i37 Music file [i37 in midi format] written Jan 2013. i37 in nwc
My Musical approach was developed to a large degree by my dad who gave me records of Mozart, and also the high school music teacher, Mr. Smart who had this sort of infectious love for classical music that I think got into me.
I realize that the USA rose to power because they placed the major emphasis on competence. The ability to do stuff. So people like my dad who were good at inventing stuff were rewarded. Gender studies did not count for anything. So to me it seems clear that for the USA to retain its position, it must reemphasize STEM studies.
But many people have trouble with STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering Mathematics] So what I think to solve this problem is '"to say the words and go on." To learn the subjects even if you think you do not understand. מה גורם לצדיקים שיתבזה שולחנם לעתיד לבוא? מיעוט אמונה שהייתה להם בעצמם "What causes to the righteous that their table is ruined in the future? The lack of faith they have in themselves."You have to have faith in yourself--that even though you think you do not understand, to believe that you really do, and that the learning is absorbed.
I realize that if learning and understanding Torah is not a goal to someone, then the idea of Rav Nahman of saying the words and going on will not amount to much--or to anything. One has to have had the will and desire to learn Torah, first in order for this to matter.
And that goal I can not relate well to people. The best I have been able to come up with is the Kant Friesian approach of Dr. Kelley Ross, about the importance of knowledge that we know, but not by the senses nor by reason. But even though this kind of knowledge is close to faith, it is not the same.
It was more or less invented to bypass problems that Kant never solved about how we know the categories. [Kant has a list. That is his own list but more or less it is like quantity, quality space time causality which are closely related to Aristotle's ten categories ] [Kant's argument is surprisingly unconvincing..] ]
And this school of thought has had an odd sort of history. starting with Fries. That ended soon. Then Fischer sunk the last nail into it. Then Leonard Nelson revived it, while against Relativity. That was corrected by Gretta Hermann who was great in many ways, but was not going with Nelson on major points. And I have a tremendous respect for this school of thought, but I just can not agree with the total dismissal of Hegel that is a fundamental axiom. To me it seems that Hegel is simply dealing with different issues.
i32 [i32 in midi format]this is from around Jan. 2013 i35 [This is also from the same time period].] [i35 in midi]
r87 midi music file Again I mention that I am sharing this because I am not writing anything new, so I decided to look into old files to see if there is anything worth sharing.
[I was just writing the music for me. Only now that I seem to have run out of steam, I decided to go and share. But that also means I have to edit! And that means every single piece needs to be worked on before it can be presented.]
e69 midi file [e69 mp3] [e69 nwc format]written in Uman right before I came to Israel for a year in Netivot I kind of regret that in my learning session with David Bronson we stopped in towards the end of Bava Metzia page 116. I was really hoping to get to page 119 with him because of the astounding fact that he could see into the depths of the sugia almost without trying. page 119 is important because there is the argument about דורשין טעמה דקרא We go by the reason for the law, not the literal meaning of the words. And even though I was able to learn what Rav Shach had to say about that subject in the Avi Ezri, I still believe that if I merited to learn that subject with Bronson, I would have seen the almost infinite depth in Tosphot. [And also the next page with those important Tosphot.] חבל על דאבדין It is upsetting to lose ideas and understanding of the depths of those sugiot/subjects that I could have learned and shared with others.
There is a kind of proof that mysticism, as interesting as it might be, leads to the destruction of one's soul. This ironically enough is from the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria himself] There are three books that explain verses of the Torah from the Ari written by Rav Chaim Vital. At the end of the Torah on the verse יערוף כמטר לקחי [my doctrine will pour/murder like rain] refers to those that learn mysticism before having fulfilled all the conditions of fasting and separation from this world, and also having finished the two Talmuds in depth.
[Is there a solution to this problem? I am not sure. The Shelah [Shnei Luchot Habrit] brings the idea one should not stroll in Pardes unless he has spent most of the day in Gemara.
Wyatt Earp decided to get some "culture" , so he and his friend bought a set of Shakespeare. After some time someone asked him what he thought of Shakespeare. Answer: "That feller Hamet was sure talkative. He would not have lasted long in Kansas."
And that of course was the whole issue with Earp. When someone decided to interview him for a book of his life story Earp had only three words he would answer to any question. "Yep", "Nope", and "Don't recall."
I learned this lesson in a different way in the LeM of Rav Nahman, vol I:6 that hold that by silence one merits to his bat zivug. [soul-mate] [Not in so many words but, in a later Torah lesson he says that Torah lesson vol I:6 holds the intensions of Elul and the intensions of Elul are good for finding one's bat zivug.]
I do not see how people can distinguish between civilians and military in the Ukraine. My own landlord in the Ukraine said to me openly that if the Russians would ever come there he would sniper them from his windows.
And for many years people that were in the majority in the cities saying privately [to me] that things were better under the Russians.
In the open marketplace I could not find a single person that said things were better under after the fall of the USSR. Everyone that I asked said things were better then, not now.
SO who speaks for the Ukraine? The average women selling their fruit and eggs at the market who always say things were better under Russian rule, or the violent fanatics that threaten to murder anyone who voices support for Russia?
And I can even say why this was the case--the Ukraine was a kind of place of no law. Theft is the accepted norm. I can see that Western people that volunteer will be surprized when they find their money and possessions stolen --when they thought they were coming to help the Ukrainians.
In the book of Job we find God sided with Job, even though he was wrong. Not with Elihu the son the Esau even though he was right. Elihu had said exactly as the Gemara itself says אין ייסורים בלי עוון There are no afflictions without sin. So we see it is not what one believes or says that is the key difference. Rather it is what one is, his essence--his deeds.
[I am referring to the end of the Book of Job where God sides with Job in spite of everything his friends had said was true.
Acta non verba-actions not words is what matters.
שיחו בכל נפלאותיו (speak of all of His Wonders) psalms105 It is hard to imagine that to speak of the wonders of God would not include his wonders in the way He created the Universe. The Laws of Physics. And Rav Nahman clearly had a idea about this saying the there is hidden Torah in the ground. טבעו בארץ שעריה [the gates of Torah sank into the ground. Now the hidden Torah is sunk into the Laws of Physics.]
[I am referring to one of the last Torah lessons in volume one of the LeM]
z63 midi file e21 in midi
s7 [in midi]
I want to thank those looking at my blog for your interest in the music has given me motivation to continue to edit older pieces. But z63 is more recent. e21 is from around 2005 but needed editing
These were written in Uman. I did not find any place where I could sit and learn Torah as I had desired, so I just found some corner in Uman where I could spend some time learning Torah with a learning partner [David Bronson who spent all of his time at the ziun of Rav Nahman], and then spend my time alone writing music. [That learning session with Bronson was only an hour a day, but I gained a tremendous amount by learning from him.]]
Even though I saw the greatness of Torah, it was clear that people that assumed the role for pay of religious teachers were what Rav Nachman said were Torah Scholars that are demons. LeM I:12, 28 [note 1] it was clear to me that there is a difference between those that learn Torah for its own sake and those that get a paid salary for being religious teachers. But I am in no way against kollel leit [people] that are learning Torah for its own sake--but to do so much accept a kollel check.
Rather the issue is the phony semicha ordination that is meant to defraud people. For real semicha ceased sometime during the period of the amoraim [sages of the Talmud]. Anything called ordination now automatically shows its bearer to be a fraud. [One should run from anyone bearing the title of a religious teacher, as one runs from cancer.]
So the issue you might say is that I do not agree with using Torah as a means of making money, but more accurately you should say I saw something off in those that do so. [I simply had no mental tools to understand the problem them in until I saw Rav Nahman's description of Torah scholars that are demons. Then it all started making sense.
[note 1] This issue is brought in other places in the LeM of Rav Nahman. LeM I:8, 61 II:1, 8 and that last one is the last Torah lesson Rav Nahman every said. So he saw this issue as important.]
n65 midi
This is another old file from long ago. I just decided to share old files with people since I am not writing anything new. I am what Rav Nahman calls in מוחין דקטנות [a state of a fallen mind.]
p120 chs mp3 [chs in midi format] s100 [ThisS100 was actually never finished, until I was going through old files and noticed it.]
exodus 4 midi file [There is a story behind this piece exodus 4. I was taking the Greyhound bus back to California after being in Uman for Rosh Hashanah. We got off for a 30 min stop in Philadelphia. As soon as I got off the bus, this song came to me and I spent the whole 30 minutes writing it down, but I could not get on the bus until it was finished and in fact I just finished it and jumped on the bus just as it was pulling out. [And in fact I had no money if I had been stuck.]
Avoda zara23b Rosh Hashanah 13a
To Tosphot in Rosh Hashanah the Gemara in Avoda zara is referring to trees from ancient generations. So they would have been given to Avraham. But it seems like a round about type of way to get to this conclusion. The gemara starts out with "Why did Israel have to burn the asherot when they entered into Israel? After all a person can not cause to be forbidden that which does not belong t him, and the land of Israel was already given to Avraham. But in the conclusion the Gemara wants that the actual trees should be owned by Israel so that there will be an obligation of burning them. If they would in fact have been owned by idolaters, then nullification alone would have been enough.
Plus I am wondering about the problem that no tree can become an ashera if it was planted to e a regular tree since it is like a mountain.
I just got back from the sea where I was thinking about this--so I am cold and tired and not sure if there really is an issue here. It is just that the Gemara starts out with "Were not those trees in the possession of Israel, so how could the Canaanites make them forbidden.?" Well what bothers me is this is exactly what the Gemara wants. It wants the trees to be in the possession of Israel so that they become an idol of a Israel and thus be obligated in being burned. That would not be the case if those trees were idolatrous trees of the Canaanites in which case a simple act of nullification would have been enough.
Maybe the way to understand the Gemara is like this: Why did Israel have to burn the idolatrous trees when they entered into the land of Israel? After all the trees belonged to Israel since the land was given to Avraham. And no one can cause to be forbidden that which does not belong to him. Answer: the trees in fact belonged to Israel and they were forbidden because of the law that if a Israeli makes an idol and someone else comes and worships it, that idol or statue becomes forbidden --and in fact is forbidden as an idol of a Israeli which must be burnt. But because of the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah we know that not all the trees belonged to Israel because, the Canaanites in fact owned the trees that they planted. So the Gemara in Avoda Zara is only referring to the trees that were in the land at the time it was given to avraham.
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עבודה זרה כ''ג ע''ב ראש השנה ע''א To תוספות in ראש השנה ע''א the גמרא in עבודה זרה is referring to trees from ancient generations. So they would have been given to אברהם . But it seems like a round about type of way to get to this conclusion. The גמרא starts out with "Why did Israel have to burn the אשירות when they entered into Israel? After all אין אדם אוסר דבר שאינו שלו, and the land of Israel was already given toאברהם. But in the conclusion the גמרא wants that the actual trees should be owned by Israel so that there will be an obligation of burning them. If they would have been owned by idolaters, then nullification alone would have been enough.
I just got back from the sea where I was thinking about this--so I am cold and tired and not sure if there really is an issue here. It is just that the גמרא starts out with "Were not those trees in the possession of Israel, so how could the Canaanites make them forbidden.?" Well what bothers me is this is exactly what the גמרא wants. It wants the trees to be in the possession of Israel so that they become an idol of a Israel and thus be obligated in being burned. That would not be the case if those trees were idolatrous trees of the Canaanites in which case a simple act of nullification would have been enough.
Maybe the way to understand the גמרא is like this: Why did Israel have to burn the אשירות when they entered into the land of Israel? After all the trees belonged to Israel since the land was given to אברהם. And no one can cause to be forbidden that which does not belong to him. Answer: the trees in fact belonged to Israel and they were forbidden because of the law that if a Israeli makes an idol and someone else comes and worships it, that idol or statue becomes forbidden , and in fact is forbidden as an idol of a Israeli which must be burnt. But because of the גמרא in ראש השנה we know that not all the trees belonged to Israel because, the Canaanites in fact owned the trees that they planted. So the גמרא in עבודה זרה is only referring to the trees that were in the land at the time it was given to אברהם
Plus I am wondering about the problem that no tree can become an אשירה if it was planted to be a regular tree since it is like a mountain.
עבודה זרה כ''ג ע''ב ראש השנה ע''א לתוספות בראש השנה ע''א הגמרא בעבודה זרה מתייחסת לעצים מדורות קדומים. אז הם היו ניתנים לאברהם. אבל זה נראה כמו דרך סביבתית להגיע למסקנה הזו. הגמרא מתחילה ב"למה היה צריך ישראל לשרוף את האשירות כשנכנסו לישראל? הרי אין אדם אוסר דבר שאינו שלו, וארץ ישראל כבר ניתנה לאברהם?" אבל לסיכום, הגמרא רוצה שהעצים בפועל צריכים להיות בבעלות ישראל כדי שיהיה חיוב בשריפתם, אילו היו בבעלותם של עובדי אלילים, אזי היה די בביטול לבדו. בנוסף אני תוהה לגבי הבעיה ששום עץ לא יכול להפוך לאשירה אם הוא היה נטוע כדי להיות עץ רגיל מכיוון שהוא כמו הר.
בדיוק חזרתי מהים שבו חשבתי על זה - אז אני קר ועייף ולא בטוח אם באמת יש כאן בעיה. רק שהגמרא מתחילה ב"האם לא היו העצים הללו ברשות ישראל, אז איך יכלו הכנענים לאסור אותם?" ובכן מה שמפריע לי זה בדיוק מה שהגמרא רוצה. היא רוצה שהעצים יהיו ברשות ישראל כדי שיהפכו לאליל של ישראל ובכך יחויבו בשריפתם. זה לא היה המקרה אילו העצים הללו היו עצי אלילים של הכנענים ובמקרה זה היה די בפעולת ביטול פשוטה.
אולי הדרך להבין את הגמרא היא כזו: מדוע נאלצו ישראל לשרוף את האשירות כשנכנסו לארץ ישראל? הרי כל העצים היו שייכים לישראל מאז ניתנה הארץ לאברהם. ואיש אינו יכול לגרום לאסור את אשר אינו שייך לו. תשובה: העצים היו שייכים למעשה לישראל והם נאסרו בגלל ההלכה שאם ישראלי עושה פסל ובא מישהו אחר ועובד לו, אותו האליל או הפסל הופך לאסור, ולמעשה אסור כאליל של ישראלי. שחייב להישרף. אבל בגלל הגמרא בראש השנה אנחנו יודעים שלא כל העצים היו שייכים לישראל כי הכנענים היו בעלי העצים שהם נטעו. אז הגמרא בעבודה זרה מתייחסת רק לעצים שהיו בארץ בזמן שהיא ניתנה לאברהם
In the Talmud Yerushalmi it is brought that every word of Torah is worth as much as all the other commandments. But to realize this truth is not always open to everyone. I for one, tasted the "taste of Torah". So I thought to devote myself to learning Torah always. But to do so clearly one needs to marry the daughter of a authentic Litvak Torah Scholar [that goes by the Gra]
The reason the sages recommend to marry the daughter of a Torah scholar is that daughters of amei haaretz [people ignorant of Torah] are hostile to Torah. They will do almost anything to stop their husbands from learning Torah. They might say it is "for parnasah", [they want their husbands to work],but that is just a cover story for public consumption. They really just do not want to see their husband sitting and learning Torah--even if they would already have plenty of money.
In some cases however, to marry a bat talmid chacham [daughter of a Torah scholar] is not possible.
Part of the reason is phony Torah scholars תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים Torah scholars from the Dark Side. So one might be offered a shiduch of the Dark Side. [Or a baalat mum, a girl with a hidden defect.]
Even though when I first got to Shar Yashuv [a great Litvak Yeshiva in NY], I did not have anything in mind except to learn Torah, once there and I got a taste of the greatness of Torah, I made it my goal to be sitting and learning Torah my whole life. Later events made that commitment to be difficult to keep. But I still believe in the greatness of that goal. [I had to go to NYU's Polytechnic Institute to learn Physics and thus the idea of sitting and learning Torah became impractical. But I imagine with enough commitment I might still have managed.] See the event with R. Yochanan and his friend that decided to leave off learning Torah to go and make a living. R Yochanan heard the angels. One said to the other: Let us knock this wall over them [and kill them], since thy have decided to leave off learning Torah. The other said, "No. Leave them alone, because one of them will stick with it." R Yochanan heard, his friend did not.
A powerful lesson to be learned for sure. Still, I just was not able to sit and learn. The best I can say is that I consider Physics to be part of Torah based on Ibn Pakuda, the Rambam, even though clearly many [or most] Rishonim disagree.]
I have been looking at music files to share and here are a few
[same piece in midi file form]
I hope to receive the energy to go back and edit these last two. But I thought to share them anyway.
I had a conversation [with Sarah Chaya] in which I tried to defend the point of view of the Rambam concerning Aristotle. My point was that even though the Rambam is Neo Platonic [Plato, Plotinus, and Aristotle} there is a reason to look for modifications of that based on Kant and Fries. Mainly my point was that this the real world, the world of ideas [not this world of shadows] is where real knowledge is. But to Kant that is where we have knowledge only within the conditions of possible experience. It is the idea of Fries that there is access even beyond that realm by means of immediate non intuitive knowledge. So we can have a relationship with God, but not by reason by by a different kind of knowledge not of reason, nor of feeling. A third kind. (The point is this is knowledge of God but not through reason nor any kind of sense perception or feelings.])
Of course we know that the Guide for the Perplexed was a scandal. No one liked the attitude of the Rambam towards a pagan philosopher. But the Ramban/Nahmanidess wrote an impassioned letter to the Baalai HaTosphot in France and Germany saying to leave the Rambam alone--even though the Ramban did not in fact agree with the Rambam about this issue.
No one I have ever tried to explain this to paid the slightest attention--but here I go again. The idea at the end of Laws of Shemita that, "when one who accepts on himself the yoke of Torah, the yoke of work is taken from him. " does not mean to make money by means of using Torah. It means that in some way God will provide. It is not a "heter" [license] to make Torah into a business.
When I first got to Shar Yashuv [a very important Litvak Yeshiva] I had seen a small booklet that was based on the Conversations of Rav Nahman perek 76 about learning fast. [It was emphasizing going through many pages of Gemara every day--But not just that bit having a few sessions also in the Midrashim, and the Yerushalmi and Rif and Rosh etc.] But when I mentioned this to Motti Friefeld, he was emphatic about depth learning with lots of review. Especially the idea of ten times review of everything one learns. [That idea he got from his father the Rosh Yeshiva Rav Freifeld. ]And I am beginning to see the wisdom in that idea of review.
If you are doing a few Tosphot or a long piece in Rav Haim of Brisk or Rav Shach, I have found that reading through them straight and then again the next day and so on and so forth for about a month is a good idea. But When it comes to Gemara, there I found just plowing through the whole tractate with Rashi Tosphot and Maharsha seems best for me. As for the natural sciences, ten times review seems to work best, but only after I have gone though the whole textbook first just saying the words and then going in until the end. Then going back and doing review
Sleep walking into WWIII. This is similar to how the world got into WWI. No one considered the damage. troops from the USA, the UK, and Germany are now involved. Everyone is thinking in terms of small moves. They imagine that their small moves will not be considered to be large threatening moves by the other side. They are turning a local war into a World War.
So the US has cut off Russian oil. So where will they get it? Already the Arab countries have not even bothered to answer the phone when the president calls to ask for a deal with their oil.
The USA is walking into the worst possible nightmare.
It is like the talk representatives of the USA to invite Ukraine to join NATO just a few weeks ago. Did they not think putting nuclear missiles on the doorstep of Russia would provoke a reaction?
Or sending fighter planes to Ukraine? That makes the USA at war with Russia.
The situation in most Ukrainian cities was such that after the USSR, and you asked people when was better, they almost always said things were better in the time of the USSR. But like the time of the civil war of the Whites against the Reds, neighbors would kill each other when they thought their neighbor was on the other side. {I knew the people this happened to.} So even if people would prefer to be back to the way things were during the USSR, they dare not say so openly. –Except to someone like me that they knew would not tell their neighbors about their feelings. There however were exceptions–people that told me if Russia would show up there, they would take a rifle and shoot them.
So what you have is a sort of Hidden Civil War–hidden because it is unknown and hidden from public view. And the Russians were well aware of this from at least back to around 2012.
There were somethings that were odd in Ukraine. Nazi battalions at the public level. There was a lot more than that under the surface. But I do not want to be critical since I knew people there that were angels. So the best thing I think is to lay off and not let a local war become a world war.
Here is a comment by Timmy on the blog of Michael Huemer:
It is possible to serve God with everything. אפשר לעבוד השם יתברך בכל דבר This is an idea brought in the LeM of Rav Nahman in Vol II 44 (and circa 86). Rav Nahman did not hold from looking for extra restrictions.
There was in fact an incident in which Rav Natan [his disciple] was offered to be a rav in some city. He asked Rav Nahman about whether to accept the offer or not.
Rav Nahman asked, "Why not?"
Rav Natan said, "I am afraid of Hora הוראה." [Giving a legal decision.]
Rav Nahman said "As long as there is a posek [authority] to depend on, you can depend on him."
I am not quoting this story exactly but this is the best that I can recall.]
[At that time the word "Posek" referred to Rishonim, However Rav Nahman used the same word to refer to the Shulchan Aruch of Yoseph Karo with its commentaries Shach, Taz, etc.
Even so, carrying in a public domain seems problematic. I know that Some Rishonim hold you need 600,000 to be a public domain, still this seems hard to swallow. I should mention that the Eruv that people put up has nothing to do with a public domain. It helps only for a Carmalit.{ Carmalit is like a מקום פטור a space that is not a public domain nor a private domain.] But real public domain a string can not make into a private domain. The reason I say this is that in tractate Shabat you have lots of discussion about what constitutes carrying in a public domain and no where is it mentioned that the cities in Babylonia were small. The largest citiesz in the ancient world were like Rome with more than a million people. But Sura or Pumbdita or other cities where there were mostly Jews were not more than Athens at its peak of power and prosperity which was about 20,000 But the Gemara goes into the issues of a public domain without mentioning anywhere that that could not have applied to their very own cities. which were less than 600,000
[The issue here is much more important than meets the eye, for it goes to the very root of what is inane and insane about the religious world in their constant search for more and more things to forbid and then claim that it is all from the Torah.]
[This is the core of my critique about the religious world,--they make up restrictions that have no source in the gemara or poskim, and ignore real and actual prohibitions of the Torah or the words of the Scribes. and yet claim to be representing true Torah and want us shimazals to pay for their sitting around all day chatting and claim to be learning Torah.]
What is the status of the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] or the Remak [Moshe Cordoba]-if we notice that the Zohar is not really from R. Shimon ben Yochai? (note 1) But there was a mystic tradition.
I think the closer we get to areas outside of conditions of possibility of experience, the easier it is to get into worlds of delusions. So while the Ari and Moshe Cordoba were great tzadikim, it is hard to distinguish. to get an idea of legitimate continuance of the Ari, it is too easy to get involved in pure delusion. [The best that are okay, are the Reshash (Sharabi), Rav Yakov Abuchazeira, the Ramchal.]
(note 1) the world "although" in the Zohar is always expressed as "with all of this" עם כל דא and that is the Aramaic translation of עם כל זה and that is an expression invented by the Ibn Tibon family of translators during the Middle Ages. Therefore it could not have been written by R. Shimon ben Yochai.
I know that most people are unclear about the issue of three trees. Or at least that is what I imagine to myself. After all I do not see anyone walking around at the sea that is worrying about that confusing issue in Bava Batra page 26. Or maybe they all have it clear so it does no bother them anymore. But at least for me I should say that in spite of my having written a few ideas on the Tosphot, still I am unclear. One thing that has helped is looking at Rav Shach's Avi Ezri on Laws First Fruits.
Just as an introduction let me just bring some basic facts. Ula said one who has owns a tree within 16 amot [circa yards] of the boundary of his friend, can not bring first fruits since he is a thief. [Thank God that someone noticed the problem. Rav Shach brings the Rashba on page 81 that asks this very question. There it says: one who buys tree owns around it כמלא אורה וסלו around it the width of one that plows and his basket. The Rashba asks the obvious question: That is not 16 amot!
Rav Shach himself brings this long and difficult subject and brings a few answers.
That does not look like the Mishna where there is an argument about how close to the boundary of his friend one can dig a pit or plant a tree. R.Yose says he can go right up until the edge, since one plants in hi own, and the other digs in his own.
I wanted to mention that my dad was nothing like the sort of nerdy scientist that people have the stereo type image of. I mean he was the exact opposite. But neither a macho he-man. He came across just as a regular guy. The only perceivable difference between him and the average Joe on the street was that he was a genius when it came to inventing Stuff that the USA government wanted. The Infrared Telescope, satellites using laser communication, the U-2 camera, plus tons of stuff that even to his family he could not say a word about.
I mean--he was not studying when he got home. As I knew him, he did his work at the lab at TRW and when he got home he did not think about it. But I knew that he and my mother were always thinking about how they were raising their children. That was their number one priority.
I see that where my world view disagrees with that of everyone else I meet is concerning the issue of "Bitul Torah". [Note 1]
This does not mean that I learn Torah much at all. And I admit that my idea of what constitutes learning Torah is broader than what most people assume and much narrower also. I include the natural sciences as per the Rambam [in the Laws of Learning Torah Yad Hachazaka concerning what is included in learning Gemara.] And I exclude all the religious babble that is not Torah. [I.e. I only include in Oral Torah the exact books of the Mishna and Talmud and Midrashim. Plus on secondary level the commentaries. Nothing more. That is like the Rambam wrote in one of his letters "Just like one can not add or subtract from the written Torah so one can not add or subtract from the Oral Torah."] [I see all Divine Law as one. The difference is as it applies to different things. Divine Law as it applies to physical things is comes to e known as Physics. As it applies to human relationships and human affairs it is known as Torah.
But what I mean to say is that I see myself obligated in learning Torah and the natural sciences -even when I can not do so. That is to say, I am not looking for ways of having fun. I might need to relax in order to get energy up in order to learn. But my intension is to get up enough energy and enough mental energy to be able to learn.
However I know that most people do not see things in this way. Even those that are sitting and learning most of the day and getting paid to do so. They see themselves as obermenschen. The rest of us plebeians were created to give them money --not to be learning Torah.
So there is almost no point of intersection that I have with almost anyone else--except for those that do learn Torah Lishma.[for its own sake]. And I must add that there certainly are people that learn lishma even though they get a kollel check. But those are people that get the check in order to learn,.
[Note 1] Bitul Torah is the sin of not learning Torah when one has the time to do so. It is not the same thing as the minimum amount one is supposed to learn
One should not get too impressed with spiritual ideas. That is the whole point of the Critique of Pure Reason. So while the ideas of Rav Nahman are great and important in terms of practical advice, there is a limit to how far any ideas in the spirit realm can be taken as accurate. They can only be accurate in the realm of conditions of possible experience. Outside of that we might have knowledge, but nothing like the religious babble.
The religious world is fraught with talk about spiritual ideas that they know nothing about.
Not that you can know nothing about spiritual reality. But that is immediate non intuitive knowledge that we know, but not through sense nor through reason [to Kelley Ross]. And to Hegel reason can reach even the Absolute. but that is not what religious babble is about.
The most important responsibility of parents is to make sure their children grow up in a wholesome, moral society. This is because the influence of parents is highly limited-even in a society of ancient times where the role of parents was highly respected. Nowadays, the role of parents is thought be negative.
הרבה שכנים עושים The priest says to the wayward woman "Confess your sin for neighbors (the general society) have a huge effect. "
\In a similar vein, one might be in a wholesome moral society like a Litvak yeshiva. The responsibility would be to stay within that context even if the parents think that for themselves a different context would be preferable. In fact, this fact alone shows how right the Gra was.
Parents might be highly motivated to do the best for their children, but if they do not know this principle, they are likely to believe what is good for them, is good for their kids. They do not stop and think what kind of group they are in already that is decent and wholesome.
Even if personal experience is not thought to be a proof of anything, for me it does some weight to the approach of the Gra. In the approach of the Gra, learning Torah, even one single word of Torah, is considered to be equal to all the other commandments of the Torah. [This is actually what it says in the Gemara Yerushalmi on that mishna in Peah.] Thus you would hope and expect that after learning Torah lishma [for its own sake] for some years, one would merit to some sort of "Devekut" attachment with God.
For me this actually happened in an instant as I decided to take my family with me to Israel. The second we got off the plane and the wind blew on me, this kind of Devekut began.
And during later times I began to see how the Gra was right in many other ways.
So even if it is desirable not to speak about the depth of one's experience in attachment with God by learning Torah, still if you do not mention it at all, it is kind of like the prohibition of כובש נבואתו.[I forget the actual verse, but the idea is a prophet is not allowed to hide his prophecy.] And one ought not to give the impression that the path of learning and keeping and understanding Torah is intellectual. The truth is the path of the Gra of learning Torah for its own sake is the highest level of spirituality that is possible. Or at least let me say that that is what I have seen.
z66 music file [in midi] z66 nwc format [This has just been sitting, and I have not figured out how to develop it, so I thought I should just share it as it is.] Here is another file from a few years ago. w42 [also in midi] [w42 in mp3][w42 in nwc] I hope to work some more on z66, but at this point I am not sure what to do.
Even though it it seems clear that the Musar movement (to learns the mediaeval books on Ethics)as thought of by Rav Israel Salanter is not all that possible, still I think that it could be given a new beginning with an extra emphasis on this in the great Litvak yeshivot. I suggest instead of the very short periods, 20 minutes before minha (afternoon prayer) and 15 minutes before arvit (evening prayer), why not go back to the way things were when Musar was first introduced in the Litvak yeshivot, two forty minute sessions?
Still i must add here, in the Torah there is a commandment not to add or subtract from the commandments. So the religious world which is constantly adding and subtracting can not be considered to be keeping the Torah even in the most farfetched sense. But they get away with it because most people are not familiar of what the Tora truly says.
In one of the beginning chapters of the Le.M of Rav Nahman of Uman [I forget the number. I think it was around 14] is brought that what is left of a person in the next world is שכל הקנה Acquired Intellect. This concept he brings from The Guide for the Perplexed. What seems significant here is that not every subject that one studies contributes to his everlasting life. For example, how to become an expert at chess would not have anything to contribute to one's life in the World to Come. So just by simple reasoning we can see there is a difference between subjects. So study of how to become a decent person (Musar), we can understand contributes to one's everlasting salvation, since good character traits are not automatically acquired. One needs to pick up good character traits from parents or friends etc. There is no one that makes up their own value system out of thin air. They get it from TV, movies , Internet etc.
Another point is we can see learning the objective knowledge, knowledge that can be easily seen to be of the way God created the world, this knowledge can called the works of God. This object knowledge can be Physics or Mathematics or other aspects of Creation that are not man made knowledge, even though they needed to be discovered by Man.
What can be a defense of faith in the Torah after that many questions are clear. Dr Michael Huemer brings this up and I have thought how to answer this. I have thought if there is some way to express my approach this. I mentioned there in a comment, the idea of the Kant-Fries school of thought. That means a commitment to non intuitive immediate knowledge,(which is similar to faith in that it holds of the categories by knowledge that is known but not known by reason nor experience) plus with the idea of Dr. Kelley Ross this means that the closer one gets to areas of value that are not within the area of conditions of possible experience [with space and time and causality], one gets to contradictions that can not be resolved except by faith. [However, I can not agree that this discounts Hegel. For I see Hegel as being correct that in essence even knowledge of God is possible and necessary as King David said to Solomon, "Know the God of your father, and serve Him."
Plus I ought to mention that I have great faith in God. It seems clear to me that this is a sort of knowledge that is not through the senses nor through reason.
But I do not try to overly strenuously defend faith for I realize lot and most of those with faith have a sort of different kind of problem.- i.e. they think they know that which they do not know. I.e. the religious tend to think they are better and smarter than everyone else, while the opposite is 99% of the time to be the case. [You can see this in the Torah itself. Who were the people that were against Moses? See the Rashi on the very first verse of Parshat Korah. They were the religious leaders- the very heads of the Sanhedrin and smaller sanhedrins. The religious leaders are the enemies of Torah. They have found away to gain power and money by seeming to be smart in Torah.]
It is better to have faith in the way of my parents--to have faith, but not to be making money out of it like the religious do.
Even though the Nefesh Hachaim [by Rav Chaim of Voloshin] is a great and important book, still I have to disagree with one aspect. He says that from the aspect, or point of view of God, there is nothing besides Him. But from our point of view, things are not Godliness.
The problem with this is it does not explain anything. Things are all God, or they are not.
The other problem is that the point of view of the Rishonim was that God created the world from nothing, not from Himself. [Not like a spider that makes its web from itself. God is not a spider. He made the world from nothing., not from himself.] Even the Ari brings this very idea that Creation was from nothing in the very beginning of the Eitz Chaim. The world is definitely not Godliness in the very beginning of the Eitz Chaim. [The reason all this is not clear nowadays is he religious leaders are stupid and do not understand what they are reading.]
Ex Nihilo is the view of Torah.
In the West the fall of the USSR was thought to be a liberating moment. And for many perhaps it was. But when I talked to people on the street the attitude was the opposite. They always said things were better during the time of the USSR. (But they could not say this aloud to others because of fear of being informed on, and often violently attacked. Only to me, a stranger, did they feel safe to express their real feelings.) )And my experience shows this to a large degree.
There was something that was hard to understand that was going on there. All I can say is: "People" is not a term that is interchangeable between one group and the other. Our DNA says a lot about how we act. Just like the chemical composition of water H2O says a lot about how it react to cold--as opposed to H2O2 boiling point.
Slav is not interchangeable with WASP. [What works in the USA or England in not the same thing that can work--over there.] WASP is not interchangeable with black.
[So my impression is not to interfere because in a city like the ones I was in, most people are not at all interested in fighting.] See the verse in Proverbs: כאוחז באזני כלב כן מתערב בריב לא לו "One who gets involved in a fight that is not his is like one who grabs the ears of a dog"
The simple explanation of Torah in the stories is mystic and in the laws-literal. That is the way I understood things. When reading the Ari Isaac Luria, I saw that he was understanding the the simple explanation of the seven days of Creation was that it was referring to the higher sepherot. The point of Torah is the commandments. Those are meant literally, But even the commandments are meant to bring to natural law as we see in the argument between R Simon ben Yochai and the sages about if we go by the reason for the commandments or the letter of the law. But to both the reason is known. So R Shimon says one can take the garment of a rich widow.
Not all secular learning is secular. Even though Rav Nahman and many others say to stay away from secular studies, still not all that is listed as secular is in fact so. On one hand, some are clearly man-made and not a part of Torah, however there are wisdoms that include the wisdom of God. So you find Rishonim (mediaeval authorities) that include Physics in the category of the things one is supposed to learn every day. And among those Rishonim are Ibn Pakuda. the author of the Duties of the Hearts.-
So while in the Mir in NY, one was not allowed to attend Brooklyn Collage while at the Mir, still when I asked the rosh yeshiva [Rav Shmuel Berenbaum] about this policy, he said one can learn Physics for the sake of making a living. But as deep a thinker he was, I think that this distinction he did not make.
אזכור מעללי יה כי אזכרה ממקדם פלאיך "I will mention the wonders of God, for from ancient times I will mention your wonders. The wonders of God hidden in the work of Creation are no less wonderful that if they had been written in the Gemara/Oral Law
I should mention some of the many places in the LeM of Rav Nahman of Uman where learning Physics is thought to be learning the wisdom of God. And that is wisdom that does not depend on the opinion of any person to check and see if it is correct, but rather Nature. One place that comes to mind is טבעו בארץ שעריה "Her gates are buried in the ground." Her gates refers to the depth of understanding of the Torah. They are buried in the ground. This is in Lamentations. That means the depths of knowledge of Torah after the Destruction of the First Temple are buried in the dirt. That is in the very substance of physical matter- that is where to find the wisdom of Torah.
Another place in the LeM is that the hidden Torah in the work of Creation which is the highest Torah.
Another place is that to reveal open Torah to a wicked person would make him worse. So Torah must be revealed to him through secular things.-things that do not seem holy.
The point is there s hidden Torah in mundane things and that one can reveal the hidden Torah inside of secular things. It is possible to serve God through what seem to be secular but in fact in hidden holiness.
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ויתר מהמה בני הזהר עשות ספרים הרבה אין קץ ולהג הרבה יגיעת בשר קהלת י''ב פסוק י''ב This is verse in the Book of Ecclesiastes, "And more so my son be careful. To making many books there is no end and they are a joke and tiring out of flesh."
As my learning partner once told me, "There are too many books." The point is brought out by Rav Shach. He explains books that go into the details of the Gemara -this is a great and important thing. But books that supposedly are about the foundations of faith are a waste of time.
The Midrash Kohelet on this verse says the word "מהמה" is an unusual construction. (It could have said, "מהם.")The reason is to hint to the idea that it refers to מהומה (confusion). Making many books that you see in the religious world just brings more confusion, not clarity.
This is especially so in light of the Rif and Rosh on the Mishna in Sanhedrin (perek Chelek) that explain "outside books" means books that explain the Torah but not based on midrashei Chazal==the explanations of the sages of the Mishna and Gemara.
So outside books does not refer to books on natural science but rather to the vast majority of the stuff the religious are always putting out which all explain the Torah, but never according to any midrash of the sages.
I admit I got tired of the mind tricks the religious are always playing, and decided instead to learn straight Gemara, with the natural sciences, especially Physics and Mathematics. Better to find out what the Torah really says instead of depending on the insane religious world.
The reason to learn Physics is that it does not depend on people's opinions. Thus it connects you what is real. To what is really real, not to people's opinions about what is real. [Besides that there is the point of the Gra that any lack of knowledge in the seven wisdoms results in a hundred times fold lack of knowledge of Torah.]
That is to say, it can be tested. Reality can prove or disprove a theory.
Thus it is objective knowledge not knowledge about what other people think--which is not knowledge at all.
And I should add that I have started with doing the ten times of review of every paragraph. I keep fast learning in reserve, but for now I feel I need to get the idea before going on.]
I do not think people should be paid to learn Torah. See the Gemara Taanit pg 7 side a where the verse is brought יערוף כמטר לקחי מלשון הריגה על הלומד תורה שלא לשמה שנעשית לו סם מוות [My teaching will flow like rain--from the same word root as to break a neck--to kill. That is my teaching will kill like rain. This refers to one whole learns Torah for the sake of making a living. The Torah become for him poison.]
But it is not that I am looking to be extra strict. Rather it seems to me that the mixture of Torah with money is what ruins it.
Rav Nahman of Uman brings a midrash that says after the event of the Golden Calf God says to Israel, "You have lost the 'we will do,' so now at least hold onto 'we will hear.'" אבדתם את הנעשה עכשיו תאחזו בנשמע [note 1] And he brings a proof from that that hearing is even more important than self learning--
I have not mentioned this in this blog before because it is hard to get to hear a true Torah scholar give over Torah lessons. But I know that it was by listening to the son in law of Rav Friefeld in Shar Yashuv, and Rav Shmuel Berenbaum (Mir) and David Bronson in Uman that opened the door for me to any degree of understanding of Torah-- what so ever.
And in fact I found the same thing in my STEM studies. Listening does a lot more than reading the text yourself, even you learn by saying the words and going on for the fast session --or doing lots of review. Listening to is better.
[note 1]At Mount Sinai, Israel had said, "We will do and hear all the words of the Covenant."
his war actually began in 2014 when the US State department backed a coup d’etat in the Ukraine to overthrow the democratically elected pro Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych and installed a pro-west leader in his place. The new pro-west Ukrainian leadership immediately began shelling and killing ethnic Russian separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine. The US immediately began sending arms (6 billion worth) to the new pro-west Ukrainian leadership to help them with their bombing campaign against their fellow citizens. They used these US weapons to kill 14000 ethnic Russians over the course of the last 8 years. Oh yeah, they also used a literal Nazi militia called the Azov battalion and officially incorporated them into their military. The US has literally armed and trained this literal Nazi militia which literally killed thousands of ethnic Russians.This is all known verifiable true information that professor Huemer somehow thought irrelevant.
Even Henry Kissinger has long warned that these actions by the US would lead to a Russian invasion of the Ukraine. This was all predicted. So why did the US do the thing that everyone with a brain knew would lead to a Russian invasion of the Ukraine? Follow the money. War is a racket.
Those $6 billion worth of weapons shipped to the Ukraine during the last 8 years were paid for by you, the US tax payer, and that 6 billion of your money lined the pockets of the American oligarchs (military industrial complex) who profit from war. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Boeing, along with the banks and the energy companies.
The expansion of NATO is all about selling more arms. To join NATO, countries need to have a minimum level of military capability which none of the last 10 countries to join NATO had. They all had to buy the prerequisite NATO war equipment from the above mentioned war profiteers and the tax payers got the bill.
War is a racket. It is the quickest possible upward transfer of wealth known to man. This theory predicted this war and it also predicts how this will all play out and how it is already playing out. This war will be dragged on and on so as to expend the most possible war machine money. Western aligned countries will all buy arms from the private war profiteer companies using tax payer money and ship those arms to the “so brave” Ukrainian people to be used in a long drawn-out hopeless and un-winnable war.
This war could easily have been stopped before it started and it could easily be stopped now by diplomacy. Russia’s pre-war demands were extremely reasonable and easy to accommodate. The opposite happened because the military industrial complex wanted this war. This war is brought to you by capitalism. Don’t take my word for it. You can look all of this up for yourself. This is not some super secret hidden conspiracy theory. It’s all being done in broad daylight. Watch.