return to Feudalism.

 I see in the former USSR that people tend to form a village around their place of employment. I mean this is a return to Feudalism. I actually saw this when I was in the hospital in Uman and saw this kind of dynamics. And I heard this from a former KGB agent also.

This is I think also the basic idea around the "Litvak Yeshiva". Even though Litvak yeshivas tend to do a great job in what they were created for--to teach Torah. [Especially the Mir in NY and also Shar Yashuv]. Still the subtle aspect is that it provides a Feudal Castle to protect one from robbers.

After all this is what the whole Feudal system came about from. Rome was collapsing. The roads were no longer safe. People wanted protection from roaming bands of "protesters." So they aggregated around a strong man that could protect them. But in return they had to work and and pledge loyalty. 

This is in fact one of the reasons why people go into Litvak yeshivas--not just to learn Torah but also to be in an environment where they can learn Torah. The secular world used to be able to provide a degree of security. You lived in a safe USA. Jobs were available. Now secular society is falling apart. 

[Does this reciprocal relationship in fact exist? That is if you pledge loyalty and obey all the rules  do you get some kind of protection like in a feudal castle where you get protection by pledging loyalty? I would say it does exist to a degree. Maybe not as much as one might hope, but it still seems to be so to a degree.]

For a mediaeval feudal system to work there needs to be a hierarchy. Sometimes there is good reason for that. Like in the case of Rav Shmuel Berenbaum the head of the Mir Yeshiva in NY.  Or Rav Freifeld of Shar Yashuv. But often, not. 

argument between the Rosh and Rav Hai Gaon

There is an argument between the Rosh  and Rav Hai Gaon. Normally when there is enough land for the males to inherit and the daughters to be feed then that is what happens. [That is to say that daughters and a widow do not inherit, but they do get feed from the proceeds of the land.] If there is not enough land for both the boys and girls then only the girls get feed. But if the sons sell the property the sell is valid. That is straight from the Gemara itself. But what happens  after during the time of the Geonim there was made a decree that movable property is also used to pay for the Ketuba and all the conditions of the Ketubah.

That is where Rav Hai Gaon says after that decree now the girls would get feed from the proceeds of the sell. The Rosh disagrees.. The question that Rav Shach brings is that the proof that the rosh brings is hard to understand. 

The Gemara says that there is  a proof to Rav Asi that the boys have some rights to נכסים מועטים [small amount of land], because if they sell, the sell is valid. The Rosh brings this as a proof that they keep the money of the sell.--even after the decree of the Geonim.

I admit that I have trouble understanding the answer of Rav Shach to this question. It does look that you can not bring a proof from the sell being valid before the decree and the sell being valid after the decree that the boys might in fact have to feed the girls with the proceeds.

Basically Rav Shach is saying that the point of the Rosh is that you  see there is a no "halot" settling of the land on the money, such that the money is in place of the land. We do see that with Maasar Sheni but not here. So while there is a decree to use movable property to pay for the Ketubah, that means money that was actually inherited. Not money that came because something that was inherited was sold. 

When communism is brought up, someone has to blame Hegel.

On one hand almost invariably when ever communism is brought up, someone has to blame Hegel.  Not that he was a communist, but clearly a capitalist. See his Philosophy of Right and his views about private property. But the reason he gets blamed is because the individual gets meaning only by being part of a larger group. However there is no freedom for the individual without the state. 

However I think he was trying to get to freedom for the individual without the craziness  and reign of terror of the French Revolution. And in fact looking at the kings of Prussia during that period do show them on the side of a liberal Constitution.

What the situation in Germany was lacking I think was people like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison whose forte was how to frame a political question and how to answer it with a just Constitution. That simply was not the forte of Hegel nor Kant.

See Walter Kaufman on Hegel.

I would suggest to blame Marx and Communism all you want, but leave Hegel alone. In fact. it could be that allowing the communists to hijack Hegel, is what gave them the small amount of credibility that they had. After all it could not have been simple to convince the average peasant in a Russian village that the success of the more well to do peasants was all because they had stolen it from the less successful.Just the opposite --to anyone living in a village or small Russian town it is clear where the prosperity comes from--the few smart peasants that bring in all the business..It is always just the few who are the big producers. So the Marxists had to use word play to convince the poor peasants to murder the wealthy peasant and steal his property and rape his daughters, and do it in name of social justice.

[Is it possible, I might suggest that communists took a hitch hiked with Hegel on some issues because he was the best thing out there?]

x-9 D Major

 x-9 D Major

to betray those that do the most good to us

 It is not just that people have a evil inclination [yezer hara]. Rather people have a very specific yezer hara--to betray those that do the most good to us and we owe the greatest gratitude. Not just lack of gratitude but even to do positive harm to those that have helped us the most. So while there are all kinds of yezer hara, this one seems to me to be the worst of all

[You can see examples with the hatred of people towards the USA, when according to their enlightened views they might have done better by staying in Somalia. Instead they come to the USA to turn us into another Somalia. [which recently blamed whites for not staying there and teaching them how to run an economy. Or course it is hard to blame the whites for leaving since they were being murdered.]

Another example is fathers who are by default the arch villain in the minds of most people. Again the same reason--to repay good with evil. 

I am no prophet, but I can say with some degree of confidence that this can not end well. There is a Judge and justice. People that betray those that have done the most for them will almost certainly not end well.

Can communists take over America?

To me it seems depend on one thing. If people can believe promises of everything for free without being aware of what is planned to make everything free. I mean there are enough examples of communism to provide evidence whether the promises of utopia becomes real.

Plus there is the slight inconvenient fact that communists think only the "rich" will lose all their money. They are not thinking that they themselves will no longer have private property, but will live where the State assigns them to live, and will work at what the State assigns to them to work at.

But the trouble is Americans believe in something only after seeing it on the internet. Since the main sites are Communist, how is there any chance of correction? 

"You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him."

 אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלוהים אין עוד מלבדו מאי אין עוד מלבדו אפילו כשפים

 "You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him."

The simple idea of the verse is there are no other gods besides God, -not that nothing exists besides God. 

The sages ask in tractate Shabat "What does it mean 'there is none other besides Him?' Even magic"

You would imagine that if the point of the verse was to tell us that nothing exists besides God, this would have been the perfect place for the sages to tell us this. Instead they explain that there are no other spiritual forces--even magic.

The truth be told, monotheism was always the faith of the Torah. That God created everything something from nothing. (And he is other than the world. He is not the same thing as the world.])That is not to say nothing exists besides God.  

[To all Rishonim [medieval authorities], Monotheism is assumed. That is that God made the world something from nothing, and that he is totally "other" that this world.] 

In tractate Avoda Zara 41:b

Almost anything can be an idol. Even though pictures are permitted to make that does not mean that a picture can not be made into an idol. However baseball cards do not count as idolatry. There has to be the idea that by worship of the object of idolatry that that object can save or help one.

You see this really in the Tosephta on Sanhedrin. [Or at least that is where I first saw this idea.]

But stated clearly you have to see the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach in laws of idolatry 7:1.

So here I want to introduce that subject.

In tractate Avoda Zara 41:b. R.Yochanan said: an  idol that broke by itself [e.g fell down in an earthquake] is still forbidden [to use, as e.g. to sell the pieces]] Reish Lakish said it is permitted. The Gemara asks from the mishna R Yose said a person can take an idol and crush it and throw it to the winds. The sages said "but then one might end up using the dust. and the verse says "So that nothing will stick to your hands from it". So why the gemara asks is this any different from an idol that broke by itself? (and we see the sages forbid it.)

The Gemara answers [for Reish Lakish] from Rava: it is a gezara (decree) because as he is  crushing it he might pick it up and then he owns it an a Israeli can not nullify his own idol.

The Ritva asks the same question applies to R Yochanan since on page 43 we see he makes a distinction between when the idolater gives up from just the monetary worth of the idol or also from the prohibition.

To the Gemara, even R Yochanan would agree that if the idolater gave up on both, then the idol that broke by itself is permitted in use [as e.g. to sell the pieces].

The Ritva [a later rishon after Tosphot] answer the case of the idol that broke by itself is different for the idolater does not know yet that it broke. For it to be permitted there has to be knowledge that it broke and became worthless. [The point is that the question of the gemara on Reish Lakish  would not apply to R Yochanan- Because to R Yochanan for the idol to be permitted in use the idolator has to be aware that it broke.]

Rav Shach in the Avi Ezri asks this same point ought to apply to Reish Lakish also. And his answer is the very point I made up above. To both Reish Lakish and R Yochanan an idol that can not save itself is not an idol. For the very essence of idolatry is the thought that people have of it that it can help. Onnce it is broken it automatically loses that category. But R Yochana requires at least an act of nullification.

[Even though it is still unclear to me where this idea comes from. I mean I have heard of requiring an act of "bitul" nullification but I am not sure where you see this here in R Yochanan. I am sure my learning partner David Bronson would be puzzling about this point maybe for weeks on end-unless an answer could be found.]

X10 A Minor

X10 A Minor    x10 midi   x10 nwc

Too much of religious identity depends on thinking that Jesus was not good.

Too much of religious identity depends on thinking that Jesus was not good. However there are issues which are legitimate. Already pointed out by Saadia Gaon. The most obvious issue is that Jesus does not equal God. And that should be obvious just by reading the NT itself.

But forgotten in this discussion is always the approach of  "Emanation" [Atzilut] -Emanation of the Divine light to create lower worlds is very well accepted in all medieval mystics. So souls that come from Emanation are thought to be "divine" in that they contain the Divine light --with no division between them and God.

[And that is the major character of Atzilut/Emanation].

So being in particular always against Jesus as a general rule has just become too much embedded in one's very identity. 

 

So what I suggest is that religious identity ought to be based on belief in God and the law of Moses, not being against Jesus. I mean to say that religious identity is important, but it ought to be based on true facts

I had a great desire to get into physics when I was young.

I had a great desire to get into physics when I was young. But I had a few obstacles. One was you might say really ridiculous. It was my first year in high school in Algebra. I can not say if I found it hard or not. I really do not recall. But I can recall the a(b+c)= ab+ac which maybe I understood or not. But it did not "click" with me. I decided then and there that I am no genius in math. And if I was no genius then why do it at all? So instead I thought to try to go into doing the violin. There I did better, but I can honesty say that if I had known about the idea of  "girsa" --just saying the words and going on, I think I would have been able to get over the obstacles.

But that was not all. When in elementary school, I walked home from school, and that took 40 minutes. But walking home from high school was an hour plus some, or I could wait for my dad to pick me up at the library. In any case, by the time I got home, I was TIRED. [School from 8:15 to 3:15; then the wait or walk home.

So you can wonder  why I bring this up. The reason is the same obstacles still are before me. Even knowing about "girsa"helps to some degree, but I still find it hard. And the tired aspect is still there. I find it best to do the studying the first thing in the morning, --but when trying to study later after have been running around on different errands, I find I just can not concentrate. 

 

So what I think, (if I can be allowed to extrapolate from myself to others);--I would like to suggest that many people --maybe even most people have an inherent desire to understand the world they live in. They would like to know about atoms and quarks, and strings and galaxies, and all that interesting stuff. But probably find these exact two obstacles. (1) Hard to understand; and (2) hard to sit down and do the learning.

For the first problem, I do want to suggest this idea of "Girsa"--saying the words and going on;-- and believing that even if you do not understand at first, the knowledge still gets absorbed and processed under the surface. The tired aspect, however I do not have any answer for --except that same thing that I said about doing the work right when you get up in the morning. After a strong tea or coffee.

Reason recognizes universals.

I see Kant, Leonard Nelson of the Kant Fries School and Hegel as very important. But I feel that in philosophy the message of the forest gets lost because of the trees. You get get so involved in the small details that the big message is lost.

So I want to explain something that was well known in the Middle Ages, but since then forgotten:that Reason recognizes universals. What is a universal? Lets say, I have two blank white pieces of paper in front on me. Do they have something in common? Yes. Whiteness. So Whiteness is  a universal. Something that particulars have in common. Do universals exist? If you think so, then you are a realist. There are two kinds of realists. One that holds universals do not depend on particulars, and the other that holds they do. Plato was the first kind. Aristotle, the second.

What are some examples of universals? Numbers, colors, laws of physics. Moral principles are also examples of universals. They are rules that apply to particular situations. Not rules of "must", but rules of "ought". Never the less, they are still rules.

Reason can recognize these rules. For that is the function of reason--to see things in common among particulars.

So we get what was fairly well known in the Middle Ages: that reason recognizes moral principles, and that Torah is meant to make us aware of moral principles that are objective.

[You can see this more in detail in Professor Michael Huemer's writings.]

[One important point here is that there is no reason to exclude reason from the "synthetic a priori". This original idea came from Hume who held reason can do nothing but locate about contradictions in definitions. He was a teacher of Euclidean Geometry, so he got this idea from there. But it is not the case that he showed this to be true. He just asserts it

Gra was right in signing the herem [letter of excommunication]

You can see that the Gra was right in signing the herem [letter of excommunication] in that you see nowadays there is a lot of emphasis on worship of dead people. And also graves of dead people.

That may not be the major reason for the herem, but it certainly is proof that it is correct.

I mean once you see this, there ought to be no question that you are dealing with a cult of idolatry , not Torah.

If you consider that herem to be valid, the result would be vast. For the law of herem is not to have thing to do with the person or people. They can not learn or teach Torah. [Though I consider Rav Nahmna is be OK as he was outside of the strict category that the herem was on.

Furthermore, it is a positive commandment to destroy idolatry and everything that was made for it. So teh fact that the signature of the Gra concerning this issue, means that people are not destroying idolatry when they are able to do so.

[In Israel, it is a positive command to search and destroy. Outside of Israel, only if one encounters it.]

benefits in following the path of the Gra

One of the major benefits in following the path of the Gra is  what you accomplish is "birur" [separation of good from evil]. 

For every area of value there is a equal and opposite area of negative value that mimics true authentic value. And this birur [separation of good from evil]] is hard to accomplish. It is hard to tell the difference between true holiness and what mimics it. So by following the path of the Gra this "birur" is accomplished by simple faith in the wise with needing to go through the difficult process of figuring it out on ones own efforts.

 I am referring to the signature of the Gra on the letter of "Herem". But the issue is not just that the herem has legal validity. It is that it represents an objective reality.

For no one claims the Gra had everything. Rather every person is usually connected to some area of value.  No one thinks the Gra could have written Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, or write the Constitution of the USA. Rather there are people that have a connection with a certain area of value, and a lot of the effort that they need to expend and others is to determine what is the real thing and what is fake. Or sometimes there is a penumbra of positive value area around the center of value that is not evil, but just not as close to the real truth as the center of value.

It is easy to see how it fit into Kelley Ross's theory of value --see "Kant Fries School", but also this can be understood along teh lines of Hegel. [Though to see this in Hegel takes a lot more work. See Cunningham of Hegel who sees the importance of McTaggart,  but also sees how McTaggart missed this part of Hegel.

[Hegel believed in the One true God of Israel and also recognized this process of birur.]

So what ought to be done is to make batei midrash on the name of the Gra. The benefit would be great for those that earn Torah and those that don't. For those that don't the benefit is to know what authentic Torah is even if they find it hard to keep it For those that learn the benefit is all the greater in that just by invoking the name of the Gra, the temptation to look at torah of the dark side is diminished

issue of Jesus

The issue of Jesus is difficult because I think no one gets it right. Or perhaps the Muslims are the closest. But they also I think get it slightly off.

The issue really fits well with the way most sages were thinking in Neo-Platonic terms until the Aristotelian revolution occurred in the 1200's. 

So with all the mystics of the Middle Ages you have this distinction between higher world of Emanation and lower worlds. [Though they will not call it by that name.] 

The problem is loaded vocabulary. Christians say either you believe Jesus equals God; or if not, then you believe he is a "mere man". 

They discount the possibility of someone being not God;-- but also not "mere man".

This comes up in the mystics of the Middle Ages. There are souls of Emanation like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph.

[In short the idea is that of there being higher spiritual worlds. (That would be עולם המלבוש. אדם קדמון, עקודים ,ברודים, נקודים, אצילות, בריאה, יצירה, עשיה.) So souls that have their root in Emanation or above would be thought to be "divine" in that their souls receive from the infinite divine light with no screen. 

And sometimes these souls merit to bring some sort of blessing into the world for the benefit of others as we see with Moses. This kind of approach would apply to Jesus also  being from Foundation [that is the light of Kindness in the vessel of Foundation]

The difference between Emanation [Azilut] is as the name implies the world of Emanation receives the light of God without a screen  ("מסך"). 

And the idea that the sepherot of Azilut (Emanation) are divine is straight from all the mystics of the Middle Ages. And that means that any soul of Azilut (Emanation) would be divine. Not God, but rather an overflow of the light of God.

Learning Torah, not speaking lashon hara, honor of parents

It is good to keep track of what you have done right and wrong. Especially the wrongs. The reason is that help to repent. Personally I have noticed a few areas where I need repentance. But before I mention them I what to say that at first before you have done anything it is hard to know the right path. But after a few years you might noticed that some course of action or path they you choose based on insufficient information is in fact wrong.

So some of the things that I can see I was not sufficiently careful about: (1) learning Torah. [However the meaning of learning Torah is more limited than what most people are aware of.. They think anything written in Hebrew about issues of Torah is Torah. That is not how I define it. To me Torah is limited to the Oral and Written Law. I.e, the two Talmuds and midrashim. [2] Lashon Hara [slander] . [3] Honor of my parents.

Some commentary on this can be considered a part of learning Torah. But nowadays things have gotten way out of hand. [In fact the very definition of Sefarim Hizonim [outside books] is books that explain Torah in ways not directly from the two Talmuds of midrash. That is openly how the Rif and Tosh define it. So math books are not "sefarim hizonim"[outside books] . 

Also it occurs to me that the herem that was signed by the Gra ought to have been heeded just because of "faith in the wise" אמונת חכמים [emunat hachamim]. But also the more so since time has shown him to be 100% correct. 

 

Natural man is a primate. A smart primate.

It is somewhat disconcerting to see that Thomas Jefferson had tremendous faith in the common man. And the inherent goodness of the common man. As many people in WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] societies did, they thought that goodness that was grafted onto natural man is inherent. [Stuart Mill made the same mistake.]

Thousand of years of society believing in the Law of Moses, made Western Civilization. Not natural man. Natural man is a primate. A smart primate. Good at using his intelligence to get what he wants. Instrumental reason, not moral reason.

But when it came to the issue of people attacking the USA, he was unequivocal. Exterminate them. So he was no dreamer in the clouds. If people want peace,-- well that is one thing. But people that want war, he was clear what to do about it.

This is a good lesson for today. There are people that want to bring down the USA. Thomas Jefferson would have not doubts about what to do with them.   [The issue came up when settlements on the borders of the USA in it smaller extent then were being systematically attacked.]

common sense.

Often a tzadik merits to one but not more than one main idea. Some "Aitza" piece of advice that can help all others.
But this goes further than just tzadikim.
Mozart wrote a lot of music but there  was only a few of a major masterpieces. Eine Kleine Nacht Musik. The Jupiter Symphony. The Magic Flute.

Rav Nahman actually merited  to a few major pieces of advice for people that each one is in itself a masterpiece. Private conversation with God, Tikun Klali, Seder HaLimud.

My own dad had a  wealth of great invention that he came up with while working for the USA government. But I would have to say the major thing that my parents had that is a contribution to all mankind [if one can get a handle on its essence] is their kind of common sense. Or balance.  There is something to learn from every great person. And furthermore there is a kind of common sense how to avoid the frauds..

Trust in God.

Trust in God involves an awareness that human life is inherently hard. There are customs that help but even with all the customs and good habits still there the basic fact does not change that things are hard. [For example speaking the truth at all cost, is great habit and and help and protection. But in the long run it is limited.] The only thing that can really help is God's will. He has to want to help. And if He wants to help, then help will come.But to gain this can only come indirectly. There is nothing one can do that will bring help automatically. Rather all one can do is hope for God's help. But there is one thing that in fact does bring about that God should want to help. That is trust.
So the best idea in all situations is to gain an attitude of trust in God.

[I have mentioned this subject before. The major areas of clarification about it comes from the book of Navardok Madragat HaAdam, The Obligations of the Hearts, and the Gra on Mishlei. And also Rav Nahman in the Lem II in the lesson concerning Shavuot. There Rav Nahman explains the idea of "making a vessel" for the blessing to have something to flow into.]


One thing you see in Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Hearts] is that there is a difference between medicine cures and working for a living. He treats these two areas differently. On the subject of a cure and King Asa's seeking doctors, Ibn Pakuda [the author of Obligations of the Hearts] says the sin was to seek doctors at all. [That is as surprise since most people think that one can seek doctor's help but trust in God. The Obligations of the Hearts does not go with that possibility. But when it comes to making a living, he is on board with making effort. So it must be that he is thinking the cure issue and the making a living issue are separate.] 

Human worth

Human worth depends mainly on deeds. Evil deeds makes that value disappear. Treason, the present day attempt to overturn the USA to turn it into a communist dictatorship with the whites being the slaves is not a good deed. So everyone involved in this attempt, or even agrees with it by silence, has lost their human worth.
So what needs to be done is to get rid of the so called Democratic party which is really just an attempt to overthrow the USA. 

If gentiles think they have moral codes better than the Bible, well their moral codes anyway change with the direction of the breeze every ten years.

Sex is an important issue but hard to get right. Rav Nahman of Uman suggested a correction for sexual sin --saying the ten psalms 16,32,41,42,59,77,90,105,137, 150.
But as Sefardim noticed during their 2000 year exile in Muslim lands that the only real way to get to sexual purity is by being married immediately that one comes of age.

[In some areas this was necessary for other reasons.]

That is as soon as the boys were 13 and the girls 12, they were married off. Usual the actual arrangements about who marries whom was made many years before that. Just the actual marriage only happened by the boy was 13 and the girl 12.

And even though the men could marry many women, still the arrangement was usually just one wife to one man. 
In Torah law, a man can have many wives and even many girl friends. And in fact we see many great people in the Bible had several wives and concubines. Like Kalev ben Yefuna [Chronicles I 2:46] [Caleb, the friend of Joshua ]

If gentiles think they have moral codes better than the Bible, well their moral codes anyway change with the direction of the  breeze every ten years. and then they think their ideas of morality are eternal,

[Marriage in Torah is not a "sacrament." It does not make sex holy. Nor even allowed. What it does accomplish is to make obligations on the man and other obligations on the wife. The same act of sex that is permitted after marriage is also permitted before marriage. The only difference is to the Ramban it is permitted period. To the Rambam there is lacking a positive command to marry. That is however not prostitution. So Christians have things about sex very mixed up.
That is what comes from lack of study of the Old Testament. When Christians talk about study of the Bible, they never get into the exact laws of the Bible.

So that was when TRW contacted my dad to design the infrared apparatus to put into the satellites.

I wanted to put into perceptive. My dad was not at all part of the space program at first. Americans were focused on getting into space. So from 1960 until 1965 he was in business for himself. [He had invented a super sharp copy mate machine]. So his invention of the infrared telescope was simply in his past at that point. [Life Magazine July 26 1954 pages 24-26](https://books.google.co.il/books?id=D1QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA24&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false) Sure the USA and the USSR were desperately focused on getting ahead of each other in space. Only at some point the USA decided it needed infrared satellites over the USSR as an early warning system.[In case the Soviets decided to launch --God forbid]. So that was when they contacted my dad to design the infrared apparatus to put into the satellites. By the end of the 60's that job was done, and then they put him in charge of a different satellite program--laser communication between satellites.

[That was never implemented until the 2000's when TRW got back into the space program. Before that, TRW was out, since a spy was discovered there working for the KGB. So TRW lost all its contracts at that point. But my dad had already left at that time. My dad left because his work on the laser was finished and he decided to tackle other challenges.]

global warming

It helps to get an idea of the "big picture" as the Gra said [brought in the introduction to the Translation of Euclid into Hebrew by a disciple of the Gra.] One single lack in any of the seven wisdoms will result in a hundred fold lack in understanding of Torah.

For me getting to know the big picture was a kind of amateur interest in Dinosaurs. [Surely the fascination of all young kids--but it stuck with me even after childhood.] But just by getting to know the environment of the dinosaurs I happen to have an idea of what the carbon dioxide levels were back then   and also world wide temperatures. So the whole global warming scare always seemed to me to be less than meaningless.

יאשיה המלך Yoshiya the king is on one hand a sad story

יאשיה המלך Yoshiya the king is on one hand a sad story. However there is a deep meaning behind it.
We know אל תתגרה ברשעים. [''do not start up with the wicked.'] So he must have been aware that getting rid of all idolatry in Israel that the evil would stick in him and his children. You can not fight someone in the mud without getting muddy. But even though he was aware of that, he decided to get rid of idolatry from Israel forever.--even knowing it would be the end of the Temple and his own children.
The reason was תמות נפשי עם פלשתים. [Shimshon  said let my soul die with the phelishtim. it was of for him to be destroyed as long as he could take  down the dark side while at it.] That is: it was worth it to make sure that idolatry would never again be a part of the accepted teaching of Torah in Israel

But that has become weakened. Now idolatry is very much an essential element of Torah as taught in the religious world. This is because the signature of the Gra was ignored and so idolatry is now a part and parcel of Torah as taught in the religious world.

[The basic event that I am referring to here is that that king got rid of all idolatry in Israel, and right after he died his sons took over and the Temple was destroyed and his children were either killed r became servants in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar.

there are many values that are true but not reducible to feeling nor reason.

Even though the Kant-Friesian School of thought of Kelley Ross is based on Leonard Nelson and Fries, it also has a few additions like the idea of that there are many values that are true but not reducible to feeling nor reason.
This seems like an important aid to self-understanding.
At least for me, it helps explain how during one period of time I might have a spark of the need to learn Gemara. At a later time, I might have a different spark. It explains a bit how Mozart, may have been talented, but his music is not reducible to talent.

That is there are objective values--not just values reducible to reason.
 

[It is hard to see philosophers as being on the same page, but you can actually see the importance of the Kant Friesian School by the critique that Robert Hanna presents on Analytic Philosophy.

Christians have an understanding of Jesus that suffers from two weak points. One is that Paul had what looks like a very different understanding of the commandments of Moses than did Jesus.

On one hand the audience of Paul was gentile and the audience of Jesus was Jewish, so by that in itself there is bound to be a discrepancy.

But even allowing for that does not really get to the degree of Paul's being downright against keeping the Law of Moses.
I am sure that reasonable answers have been proposed for this. However I want to point out now that regardless of how you evaluate Paul, the approach of Jesus himself could not have been more clear One must keep all the commandments including those from the words of the scribes. ["The scribes sit in Moses's seat, therefore all that they teach and command that you must listen and obey."]

All the controversies that are in the Christian world could be easily answered by this one simple observation.

[In Bava Batra: "Three are called by the name of G-d, tzadikim, Jerusalem,.." But no one prays to Jerusalem. It is more or less a Plotinus approach that they emanate from God.]

Litvak yeshivas tend to be a mixed bag.

Litvak yeshivas tend to be a mixed bag. Not all perfect,  but they have a lot of good. The main good is they introduce one to authentic Torah,- Torah as opposed to Torah of the Sitra Achra (Torah of the realm of Satan). [i had the great good fortune to have been in to great Litvak yeshivot, the Mir and Shar Yashuv]
But if you realize from where the good energy of the great yeshivas derives from--the Gra, you ought to be able to bypass any institution and simply work on Torah yourself with the need of any group.--Just by following the path of the Gra yourself.

The trouble seems to be that they really do not follow the Gra fully--which anyway I understand can be hard to do. After all the signature on the letter of excommunication is a start. Next would be the individual to get through the two Talmuds with Tosphot, Pnei Moshe, Maharsha and the two sets of midrashim, legal and agadic.]

[I would also add the Hidushim of Rav Chaim of Brisk and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.

In high school, communism and Leftist ideas were being introduced way before people knew that the education system had been infiltrated and seeded by the Frankfurt School.

In high school, communism and Leftist ideas were  being introduced way before people knew that the education system had been infiltrated and seeded by the Frankfurt School. So on one hand American Classical  Education retained some of its structure. For example: as a senior, I took English Literature, and we learned Chaucer. And as a sophomore we learned, The Book of Job. But also Camus!! How did he replace Shakespeare?
[Note--my teacher for Chaucer said in the short story about the cook that used lots of spices, the intent of Chaucer was to be ironic. [Meaning-- that he was a incompetent cook covering it up with spices]. I think this is incorrect. In the Middle Ages a bag of spices was worth a small fortune. Spice was the reason for going to India, and later was the motivation of Magellan to find a fast route to the Spice Islands. The average diet was bland. People would pay tremendous sums for spices especially pepper.


So how did Marxist ideas take over the Department of Education in the USA?

I had a friend who used to be in the KGB, who told me that he thought the KGB simply did not have the means to cause all that on its own. And I tend to agree. It had to have been native, naive Americans.

But after my own studies over the years, I was pretty sure that Marxism simply did not hold water.
[It is based on the Labor Theory of Value. That theory says that the amount of value something has depends on how much labor went into it. Since that value comes only from the physical labor, therefore the owner of the factory is extracting excess value from the workers to feed himself and give them low wages. However that theory is false. If a worker works on making a needle 24 hours a day. That does not make people want the needle more than if he worked on it for two minutes. ]

However being in the former USSR, I realized that there was a stabilizing element to the chaos that existed before and after the collapse.  No one ever told me things were better after the fall of the USSR. No one. So I realized that a lot depends on the people and situation. When things are in chaos and you need wide agreement of people to a central authority, then Marxism, though false, gives a core belief that will unite people--kill the filthy rich and take their stuff. At least you get the vote and then can impose order.
And being in Ukraine, I noticed a lot of people like to steal just by force of habit. It is not at all a kind of place that an American Constitution could have worked. Once you get a certain percentage of the population that like to steal, then the fact that the majority are angels makes the whole system fail. 

So I can see the point of the Bolsheviks in the USSR.
But the same system that the Left is trying to impose on the USA will result in the collapse of the USA. Personally, I would arrest every single rioter and put him on trial for treason.

x4 B Flat Major. This surely needs editing but I have been  sick and not putting any music on the internet. So at this point it seems to me it about time I put just anything on line.

[Some thoughts---  the last 6-8 time needs development. The measures need trimming. I also think the cello needs to be in part B. not just part A. Lots of other things that I just can not decide right now.]


x6

Universities  had their origin with Plato's Academy. But there was no way to get to the truth of things back then by experiments. Still truth was the goal. [The only tool was logical analysis started by Socrates.] And that goal remained the prime value in universities in the West. But also there were small study groups that collected around people like Peter Abelard. And in the High Middle Ages these small groups coalesced to become the Medieval University. Their prime goal was the furtherance of Christ.[Still the official motto on some American universities]  But that was thought to be compatible with Reason--at least possible. [But this marriage was always  shaky. From around 200 AD up until 1200 AD they were going with Plato and Plotinus, but that never worked well. It brought multiplicity into the God-Head, and that according to Torah completely out of the question. So Aquinas made a radical break with the past, and started on the path to combine Faith with Reason based on Aristotle's . [I.e imminent realism--that universals are real and they depend on individuals, Ex. There can not be blue without a blue object. But blue is real. Also are trees. and lots of things which have "universals in common." Furthermore there are formulas which are a different kind of universal. ]  In so doing he was borrowing from the Muslims who had already been going with Aristotle as opposed to Plato for a good long time. [However Aquinas also added a great deal of body to the idea of natural law.]  [The Muslims I imagine probably found the simplicity of God a lot easier to deal with in an Aristotelian framework. and I guess that Aquinas just came to the same conclusion.]

In any case, modern universities no longer value truth except in certain specific STEM departments. Now the major ball player on the field is the VICTIM. And how does one qualify for the greatest victim? By making false accusations. And when the Greatest Victim changes, the old victim gets forgotten. Or more often actually deposed of after he (eer.. I mean "it") has lost his credibility and usefulness.

The classic virtues love, generosity, prudence, humility as all gone, out with the do-do bird.
Now its is power is the prime goal and the way one gets to super-power is by playing the Super Victim.
The psychosis of lust for power has an origin in Nietzsche.  So that does not make much sense. e.g. You are a roommate. You want everyone to share the responsibilities and also the benefits. But that does not mean that is the Reason for being roommates.

The Left always wants one and the same thing. Tear down the old system and put a "Dream Land" in its place. All the benefits also with all your freedoms. How nice if true! But everywhere and everything the Left has brought into it Utopia it been at the cost of mass murder. 100, million just between Mao and Stalin alone. And totalitarianism. ]
The lust for power is not nice. If you meet someone on the street and ask them "What do you value most in life?" And let's say he answers you, "Power. I want power. Absolute Power. And to stop at nothing to get it." You would take a few slaw steps backwards to get away from them as quickly as possible."
But He wins in the election because he promises everything that everyone wants: guaranteed income food medicine. But what you might do is to emphasize the classical values--not promise more money

My high school teacher brought up a hypothetical question. They had discovered a point in the brain that if stimulated brings one bliss.. Let's say you could just carry around a small transistor and stimulate that place any time you wanted? Would you want that?

In the very first Star Trek this was the exact theme. Better to have reality, or a blissful dream world--but not a real world?

I find it unlikely that the Gra would have agreed to making Torah into a shovel to dig with, a money making machine. To receive money thankfully that is offered is one thing. To demand it is another.

Even though going with the Gra I think is important, that does not mean that everything in the Litvak yeshiva world would be thought OK by him.
For example we know in Torah there is such a thing as "Hamas" חמס which is someone takes something that belongs to someone else, but then pays for it. That is to say there is a difference between giving willing as opposed to having something taken for you..
So when a religious party can force the government to give them money which is in clear violation of this Torah rule. [You can not use Torah to make a living with. Much worse is if one used Torah as an excuse to do Hamas (Violence).
The fact that the system of government is flawed in such away that allows this kind of abuse does not make it morally correct. If the form of government would make something correct the Nazi Germany would be above reproach.]

Rather, there is such a  thing as objective morality which does not depend on what people think or how they vote. Right is right and wrong is wrong.

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication is also ignored and that does not make it any less valid or relevant now than it was then. People ignore it, and lose their divine souls and become demon possessed.

[A slight exception is Rav Nahman would is OK]
I find it unlikely that the Gra would have agreed to making Torah into a shovel to dig with, a money making machine. To receive money thankfully that is offered is one thing. To demand it is another.

Authentic Torah is what one gets in the path of the Gra

Authentic Torah is what one gets in the path of the Gra [Eliyahu Gaon of Villna]. This path became the basis of the Litvak Yeshiva world. But there are  areas where the Gra is ignored even there. The reason is that people tend to put feelings above thinking. So when they ignore reason because of feelings  this leads to losing real Torah. This is how the religious world today is mainly going with the Torah of the Sitra Achra. [Dark Side].
What I recommend is to stick with the path of the Gra as closely as possible. To get back to authentic Torah.
Now in the path of the Gra there are two aspects. One is fast learning and the other is in depth. This is thankfully in fact a regular part of every Litvak yeshiva. The morning hours for in-depth learning and the afternoon for fast learning. Fast learning means to get through the basic set of the Oral Torah at least once. That is the two Talmuds, and the halachic and agadic midrashim. [Sifrai, sifra, mechilta are the halachic midrashim. Midrash Raba, and Midrash Tanchuma are the midrash agada.]

The Gra also emphasized the [seven wisdoms] as the criteria for understanding Torah, That is the natural sciences. Not the pseudo sciences taught in American universities. Psychology is an example of pseudo science. Social studies are are not even that. The humanities and social studies are both pure garbage. And produce pure garbage]

Lemaitre discovered the big bang before that in 1927 but in his article in Nature wrote that time and space could only begin to exist after their were already enough quanta around to justify their existence.

Space is an odd kind of thing as Kant noticed. And Lemaitre also in 1931. Lemaitre discovered the big bang before that in 1927 but in his article in Nature wrote that time and space could only begin to exist after their were already enough quanta around to justify their existence.

You can see this in the EPR experiment that shows that time and space do not exist for particles until they are measured. [Some people think it shows non locality. But that is wrong. It might show that or that time and space do not exist before measured. But we know locality is right because of GPS satellites which are a dramatic proof of relativity.]

You can also see this in protons. Protons must know that they travel in space since they originate at some point and when they collide with something they cease. So they know they are going somewhere. But they also know they travel at the speed of light so time for them does not pass. So from their point of view they get from here to there instantly. But they also know they can not travel instantly anywhere. Even at the speed of light they still do not get anywhere instantly. Therefore from the point of view of  a proton, space does not exist. There is some sub-layer underneath space that space is superimposed on.

[ In String theory you have extra dimensions. But these dimensions are all directions of space and time. They are all coming out of a deeper level  that comes before space and time.

Rav Maasud Abuchazeira and his son Rav David.

You can see the fact that honor of one's parents is more severe than is commonly known from the rebellious son.
It is a lot easier to incur the death penalty for disobeying one's parents than people are aware of. It does not need a lot of conditions. That is you need the rebellious son to take something of his father's without permission. [That is stealing]. And then you need him to buy wine and meat. [To go shopping with the money]. Then the parents bring him to a small court of three judges and they give the son lashes. If the son does it again, they take him to the larger city court of 23 judges and they give the death penalty to the son. [Every city had a court of 23].

You can see the severity of this also in the events in the life of Rav Maasud Abuchazeira and his son David. Rav David was in fact a very great tzadik. But one day his father said something that sounded like a complaint to Rav David. Rav David asked, "Why does my father complain?" Rav Maasud, Looked at him and said "I had a great diamond, and now I have lost it." [Meaning that David had lost his great spiritual level]. Then David realized what he had done and went into exile. Then after some time he returned home and when he got to the edge of the city he began cawing on his knees until he got to his father and begged forgiveness.

However parents that are wicked are an exception. Even in the strict legal sense. Rav Shach has a section about this issue in his Avi Ezri. 

This is the Age of Disappointment. People get involved in some political or spiritual group with the best of intentions. Then discover the group is based of fraud or some kind of scam.
The good people will leave the group and spend the rest of their lives wondering what went wrong.
   Some might spend their time fighting the group after realizing it was based on lies. Other might just try to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and get on with things.

  This is different than previous generations when there were plenty of all kinds of groups with all types of strange ideas,-but (and this is a big "but") they did not lie about their basic beliefs in order to entice people.

It seems more noble to warn others and to remove the evil. But not everyone is up to that.

[I am thinking about the warning of the Gra. That is the signature on the letter of excommunication. The fact is that was ignored. But now that it is clear that he was 100% right, people ought to themselves repent, and heed his warning and even warn others.]

I am wondering during the Black Plague  in the Middle Ages, did people need to get tested to see if they had it? How can something be a deadly virus, if one needs to be tested to even see if he has it?

the values that the USA was founded on --the Bible and the Enlightenment can and will survive.

So when people go insane what does that mean? I think that it is two things. One is Hegel's dialectics. where God [Absolute Spirit] is working in the world by a kind of thesis anti thesis synthesis process. And combine that with Heidegger that Being is coming into the clearing.

"racism" and categories of sins

I have never been very impressed with the "racism" charge. I have not seen anywhere in the Bible that that is considered a sin.
If it means feeling superior to others because you belong to some racial group or some other group , well why not? Let's say one is an American, and feels superior to others because of the great things America has accomplished. And then someone insults him, "You are an American" or, "You are a patriot," as a slur. Well so what?
Besides that there is no such sin. There are lots of categories of sins. The Gates of Repentance goes into them in detail. [By R Yona of Gerondi]. But racism is not there. Besides that, people ought to welcome it. It is a compliment to feel that your group has accomplished great things.
So if you are a Wasp, White Anglo Saxon Protestant, then feel racist, and proud of your race. When other races have invented anything even a trillion light years away from this then they will also have reason to feel proud of their race.

People do not usually put the Gra and Rav Shach in the same category as Rav Nahman of Breslov. But to me that seems like a mistaken approach. True the Gra did sign the letter of excommunication the herem which certainly has halachic validity and ought to be heeded to at all cost. Still Rav Nahman certainly was not in the category of the herem.

The Gra and Rav Nahman have different areas of emphasis. Rav Nahman with prayer, and the Gra with Torah. Happy is one that can combine both.

I have thought about an idea of Rav Nahman [of Uman and Breslov] that there is always some piece of advice for any problem. He never says this in so many words but it is implicit in all of his writings.
Not just the Sefer HaMidot where in fact you have about a thousand individual bits of advice for a whole assortment of problems. But you can see in events reported about him that he was always looking for some kind of advice that would help people in some way or another.
It usually has mostly to do with some positive commandment. So in terms of "sweetening of judgements" [that is for cases where a person feels everything is going wrong with his life]]

But most of these pieces of advice I think have to be done over a period of forty days in a row or more.
Still the idea seems powerful to me and it has stuck with me for a few years.

Now I think there is one major piece of advice I believe has saved me from countless problems and enemies. To speak the truth always at all cost.
But there are other bits of advice I have not seen so much in Rav Nahman but more in the Gra that struck me at also being extremely powerful. Learning Torah along with trust in God.
This I saw in practice while at the Mir in NY. people would learn Torah and put their trust in God to help with making a living and somehow that always worked out. No one ever starved. They all got married and had good children --all the while doing nothing but learning Torah and as for making a living the attitude was "God will help"
I feel this is true and great. But I would like to say that I think Physics and Mathematics are part of learning Torah in terms of this advice. That is also to learn Physics and no worry if you will understand or not or if will help in terms of making a living. Just for its own sake,

I would like to also mention  coming to Israel can be a great help based on a few statements of Rav Nahman about Israel being the place of miracles. And start a Beit Midrash HaGra and Rav Shach. --so that people learn authentic legitimate Torah.[There is no patent on teh name of the Gra and Rav Shach.\]

In the Torah, there is a general rule that when one is extra strict about any commandment, that brings him to afterward nullify the commandment completely. [

In the Torah, there is a general rule that when one is extra strict about any commandment, that brings him to afterward nullify the commandment completely. [This is from the sages and brought in many books of Musar.]
In Torah the rule is "Do not add nor subtract from the commandments." [Deuteronomy 6] This is one of the reasons why the religious world is kind of "off." By adding restrictions, they end up transgressing everything in such a way that all the religiosity is paper thin. From the clothing and outwards. Not the inside.

battle and war for the soul of the USA

What is going on in the USA is that there is already a change of regime. You might be confused when the Left demands there be no police. That sounds like no law and order. But that is not it at all. The Left does have a police, that is the mobs destroying white people and business. The mob is their police. But not just the mob. Already they own the judges and courts and even the Supreme Court. So in essence the battle and war for the soul of the USA is lost. If a white person defends his or her life, they are guilty of assault. Anything any white person  says is easily dismissed instantly with four words "You are a racist."

In terms of a plan of action, my recommendation is to learn Torah [especially the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach] and to trust in God.

I think things would never have gotten this far if people had learned Torah. Marxism could never have even gotten started if people had been aware of the commandments "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet." [And if you learn even one page of Bava Metzia it is impossible to miss this.]

People would never have made an issue of slavery in the first place.
And there never would have been adopted all the principles of the Left that go directly against the laws of Moses.

[ The fact that a lot of Americans are Christians is not the issue. Just because people are Christian does not make the commandments null. No Christians held that way until recently.
Rather there was a distinction made between ritual law and natural law that was stated by Saadia Gaon and Aquinas. From the Pilgrims down until around 1920 the USA was going with biblical principles. \

[I might add here that Russia already knows about the insanity of Marxism. It would be nice if there would be some kind of alliance between Russia and the USA. ]

 I just wanted to jot down my basic interpretation of Hegel, Heidegger, and Leonard Nelson.

It is not very academic but it is way I see them. It is all contained in one word: Plotinus. That is his neo Platonic system. (1) The One, (2) Logos, Reason, (3) Being.

So to me when ever I look at Hegel I see a modification of Plotinus. That is a modification that had to happen after Kant's three critiques. Hegel gets from Being up back to the One. And he does this by means of the Dialectic.

Heidegger is a bit different. He gets from Being to Logos. That is most clear in his debate with Ernst Cassirer. He sees Kant as dealing with the question of life, not knowledge as one aspect of life. [AS you can see also in his Being and Time.] He like Schopenhauer put the main emphasis on the first Critique before the revised edition. His answer  is that Being uses time to manifest itself, to come into the meadow. And the Transcendental Deduction of Kant is to get from Logos to Life [Logos to Being]. That is how Heidegger understands the synthetic a priori. [See that debate with Cassirer.]

Then Leonard Nelson [based on Fries but going beyond him], shows that not only is there non intuitive immediate knowledge [faith], but that has to come before reason and before empirical knowledge.

So maybe it is just me, but I see Western Philosophy after Kant to be foot notes to Plotinus.

Apparently it takes a certain amount of spiritual awareness to be able to tell who is  a true Torah scholar from the realm of holiness and who is a Torah scholar demon as Rav Nahman of Breslov points out. In those two sections LeM I:12 and I:28 he in fact does not give any hints about how to tell the difference. But I recall that in LeM II:1 he in fact does point out traits that one can hold onto that give one the ability to discern.

I might hold that the Lithuanian yeshiva world would be clear from this kind of problem, but the problem is that by ignoring the cherem signed by the Gra the Sitra Achra got into the Litvak world also.  So what one can do? Well clearly the best idea is to learn Torah at home. Go through the two Talmuds and the Midrashim. Another suggestion would be to start a Beit Midrash on the name of the Gra.  [With of course, Rav Nahman's books would be allowed. That would be different from for example the Yeshiva of Rav Silverman in the old city of Jerusalem.]

But the main point I want to bring out is that trusting any religious authorities at all is tied by too much danger. As far as I can tell the majority might be Torah scholars that are demons. Who knows? And once there is a majority then how can you trust any? Frankly the whole religious world seems a bit creepy. So it is better to simply learn Torah and Musar of Rav Israel Salanter at home and teach your own kids at home.

[In any case there is an obligation to get through the oral law which means the two Talmuds, the halachic midrashim and the agadic midrashim. So the best way to do that without distractions is at home.

There is a difference between keeping Torah in truth and the false appearance of Torah of the religious world. Not that this always was the case. But that was the point of the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.  That is to make this difference clear.

The result of his signature being universally  ignored created the situation that the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] got inside and took over the religious world.

[However I think that Rav Nahman was not included in the excommunication since one day I was walking around the old city of Jerusalem and happened into a small library that had the very famous book that printed all the different letters of excommunication plus and the word for word testimonies that were collected in Vilna. So I saw the actual wording if the letter that the Gra signed. Rav Nahman  would not have come under that heading. See for yourself if you are interested.]

At any rate, the actual result is that in order to keep Torah one has to run away from the religious as far as possible,

Lemaitre already back in 1932 said that time and space come into existence only after there were plenty of quanta.
This goes well with Bell's inequality which nature violates. [the Aspect experiment of 1982].

So not that nature is non local. Rather particles do not have classical values in space and time before measured. [That is before they interact with the macroscopic world. It is not as if they need to be seen by a physicist in  order for their wave function to collapse.] [As Kant already indicated that space and time is how we measure things. But with Kant they also exist, but we do not really know what they are. i.e. with Kant the dinge an sich exist, but we do not have access to what they really are.] 

Dr Kelley Ross shows that QM corresponds to Kant's approach. This is a relief from other "philosophers" that imagine they can refute QM before understanding it.

See the Green talk with De'hooft. 

x3 music file

x3 A Major

Can an IOU serve as money?

Can an IOU serve as money?
Let's say two people own a slave, and one lets him go. So now he is 1/2 slave and 1/2 free. According to Beit Hillel [Tractate Bava Batra page 13] he works for himself one day, and for his master on every other day.
Beit Shamai said but then he can not get married. That is, a gentile slave can not marry a Israelite woman. And a freed slave can. So as a slave he could have his slave wife and not an Israelite. As a freed slave he can only marry a Israelite. So he would be stuck. So Beit Shamai says the owner must let him go and the slave writes  a document (an IOU) for the money that is owed.

But we know a slave only goes freed in one of three ways; (1) A document letting him go, (2) money or (3) injury [24 types].

So here there is no document letting the slave go. Just an IOU. So that must be considered  as worth money  שווה כסף

[I am being short here as this comes up in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri in the beginning of Laws of Selling. In other contexts clearly an IOU is not money. In Tractate Kidushin [see pages 5 and 8 and 47], the Rashba and Ramban that marrying a women by an IOU does not work.]




[Just as a side issue, it does look to me that Abraham Lincoln, really could not free the slaves by means of a proclamation. Certainty he did not expect that the slaves would then turn around and become the masters of the whites. -forcing whites to work for them by the welfare state. And now becoming the ipso facto masters of white people. It is unlikely that Lincoln would have agreed to this.] [The 14 Amendment signed by the southern states under force can not be thought to be valid.]  

The world is being taken over by Lucifer.

The world is being taken over by Lucifer. The question is what to do about it. Learn Torah was the basic advice of the Gra except that I would like to expand his definition of learning Torah to include Physics. {This is based on a few authorities but not all. Clearly Ibn Pakuda חובות הלבבות is on one side. Ramban (Nahmanides), Rashba on the other. Still I have good reason to think Ibn Pakuda was right.]