but you can see that he understands the simple explanation to be that by doing acts of kindness, one mind is made pure.

(I do not recall which chapter in his LeM brings this).

So it seems to me that he is suggesting a good strategy to gain mental health. When an act of kindness presents itself, do it.

But he would not be advocating socialism: i.e. the idea of taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
[Or "government control of industry" which is just a fancy way of saying the same thing.]
 The reason would be that taking people's money from them even with a good motive is theft. So you do not do theft even in order to do good with the money later. Another reason is that socialism means to take away people's freedom. If you take people's money you take away their freedom because without money you are automatically a slave. You have to do what the boss says or you don't eat.

Also I should add that the idea of Torah about what one should be doing with his time is to learn Torah, and that is the biggest kindness for oneself and all others. You see this in the Yerushalmi where the incident is brought that one person sent his son to Tiberias to learn Torah and heard that he was burying the dead. He sent to him, "Did I send you to learn Torah or to bury the dead?" The Yerushalmi concludes that if there is some kind of mitzva that can not be done by others then one can interrupt learning Torah and do the mitzva but otherwise not.
[I saw in the Even Shelema which brings quotations for the Gra that the meaning of the Yerushalmi is that one can interrupt one's studies for a mitzva that can not be done by others. Not that one must. The reason the Gra says this seems clear to me to be העוסק בבמצווה פטור מן המצווה One who is doing one commandment is not obligated to interrupt in order to do another.

I think that the idea of a "herem" [excommunication] is more of a serious  issue than most people are aware of. I was looking at the first chapter of Nedarim and I noticed there where the subject is brought.

The short and sweet of the subject is this. One under a  Nidui can learn Torah. But one under a "herem" can not learn nor teach. [That actual law is from Moed Katan]. So even if one would think the herem was based on a mistake it would not matter in terms of its validity.

So I try to avoid the religious world which seem to ignore the herem. And I can not figure out why the signature of the Gra seems to count for nothing for most people. [He who ignores a herem is under the same herem.]

Rondo for violin and winds

D Major Rondo  w14 file name mp3.  w14 in midi format  w14 in nwc format

Hegel thought somewhat as Dr Huemer said that just knowing what people thought [history of Philosophy courses] is not worth anything. But Hegel also thought that philosophy makes progress. This he thought happens by a "give and take" kind of conversation along the lines you would see Socrates do. Except Hegel expanded Socrates to say that that same process happens even after Socrates.

The fact is it is hard to get a good idea of the world view of the Torah even if one would know the whole Gemara. The reason is there was an aspect of things that the Rishonim [mediaeval people] were good at and that is to get at what the actual world view of Torah is in a general sense and then also to work out the details so that you iron out any seeming contradictions.
So to get an idea of the working world view of Torah--what it actually holds is right and wrong you really need the Musar Movement of Rav Israel Salanter who emphasized that aspect of the Rishonim.

There is no crisis in Physics.

There is no crisis in Physics. Physics is doing well, thank you. The crisis is in the minds some people who do not get the idea. The reason for this is that it has gotten hard and takes longer to get the idea.
QM works as well as when it was started. So does Relativity. There were problems with QM in terms of interactions so Q field theory was worked out by Feynman and Schwinger. There were strange kinds of relations between mass and spin so strings were suggested. [Spin seems to increase with mass squared. Regge trajectories.] Gravity was  a problem and it turned out that strings have answer to the problem of gravity.

The thing is to know Physics today takes a lot of time and effort. Lots of "Girsa" [saying the words and going on] and lots of Iyun (Review of one section many many times.]

Just for the sake of information, there is in Vayikra [Leviticus] a death penalty for sex between two males. It does not matter if one of the males cuts off his penis and makes a hole. He is still a male.

I recall this from a few places which I have not been able to review for years. [Of course I still hope to do review God willing].

One place is the subject of the person born with two sex organs. This is in the Mishna itself, not just the Gemara.
And that Mishna is brought in plenty of places that I ran into when in Shar Yashuv and also in the Mir in NY. And just take a look and you will see that cutting off the male organ would not make the person into a female even with a natural vagina. He is still half male.[So even way back in the time of the Gemara it was crystal clear to people that the difference between male and female is in every single cell of the body.]
[I ran into this when I was doing Hulin about the subject of a "Kvi" an animal that is between two species. I also recall this in Yevamot. But Sanhedrin where the main subject of the death penalty for sex between males comes up I simply did not learn in those few years I was in NY. Sanhedrin is a not a "yeshivishe tracate"]

Germany tends towards to extremes.

Germany tends towards to extremes. This is different from the way the USA used to be in that people tended towards to Middle. The differences between the political parties was usually confined to a ten yard line somewhere in the middle. Not the extreme Left or Right.
The fact that Germany tends toward extremes is on one hand the secret of their excellence. They take a axiom or build a car or a rocket and take the idea or build the car to the ultimate degree. In that they can find what is wrong with an axiom or find the weakness in the car and fix them.

But going towards the extremes has a defect also in that the truth never is in the extreme but somewhere in the middle.
Perhaps the best idea is to be extreme about being in the middle and having balance.

I am referring here to two reports from Germany. One about "sex" between two males is thought to be "natural". My answer to that on a Catholic blog was this: "The natural world includes not only green grass, bright flowers, and blue sky, but also fleas, lice, cholera, malaria, diphtheria, yellow fever, typhoid and smallpox." [Steven Dutch.] They are all a "normal" part of nature.

The other was on Reference frame about "climate science".

My feeling about philosophy is that Leonard Neslon [the Kant/Fries school] and Hegel both have important points. It seems to me the differences between them are less than the similarities.

And both seem a lot better than almost anything that came after them.

[Most of 20th century philosophy after Kant and Hegel is simply trying to come up with anything significant by people afflicted with Physics envy.]

My feeling is that people would not be so prone to believe in pseudo science or flaky philosophies if they had more background in actual Physics.

A lot of people that went into the hard sciences did so as they were fed up with politics and politicians. They were looking for a bit of certainty in life. That is certainty that did not depend on what other people were saying. This is a good strategy for smart people. But what about us average?
For that there is the path of "Girsa"--say the words and go on. See the Musar book ארחות צדיקים [Ways of the Righteous.]

After you have finished the book four time and still do not get it, then review becomes important.

The question about saying that learning math and physics is a part of learning Torah [according to those rishonim [Mediaeval  authorities] that hold that way] is where is the numinous [holy] aspect of it? Answer is that there are paths towards holiness that have been revealed only after great tzadikim opened them up. They were not just hidden before that but in accessible. Sometimes you need a tzadik to go into the jungle and carve out a path before others can follow.



At least I can depend on the Gra who held "One who lacks knowledge in any degree in any of the 7 wisdoms will lack in Torah knowledge a hundred times more." So at least to that degree math and physics are important. [That quotation is from the translation of Euclid done by a disciple of the Gra in his introduction.]

[You can see this opinion in the Obligations of the Heart [shar habehina chapter 3 where he makes a distinction between learning about the spiritual aspect of things and the actual learning of their physical workings. And both are necessary to learn.]

Any of the Musar books of ethics and morality makes sense to learn for many reasons. One reason is that after the Middle Ages thinking in philosophy and or religious matters lost rigorous logic. That is,- even if the axioms that are assumed in the Middle Ages you might question, but almost always the results are exact. After the Middle Ages thinking in philosophy became mostly circular. Even by people you would have thought would be above that kind of mistake like John Locke or Kant.

The circular reasoning in Kant and Locke was pointed out by Dr. Kelley Ross. That is why he adopted the more rigorous approach of Leonard Nelson.

Allan Dershowitz wrote against impeachment

Allan Dershowitz wrote against impeachment a nice book that I read a bit of and it seemed to me to well reasoned. I recall the basic idea was that there needs to be some crime done in order for there to be impeachment. I think that is a good point.

Besides that there is a point of Steven Dutch that one's faith is the source of one's values. So it makes sense whether one is Catholic or Muslim--as long as one's faith holds that there is objective morality,--that the whole issue ought to be thought of from an objective standard--from from identity politics

The problem is that the Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach in two specific cases. The Congress does not get to define its own powers. Or at least it should not as long as the Constitution is the Constitution.

Are there evaluative facts? i.e. is there such a thing as objective good or evil? If there is, then there is free will. For what what is forced to do can not be termed good or evil. If one has free will then he can choose good.

You can not reduce questions of good and evil to ignorance because ignorance has to be ignorance of some fact. Ignorance of what? is the essential question.


See Dr. Michael Huemer for more information about objective morality. I  guess you could go to the intuitionist school of thought or to Hegel or Prichard and G.E. Moore for the same reason, but with limited time I found it easier to look at Dr Huemer than having to take  a few years to go through these other philosophers`.

"To finish Shas"

"To finish Shas" I recall was one theme that was mentioned often in Shar Yashuv. That was intended to say that no one has a right to an uninformed opinion. And to have an informed opinion means to have finished the two Talmuds at least once. [I.e. the one that is famous written in Iraq [Babylonia] and the other called the Yerushalmi.


Since I have concluded that math and physics and Aristotle's Metaphysics are in the category of Torah, it makes sense to me to suggest a daily schedule in which one finishes the two Talmuds plus the basic set of math and physics plus the books of Aristotle named Metaphysics.

[This is more or less based on authorities that came after Saadia Gaon and took his lead. However I do admit there were great rishonim would did not think these subjects would be included in Torah learning. Obviously the Ramban [Nachmanides] would not include Aristotle and probably not math or Physics either. This was a subject that was never much discussed at the Mir in NY. But once I returned there and discussed this a little bit with Rav Shmuel Berenbaum. And he said for parnasa [making a living] it is OK. I tried to argue and claim that to some rishonim learning physics is in itself a part of learning Torah. But he did not accept that. And he repeated again the statement if it is for parnasa it is ok.


Maimonides himself does take this approach of Saadia Gaon as you can see in the Guide. But contrary to what most people think, he includes his opinion also in the Mishne Torah in the law about dividing one's learning into three parts. One part is Gemara. And there he says that "the subjects called pardes are in the category of Gemara" and he defined what is included in pardes in the first four chapters of mishne torah.

Winds and Violin in C major.

Music file w12. mp3 w12 in midi format  w12nwc

My suggestion--learn mediaeval books on morality and ethics right at the start of every day-- even if only for a few minutes. This is from the Musar Movement of Rav Israel Salanter

One of the main idea of Musar was to help people develop good character traits. Is it effective? I think so. From my own experience in the Mir in NY and in Shar Yashuv I would have to say that learning books of ethics actually helps one develop good character to some degree. But it is not fool-proof. [It is like Steven Dutch wrote: "I am completely unable to conceive of any system that can not be abused and used for personal power and profit."
So the fact that a system can be abused does not count against it in the larger picture. [This idea is an ancient Roman proverb: "Abusus non tollit usum." (Abuse does not cancel use.)] The real questions are if it is true and does it bring people to a higher level of objective morality at least to some degree? Since both these conditions are certainly fulfilled by Musar and the general Litvak yeshiva approach I have to put in my two cents worth of approval.

[Rav Shach also wrote as much in the introduction to one of the volumes of the Avi Ezri.]

Especially at the start of every day right when you wake up--learn Musar. Or if you know there is some particular area you need to work on then find the parts of Musar that deal with that area and  especially some short paragraphs and say them right when you wake up before you say anything else.

In the Guide of Maimonides there is the parable

In the Guide of Maimonides there is the story about a king and the levels of closeness to him in his country. [1.] People outside the country. [2.] People inside the country.  [3.] People around the palace. [4.] People on the inside of the palace in the outer areas. [5.] People with the kind in the inside area of the palace. The allegory refers to God. People outside the country are barbarians. People inside are people with morality of reason (the Rambam calls this level the "laws of the ancient Greeks"). People around the palace are those who learn and do the Talmud ("the Talmudiim"). The people inside the palace are the physicists. People on the very inside are the prophets and the philosophers.

The putting of philosophers on the inside with the king does not seem to be applicable nowadays.

See how i got fired by the ryerson philosophy department.

See also Michael Huemer. [Dr Kelley Ross also. Plus Allan Bloom]
Basically I have an idea that philosophy comes in stages. The Ancient Greek Philosophy started with the question how is change possible? Then Plato answered it and from then until Plotinus was tying up loose ends.
Then the problem of Faith and Reason began with  St. Augustine and Philo. That went until Descartes. With Descartes began the Mind Body Problem. That went until Kant made his sort of synthesis.  Now the reason philosophy is  a mess is that the next problem has not been found.

I myself think the argument between Hegel and Fries [as represented in the writings of Kelley Ross, and Leonard Nelson] is the most important issue today. How do you deal with it?

One way I have thought of is along the lines of Michael Huemer. [I assume he gets this from the school of the intuitionists like G.E. Moore]. That reason recognizes universals. But even with that knowledge tends to be as things appear prima facie unless further evidence is forthcoming. He holds there is no such thing as pure empirical knowledge. Even what we thing is empirical always has a element of a priori.

"iyun" learning in depth

The best way to understand what Torah is about is by "iyun" learning in depth. Though there is something to be said for "bekiut" [fast learning], still unless one learns in beiyun/in depth, it is impossible to ever come to authentic Torah. But what is "Iyun"? The way I managed to do this was by simply repeating a Tosphot or a section of the Avi Ezri or Rav Haim of Brisk every day over a long period of time until it started making sense. [This sometimes could take me more than a month.]

This seemed to work in a situation when I did not have my learning partner around and was forced to do the learning on my own.

I mentioned this once to my learning partner in Uman [David Bronson]. I mentioned to him how I was frustrated during my first years in Shar Yashuv [a Litvak/Lithuanian type yeshiva in NY] that the whole emphasis was on "Iyun" learning in depth. I thought how can you do in depth learning before you have the big picture [having finished that tractate at least a few times]? Later I began to see an interesting phenomenon. That is this: that people that do not get the "Iyun thing" immediately at their first couple of years in yeshiva--never get it.

[So my first years were spent with a lot of Maharasha, the long Maharsha [commentaters on the Maharsha]Pnei Yehoshua. That was because I was trying to make progress along with iyun.

The way I see things today is that it is best what they do in Litvak yeshivas. The morning for in depth learning and the afternoon for fast learning. "Fast learning" means going through a lot of pages of Gemara with some Tosphot. [with fast learning one ought to get through the two Talmuds, midrashim, and the Ari.] As for the even wisdoms that the Gra emphasized  i try to have a few sessions in which i get through one chapter and hold my place with a place marker and then go back through all previous chapters. I have four major sessions in depth that i try to do for the sake of my son izhak--algebraic topology, Emmey Nother's invariance principle [i have a book on that], quantum field theory, and the avi ezri. 

F major for violin and winds

Music file mp3 w11 w11 in midi  

  w11 nwc

I thank God greatly for the privilege of writing music. I had thought that I would never be able to do so again until recently He granted to me to write again.

I also want to thank Mr. Smart my high school music teacher.

C Major for English Horn and Flute.

Music File MP3 w10   w10 in midi format

[w10 nwc]

A lot depends on how dedicated to learning Torah one is,

A major attraction of the Litvak path is family values. Does it actually work? I would have to say it does to some degree. A lot  depends on how dedicated to learning Torah one is, and how much one's wife is. If you start out with the basic idea to learn Torah and to trust in God to make ends meet, then certainly the Litvak path works well. But if you start with wavering, then  it is like a top spinning around. You know when it will fall because that is when it starts to waver.

I do include math and Physics in the category of learning Torah however.
But most secular subjects outside of these two I consider Bitul Torah. Some secular subject however I think are OK to learn because of Parnasa/[making a living] like medicine.

The terms "bitul Torah" refer to the fact that one is obligated to learn Torah whenever he has time. It matters not if one is smart or not or even understands what one is learning. ''Bitul'' means literally ''nullification.'' This is a lot more serious than the idea that one is obligated to learn Torah. It makes not learning [when one can] into a sin.

How I encountered this idea was in a small book "Binyn Olam" that I saw in my first year in Shar Yashuv. And I still hold by this idea strongly except that I expand the definition of learning Torah to include Math, Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle.
Not that I am able to learn much myself. Rather my intention here is simply to set the record straight about what the Torah is all about.

The disciple of the Gra, Rav Haim of Voloshin wrote a small book about this important subject also.

So what I suggest is to go through the two Talmuds with Tosphot and Maharsha and the commentaries on the Yerushalmi [Pnei Moshe, Karban HaEda.] Plus Math and Physics. But since neither math nor physics has an official set then you simply have to get through the basic subjects with whatever books most make sense to you. That would be String Theory, and Algebra. [Algebra nowadays is divided into different parts. There is Abstract Algebra, Geometric Algebra and Topological Algebra.

[So I am not thinking of math and physics as just for parnasa [making a living] but rather a regular part of learning Torah. This is not something you see in most Musar books. Rather I mainly got this idea from the very first and most important Musar book the Obligations of the Heart. Part III Behina. where he goes into the different aspects one should study about God's wisdom. There he talks about many aspects of creation. And then goes into the spiritual aspects of creation--so we see they are different. In any case this is more clear in other rishonim.

With Kant and Leonard Nelson there is one answer why discovering the right path is so hard.

With Kant and Leonard Nelson there is one answer why discovering the right path is so hard. It is because any area outside of conditions of experience falls into a category of knowledge that he calls the dinge an sich where reason can not venture into. And when it does it ends up contradicting itself.

This seems to limit any possibility of coming to Truth, However-Hegel and Rav Nahman of Breslov both provide a template why there are diverging paths towards truth and virtue.  To Rav Nahman [who I assume was not under the excommunication of the Gra as you can see if you look up the actual language) said the reason that true tzadikim differ is to make free will possible. See LeM I chapters 4 and 5. To Hegel there is a slow progress through time towards truth, (the absolute idea). He means this: the dialectic of Soctrates was not just a way for him to get to the truth. It is the path towards truth in all human history.

But with Hegel it is not the same as saying you just pick up what is right in one system and what is right in another. Rather there is an organic process inside any one consistent system in the first place that leads towards the other and that process goes on with the other until both come to a higher synthesis.

That does not however refer to the need to fight evil. One should not use either idea as a reason not to fight evil. Rav Nahman specifically talks about "disagreement among tzadikim (saints)".