You can wonder about mixing belief systems. When the Rambam combined Aristotle with Torah, that must have seemed at the time like mixing apples and oranges. However you would not ask that if one would apply that principle to Torah and Medicine. It seems like they deal with two different areas. But Aristotle's Metaphysics must have seemed to some people as not really a different area than Torah but rather a conflicting area.
It is hard to come up with a good rule of thumb about this.

"מחאה" (to object to wrong doing)

It was pointed out to me once by Leibel [the son of the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir Rav Shmuel Berenbaum] that there is an obligation of "מחאה" (to object to wrong doing--even when it seems you will not be listened to.]
In fact you see that in the Gemara in the events about Kamza and Bar Kamza. There was some wrong act that was done. But that act was not the cause of the fate of the Temple to be destroyed. Rather the fact that the sages of the time did not object to that act.
You see this also in the Old Testament with the tribe of Benjamin that did not object to the treatment of the concubine at Giva. And in that case God himself revealed to Israel to continue wiping out that tribe because of the fact that they did not object to wrong doing.

Similarly you can see why the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication. Same reason. To object to evil--even if you know you will not be listened to.

two great Litvak yeshivas

There was a certain degree of grace that I merited to go to two great Litvak yeshivas. Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. Only later did I come to Israel to learn in kollel. But the kollel thing in Israel seemed to be structured in a way that I though was not really proper and so I dropped out of it and learned Torah on my own and said to my wife that we would trust in God to help with making a living.

[That is the short and sweet of my yeshiva career. The beginning of it was a meeting with Shmuel Glazer who was going to a different Litvak yeshiva in Baltimore (I think of Rav Rudderman).

I was in Asbury Park at the time, and met him through an old man at a hotel that my family was running. [The Hamilton Hotel]. 

What is great about Litvak yeshivas is basically the fact that they learn Torah in the straight and narrow path. They do not add nor subtract. What is Torah is Torah,- and what is not is not.
So in the few years I spent there I got a basic idea of what Torah is all about. That is on one hand the most obvious advantage of the Litvak yeshiva world. Another hidden advantage is that if you get into it, you can really get touched with "the spirit of Torah", but that is a little harder to put my finger on.

But it is not as if they are going with the path of the Gra exactly. Rather that they get about as close to the real thing as possible. But it would be nice if they would stick with the Gra more than they do.  The way I see it is that if they would take the Gra and Rav Shach a bit more seriously, that would help to bring clarity to what really is Torah and help people avoid the Dark Side and pseudo Torah.
 [Just for clarity let me just mention that basic set of the great Litvak yeshivas is Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat in NY and Ponovitch, and Brisk in Israel. [But Ponovitch has branches and also non-official branches of people that learned at Ponovitch and started yeshivas along the lines of Ponovitch. Shar Yashuv is known as a beginner's kind of place --which is true for the first year. But my impression was that after the first year they get rapidly into deep Torah waters in a way that falls nowhere behind the other great Litvak yeshivas.

[I did not learn Musar in Shar Yashuv because that is a Litvak yeshiva, but not a Musar Yeshiva. The idea really comes from Rav Haim of Brisk that Musar can be and often is a distraction. So Shar Yashuv was based on that model. They want the time in yeshiva to be for getting to the "real thing" as deep and fast as possible. Yet later at the Mir I did learn Musar. And I still am not sure which model of  Litvak yeshiva is better. With or without Musar.] 

Is China behind it? To me it seems unclear. I was convinced for years that the KGB at least had a hand in the riots of the 1960's. And later that became clear with the defection of Bezmenov [See Bezmenov utube]

I can imagine China is doing the same thing about trying to bring down the USA. But I highly doubt if they are doing it in the same ways.
[If Russia has to get a sample of sand from an American beach they would send in a commando Spetsnaz unit by submarine and commandeer the beach while gathering some sand. The China would send in a thousand tourists and each one would pick up one grain of sand and bring it back to China. That is probably how China is now dealing with the USA. But just like a friend of mine who was a KGB agent told me, (according to him at any rate) the KGB simply did not have the resources that would have been needed to subvert the entire USA in the 1960's/ It had to be Americans doing it to Americans. It seems the same nowadays. People have been so indoctrinated in Communists values in American public schools and colleges that they are simply taking the next logical step.

What Americans do right now I think has a lot to do with how the future will look. For one thing American might stand up to the mob. They might get armed and packing. They might refuse the Tyranny of Antifa. Or they might go down as sheep. Wear the masks. Obey the tyranny. I think a lot will depend if Americans are willing to accept tyranny.

You can't say, "I can't breath" without breathing. Just try it. It is a physical impossibility. Air must be going through the vocal chords for them to work.

Floyd  did not suffocate, he was talking (you can't say "I can't breath" without breathing) up until the moment his damaged heart, further impacted by massive doses of meth and fentanyl, gave out from stress, likely the stress of his resisting arrest.

The Middle Ages had one main problem to solve. The relation between faith and reason. And a sub area was free will. [There also was the issue of the relation between religion and government.]
The free will issue comes up in the Rambam and Raavad in Laws of Repentance.

Though Kant, Hegel and Leonard Nelson do not deal with this directly, their insights can shed light on the issue of free will.

One thing that I noted is that knowledge does not cause events. Rather knowledge is a result of something. [At least in my naive way of looking at things.] I see a blue desk so then I know there is a blue desk. [Someone must have painted it blue.] So the fact that God knows if one will be righteous or not does not cause the person to be righteous. Knowledge is different than being. It is a result of being. But with God, with "logos" the order is different. His knowledge comes first and then being. But still that knowledge --in order to be knowledge, in any sense of the word, can not force a thing to be so. It has to be a result of the thing being so.

w100  [w100 in midi] [w100 nwc]  x100 in mp3  [x100 in midi]  x100 nwc

Blue Lives Matter. [I.e the police.]

These attacks on the police are not peaceful. They are attempts at provoking violence. And they ought to be persecuted under obstruction of a policeman in the fulfillment of his job.

General Lee

As for General Lee, I think he ought to be honored because the South and North were fighting for truth and justice, but disagreeing about how that would be applied at that time. . The South had a right to leave the union since nothing in the Constitution says that once signed no state could leave. There could have been a clause like that but there was not.
[If it had gone to the Supreme Court, there would have been no war. And in fact the president of the Confederacy asked to be tried as a traitor. He knew that the courts could decide one way, or the other; and then everyone would simply have to abide by their ruling.


Dr. Kelley Ross also wrote that clearly the South had a right to leave the Union, but that they choose the worst possible issue to do it over.

[And I even wonder if the Union had a right to outlaw slavery. That is, even if it had been legitimate as a constitutional amendment approved with the willing vote of the states. The reason is that the federal government had enumerated powers.  Taxes, yes. But not simply to declare law and certainly not to declare war  without Congress. [To preserve the Union might be a worthy ideal, but where in the Constitution is that given to the Federal government  in any sense? The idea itself is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Can a husband murder his wife if she demands to leave their union?

So clearly Jesus was what you would call Caucasian.

I do not recall which book off hand, but I recall reading in some book of ancient history that the peoples around the Mediterranean sea were white and blue eyes. Specially the Greeks.
[I do not recall if it was Herodotus or Thucydides's Peloponnese War. Or maybe some general history written by some Romans. It was so long ago I do not recall where I saw this.] In the Mishna it says openly that Israel are not dark nor albino, but medium. I.e probably along the lines of what your see in Iranians today. [I also don't recall where in the Mishna. Maybe it was in Nedarim.] And that makes sense, since after all Israel did originally come from Iraq [Mesopotamia]. So clearly Jesus was what you would call Caucasian.
[In the movie Alexander the Great you see the ancient Greeks shown as white Caucasian. Thought that is no proof, still it in fact is exactly what was recorded in ancient history. But my reading of ancient history was a long time ago. So where I saw this could have been almost any ancient source.]
[Besides this there are plenty of murals that show Romans as white. And in the Egyptian pyramids all the pictures there showing the ancient Egyptians show them as being white. Later invasions changed things, but that is how people are the Mediterranean Sea looked then.

So I see this loose alliance of the Litvak yeshivas

Ever since learning about the war between Sparta and Athens I have been aware of the importance of alliances. [Sparta only conquered Athens between it had the rest of the Greek city states on its side.]
In any case, because of this I tend to look at Lithuanian yeshivas in a positive light, even though I would prefer if they would be going more by the Gra.
I mean, clearly the top is Ponovitch, with Brisk a close second. But all the Litvak yeshivas are very good as much as they are going with the straight Torah approach if the Gra.
So I see this loose alliance of the Litvak yeshivas as great thing as being the one and only source of accurate information as to what the Torah actually holds and says.
[My own approach, is simply is to try to learn Physics Math and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach as much as possible. I never managed to last very long in the amazing world of straight, unadulterated Torah of the Litvak yeshivas. But for the short time I was there, I got a taste of the "Real Thing" which was nice. More than nice. Awesome you could say.]

The white race is hell bent on suicide,

The white race is hell bent on suicide, and woe to anyone that stands in their way. The worst sin, of course, is to have white children. The least a white person can do is to have mulatto children. Even better is not to have children at all,-- in order not to perpetuate the sin of beauty and grace. [Ah, who can fail to see the glories of mud? Oh muses, give to me the gift of song of the glories of mud. Oh wondrous mud. Beautiful mud. Mud,O mud, beautiful beyond compare! Who can extol the wonders of mud. Mush with mud, and mud with mush, the breakfast cereal of champions.

With John Locke and the American Constitution there is a basic principle that all men are created equal. . People are born with different DNA. And the humans have never been equal and never will be.

 With John Locke and the American Constitution there is a basic principle that all men are created equal. . People are born with different DNA. And the humans have never been equal and never will be.
The way to resolve this conflict is the original idea of equality in the French Revolution is that people should be equal under the law. That is there should not be one set of law that applies to one class and a different-set that applies to a different class. But not that all people are born with equal talents or traits.

But if the French Revolution contributed any original idea of good idea that already was not contained in the American Constitution is hard to know. To me it seems all based on Rousseau which is really half baked place to start from. [The General Will as opposed to objective morality and objective rights of individuals.]

Leonard Nelson wanted to have a new beginning of the Socratic approach. But that would be hard to duplicate. Especially because of so many levels and sub levels in the Socratic dialogues.

The main question about Socrates is how did he know what line of questioning would lead the person he was addressing to the exact opposite conclusion what he started out with?

How can you learn a method that seems to depend on intuition?

However on the other hand Hegel thought that any concept, if one thinks deeply enough about it has to lead to some opposite place from where it starts out from until by force it is lead to a higher level. And then that same process starts again until one reaches Absolute Spirit.
So perhaps it was more than intuition of Socrates but an ability to probe into the facts.

Police Lives Matter.

What seems to be the problem with the religious world? (*Besides the fact that they are all crazy.)

What seems to be the problem with the religious world? (*Besides the fact that they are all crazy.) The answer seems to be staring me in the face, though I could not see it for a long time. It is a Midrash that brings the statement of R. Meir about learning Torah for its own sake brings one to great things? They ask "But how can that be? For R Yohanan said, 'One ought to learn Torah even not for its own sake because by that one will come to learn Torah for its own sake.' And the Midrash answers (that question of the contradiction between R. Yochanan and R Meir) that R Meir was saying like R Akiva that one who learns Torah not for its own sake, it is better of he had never been born. (I.e. the Gemara concludes that this is an argument between Tenaim, not between R Yochana and Amora and R Meir. That is an argument between an amora of the Gemara and a tana of the mishna is not possible.])
Now if there had been any distinctions between kinds of  "not for its own sake," then that would have been the obvious answer. So clearly the sages did not see any distinctions. Whether it so for money or whatever the reasons maybe, it is all the same to them. To R Yohanan it is OK and to R Meir and R Akiva it is not.
So of the law is like R Meir and R Akiva, that would seem to explain the issue.
The custom is to make differences between types of "not for its own sake" in order to excuse the custom of extortion of the state to make the state pay for yeshivas. That seems to be a problem 

It got to be that even among people that went along with the approach of the Gra that secular studies were not accepted unless in order to make money. But this does not distinguish among different kinds of secular studies. Most of what is taught in universities is in fact quite worthless. However the many Rishonim including the Gra did hold that the natural sciences are important. But since not everyone is really up to the level of being a physicist so they go into the pseudo sciences. And then try to convince others that what they are doing in in fact some deep wisdom. [Go check up among all students in universities who has the lowest IQ. That ought to tell you something.]

[The Gra said that lack of knowledge in any of the seven wisdoms would result in a lack of understanding of Torah a hundred fold.]

Man made pseudo wisdoms are not the same thing as the wisdom of God as revealed in the work of Creation.

I wanted to express the greatness and importance of following the path of the Gra. That is mainly the idea of straight Torah with no additions nor subtractions. But even though the Gra is known, the whole "spirit of Torah" that you find in Litvak yeshivas is not known. Even after it is known , it  is hidden.

I am not saying I had the merit to follow the straight path of the Gra for more than a few sweet years in Shar Yashuv and later at the Mir. [Both great Litvak yeshivas.] But I go with this idea that even if I can not be what I ought to be, at least I can help others by showing them the path of authentic Torah.

People that protest against the police in the USA, truly love and believe in the police.

People that protest against the police in the USA believe in the kindness and upright moral character of the police. They truly love and believe in the police. How do you know this? Because they know if they would have walked to a militzia officer in a Communist Russia and insulted him, they would have left without any of their teeth. Only in America do the police show constraint and understanding and moral responsibility.

One way to deal with the attempt to take down the USA by China and Antifa would be to learn the basic values that the USA was founded on. That is not just the Federalist Papers. But also the history of England and the Magna Carta. [Why these are no longer taught in schools is baffling]

Another suggestion is to arrest one person working for Antifa. I mean, even if you can not arrest an entire mob, you can arrest one [or more people] and charge them with incitement of rioting, and treason, and felony assault on a police officer.

If the white race is committing mass suicide by siding with their enemies, that does not mean that every single one has to go down without a fight.
If white people have no pride about creating the most magnificent civilization in all history, I can not give it to them.

[When Somalia can do something like this then let me know.

There is a lot of resistance to the idea that Jesus was  a regular "Jewish Tzadik." Part of the reason is group identity. In order to be Jewish one must not have a good opinion of Jesus. The slightest positive statement about Jesus is enough to nullify one's credibility once and for all and to be labeled the worst of all terms "a missionary".

Another reason is the history of the crusades. That is in fact a good reason even if not sufficient.

Another reason is misunderstanding. Even though Paul did have this idea of nullification of the commandments that is clearly the exact opposite of open statements of Jesus himself.
There is also the mistaken idea that people worship Jesus and identify him with God which is all one big misunderstanding of what he was saying. The Trinity is not anything that he would subscribe to as gone into detail in the Trinities blog    

The white race is on a race towards mass suicide. Sometimes self defense is the only defense.

It occurred to me that WWII was also a kind of attempt to stamp out the USA and Democracy. I mean to say that the USA was smack in the middle between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. So I am thinking that Japan and Germany must have been planning on coming in from both sides and taking over.

So now it seems there is a similar attempt to take over. But this time the enemies are in the gates, not at the gates.
How did the situation get so dire? One one hand there seems to be the lemming effect, the white race is on a race towards mass suicide.

While on one hand I was always profoundly grateful for being born in the USA. Yet right in the USA itself I noticed there were lots of people that had a profound hatred of everything American. Whatever the USA has done in history or today to them was always wrong. And they will side with any enemy of the USA.

So what is a possibility?

The answer I think can be seen in the American War of Independence, when Americans took up arms to protect themselves and their homes. Sometimes self defense is the only defense. [Especially now that the police simply find a place to park outside the local donut shop and wait out their shift.]

So if Antifa stand in front of your car to stop you, step on the gas and accelerate.  

Link to Kelley Ross's ideas about the present day situation in the USA

So let me ask why is he the only modern day philosopher that has an inkling on common sense? Is it like Sandra Lehman told me that Philosophy removes common sense from people?
Or like Elon Musk that it is simply German philosophy? Who knows?
In any case, at one point when I realized I was going to have to spend some time in university and try to do something about making a living I decided to go into Physics,-- and not Philosophy.
The actual reason was the Rav Nahman actually warned against philosophy I I took that to heart and choose something else.

An employee has no law of getting less that what his labor is worth. [Rambam Laws of Acquisition 13]. That is on most things you buy, if they are marked up from their market value there is a law of אונאה That is if a 1/5 the money goes back to the buyer. If more than 1/5 the whole deal is off.
 But with an employee there is no such law because an employee is bought for the time. [That is he is a slave for the time period that he is being hired for.
This goes to show that there is nothing particularly different from being a slave and being an employee. The only difference is the employee when the term of his employment is over he is no longer owned.

So was the Civil War really worth going into for this. Any employee has a similar dilemma as a slave. work or do not eat. Children are also in a similar situation. They must listen to their parents. They have no choice in the matter.

I saw something interesting about Elon Musk --that a good deal of his motivation for making Space X and the Tesla car was his question in college when he asked himself what can I do to help humanity.

Well that sort of lit a light for me in that I also have a few ideas that I believe would be great for humanity. 

One is learning fast. That is too many people shy away from Math and Physics because they think they are too hard. They lack the confidence that by just saying the words and going on that they will understand. So I want to bring this idea to the attention of people. [That would also have a side benefit that when people would know what real science is they will throw out all the pseudo sciences like the Social Studies and humanities departments of the universities.

This idea is from the gemara Shabat  [I think around page 63] and brought in books of Musar. [e.g. אורחות צדיקים]

Another great idea is talking with God in one's own language. 

Another idea is saying the truth always which also people do not know how this provides a kind of protective shield around one.



[As for the political situation I have little to say but Trust in God.] 

I should add that I see the coming civil war as the end of civilization so I have to explain that Trust in God does not mean to do nothing. Rather it means not to do "over efforts" "ריבוי השתדלות". It simply mean to trust and God and take the basic necessary steps to protect yourself. So for example if Antifa stand in the way of your car to stop you, step on the gas and accelerate. That is a simple basic logical step of self preservation. Also get gun skills.

w99 G Minor edited   It usually takes me a lot of time to get the instruments right, after I have gotten the basic music line down. Plus corrections as to the music line often come only after I have thought about it for a while. So there still might be more corrections that need to be done.  [w99 in midi format]

The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

Idolatry is worship of some being other than the one First Cause [סיבה ראשונה]. And that includes people. It even includes people who have souls from Emanation [אצילות]. So for example when we say that Abraham the Patriarch's soul was from Kindness of Emanation [חסד של אצילות] we do not worship Abraham. Nor do we pray to him. That is in spite of the fact that souls from Emanation are Divine אלקות.

So worship of people that is the basic essence of the religious world should not be considered to be OK.  And from this it is easy to see why the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication to make this point clear. [And the letter of excommunication I believe has halachic validity in spite of its being ignored. In fact it is hard to understand why anyone would imagine that a letter signed and sealed by the Gra would not be valid in Halacha. Such a thing seems absurd on the face of it.]

[And though you can argue on this point, but my looking at a book that collected all the testimonies in Villna  and letters of excommunication I decided that Rav Nahman was OK. This seems to be a gray area.]

I thought to add the fact that once I got to Tenach [Old Testament] I noticed the central issue pf idolatry. I mean when critique of kings comes up it is always about this one issue. The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

There is a kind of work that is forbidden on Shabat called בורר seperating. The idea is to separate what you do not want to eat now from what you want to eat now. Or to separate what you want for later.

This process can be understood in a  sense to apply to the fact that there is an array of good values that one ought to hold onto. Good points. These have their root in Divine traits [Sepherot]. And there is also a process of combining these good traits. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them. This can apply in science also. Newton and Maxwell could not be combined until Einstein came along. Einstein and Heisenberg could not be combined until Dirac and Richard Feynman came along. [Dirac was OK with one or two particles but once you got more it could not work until Feymann showed the way to QFT. Quantum Field Theory.]

Similar to good traits. There are several areas of positive value. To say the truth, trust in God, learning Torah. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them.
This is a kind of process which you see in Kant and then later Hegel. 

So there is a process of finding the good traits and good points one needs to stick with. And to separate out what is mixed in of the poison of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side). And then to combince the good traits.

Sometimes a tzadik comes into the world to reveal one particular trait or more and sometimes another may come to combine traits.
So for example you will find that Avraham Avinu was united with the Divine Trait of Kindness. That would mean not just that his soul was from Emanation but also that he came to reveal that trait in the world.

Rav Nahman [of Uman] explained what was the problem with a country where the taste and scent and beauty had all gone down. He said the problem was the slaves of a foreign king who had been sent in and ruined everything by means of ugly language, sexual promiscuity, and addiction to bringing lawsuits.
The solution in the story of Rav Nahman was to make a separation.

he did not openly say he was referring to the USA but it seems clearly the implication. That is he was predicting already 200 years ago exactly what is happening today.

The original idea of the Litvak yeshiva was to be  a four year program which would go through the three bava's [Bava Metzia, Bava Kama, Bava Batra] and four nashim [Gitin, Kidushin, Ketuboth, Yevamot]. This I see as very important even though it is not really the same thing as the commandment of learning Torah itself which applies all through life and is required of every man.
So the main greatness of the idea of the Litvak Yeshiva is that those are the ages 18-22 that a world view is formed. One generally accepts at that point the social meme of his environment at those crucial ages,- and this meme becomes hard wired. [So the idea in short is that you learn good morals at those few first years and that sticks.]

[This was the original idea of Rav Haim of Voloshin. Before that there was no such thing as a yeshiva in modern sense, but rather it was the local hall where people would pray in the morning, and then go off to their work. The younger people  stayed there and learned. Then Rav Haim came to his teacher the Gra and suggested creating a yeshiva as an independent institution. It is not clear what the answer of the Gra was. There are different versions of the events. At any rate, I must add that I had a great time at the Mir in N.Y.  And besides the my learning during the regular hours I also was privileged to spend time with Rav Shmuel Berenbaum (the rosh yeshiva that gave the highest class). He was  a very deep and creative thinker along the lines of Rav Shach. But for some reason, he never wrote a word, and so most of his ideas were lost with time. Still you can get the basic approach from Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or Rav Haim of Brisk's books.]

w98   [w98 in midi format] [these were written in a format called nwc but i assume most people do not have that so i post the midi format so that people have access to the notes--which they would not have with only the mp3 version.][I want to add that I do not know why some music files were posted while others not. I just can't recall,  --nor did I think it mattered at the time. [w98 nwc]

socialist takeover of the USA

The issue of a socialist takeover of the USA is on one hand upsetting, but on the other it might very well be a cause for people to take up arms and defend American values? I mean, until now there no one has stepped on the brakes of a socialist revolution. Maybe now people might begin to see the ugly face of socialism?


Also I am wondering about the fact that Allan Bloom suggested that universities are the centre of the issues. So what I suggest is to learn the Federalist Papers, John Locke, and Daniel Defoe's  political writings of the 1700's.

But since it might be a bit late for this, the best idea would be for Republicans to protect their homes and business's at all cost. Not to give in an inch.

"There is something about philosophy that deprives people of common sense."

There is some aspect of Philosophy that is odd as Sandra Lehman [a student of philosophy from Germany] once told me: "There is something about philosophy that deprives people of common sense."[However, I doubt if she would include Thomas Reid-the philosopher of common sense

That in fact goes along with Rav Nahman of Breslov who also has a particular warning even about "hashkafa" books even written by the great sages of Israel.
There might be something to this. He in particular was not very thrilled with the Guide for the Perplexed.

Steven Weinberg [once of the discovers of the connection between the weak force and electro-magnetism] had a really insightful comment about philosophy. He said it like nation states before the advent of the post office. The main purpose of nation states was simply to save one from other nation states. Same with philosophy, it only purpose is to save one from other philosophies.

Rav Nahman [of Uman and Breslov] emphasized saying the words and going on.  But his approach was towards the Oral and Written Law. In fact he gave  a list of what one ought to finish every years in such a fashion, the two Talmuds, Rif, Rosh, all the Midrashim etc.
But based on some Rishonim [medieval authorities] I expand that to include Physics and Mathematics.[Not all Rishonim agree].
Now one one hand R. Natan the disciple of Rav Nahman held one ought not to learn these subjects at all. To him they were all in the category of "outside wisdoms". In Sanhedrin   there is a list of things for which one loses his or her portion in the next world. One of them is he who reads "outside books".

The way I usually deal with this was to apply what Rav Nahman had said about doctors to the issue. Rav Nahman strongly turned people to avoid doctors. However when a true vaccine came out in those days he said one must take it. So avoiding doctors did not refer to true medicine. In those days oxygen had not even been discovered. Doctors were still going with the four humors of the ancient Greeks and blood letting.[ the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm].

So my feeling about this is his objection against outside wisdoms was pseudo man made wisdoms. Not true Physics in which the Glory of God is revealed.

In the laws concerning a "Herem" excommunication there a very relevant point that one who ignore the excommunication is also comes automatically under the terms of the excommunication.

This would show why the religious world is so corrupt. Because they universally ignore the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.

That unfortunately includes the Litvak yeshivas.

[What I mean here is that Herem is different from Nidui. In Nidui one can learn Torah and teach. But in Herem no one can learn nor from the one under herem and nor can he learn himself. One of the major halacha books of the litvak yeshiva world brings constantly sources that were under the herem so that sort of excludes the entire Litvak world
Sp the proper approach is to start to be alert to the fact that one must have nothing to do with the Sitra Achra. [Dark Side.]

However I must add that the actual language of the herem was not on the Baal Shem Tov himself nor most of his disciples. So Rav Nahman would clearly be in the clear, See the actual language and you will see what  mean.

So yeshivas might learn Halacha in the morning, and that makes sense; but the not the way they are doing it. Rather the Shulchan Aruch with the Beer Hetaiv or the Tur with the Beit Yoseph.

In short, the Gra must be taken seriously. The facy of his being ignored is what has caused the most of religious world to be absorbed into the Sitra Achra Dark Side, as anyone who has tasted of it can already testify without my help.
And there is an added degree of responsibility of the Litvak yeshivas because all Israel looks to them to set the standard of what is really kosher and what is not. Even of many people do not follow this their example strictly still they look towards the Litvak would to tell the rest of us what really is ok and what is not. So when they ignore the Gra about this most essential issue they are really messing up.

The next world war I can imagine could start between India and China, and only from there spread to everyone else. [or Japan and Taiwan].

I have thought about what would be a benefit for the many {זיכוי הרבים} and it occurred to me today that building yeshivas on the name of the Gra would be the best idea. However for me personally that does not seem like a possibility. So instead perhaps I could recommend to others that do in fact have the ability to do so.

But to be more specific let me just say that the name of the Gra would be great because that name implies a certain way of learning Torah and a certain path which is pure authentic Torah. So even if someone like myself or others do not merit to walk in the straight and narrow path of true Torah at least the message would be clear.

And perhaps even the great Litvak yeshivas this would be a good idea i.e. to be more careful about the path of the Gra since that is (after all) exactly what they were founded on (but without the name).

[But I do have to add that  learning the "seven wisdoms" was definitely a part of the path of the Gra but this for some reason is not well known. ]

President Trump: Do not give in on any issue. Support the police. The coming election makes no difference. Do what is right now. Support the police and do not give in an inch.

But to call slavery wrong would be saying that the Old Testament is evil.

There is nothing wrong with slavery. The main issue is how you treat a slave. [It is after all better that freeing them and then having them destroy Western Civilization.] In its essence however there is nothing wrong with it. And not only that but the fact that many people accept the idea that slavery is wrong. So they have already given up on the Bible.
So making war on the South was a mistake that has come back to haunt us.
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[It occurred to me that Rav Nahman hinted to this situation in his 13 stories.--about the country that life had lost its flavour. The food had its its taste. The smells did not smell right. Everything was empty. In that story it turned out the cause was imported slaves. The advice that worked to save that country was to deport them. It does not seem clear how that might work today.]

Some Christians claim that Slavery is wrong. So the the Bible when you have slavery according to them  is evil? (This is not to mention the letter of Peter [first letter second chapter] which says slaves should obey their masters.) Clearly Catholic doctrine is that the commandments of God are good, not evil. [Of course I am referring to the institution in the Bible of slavery of both Israelis and gentiles but also I am thinking of Jesus who held everything in God's Law is good and will never pass away. Paul also stated the Law of God is good but he held that after Jesus came people no longer have to keep some aspects of it. Aquinas goes into that in detail. [That is where the Natural Law aspect of Torah gets into Aquinas. That eventually became natural rights with John Locke.]]
Besides that I have never heard that Protestant doctrine holds that the commandments of God are evil. Rather that they hold after Jesus some are not obligated. But to call them wrong would be saying that the Old Testament is evil.

My basic impression is that when it comes to political theory, nothing is anywhere near the amazing Federalist Papers by Madison, Hamilton and John Jay. And that system of government would still work fine today if not for the race issue.The Achilles Heel of the USA. So what do do now? Well I see the world getting divided into two parts. One part is Mad Max and Seattle chaos. The other is a small remnant of where Western Civilization will continue to grow and proper like Space X.
Clearly the seeds of the destruction of the USA were sown by communist infiltration of the Western universities.  [Now from Communist China.]

And furthermore I think that the best idea for Trump would be not to give in on any issue. No compromise.

Kant Friesian School

Besides Dr Kelley Ross there is also Robert Hanna who has a lot of respect for Leonard Nelson [that is the Kant Friesian School]. It is interesting that Springer Verlag  publishing has in fact published one of Nelson's books. [philosophical fallacies]

[Though as usual R Hanna did notice a some difference between Nelson's personal philosophy [Kant Fries] and the philosophical method that he was advocating. [In his book about philosophical fallacies].

This still does not help much when it comes to figuring how Hegel fits in to all this?
The trouble is the are just too many completely opposite interpretations of Hegel.
Cunningham versus McTaggart. But with Kant that is also a problem.
At least one thing we can all agree to is to throw out all twentieth century philosophy as being long overdue for the trash bin.


I did notice that some of the complaints about Hegel have to do with complaints about Communism that seeks for support from him. Another source of complaint comes from complaints about Germany in WWI. I have no idea what to think about that. Walter Kaufman saw Hegel more almost as a good American patriot. I would have to draw a blank about all this. To me it seemed clear that Hegel just wanted a middle path between freedom and law and order. That is freedom without the craziness of the French Revolution. And he did support the Prussian Monarchy--which was the source of reforms and constitutional laws as opposed to the previous sources of law in Prussia which was mainly the whim of princes. So there are some areas where Hegel was right. Other areas where Kant and Leonard Nelson were right. So in some way there ought to be some kind of way of finding a middle path.]

My basic impression is that when it comes to political theory, nothing is anywhere near the amazing Federalist Papers by Madison, Hamilton and John Jay. And that system of government would still work fine today if not for the race issue.The Achilles Heel of the USA. So what do do now? Well I see the world getting divided into two parts. One part is Mad Max and Seattle chaos. The other is a small remnant of where Western Civilization will continue to grow and proper like Space X.
Clearly the seeds of the destruction of the USA were sown by communist infiltration of the Western universities.  [Now from Communist China.]

One great thing about Rav Israel Salanter was to see how "midot" good character is the essence of Torah. This can easily be missed. But further than that he provided a way to gain good character.
In my own development I got the first part, but not the second.
That is,-- I saw how "midot tovot" [good character traits] is an essential part of Torah, and also got an idea of how to define good character. But the second part of working on one's own character by means of learning Musar -- I missed that part. And I think it almost does not even thought by many to be very effective. Still you have to wonder if this is possible resurrect. That is to learn Musar more than the fifteen minutes that is done in Litvak Yeshivas. But to get back to the original idea of learning lots of Musar--with the intention of improving one's character.

[Musar is based on the original Musar books of the Middle Ages. Then there were plenty more later like that Maharal from Prague. Then the books authored by the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter.]

w97 G Minor  [w97 in midi]

w98 in mp3 format  [w98 in midi]

So the fact that the religious world is now idolatry, it makes more sense to pray at home or in a Reform Temple [or Conservative.]

I noticed in the Old Testament that the major complaint is always idolatry. Rarely is any other commandment mentioned.  Go and check yourself. When there is a complaint about the kings of Israel or Yehudah and Benyamin it is always about idolatry and almost never is anything else even mentioned.
Even with King Solomon the complaint is not the women, but idolatry. The problem in fact with the women is that they turned his heart from God to serve idols. You see this clearly when God comes to him a third time to tell him that because he turned to other gods therefore his kingdom with be torn from him [all except one tribe] (Benyamin was no included in that promise even though they later in fact sided with the tribe of Yehuda) the complaint stated there is that he worshiped other gods. Not the foreign women.
So the fact that the religious world is now idolatry, it makes more sense to pray at home or in a Reform Temple [or Conservative.] [Nowadays there really is nowhere safe. Even the great Litvak yeshivas which one supposes go by the Gra have also been infiltrated by the Dark Side.]

[That is because the Dark Side is always trying to infiltrate into the would of holiness. So this is no surprise. But after the fact, it still means that to learn Torah one has to do so alone and avoid the religious world.]

Here is the longer Bezmenov Video

Bezmenov [What is going on in the USA.] This is the short Bezmenov Video

I have to add here that like he says here that a lot of the demoralization only started from the KGB but once the ball got going, it simply is done by Americans to Americans.


No one knows if he engineered his fictitious death in order to get the KGB off his tail, or if they actually got to him. I knew the KGB agent who discovered his whereabouts in Canada by monitoring the broadcasts from the West. But if they actually ever got to him I have no idea. [Needless to say the KGB lost no love on defectors.]

The religious world is mainly idolatry even though there are some areas that are true to Torah. The areas of true authentic Torah would be the Lithuanian yeshivas.

The religious world is mainly idolatry even though there are some areas that are true to Torah. The areas of true authentic Torah would be the Lithuanian yeshivas that are based on the Gra.
That is the three great NY yeshivas Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat. In Israel that means Ponovitch and Brisk.

However this is not meant to exclude Rav Nahman of Breslov. The reason is simple even though I would rather not go into it here. There was a book that collected all the letters of excommunication pus the testimonies in Villna that I went through and that led to my conclusion that Rav Nahman should be thought of as outside the excommunication and in fact a great tzadik. But to see the subject in detail, you have to see the actual language of the letter of excommunication that the Gra signed.

But the issue is more severe than simple idolatry. This is even though in Torah the most severe thing is idolatry. Still there is an aspect that is adds confusion to what is already a mess. The problem is label. Lets say you would take an idol of Krishna or some other Hindu idol and put a stamp of approval on that. Would that make it OK? Well clearly not. But in the religious world that is exactly what has happened. The label does not make it so.
So it would have been better in the first place to accept the approach of the Gra and Rav Shach before it had to be shown the hard way.

We see a lot of idolatry in the religious world. Thus Gra signed the letter of excommunication. But the result is that anything dedicated to idolatry is forbidden.

The prohibition of idolatry is a bit subtle. On one hand like my learning partner David Bronson explained to me that one can not be  guilty of the death penalty unless he worships a physical object.
But even not of the side of legal guilt, clearly there is guilt if one worships in the abstract.
You can see this in the Rambam in the 13 principles of faith [and also in Mishne Torah] that idolatry is worship of anything in heaven or earth, any of the four elements, any angels etc. That is anything other that the First Cause.

But what is worship exactly? Well there are the regular four services [sacrifice, bowing, burning pouring] that one is guilty, but then there is included the specific type of worship that is done for that idolatry even if it is not one of the four services.
And Rav Shach explains the basic essence of idolatry is the fact that someone believes that idol can save. That is how he explains the argument between R Yochanan and Reish Lakish about an idol that fell apart by itself. So people would say, "If it can not help itself, how can it help me?"

We see a lot of idolatry in the religious world. And there is in particular a commandment to get rid of it whether in Israel or outside of Israel. [Outside of Israel one is still required to get rid of idolatry but not required to pursue it.] Clearly this was the reason the Gra signed the letter of excommunication, and it seems to me to be a good idea to take that letter seriously,--even to the degree of considering it valid according to the letter of the law.

Plus there is a further result: Idolatry is not just forbidden to do, but any objects that are set aside for use of idolatry are also forbidden.