מחלוקת between רב שך and the חזון איש

There is an מחלוקת between רב שך and the חזון איש In Laws about Murder in the יד החזקה הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה' הלכה ט about הרוצח בשוגג and he is on his way to a refuge city and he is killed by the גואל הדם. It seems like an obvious question. The murderer is on his way to the עיר מקלט. Outside of it he is not safe and can be killed. So let's say he was killed, but the case had not yet come to court.
In the actual verses themselves you see this quandary. The verse says he has to get to the עיר מקלט to be safe even before the court has tried his case. That is to say in the verse itself there are two cases. One in which he is tried and found guilty of man slaughter by accident, and the other case is he is running to the עיר מקלט. In both cases he is safe only there. But how do you know his legal status unless the case has already been brought to court?
That is the exact point of רב שך. The חזון איש however thinks the גואל הדם is not guilty of murder if he kills the הרוצח בשוגג even before the case has gone to court. That means the חזון איש is thinking that you do not have a situation where the court has to decide if the murder was accidental or with intention even without the murderer being in court. The court has just to judge the case as best they can see the facts. Was the original murder intentional or accidental or self defense [permitted]. Even without הרוצח בשוגג being there, they can decide. רב שך agrees with this. But the point of רב שך is that  before the court case the רוצח בשוגג is not a גברא קטילא קטל is not someone that the גואל הדם can kill, even if the case is brought to court and decided later that he was a רוצח בשוגג. But before the case he is just a regular guy.
רב שך brings a proof that a court of law that sees someone kill someone else can not become judges because they can not see merit in the guy. [מכות י''ב] Now תוספות understands that to mean they can be biased. But רב שך shows that the רמב''ם holds a different reason. That you need a  פסק דין decision of the court. Without that the רוצח בשוגג is not a  בר קטלא that is not even חייב מיתה until there is a פסק דין. The question about this is that after the court has decided that he was a רוצח בשוגג, then the גואל הדם was as far as I can tell justified. This does not seem exactly parallel to the case of the court that saw some doing murder. That is a case of from now until the future. The case רב שך is bringing a proof for has to go in the past. למפרע.The first proof of רב שך seems stronger. There is a case of עדים זוממים. They said so-and-so murdered on Sunday. Then came other witnesses and said "How could you have seen that? You were with us that whole day somewhere else." So the first set are killed because they wanted to kill. But this applies even if the second set said the murderer did in fact murder but he did so before יום ראשון.






קיימת מחלוקת בין רב שך ואת החזון איש (יד החזקה הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה" הלכה ט) בעניין הרוצח בשוגג והוא בדרכו אל עיר מקלט והוא נהרג על ידי גואל הדם. הרוצח הוא בדרכו אל עיר מקלט. מחוצה לו שהוא אינו בטוח יכול להיהרג. אז בואו נגיד שהוא נהרג, אבל המקרה טרם הגיע לבית המשפט. בפסוקים עצמם אתה רואה לדילמה הזאת. הפסוק אומר שהוא צריך להגיע לעיר המקלט להיות בטוח עוד לפני שבית המשפט דן במקרה שלו. כלומר בפסוק עצמו ישנם שני מקרים. אחת שבה הוא בא לדין והורשע של הריגה בשוגג, והמקרה השני הוא רץ אל עיר מקלט. אבל איך אתה יודע את מעמדו החוקי אלא אם המקרה כבר הובא לבית המשפט? זה הוא הנקודה המדויקת של רב שך. חזון איש עם זאת סבור גואל הדם אינו אשם ברצח אם הוא הורג את הרוצח בשוגג עוד לפני המקרה נפנה אל בית המשפט. כלומר, חזון איש חושב כי המצב הוא שבית המשפט צריך להחליט אם הרצח היה בשוגג או בכוונה אפילו בלי כך שהרוצח הוא בבית המשפט. בית המשפט יש רק לשפוט את המקרה כמיטב הם יכולים לראות את העובדות. היה הגנת רצח בכוונה או בשוגג או מזיד. אפילו בלי שהרוצח בשוגג שם בבית המשפט, הם יכולים להחליט. רב שך מסכים עם זה. אבל הנקודה של רב שך היא כי לפני המקרה המשפט רוצח בשוגג אינו גברא קטילא (אינו מישהו שגואל הדם יכול להרוג), גם אם במקרה הוא הובא לבית המשפט והחליט מאוחר שהוא רוצח בשוגג. אבל לפני המקרה הוא סתם בנאדם רגיל.





רב שך מביא ראיה כי בית משפט זה שרואה מישהו הורג מישהו אחר לא יכול להיות שופטים כי הם לא יכולים לראות צד זכות. [מכות י''ב] עכשיו תוספות מבינים שזה אומר שהם יכולים להיות מוטים. אבל רב שך מראה כי לרמב''ם מחזיק מסיבה אחרת. זה מה שאתה צריך החלטת פסק הדין של בית המשפט. בלי זה רוצח בשוגג אינו בר קטלא כי הוא אפילו לא חייב מיתה עד קיים פסק דין. השאלה על זה היא כי לאחר שבית המשפט החליט כי הוא היה רוצח בשוגג, אז גואל הדם היה ככל שאני יכול להגיד מוצדק. זה לא נראה מקביל בדיוק למקרה של בית המשפט שראה מקרה של רצח. זהו מקרה של מעתה ועד להבא. המקרה רב שך מביא הוכחה צריך ללכת למפרע.אבל ההוכחה הראשונה של רב שך נראית חזקה. ישנו מקרה של עדים זוממים. הם אמרו מי שהוא נרצח על ביום ראשון. ואז באו עדים אחרים ואמרו "איך הייתה להם יכולת לראות את זה? היית איתנו כל אותו היום במקום אחר." אז הסט הראשון נהרג כי הם רצו להרוג. אבל הסט השני אמרו שהרוצח עשה את הרצח לפני יום ראשון, ולכן חייב מיתה ביום ראשון. רואים שבלי פסק לט היה בר קטלא.

philosophy interesting

On one hand I find philosophy interesting because at least ancient philosophy deals with the humanizing questions that matter. Justice. Beauty. Menchlichkeit [to be a mensch/decent human being]. However the frustrating thing about it is no conclusion. So you can ask why waste the time?

People of the Middle Ages that wrote the great Musar books were definitely depending on Aristotle. Especially Ibn Pakuda. [author of the Obligations of the Heat חובות לבבות ]. But if you look at the Obligations of the Heat חובות לבבות Hovot Levavot] right at the beginning, [end of Shaar I.] you can see that he is along the lines of Neo Platonics. [That system of Plotinus had a kind of synthesis between Plato and Aristotle.]

Some rishonim [mediaeval authorities] put metaphysics and physics in the category of learning the command to learn all the time. That usually means Gemara, but they expand that definition [to include some subjects that are considered secular but not all. Physics and the Metaphysics of Aristotle is open in the Rambam that they are part of learning Torah. But other secular subjects are forbidden, e.g. literature. which he forbids in the commentary on the Mishna in Perek Helek.

Dr Michael Huemer brings the idea that philosophers have said a great deal of nonsense. But on the other hand you can look at it like Ayn Rand--that where philosophers go that is where people go afterwards. And then the ideas of the philosophers becomes common sense. And after the ideas are common sense then you go back and look at the person that introduced the concept in the first place and see that he was just going around it. He was fishing for it because he was the first one to think of it. So now it looks naive. But that is only because his original idea became thanks to him common sense.
[My feeling about Philosophy is to learn Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel.]

A number of more modern thinkers have taken note that most of 20th Century Philosophy is "obviously false" in the words of John Searle. And that is good in terms of clearing the field. But it does not go much further.
Some modern people deserve good mention.
Scruton I have no recollection of hearing about until he was gone. But now I see a lot of important ideas.
Ed Feser is working on the issue of a synthesis of Aristotle and modern Physics.
Leonard Nelson had a kind of understanding on Kant which seems to get around a lot of the problems in Kant. [That is on Kelley Ross's web site]
Hegel also seems in need of explaining and Mc Taggart does a nice job.

But none of this would be interesting to me if not for that fact that they all seem to me to be revolving around a single point-faith.

Rav Shach and the Chazon Ish [In Laws about Murder in the Yad HaChazaka הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה' הלכה ט]

There is an argument between Rav Shach and the Chazon Ish [In Laws about Murder in the Yad HaChazaka הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה' הלכה ט] about when one kills someone else by accident and he is on his way to a refuge city and he is killed by the revenger. It seems like an obvious question. The murderer is on his way to the city where he will be safe. Outside of it he is not safe and can be killed. So let's say he was killed, but the case had not yet come to court.
In the actual verses themselves you see this quandary. The verse says he has to get to the city of refuge to be safe even before the court has tried his case. That is to say in the verse itself there are two cases. One in which he is tried and found guilty of man slaughter by accident and the other case is he is running to the city of safety. In both cases he is safe only there. But how do you know his legal status unless the case has already been brought to court?

[That is the exact point of Rav Shach. The Chazon Ish however thinks the revenger is not guilty of murder if he kills the murderer even before the case has gone to court. That means the Chazon Ish is thinking that you do not have habeus corpus. The court has just to judge the case as best they can see the facts. Was the original murder intentional or accidental or self defense [permitted]. Even without teh murderer being there they can decide. Rav Shach agrees with this. But the point of Rav Shach is that  before the court case the murderer is not a גברא קטילא קטל is not someone that the revenger can kill.--even if the case is brought to court and decided later that he was a murderer by accident. But before the case he is just a regular guy.
Rav Shach brings a proof that a court of law that sees someone kill someone else can not become judges because they can not see merit in the guy. [Makot 12] Tospfot understands that to mean they can be unbiased. But Rav Shach shows that the Rambam holds a different reason. That you need a "pesak din" decision of the court. Without that the murderer is not a "bar katala" בר קטלא that is not even obligated in the death penalty until there is a decision of a court.
The question about this is that after the court has decided that he was a murderer by accident then the revenger was as far as I can tell justified. This does not seem exactly parallel to the case of the court that saw some doing murder. That is a case of from now until the future. The case Rav Shach is bringing a proof for has to go in the past. למפרע.
The first proof of Rav Shach seems stronger. There is a case of false witnesses. They said so-and-so murdered on Sunday. Then came other witnesses and said "How could you have seen that? You were with us that whole day somewhere else." So the first set are killed because they wanted to kill. But this applies even if the second set said the murderer did in fact murder but he did so before Sunday. So here we see clearly what Rav Shach is saying. Even after a  pesak din the murderer does not become a איש קטילא  [condemned to die] in reverse. Only after the pesak.

The yarzeit of the wife of Rav Shach was the 18 of Shevat- I just discovered. He attributes the merit of all his learning to the fact that she took care if the parnasa [making a living] aspect of life.
This to me is kind of a reminder that when one is involved in learning Torah, it makes a lot of sense to marry as the sages said "bat talmid chacham". i.e. someone that appreciates what you are doing.
[It does not help if she says that she appreciates it. Rather she actually has to be someone that has real self sacrifice for Torah --no matter what.]
[And so you see there were people like Rav Shach that learned Torah for its own sake. Not for money.]


[I am not sure what to do if you are in a situation when there is no one to a marry except a non "bat talmid chacham." No everyone can marry the daughter of the rosh yeshiva.

[At the Mir in NY, this issue did not come up. Most people including me were just interested in learning Torah, and more or less went with the idea of trust in God --to help with making a living after getting married. So far I have not heard of anyone starving to death because of learning Torah.] [My own experience was such that as long as I trusted in God things went OK. But instantly when I decided to start making money that is when I lost everything. If that is not a lesson I do not what is.]

Steven Dutch has a nice piece on Hume. https://stevedutch.net/Pseudosc/Hume.htm
And Thomas Reid also.

But you see that Thomas Reid does not knock him nor Berkeley in such away as to say they made obvious mistakes. Rather the matter is subtle.

Also the very idea in itself that reason can not prove anything but what is self contradiction is taken as an axiom in Hume but for some reason is itself never proved. [Huemer pointed out that reason can know more things than just what is not self contradictory. (I think Bryan Caplan was the first to point out this problem in Hume.)
But how does reason know? Is it by Bayesian Probability as Huemer says? Or things that we know by non intuitive immediate knowledge as Leonard Nelson says [based on Kant and Fries]. Or is it by a dialectical process like Hegel says? 

Reform and Conservative Judaism are close to true Torah-- since there is no idolatry involved in their approach.

One issue that seems to me to be highly relevant to me is that of idolatry. This is related in an inverse way to that of trust in God. The problem with idolatry seems to be that it has changed form from worship of statues. So even if people are not worshiping Jupiter, they still might be worshiping other created beings.

This in an ironic way seems to be a problem when people become religious. Being religious you would imagine would mean more trust in God. But instead it seem to get diverted.
I can see that the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication for this very reason. Sad that he seems to be ignored.  This is clearly a major issue in Torah. [Rav Nahman I think was not in the category of the excommunication as I have gone into before. If you want to take the time look at the books that bring the actual language.]

In terms of this issue, it looks to me based on my experience that Reform and Conservative Judaism are a lot closer to true Torah-- since there is no idolatry involved in their approach. Whatever worship they do is always directed towards God alone.

Now even if people are doing idolatry which is one of the things in the Torah that there is a death penalty for, that does not mean you can kill them. There is a for any death penalty the need of a court of law of 23 judges or the 71 judges of the great court in Jerusalem. Still from the fact that idolatry is serious enough to warrant a death penalty, you can see that it is nothing to play around with or to ignore. So the fact that the signature of the Gra on that letter of excommunication is ignored seems to me to be not a good reason for you to ignore it.

[However you can wonder about Eliyahu the prophet on Mount Carmel that after that test of the prophets of the Baal told the people to take the false prophets down to the river and slaughter them.
Where was a court of law to try the case?]


And besides this I admit that fighting against idolatry can be a hard thing to know how to do it. Take Yoshiyahu the King that destroyed all idolatry in Israel. Well things did not exactly go so well for him afterwards. Apparently some kind of caution is needed. (There were great kings before him but none of them ever uprooted idols from all Israel. King Hizkiah only ruled over Judah and Benjamin.)

I have mentioned before that philosophy tends to go in stages. "How is change possible?" was the question for the pre Socratics. Faith and Reason was the Middle Ages. Mind -Body problem was the modern issue. This last one came to its peak with Kant and Hegel, and then everything after that is picking up the pieces.
So what is the next issue is overdue. Who knows what it will be? But I would like to suggest that these issues all came up because of some need or dire emergency. I do not however know how the problem with change came to deal with an issue then during the time of Paramenides. But the faith reason thing seems clear.
So what ever is the next issue is probably already is a gestation and slowly coming to the surface.

[The Mind Body problem that began being raised in Descartes had connection with the older question how do we know stuff being raised by Socrates.]

I would like to suggest that the major issue today is in wrong attitudes. Or what you could call evil thoughts. And the solution is trust in God. That is to say that everyone on any side of the political spectrum is aware of the problem of evil thinking. At least that is how he or she understands what is wrong with the other side of the political issues. But the connection of this to trust in God is something that almost no one is aware of. But it is a cause and effect. Trust in God brings one to good thoughts and healthy and strong attitudes. So how does one come to trust. I suggest the path of Musar of Rav Israel Salanter, i.e., to learn books of ethics right away when one gets up in the morning. Especially concerning trust in God. 
[Musar means the medieval books of Ethics. However the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter also wrote books of Musar. But those books are not the foundation in the same way that the medieval books are. Still I tried myself to get through this.]



[You can see the problem of  evil thoughts also in the triple billion dollar industry of shrinks. It is known that the whole thing is bogus, but why is it that people still spend in teh USA trillions of dollars on it. Because of evil thoughts. So the problem is clear to people. The solution is not. Unless you learn to trust in God. That was an important insight of  Navardok [i.e. that branch of Musar].

But trust in God used to be thought to mere sitting and learning and not worrying about making a living. My way of thinking is that one can learn Physics with the same intention.

The basic principle of matza is time. So you could put oatmeal into a pot and cook it, and it can not become leaven.

The basic principle of matza is time. There is no way of getting leavened bread without time by definition. So in short, oatmeal or wheat flour it can not become leaven without time. Thus you could put oatmeal into  a pot and cook it, and it can not become leaven.  Same with wheat.
And after it has gotten to be cooked, it also can not become leaven. [So you can have the regular breakfast of hot oatmeal that some people are used to. Not only can oatmeal not become hametz unless it sits in water for over 18 minutes but after it is cooked it can never become hametz ever even after a million years.]
To make you own matza to say a blessing on is simple. Get a frying pan. The only thing is if you mix wheat flour and water to make maza to say the hagada, then there is this issue. If the mix flows like a pancake, then it is not bread but cake. To say the blessing, "Who brings forth bread" it has to be thick enough that it does not flow.
[This can be hard to decide. What if it flows a little, but not like a pancake?]

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The basic books of how to learn Torah are actually available. One could get a Avi Ezri of Rav Shach, the Hidushei HaRambam by Rav Haim of Brisk and his disciples, the Birkat Shmuel and Shaari Yosher, and the Hidushei HaGarnat by Naphtali Troup. And then just plow through them.

This is in fact what I was trying to do in Uman during a period I was isolated there.

Of course it is helpful to be either recall the actual Gemaras they are talking about, or at least be able to look up the basic subject. However I have to add that the Avi Ezri brings down the basic Gemara itself with such clarity that you can almost bypass the intermediate steps.

[To some degree you can do this also with Rav Chaim of Brisk,-- except that his is less clear than Rav Shach.] When I had the Avi Ezri I would go through each piece a few times. About once a day for a few days. That was not exactly the same as learning "beiyun" [in depth] . But it was not "bekiut" [fast learning] either. It was just this sort of middle way that seemed to work for me.

[Especially given the fact that my time was very limited. For someone with the merit of sitting and learning Torah all day I have no idea how I would go about learning Rav Haim or Rav Shach. I might just take one afternoon to go through a whole piece a few times instead of spreading it over a few days.]

the big picture in learning Torah.

Why do you need the big picture in learning Torah. I mean to say why emphasize learning fast when it is known that one gets only a rough idea? [As you see in Sicha 76 of Rav Nahman of Breslov to say the words and go on.] Because you need the small pieces of the big picture but also the overview.
You can see this by this example. This is not a car.

 


This is a car:

On the blog of Michael Huemer there is a comment that compares changes in philosophy to changes in science.  And I have been wondering about that. After all, changes in science are because of new evidence. But that does not mean that philosophy is just speculation. Rather philosophy has a different kind of task--to get the big picture and make sense out of it.
And also I might mention that in fact changes in science are not just because of new evidence. Rather taking a look at Einstein. There was a contradiction between Maxwell and Newton. A certain kind of sense caused Einstein to choose Maxwell and to modify Newton. And Copernicus was not accepted because of new evidence. Rather his approach was simple as opposed to having to add more rings. It was the math that appealed to people--not new evidence. In the editions of his books, it is the math pages that are greased from fingers going over and over them.


[But sometimes it is experiments that do say something. The black box causing the Plank h bar. The success of QM to explain the spectrum of light coming out of excited atoms. String theory from things spinning around faster when they have more mass.]

w39 e major i recall this song i might have written some version of it a few years ago.

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Thinking about theological questions can cause a person to go nuts. However you can tell something about a religious belief because of the general kind of people that follow it.

I think that in Kant there is a kind of skepticism about any kind of thinking outside the realm of "conditions of possible experience" which limits what we can reason about. It is not just that you see this in his system but also in his separate writings about Swedenborg. All together you get the idea that he accepts there are metaphysical realities but best not to reason about what there is no way of testing.

[In a later essay, he held that even thinking about theological questions can cause a person to go nuts. So it was not just an idea that he had that Reason when going into areas of unconditioned realities comes up with self contradictions but specially any person doing so would also end up insane.]

I think that this that Kant noticed about the effect of thinking about spiritual things [making people insane] must have been noticed by him in his daily conversations. He was a great "socializer" as is not well known.

[ Rav Nahman's belief in the limits of wisdom is one of his most famous doctrines [I think it is mainly in LeM vol II]. There is a place in the "Hashmatot" at the end of the LeM [not printed in all editions] where he says openly that to wisdom was set a limit so that it could not expand beyond that limit.]

It is well known in the Lithuanian Yeshiva world that thinking about spiritual things is discouraged. Simply one ought to learn Gemara in depth and that is that.

[In short the less there is of this, the better.]


Also I am not saying that Kant needs to be taken here without a grain of salt. He certainly has a point. However it was Hegel who felt the dinge an sich is possible to get to and I also happen to have a lot of respect for a mystic of the Middle Ages Rav Avraham Abulafia. His approach to Jesus is certainly an eye opener. His basic idea is that Jesus would be someone along the lines of Joseph in Egypt. He calls him the חותם של יום הששי which you would think would refer to Yoseph, i.e. Foundation of Emanation. So why or in what way does Jesus fill that same job description?]



However there are ways of testing: It is not as if all religious systems are beyond testing. Not exactly scientific testing in a microscope. But rather in terms of character. And of course even with that people have free will so you can not get an exact  result. For example it is rather clear that Nazi doctrines  had something to do with WWII. So sometimes results can indicate something about a set of doctrines. You can see this also in Dante. The different levels of hell all have to do with traits of character. And clearly I have  a feeling that Rav Nahman was right about a lot of stuff and the Gra and Rav Shach. So I do attribute to them a kind of sixth sense--an immediate non intuitive knowledge [not sensed with the five sense--but perhaps still sensed?]

So you can tell something about a religious belief because of the general kind of people that follow it.

Kant morals are universals

Kant was trying to capture something mentioned in the essay, “Why I am not an Objectivist” [by Dr. Huemer] i.e. that morals are universals. But they are different than universal laws. They are “oughts” not “is”. That is at least what I think he was trying to get at. [nd we can know universals as shown in the Critique about synthetic a prior which is equivalent to universals.--also as shown by Dr. Huemer in "Why I am not an Objectivist"

Hegel

 Hegel has this idea that there is kind of progress in philosophy in such that they are trying to progress towards a kind of understanding of the world --which means they are trying to question assumptions and also to build up sometimes their own system.

 Hegel was not unlike most other philosophers was not anti Christian though he is often thought to be. Just the opposite. He was doing in his way what Aquinas was doing. Except to me it seems he sees the world as an organic whole.

The reason Kelley Ross [The Kant Friesian School] and many others  are not happy with Hegel I think comes from politics. And in fact it does not seem that politics was Hegel's forte. As far as politics goes I think the founding fathers of the USA were much better. The problem with the Constitution of the USA is what the founding fathers said about it in the first place. It can only work for a certain kind of person.  That might explain some of the more difficult to understand aspects of the USA today. 

Ayn Rand

According to Ayn Rand. philosophy trickles down to the general world view of people--if it is accepted in the first place as legitimate. So you don't know the assumptions of people  before there is philosophy. It might be wildly insane. There is a sort of background of assumptions that people start with. So though philosophers now might seem off, that might be after there is already a background of rationality. 

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The importance of the path of the Gra and Rav Shach is  not based on thinking they got everything right. Rather that they were the best in one area of value--understanding and keeping Torah. That does not assume that they could compose like Mozart. In fact I found it hard to keep all the Torah with the kind of greatness they brought to that endeavor.  But I realize they that is one area of value that they got right.

A theory of several areas of value is certainly brought in Ibn Pakuda in the Obligations of the Heart. You can see this also in Kelley Ross [The Kant-Fries School]. There were originally some problems in the Friesian approach that were later fixed by Leonard Nelson, and after that Kelley Ross made a kind of system out of the whole thing. It is a kind of rival to Hegel's system. [Which is better from a philosophical point of view I have no idea. Both have advantages. But in any case with both you have this idea of several areas of value.
(Hegel also has a many area of value system, except his values all approach God. It is different from Leonard Nelson in significant ways but also shares a lot of basic values.]

We know from Rav Nahman that there are Torah scholars that are demons [LeM I:12.]. But how can they trick others? People are so easy to swindle because of the victim's own moral defects.  When good judgment and moral sense are subjected and by lust or greed or sloth or vanity or anger, the one swindled participates willingly in his own undoing.  In the end he swindles himself. 

There is a transcendent aspect of human life. There are however different sources of transcendence. Not all are good. So it makes sense that Rav Nahman would warn about this. Clearly also the Gra and Rav Shach also warned about this, but for some reason their warnings seems to go ignored.

Learning in depth

Learning in depth I think is an aspect of the path of the Gra. The most important of the books on learning in depth are all from the path of the Gra. Not just after Rav Haim from Brisk but even before him. Might as well make a list. The Hidushei HaRambam of Rav Haim of Brisk. Shimon Shkopf the Shaari Yosher. R Akiva Eigger. Netivot HaMishpat. Baruch Ber of the Birkat Shmuel. Ketzot HaChoshen. The Musar movement. Naftali Troup. Aruch Hashulchan. The two commentaries on the Yerushalmi, Pnei Moshe and Karban Eda both direct disciples of the Gra  The peak is of course the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. But besides that there are countless of deep and great books by the great people of the Lithuanian Yeshivas which are all of amazing depth.
But I have to add that the path of the Gra to a large degree meant trust in God. People were not worried about making a living. Trust and learning Torah in depth are the two pillars of the path of the Gra.

[My thought is to at minimum get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and do each section many times until it becomes clear.] 

Saadia Gaon in raised the two most famous objections on Jesus: (1) nullification of the commandments; (2) Divinity.
To answer the first objection it is possible to point out bahnsen The Theonomic Position

I have known about this essay for about two or three years but never thought to mention it. It seems important but I guess my blog was about other issues. So it simply never occurred to me to bring it up.
The other objection I have mentioned that "I am" (When Jesus stood before the Roman judge he was asked, "Who are you?" He said, "I am".)  is not the same thing as "אהיה אשר אהיה" "I will be that which I will be" [Which is the name of God at the Burning Bush].[That is the usual source for the claim. That is that "I am" refers to the name of God.] [The idea that Jesus is always refers to "the son of man", does not in itself seem to have any implication along these lines. So the critique of Saadia Gaon is a critique on the church rather than on Jesus. [And Avraham Abulafia also was critical of the Church, but about Jesus himself he said very positive things.]

So to me pursuing truth is more important that being "politically correct." PC means any mention of Jesus has to be with some insult. You might get away with saying something nice as long as you insult him afterwards.. But that has nothing to do with pursuing truth.



Here is a middle part of that paper of Bahnsen:

it would be senseless to think that Christ came in order to cancel mankind’s responsibility to keep them. It is theologically incredible that the mission of Christ was to make it morally acceptable now for men to blaspheme, murder, rape, steal, gossip, or envy! Christ did not come to change our evaluation of God’s laws from that of holy to unholy, obligatory to optional, or perfect to flawed. Listen to His own testimony:

Do not begin to think that I came to abrogate the Law or the Prophets; I came not to abrogate but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, until all things have happened, not one jot or tittle shall by any means pass away from the law. Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:17-19).

Several points about the interpretation of this passage should be rather clear. (1) Christ twice denied that His advent had the purpose of abrogating the Old Testament commandments. (2) Until the expiration of the physical universe, not even a letter or stroke of the law will pass away. And (3) therefore God’s disapprobation rests upon anyone who teaches that even the least of the Old Testament laws may be broken.¹⁶

¹⁶ Attempts are sometimes made to evade the thrust of this text by editing out its reference to the moral demands of the Old Testament—contrary to what is obvious from its context (5:16, 20, 21-48; 6:1, 10, 33; 7:12, 20-21, 26) and semantics (“the law” in v. 18, “commandment” in v. 19). Other attempts are made to extract an abrogating of the law’s moral demands from the word “fulfill” (v. 17) or the phrase “until all things have happened” (v. 18). This, however, renders the verses self-contradictory in what they assert.

In all of its minute detail (every jot and tittle) the law of God, down to its least significant provision, should be reckoned to have an abiding validity—until and unless the Lawgiver reveals otherwise.

Rav Nahman deals with the issue that sometimes עת לעשות להשם הפרו תורתיך ואמרו חז''ל פעמים ביטולה של תורה זה הוא קיומה The verse in Psalms says It is time to do for God because they have nullified your commandments. And the Sages said sometimes the nullification of Torah is the fulfillment.

Rav Nahman brings this in that same Torah lesson I mentioned before LeM vol I:76.
This is how some rishonim understand Eliyahu on Mount Carmel. Not as "by prophecy" but rather because sometimes the nullification is the cause of the fulfillment.

Since the very same people that claim to represent Torah are in the category of "Torah scholars that are demons" that Rav Nahman brings in LeM I:12 the very need to keep Torah requires one to make this statement of Rav Nahman into a guiding principle. 

[In Exodus Moshe told Pharaoh the reason they had to leave Egypt to bring sacrifice- after all why could he not have found a park or some private home? Because there was idolatry there. Thus there was no possibility to bring a sacrifice to God anywhere that would be acceptable to God.  

There is a future looking point of view in which one learns from past great people but does not assume that they got everything right. You need some way of combining the good that you learn from past great people and also gain some kind of sense of "birur" to take the wheat from the chaff. Or even to tell who really is a good person worthy to learn from.

But even if you find great people in the past and you can combine all their good ideas that still does not take care of the job of the present of looking into the future. Being future oriented.

I have so many thoughts in this direction it is hard to be able to put it all down-.

One side issue is this very process of "Birur"(choosing). This whole idea here is certainly related to Hegel except in a slightly different way. With Hegel you have thesis anti thesis and then synthesis. But Birur is not the same since choosing is simply deciding what is good and valid in the first place and rejecting the rest.

The idea of trust in God I would like to extend to learning. At least that is how I understood the concept for myself during a period of years when I was adhering to the way of learning of "Girsa" [saying the words and going on].
I had noted before that that the idea of  "Bitachon" [trust in God] extends to even the next world. That is openly mentioned in the most famous of all Musar books, The Obligations of the Heart חובות הלבבות.

So I would think to apply this to learning Physics also.

But I can imagine this is  a a bit of a stretch. First to accept the idea that learning Physics and Math is in the category of learning Torah. [I have mentioned this before.] [And to accept that learning Torah itself is a commandment]. Then to say that learning even without understanding is also in that category. And then also apply learning something that at first seems hard to understand.

Even so, this is what I would like to suggest.


[Later the next day I noted in the writings of Rav Nahman this very idea [in LeM vol I chapter 76]. There is such a thing as trust in God in such a way that one merits to understand his learning even without "iyun" deep study. But the actual idea of just saying the words and going on is also mentioned in the begining of the LeM על ידי עמצאות הדיבור זוכים להבנת התורה לעומקה 

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The importance of the Gra

The importance of the Gra is hard to overestimate since he seems to have had an amazing intuition about what is straight Torah. So the Litvak yeshiva movement founded on his principles in fact represents authentic Torah to a high degree. It seems to me that after the Gra has come into the world then in order to get to authentic Torah in any sense at all, one needs to go through the path of the Gra.
Mainly the path of the Gra in a practical sense means trust in God, and an emphasis on the idea of "bitul Torah". "Bitul Torah" means wasting time from learning Torah. The idea is that there are things that one ought to do besides learning Torah. However the thing to do when one is not obligated in those things is to learn Torah. [The actual path of the Gra got combined with Musar of Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.]

The only thing that I have to add to this idea is that I believe along the lines of the rishonim [medieval authorities] that held Physics and Math to be in the category of Torah. [Even  though this is an argument among the rishonim]. [These same "Rishonim" Ibn Pakuda, Binyamin the Doctor, etc all held also metaphysics is in that same command of learning Torah. But I have a hard time identifying what exactly does that include. Clearly Aristotle. But what else?

[I would venture to say that the fact that most rishonim do not mention Aristotle in terms of Metaphysics that they must have been referring to the whole disciple as it existed then. That would mean the actual book of Aristotle The Metaphysics along with the commentaries of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Clearly also Plato and Plotinus. What I would add today would be the three Critiques of Kant and Hegel. Anything after that I am not sure of nor of the people leading up to Kant. That is to say a lot of people were leading up to Kant and all have value. But after Kant their value seems diminished to me. Also Kant and Hegel were the giants so after them I am not really sure of who would be thought to be progress after them? I would guess Leonard Nelson and Prichard. [Prichard was part of the school of  Intuitionists that Dr Huemer is based on.] (There is a great deal of tension between the Hegel approach and Leonard Nelson. I wish I had some kind of resolution for this matter and it seems of great importance to me and in fact to the whole world. But I have no resolution.Both Hegel and Nelson have significantly important points.]

At least Physics is well defined. We know where it is at today and therefore we know what to learn. String Theory.

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Howard Bloom mentioned that people are tribal [--in a super-organism] in The Lucifer Principle about what he calls a "social meme". He has got a very nice exposition how people get a certain kind of wiring in their heads that does not get easily readjusted once it is set--like a circuit board.

There are honest stupid people and deceitful stupid people.

The worst type of stupidity for me is not having any appreciation for what you don’t know. There are honest stupid people and deceitful stupid people. The honest variety can appreciate there is a lot they don’t know and could never understand. The deceitful variety portray what they don’t know as not that important and amenable to anyone’s understanding in principle. The deceitful variety are often the “educated” humanities folks and those in the soft sciences.

I prefer an uneducated stupid person to an educated one as a rule because the uneducated ones weren’t propagandized to believe they were smart as part of some soft university degree program. The educated ones are insufferable in large measure.

https://motls.blogspot.com/2020/02/when-dumb-humanities-trainees-deform.html#disqus_thread

Imagine everyone would wake up in the morning have twice as much money. Would anything change? No. Rent would double. Prices would double. Nothing has been added.

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It is a odd thing about Leonard Nelson's diagrams. See https://my.fit.edu/~aberdein/Nelson.pdf on some of the recent history by a  philosopher in Florida Dr Andrew Aberdein. Dr Kelley Ross [California] has his own expansion of the idea instead of a square he expands the method into a cube.

So on one hand you can argue that it simply is  away to make his arguments clear. But you have to wonder. For example you have Feynman diagrams that are common in QFT. They are a device. But he thought that they also present how things actually are.

So perhaps there is a connection between logic principles and Geometry. And perhaps you could expand into higher dimensional Geometry or even Algebraic geometry. [That is kind of like Abstract Algebra, but a little different-- in that it deals with local things instead of global things, like Algebraic Topology.]

But you have to wonder if this is perhaps not such a great idea because after all Mathematics was thought to be reducible to Logic until Godel came along.

Based on the idea of Rav Nahman that there is even such a thing as Torah scholar who is a demon, the question is- how far can you take this? How far is there suspicion on anything they say. After all, if lets say you have a delicious chocolate Sunday ice cream, but mixed within is  slight bit of arsenic? How good can that be? And the question ought to be asked,-- after it is known that this is not just in theory, but in fact in this very time and age now there are countless of victims. So the issue is very relevant.

My feeling is to follow the basic, authentic, straight path of the Gra and Rav Shach, and straight Musar. But it does not seem simple to do so, or what kind of "Birur" [sifting] is needed- even on a private level. One solution I have thought is to simply bury my head in the sand, and walk in the path of straight Torah as well as I can. Yet I feel there probably is something important about at least letting others know so at least others can be forewarned.[If I at least warn people, I do not have their blood on my hands. I guess that is the most I can do.] להרים מכשול מדרך עמי

F sharp minor  Oboe, French horn, 3 bassoons, piccolo, violin.

Howard Bloom (in The Lucifer Principle) explained why people do jihad because of a social meme that gets hard wired into their mentality. Like an electric circuits board that before it is hardened in the oven can be rewired in a different configuration. But after it has become hardened, it can not be undone except by taking out all the wiring.

[In the Gemara this is called "Girsa DeYankusa" [learning of youth], i.e., what one learns when he or she is young sticks.]
So you have to try to get the wiring on your circuit board attached well before it get hardened.
And that applies I think even in the beginning of the day. To start with Musar. That is why I think it is good to start the day right at first with the whole page of the Levels of Man of Navardok (Madragat Haadam) about trust in God.


However one needs care to decide what values are in fact good. "There is a crowd that willingly follows anything that moves." Have courage. Stand on right principle.

Objective morality is possible to know by prima facie evidence. [Dr Michael Huemer goes into this.The point is open in the gemara that there are reasons for the commandments and they are knowable. So the commandments are not good because God said so, but they are God said so because they lead to good. The question in the Gemara is between R. Shimon ben Yocahi whther you go by the reason for the commands or by the written word. See Bava Metzia page 119.]

From my little reading of history of Spain I recall a theme. Muslims took over areas of Spain. But the people were Christian.  [So in those areas the rulers were Muslim, but the population were Christian.] That was the setting for the next stage. "Soft jihad" you might call it. That was like this. Muslim adults would be great people. But their teenage boys would venture into the towns of the Christian and do acts of violence. More or less events of jihad. So two opposite streams tended to soften the population to eventually accept Islam. That is kind of how I recall the events in history but I have not read upon this in detail. [I think it was this process which ignited the Martyrs of Cordoba where some people would seek to be martyrs by going up to some Muslim and opening insulting them knowing the penalty.] So it seems like jihad sometimes does work.

[ It is a political problem. And I think that the Constitution of the USA has solved the political problem on how to create a just society. But it seems to work mainly with a Protestant society. So how could one deal with the issue of a different kind of population in a society that is "post Christian"{lukewarm of not at all}?  But looking at Hegel I did not see much helpful, because his forte was philosophy, not politics. Socialism has the basic problem that the very first Plymouth colony discovered when the Pilgrims went to settle in America. Why should the industrious work to feed the lazy?  So when the founding fathers of the USA were dealing with this problem they decided that the Constitution and their system could only work with a kind of people that had an essential set of values. [Basically Christian values as in family, belief in God, in kindness.]

the Gra and Rav Shach

The importance of the Gra and Rav Shach is not to follow them in every detail. The way I see things is that there is a kind of בירור האמת [the truth coming into the clearing like a meadow you find in the middle of a forest -to borrow an analogy from Heidegger.] The point is that sometimes even a great tzadik gains only certain aspects of the truth--but not the whole thing. So I see a kind of dialectical process that happens over time.
Even if Bava Sali was a great tzadik, it does not mean he never made a mistake. We do not even say that about Moses who made at least one major mistake that is recorded in Numbers. We do not say even the greatest tzadik does not and can not make a mistake. Even a sin. But the tzadik tries to repent. And if he does not know or understand his mistake in this world, he tries to correct it in the next world.
The the issue is not to choose a particular tzadik to follow. Rather the point is balance. To find the good values that one ought to stick with and some way to determine what kinds of people or ideas come from the Dark Side [the Sitra Achra] in order to reject what is evil.


[To me it seems that the Musar path of Rav Israel Salanter was in fact very much balanced. Still the "Musar movement" became a movement instead of a path of personal improvement as implied by the words itself. But the actual "Igeret HaMusar" is about learning musar, not making any kind of movement..]

I should add that the path of the Gra certainly is that of "Iyun" deep learning, even though there is an aspect of "Bekiut" [fast learning--saying the words and going on] also. There is a kind of balnce between these two types that I saw in the Mir in NY.

The path of the Gra

The path of the Gra involves learning Torah as a prime ideal. But I want to add to that learning Physics and Math because of discovering this in the Musar of the Rishonim [first authorities, i.e the authorities of the Middle Ages] even though in the achronim [later authorities after the Beit Yoseph.] the opposite is their approach.
 [The Rishonim also add Metaphysics.]
The way to accomplish this I believe is by the  Derech HaLimud [method of learning] of Rav Nahman of saying the words and going on.
(Sicha 76 in Sichot HaRan).
That would mean going through the Gemara with Tosphot and Maharsha. [That is the Oral Law]. In understanding the profound aspect of the Gemara I also think one must add the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. In terms of the Math and Physics, I think one should have a session in getting through Algebraic Topology and Quantum Field Theory and String Theory. [But I have no specific texts in mind.] [As for Metaphysics, clearly the Rishonim were referring to the Metaphysics of Aristotle. But I would add Kant, Leonard Nelson, and Hegel. (I do not have much of an idea how to resolve the difference between Hegel and Nelson.]


[I hope this is clear, But just in case let me add that the idea is to have a session in Gemara Tosphot and Maharsha every day. That is to do a few pages just straight. Then put in a place marker. Then pick up an Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and also go through a few pages. Put in a place marker. Then Physics. Same as above. Then a few sessions in Mathematics.]

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Steven Dutch said : I can think of any system that can not be misused."

The issue of Torah scholars that are demons Rav Nahman brings in the very last Torah lesson of his life. So in the thought of Rav Nahman this issue is of great importance. היינו תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים.  In the thought process of Rav Nahman the point is that he is actually thinking of real "shadim" or what might be called minor deities with real powers--even miraculous powers.
Though it is clear anyway that that is exactly what the gemara itself holds. As the issue applies to Torah scholars what seems that Rav Nahman is getting at is that the very inner essence of these people has been changed from a human essence to an essence of a demon. Kind of a frightening thought I must add.

Though I have mentioned that this is actually brought in the Gemara itself and even the Mishna yet seems to be an unpopular subject. You don't usually hear about it much--unless you happen to read Rav Nahman's books. Because in the Gemara itself it is mentioned I think just once.

The main thing here is not that this is a reflection on Torah itself. Rather like the Roman saying: "Abuse does not cancel use." Or as Steven Dutch said : I can not think of any system that can not be misused."

The way to understand this is that of בירוד. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff. The way to go about this is a kind of process desired by Hegel. That is in every concept is contained aspects of its opposite until you get to the ultimate Truth. So you need some kind of sublimation to get to the truth. That is in short you find what is right in both and then you can make a synthesis.
[I know this is hard to see in Hegel. I understood this only after learning McTaggart's commentary of Hegel's Logic

Sometimes you have one person who embodies a certain value -like the Gra would embody the value of learning Torah.

With Hegel it is important to see that the process of the dialectic is  a process which leads to the truth. [John Mctaggart [philosophy] makes this clear.] Sometimes you have one person who embodies a certain value -like the Gra would embody the value of learning Torah. Or Rav Israel Salanter the value of Musar. The question is how to combine these different values in a practical way for oneself. 

to critique the claim that a communist society would come up with all the good stuff of capitalism and more

I mean to to critique the claim that a communist society would come up with all the good stuff of capitalism and more. But no significant invention shows that claim to be not true.

Not one invention the whole 70  years of the USSR. The spies used to call Silicon Valley "the laboratories of the KGB" because that is where all the tech of the USSR came from. From spies stealing American inventions. [I know because one of my friends was a KGB agent, and I knew him well, and his family. I even taught how to play violin to his daughter.]
In fact, the very corporation my Dad was an inventor in was penetrated by the KGB. [The film, the Falcon and the Snowman was based on this.] [The incident happened after my Dad left the company. He at first had made the infrared detection part of the USA spy satellites. After that my dad continued working for that company --- on laser satellites. But after a few years of that he left.] 

the problem of people that are not physicists commenting on physics.

I also noticed the problem of people that are not physicists commenting on physics. However I also noticed the problem with physicists commenting on physics. That is to say sometimes it is hard to decided who really is the top and who just seems like they know.

Take for example Husserl who knew Physics of his time well. But that did not put him into the same league as an Einstein or Heisenberg. So when t comes to commenting and understanding Physics from a larger picture it turns out that Leonard Nelson was probably a lot better than Husserl. Even though Nelson was not in fact trained as a physicist.
But that does not mean that Husserl was a crackpot. Rather it simply means one has to recognize his own level of experience. Not assume one knows more than he does. Too many smart people over estimate their own abilities. 

Whether in terms of learning Gemara Tosphot and Maharsha or whether in terms of Physics, I think that there is no question that both "Bekius" (fast learning) and "Iyun"(in depth) are needed.

Clearly Rav Nahman was on the side of going fast. Saying the words just once and in order and going on as fast as possible.  And clearly at Shar Yashuv [Rav Freifeld's in NY] and in all places founded on the Gra, the emphasis is on the in depth approach.

But to me it seems clear that the Mir in NY settled on the path of balance. The morning was devoted to "iyun". There that meant preparing for the class of the four roshei yeshiva. And their classes were in fact amazingly deep. The classes were much more than going over Rav Haim of Brisk or R. Akiva Eigger. For some reason the roshie yeshiva had a new idea to add every day. [It was akin to taking classes in Physics from Richard Feynmann or Einstein.] I assume that this was because they had spent all their lives up until about the age of 50 simply preparing. So by the time they became teachers they had plenty of new idea every single day to go into the depths of Rav Haim Soloveitchik. 

The afternoons and evenings were for fast learning.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

Rav Avraham Abulafia for some reason is not as well known as one would expect. On one hand his books were never published until a few years ago. But he was thought to be one of the greatest mystics of the Middle Ages and is quoted at length by the Remak and Rav Haim Vital.

[The fourth section of Shaarai HaKedusha of Rav Haim Vital itself was never published until recently but that is the section of his only Musar book that explains how to come to "Ruach HaKodesh" [the Divine Spirit] and it is based totally on Rav Avraham Abulafia.

אמונת חכמים ["faith in the wise"] is in fact an important principle for me, so I take it as an axiom to believe the wise. The only question is how to decide who comes under that category. [This great importance of faith in the wise comes from Pirkei Avot but is emphasized by Rav Nahman of Breslov.


[The basic story with Rav Abulafia is the well known event that he went to debate with the pope. The pope left orders that when Rav Abulafia would reach the gates of Rome that he would be arrested. But for some reason people that tried to arrest him died suddenly.]

So Torah is not meant to be a profession.

There is an important commandment to learn Torah. The basic idea is that when there there is another commandment to do that no one else can do, then one is able  to stop learning and then to do the other commandment, and then get back to learning Torah. ["Able" but not obligated according to the Gra]] Otherwise anything one does besides learning Torah come under the category of "Bitul Torah".[Not learning Torah when one is able comes under the category of כי דבר השם בזה הכרת תכרת הנפש ההיא הכרת בעולם הזה תכרת בעולם הבא עיין בנפש החיים ]

[However there is a large array of commandments that are in fact impossible to do by others. For example ונשמרתם מאד לנפשותיכם. פרו ורבו ויותר [watching your health. Having children, etc.]
There is however an important caveat [condition]--not to be making money by means of Torah. Using Torah for money does seem to detract from the value of the commandment. How much so is unclear to me. But in any case, it certainly is undesirable.

So Torah is not meant to be a profession. [See the commentary of Maimonides [Rav Moshe ben Maimon on Pirkei Avot chapter 4. לא קרדום לחפור בהם ... ואשתמש בתגא חלף.] [That statement of Hillel comes up in the first chapter of Pirkei Avot also but that is not where the Rambam put his long comment on it but rather in chapter 4.]

 So where  does Math and Physics fit in with this? I would have to say that they are in the category of learning Torah and are not just for Parnasa [making a living]. This I saw hints of in Rishonim like the Musar book Obligations of the Heart. But quite openly in the Rambam in Yad HaChazaka and the Guide.

F Major. French Horn, and Winds

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Torah scholars that are demons

The only person that I know about who noticed the problems with Torah scholars that are demons is Rav Nahman of Breslov. You would think that this ought to be well known. And also a well developed subject. But for some reason the whole idea seems to be ignored.

[Though you certainly find this in the Mishna and Gemara, still the subject seems to be unpopular].

In Rav Nahman the subject is brought up (LeM I:12 I:28 I:60 II:8 and lots of other places I forget off hand.] but without going into the subject in such a way that can give a person tools to discern.]

In tractate Shabat the sages said "If you see a generation in which troubles are coming upon then check the judges of Israel;-- for all troubles that come into the world only come because of the judges of Israel." [I forget the exact page number but it is towards the end.] The Mishna in Avoda Zara says that "The Prushim are the destroyers of the world". [ פרושים הם מכלה עולם].

Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. One section per day.

Even though there is an aspect of keeping Torah which is important, the problem is how to go about this is hard to figure out.
The approach which makes sense to me is to have a few sessions of learning per day.
That is the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. One section per day. But go over that section every day for a few days in a row.
Also a session in Physics and a session in Mathematics. [Besides that secular subjects seem like "bitul Torah" to me.]

To me it does seem to make any difference if one has finished Shas before learning the Avi Ezri or the Hidushei HaRambam of Rav Haim of Brisk. It was the path in Shar Yashuv to dig into the depths Gemara right away without any waiting. However I do recall the the first year in Shar Yashuv was spent on catching up. Maybe some part of the second year also. But pretty much the idea was that if one does not learn right away "how to learn" [how to understand the Gemara in a rigorous and exact way]then one never gets it.