In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission signaled that it would begin to crack down on employers who use the criminal histories of job applicants to discriminate against them illegally. ...
So you don't want to hire criminals? Hmmm...
24.6.12
(1)The God of Maimonides and Aristotle
(3) It seems to me that Yaakov along with Job and King David [עד אבא למקדשי אל אבינה לאחריתם in Psalm 73 ] found some way of dealing with these issues. The way they did this was to project God's goodness out over a longer period.
To me it seems that this was the opinion of Job and God himself who agreed with Job.
The friends of Job said: "God is just". God said they were wrong. Point blank. At point blank range. There is no way to misinterpret this because the entire Book of Job shows this.
The first statement is that Job was without sin. So trying to fudge the variables here does not work. Trying to make it that there were other faults is clearly not what it says. Then the whole story of how God caused him to suffer in order to win a debate with Satan just shows the point. Because you want to win a debate with someone does not give you cause to make someone else suffer. This is the clear position of the narrator of The Book of Job
What enrages people is that the Rambam understands the Torah thorough the eyes and world view of Aristotle. And that he is not embarrassed about that makes it worse. At least he could try to hide where he gets his ideas from like everyone else. And what makes it even worse is that no one can claim to understand the Torah better than the Rambam unless they want to seem like an arrogant, ignorant fool. Thus people just ignore the Rambam when it comes to the world view of Torah.
My approach is different than the generally accepted approach. I say the Rambam was right, and everyone else simply does not understand the Torah.
In any case the Rambam's approach to Torah is I think about as close to the actual Torah approach as possible. In another approaches there are strong elements of polytheism. They may not reach pure polytheism but they certainly come close. Today Torah practice often contains polytheist beliefs. In fact it is almost an axiom that the more strict one is in practices the more likely there are underlying polytheistic beliefs. Monotheism is not the same as polytheism except in number. There is more than a quantitative difference. There is a qualitative difference. A difference in world view. And the world view of Torah could not be further away from what people think it is today. It presents a reality that is radically different than what people think the Torah is about.
A Rambam Yeshiva would not be anything like the yeshivas we see today. The books there would be the Mishne Torah and Aristotle's encyclopedic work, Physics and his other encyclopedic work, the Metaphysics. In the beginning of Mishne Torah he writes that the Mishne Torah contains all the Oral Law and take a good look at his language there when he says "One does not need any other book from among them." "One reads the Old Testament and then the Mishne Torah and one does not need any other book from among them for any law," i.e. the books that he just mentioned in that paragraph. However he says one needs no other books to know what the law is (that is what among the laws of the Talmud is the halacha. But that does not mean that one understands the meaning of the law without knowing the Talmud. That is how all sages of Israel after him understood him. That is without the Talmud one can not know the meaning of any law in the Mishna Torah of the Rambam. Just like the Guide require background in Aristotle and Plato so the Mishna Torah requires the background of the Talmud.
So you can ask then what to do after you have read the Mishne Torah? You can finish it in two weeks easily. Start at 9:00 AM and go until 5:00 PM. A normal working day. You can finish it in two weeks. Then he explains you learn "the work of Creation and the Divine Chariot which are the Physics and Metaphysics of the ancient Greeks." Here too he explains this clearly in several places in the Mishe Torah and Guide. And he not ambiguous in any way. You can see what enraged people about the Rambam. He says after one has finished reading the Written and Oral law (as he defines Oral Law to mean his book the Mishne Torah) then he spends all his days learning Physics and Metaphysics.
So clearly a Rambam approach to Torah would be a radical departure from what people think today compromises a Torah approach. And he writes in a letter that the only reason that his book was not accepted as the final decision is because of the arrogance and pride of people wanting honor and power. So when the final redemption comes and arrogance and the evil inclination will be eliminated from the world then his book will be accepted as the objective truth. In the future the Mishne Torah of the Rambam will be considered as the truth and final decision. The son of the Rambam who became the Rav of the city after the Rambam in fact taught the Mishna Torah instead of Mishna or other things that had been customary to teach between the afternoon and evening prayers.
My personal opinion is that Physics today (and Metaphysics) has gone considerably beyond Aristotle and that today the Rambam would hold to learn the Old Testament, then the Mishne Torah and then modern Physics and Kant. (I must admit I have not gotten far in Mathematics or Physics. My impression is they both need about the same amount of time and effort as knowing the Talmud even at the most amateurish level. That is about 20,000 hours each. That is you have the normal 10,000 hours for just barely scratching the surface. Then the next 10,000 hours for gaining expertise. That was in any case my own experience with Talmud and it seems to me that Math and Physics are not all that different.)
And I should mention that this is the way I have accustomed myself to be learning for some time now. The only thing is I admit I do learn Talmud as I thing it is the only way to understand the Mishne Torah. Without knowing from where the Rambam gets his decision, people always misunderstand what he is saying. [And they think they understand.] For that reason, one should also learn Talmud and Rav Shach's commentary on the Rambam together with the Rambam..
[I should mention that this is not how Litvaks go about learning. And for myself if I have any time for learning at all I go straight to the Gemara. Being limited to what you can get I would say get a Bava Metzia (one full Talmud Tractate with Tosphot Mahrasha and Rif.). One Musar book and one of Jewish world view like the Guide for the Perplexed.
22.6.12
Why do I think that Islam is a threat to America? (This is rhetorical question.)
Why do I think that Islam is a threat to America? (This is rhetorical question.)
Ask the Bulgarians, Greeks, Ionian Greeks and Armenians about how different things were. Moslems were murdering, raping scum from the start, and they are murdering raping scum today. Dirty too. Greeks founded and maintained a circle of splendid cities on the perimeter of Anatolia 5 hundred years before Christ. Islam massacred raped and pillaged the city of Smynra (Izmir now) in 1922 and at that time over one million Greeks who had lived in Analtolia for thousands of years were either killed or forced to emigrate to Greece. Similar stories of course with the Armenians, Hungarians, Serbians and Bulgarians, in fact with all unfortunate enough to come in contact with these people.
Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Christian empire till 1453 when 'peaceful' Islam conquered, massacred, raped and pillaged it.
It is today what it always has been, an anti-civilization nomadic primitive and violent culture. Islam has no place and no part in Western civilization and must be entirely removed from Europe and America.
Though I am against Communism- but still it was based on the Enlightenment ideas and trying to create a just society. (And there were abuses that the czars were doing at the time, e.g. getting involved in WWI.) So I see the debate between Communism and Capitalism as an internal thing, a honest disagreement of how to have a working just society. But Islam is different. It is the worst threat to civilization on every possible level. Islam is the number one threat to the continued existence of the human race and planet Earth.
"To begin with, all manner of leftists are stuck with that whole cultural-relativism thing, at least when it operates to the detriment of the white race, Western culture, and America and old American ways. That drives them to cuddle up to primitive non-Western peoples, the more dodgy and exotic the better; and, to the extent they can, import them into the United State." -Nicholas Strackon
Most leftists (including the femi-nazis) are reticent to admit that they will ally themselves with the most barbaric creatures on Earth if they too are anti-Western and anti-American.
They know EXACTLY who/what they are standing with, but will do so anyway.
Just while I am at it let me mention a problem in political philosophy that relates to the inability of the left to see the threat of Islam.
As John Searle put it: "The leading political event of the twentieth century was the failure of ideologies such as communism, and in particular the failure of socialism in its different and various forms. The interesting thing is that we lack the categories in which to pose and answer questions dealing with the failure of socialism. If by “socialism” we mean state ownership and control of the basic means of production, then the failure of socialism so defined is the single most important social development of the twentieth century. It is an amazing fact that that development remains unanalyzed and is seldom discussed by the political and social philosophers of our time. "
Here is a good example from todays news:
Muslim insurgents attack Kabul hotel; 15 killed
One guest at Spozmay Hotel, Sharif Aloko, said he and 11 friends were sitting on the patio eating dinner when the gunmen entered wearing police uniforms and strapped with explosives. Three of them stood guard outside the restaurant while another one shot a father and a daughter while Aloko and his friends watched in horror and the family members pleaded “please don’t kill us.”
(Washington Post)
In the world of philosophy, there is no way to understand what is wrong with Islam. And when people lack a way of understanding something they simply can't see it. (like south American tribes that live on plants that they grow. They will starve rather than go fishing because the concept does not exist for them.) I mean take yourself for example. You are reading this little essay. How would you examine this? Clearly people have lots of buttons you can push. If you read Talmud or the Bible--it tends to push certain buttons in people. Some people read the Bible and go out and start a Salvation Army or a soup kitchen. Some people read Talmud and decide on daily schedule that that is basically taken up with learning and prayer and high moral standards. Some people read the Koran and decide that to murder lots of Jews is the way to come to the highest spiritual levels of Enlightenment. But if you try to analyze why this is or what is going on you are at a lose. The problem is Modern Philosophy in itself. It is the prime fallacy of Philosophy. It is the fallacy that it makes sense to look at a structure without knowing the contents of the structure. So philosophers feel they can examine religion without regard to the contents of the religion.
Here is what Steven Dutch says about this: " What we can call The Fundamental Fallacy of Modern Philosophy might be defined as the idea that it makes sense to study structure divorced from content. This is the idea that has given us businessmen who think they can "manage" without knowing anything about what they manage, critics who claim that only the technical excellence of a work of art matters, not its content, and sociologists of science like the one with whom I corresponded who think you can study the Velikovsky affair without regard to the scientific validity of Velikovsky's ideas."
Ask the Bulgarians, Greeks, Ionian Greeks and Armenians about how different things were. Moslems were murdering, raping scum from the start, and they are murdering raping scum today. Dirty too. Greeks founded and maintained a circle of splendid cities on the perimeter of Anatolia 5 hundred years before Christ. Islam massacred raped and pillaged the city of Smynra (Izmir now) in 1922 and at that time over one million Greeks who had lived in Analtolia for thousands of years were either killed or forced to emigrate to Greece. Similar stories of course with the Armenians, Hungarians, Serbians and Bulgarians, in fact with all unfortunate enough to come in contact with these people.
Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Christian empire till 1453 when 'peaceful' Islam conquered, massacred, raped and pillaged it.
It is today what it always has been, an anti-civilization nomadic primitive and violent culture. Islam has no place and no part in Western civilization and must be entirely removed from Europe and America.
Though I am against Communism- but still it was based on the Enlightenment ideas and trying to create a just society. (And there were abuses that the czars were doing at the time, e.g. getting involved in WWI.) So I see the debate between Communism and Capitalism as an internal thing, a honest disagreement of how to have a working just society. But Islam is different. It is the worst threat to civilization on every possible level. Islam is the number one threat to the continued existence of the human race and planet Earth.
"To begin with, all manner of leftists are stuck with that whole cultural-relativism thing, at least when it operates to the detriment of the white race, Western culture, and America and old American ways. That drives them to cuddle up to primitive non-Western peoples, the more dodgy and exotic the better; and, to the extent they can, import them into the United State." -Nicholas Strackon
Most leftists (including the femi-nazis) are reticent to admit that they will ally themselves with the most barbaric creatures on Earth if they too are anti-Western and anti-American.
They know EXACTLY who/what they are standing with, but will do so anyway.
Just while I am at it let me mention a problem in political philosophy that relates to the inability of the left to see the threat of Islam.
As John Searle put it: "The leading political event of the twentieth century was the failure of ideologies such as communism, and in particular the failure of socialism in its different and various forms. The interesting thing is that we lack the categories in which to pose and answer questions dealing with the failure of socialism. If by “socialism” we mean state ownership and control of the basic means of production, then the failure of socialism so defined is the single most important social development of the twentieth century. It is an amazing fact that that development remains unanalyzed and is seldom discussed by the political and social philosophers of our time. "
Here is a good example from todays news:
Muslim insurgents attack Kabul hotel; 15 killed
One guest at Spozmay Hotel, Sharif Aloko, said he and 11 friends were sitting on the patio eating dinner when the gunmen entered wearing police uniforms and strapped with explosives. Three of them stood guard outside the restaurant while another one shot a father and a daughter while Aloko and his friends watched in horror and the family members pleaded “please don’t kill us.”
(Washington Post)
In the world of philosophy, there is no way to understand what is wrong with Islam. And when people lack a way of understanding something they simply can't see it. (like south American tribes that live on plants that they grow. They will starve rather than go fishing because the concept does not exist for them.) I mean take yourself for example. You are reading this little essay. How would you examine this? Clearly people have lots of buttons you can push. If you read Talmud or the Bible--it tends to push certain buttons in people. Some people read the Bible and go out and start a Salvation Army or a soup kitchen. Some people read Talmud and decide on daily schedule that that is basically taken up with learning and prayer and high moral standards. Some people read the Koran and decide that to murder lots of Jews is the way to come to the highest spiritual levels of Enlightenment. But if you try to analyze why this is or what is going on you are at a lose. The problem is Modern Philosophy in itself. It is the prime fallacy of Philosophy. It is the fallacy that it makes sense to look at a structure without knowing the contents of the structure. So philosophers feel they can examine religion without regard to the contents of the religion.
Here is what Steven Dutch says about this: " What we can call The Fundamental Fallacy of Modern Philosophy might be defined as the idea that it makes sense to study structure divorced from content. This is the idea that has given us businessmen who think they can "manage" without knowing anything about what they manage, critics who claim that only the technical excellence of a work of art matters, not its content, and sociologists of science like the one with whom I corresponded who think you can study the Velikovsky affair without regard to the scientific validity of Velikovsky's ideas."
21.6.12
hindu revisionism and Prabhakar Kamath
Hindu Revisionism: Was Shankaracharya Deceptive Or Just Ignorant?
(1) I want to mention that the type of revolution that the Bhava Gita was trying to do I look on with approval because of many aspects.
To break through the rule of the Brahmins seems to me to be worthy since basically the ruling class of Brahmins came to India from Iran and enslaved the local population and made them into the untouchables and created the Vedas to give spiritual significance to their rule. The BhavaGita and the Upanishads intended to break that rule and bring people to a true spirituality.
(1) I want to mention that the type of revolution that the Bhava Gita was trying to do I look on with approval because of many aspects.
To break through the rule of the Brahmins seems to me to be worthy since basically the ruling class of Brahmins came to India from Iran and enslaved the local population and made them into the untouchables and created the Vedas to give spiritual significance to their rule. The BhavaGita and the Upanishads intended to break that rule and bring people to a true spirituality.
20.6.12
"I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years"
"I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years"
Now is his chance.
The problem in America is possible to analyze as one problem with different faces.
(Problem 1) Democrats are depending on their belief that Americans are stupid and can't remember a promise made four years ago. ["I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years." (It has gone up 17 trillion dollars.)]
Personally, I think this is wrong. I don't think Americans are stupid and I think the Democrats are wrong in this.
In fact, I was very impressed when I was growing up with just the general level of intelligence of average Americans. Whether it was my teachers in school in Math or Physics or just regular American soldiers. Not only did I discover that Americans are smart, but that they are alarmingly smart. So smart to make me intimidated. The average America solider could talk with me about Spinoza or a regular professor of English in Brooklyn Collage could talk to me about Dostoevsky and display an expertise which really flattened my ego. My high school teachers studied the Book of Job with a depth that I never saw afterwards. America today has changed, but the old America was unbelievably smart.
(Problem 2 in America) There is no division of power. Long ago the different parts of government decided that they could all act in concert, as one unit. So the Supreme Court has never limited government power-because they have decided that they themselves are a part of government. Why should they limit their own power?
(Problem 3) This monolithic government can then promise to people lots of money and the blacks and people that their social identity (progressive) depends on their supporting black causes (i.e. reform Jews) vote this monolithic government into power in spite of it being against the constitution of the USA which limits government power.
(Problem 4) In the original America, people like Jefferson did not think that it would work without education. But education today is political indoctrination. And the higher one goes into American universities, the purer the Marxism becomes. I personally saw the texts that they were teaching in social studies at my university where I was learning Physics. They were pure Hegelian-Marxism.
Now is his chance.
The problem in America is possible to analyze as one problem with different faces.
(Problem 1) Democrats are depending on their belief that Americans are stupid and can't remember a promise made four years ago. ["I'll resign if I don't cut the deficit in half by the end of four years." (It has gone up 17 trillion dollars.)]
Personally, I think this is wrong. I don't think Americans are stupid and I think the Democrats are wrong in this.
In fact, I was very impressed when I was growing up with just the general level of intelligence of average Americans. Whether it was my teachers in school in Math or Physics or just regular American soldiers. Not only did I discover that Americans are smart, but that they are alarmingly smart. So smart to make me intimidated. The average America solider could talk with me about Spinoza or a regular professor of English in Brooklyn Collage could talk to me about Dostoevsky and display an expertise which really flattened my ego. My high school teachers studied the Book of Job with a depth that I never saw afterwards. America today has changed, but the old America was unbelievably smart.
(Problem 2 in America) There is no division of power. Long ago the different parts of government decided that they could all act in concert, as one unit. So the Supreme Court has never limited government power-because they have decided that they themselves are a part of government. Why should they limit their own power?
(Problem 3) This monolithic government can then promise to people lots of money and the blacks and people that their social identity (progressive) depends on their supporting black causes (i.e. reform Jews) vote this monolithic government into power in spite of it being against the constitution of the USA which limits government power.
(Problem 4) In the original America, people like Jefferson did not think that it would work without education. But education today is political indoctrination. And the higher one goes into American universities, the purer the Marxism becomes. I personally saw the texts that they were teaching in social studies at my university where I was learning Physics. They were pure Hegelian-Marxism.
19.6.12
Reb Eliyahu from Villna. The Villna Geon
Today a learning Talmud partner of mine mentioned to me about the Kol Hator [קול התור] of the Geon from Villna. He had not seen the book before so he was unaware of a lot of the history about the Gra. He wanted me to fill in the details.I will try to be as brief as possible. I said "the nice thing about the Gra is he is Kosher."
The Gra (the Geon Eliyahu from Villna) had an unusual way of learning. In general he has a completely different way of looking at any subject and only mentions it in hints. But sometimes when he is more explicit he surprises you. Like on the Mishna "aruga which is 6^6" his commentary looks at it from a completely different perceptive than anyone else and answers all the questions on the Mishna perfectly and it is a way of looking at it which seems to be impossible to think of on one's own.
This seems to be characteristic of the Gra.
This conversion got in the question of the excommunication. I said that it is clear to me that the Gra was right. I mentioned that one reason for the excommunication was due to teaching Shabati Tzvi's version of Kabalah and also pantheism. I am pretty sure that the Besht did not know that the teachings of the silversmith from Villna that the Besht praised so highly were from a false prophet of Shabati Tzvi.
(He said that one that learns them will merit to true Divine Spirit.)
But ignorance people say is no excuse. The fact of the matter is that in Orthodox Judaism today are teachings that are based unintentionally on Shabati Tzvi.
Pantheism: Now I have nothing against pantheism. If Spinoza would have proved it, that would be fine by me. But that is not the issue at all. The issue is that the Torah does not hold from pantheism. It holds from monotheism. So to lie about the Torah and to claim that it teaches Pantheism is a problem of fraud and lying.
And it does not help to make a difference between Pantheism and Panetheism since the difference is meaningless since the word "pan" means everything. To say you mean that God is everything and beyond everything is simple expanding the word "everything" to include "everything." [It is just a word game to try to get out of the fact that they are teaching pantheism.] But that is what it meant in the first place. So Orthodox Judaism is playing with words. Also the Torah does not teach either one. not pantheism nor panetheism. The faith and world view of Torah is Monotheism.
The Gra (the Geon Eliyahu from Villna) had an unusual way of learning. In general he has a completely different way of looking at any subject and only mentions it in hints. But sometimes when he is more explicit he surprises you. Like on the Mishna "aruga which is 6^6" his commentary looks at it from a completely different perceptive than anyone else and answers all the questions on the Mishna perfectly and it is a way of looking at it which seems to be impossible to think of on one's own.
This seems to be characteristic of the Gra.
This conversion got in the question of the excommunication. I said that it is clear to me that the Gra was right. I mentioned that one reason for the excommunication was due to teaching Shabati Tzvi's version of Kabalah and also pantheism. I am pretty sure that the Besht did not know that the teachings of the silversmith from Villna that the Besht praised so highly were from a false prophet of Shabati Tzvi.
(He said that one that learns them will merit to true Divine Spirit.)
But ignorance people say is no excuse. The fact of the matter is that in Orthodox Judaism today are teachings that are based unintentionally on Shabati Tzvi.
Pantheism: Now I have nothing against pantheism. If Spinoza would have proved it, that would be fine by me. But that is not the issue at all. The issue is that the Torah does not hold from pantheism. It holds from monotheism. So to lie about the Torah and to claim that it teaches Pantheism is a problem of fraud and lying.
And it does not help to make a difference between Pantheism and Panetheism since the difference is meaningless since the word "pan" means everything. To say you mean that God is everything and beyond everything is simple expanding the word "everything" to include "everything." [It is just a word game to try to get out of the fact that they are teaching pantheism.] But that is what it meant in the first place. So Orthodox Judaism is playing with words. Also the Torah does not teach either one. not pantheism nor panetheism. The faith and world view of Torah is Monotheism.
17.6.12
In Israel I saw a lot of kabalists. There was never anything about them that indicated any higher type of person.
In fact, if I could I would today change the whole way I went through the Talmud.
The things I would change would these: I would have gone to university 1/2 the time like Reb Shelomo Friefeld [the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway] told me to do. I would not have ignored the advice of my parents and teachers. (But at the time, I did not see much I liked in university and was not up to learning Physics. Nowadays I have discovered a way of learning Physics, I just say the words and it goes in. This is no joke. It actually worked when I was in Polytechnic Institute New York University. But there I modified this system a little to say the words forwards and backwards.)
In terms of learning Torah itself, I would have one daily period of Talmud with Tosphot and the Maharsha in order from the beginning to the end of the Talmud. The other daily session I would have would be Chaim Soloveitchik's masterpiece, the Chidushi HaRambam. This means in plain English that I would spend much more time of the so called in depth type of learning which I ignored at the time.
In Israel I saw a lot of kabalists. There was never anything about them that indicated any higher type of person. This in fact would be a great subject for another essay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)