The issue of conversion to Judaism

The issue of conversion to Judaism really depends on two different places in the Talmud, one in Tractate Sanhedrin and the other in Tractate Avoda Zara. It is not complicated at all.  However, when it comes down to what to do in practice you need three judges.  However since there is no such thing as a “judge” as defined by the Torah anymore; [A judge has to have ordination/semicha from Moses at Mount Sinai and that has stopped existing since the time of the early Amoraim  [in the middle of the times of the Talmud]] what you end up today is that you need simply three kosher witnesses which according to Tosphot can do the shelichut ["messenger service"] of the real judges that once existed a long time ago. The truth is this opinion deserves respect because it is coming from Tosphot. [Tosphot is always right. You just have to think into what he says long enough.]  However it is clear that this would not work at all to the Rambam. The witnesses do have to be male.  So in fact as sad as the state of affairs is for women converts there is simply not much you can do.  The dipping needs to be witnessed by three adult males and it does need to be seen that she is completely immersed. Believe me if there was a way to get out of this I would know about it and announce it from the rooftops.



While on the subject I might as well mention that conversion to Judaism today is largely considered as joining a community. This is however not the Torah approach. In Torah it is considered the act of a person that accepts the Torah-- i.e. the world view of the Torah and to do a certain minimum amount of mitzvot.

The idea as stated in the Shulchan Aruch and the Rambam is that when one comes to convert one does not tell them all the difficult details of the mitzvot. One simply tells them "chapter headings" [literally roshie perakim]. [That there is a general idea of shabat etc]


The reason the actual dipping needs to be seen is that it is a kind of act of witnessing something. A woman that goes to a mikvah in general needs no witness.the mikvah woman is there just for things like checking nails etc. Conversion is a whole different ball game. It needs to be effected and created by some act. This act is the dipping into a natural body of water in teh presence of three kosher judges with intention to keep the mitzvahs and believe world view of the Torah




I see the effect of cults on people in general--Jewish and gentile as being very destructive. If I was a law maker in any country I would be very careful about which religious groups I would allow to operate in my territory. Once  a group is known as a cult I think I would make it illegal without too much more thought.
Freedom of religion is not such an important value as to put the public into danger of lunatic cults.

 Today I want to say a few good word about Nietzsche to make up for what I wrote yesterday against him. The argument against him I might not get to today, but let me just say he is very important to read. He is part of a tradition that one needs to know in order to be literate.  Much Jewish philosophical writings of the twentieth century borrows  from him without mentioning his name. Certainly many of Freud's main theses are directly taken from Nietzsche. [Not just the idea but even the very name of the The Id is straight from Nietzsche]
 
He always has some good point. Most of what passes for "Leshem Shamim" behavior--for the sake of Heaven  is 99% of the time a cover for low drives. Yet there is another side of the coin. Much of what people do quietly without fanfare is in fact for the sake of heaven. Nietzsche tried to simplify what a human being is about but one sub-level of desire for power. Sometimes human beings do thing for other motives. Sometimes these motives are compassion or a desire for knowledge or desire to do what one knows is right.

 Consider an argument  against moral relativism by Michael Huemer:

 Consider such claims as

(a) Happiness is good.
(b) Honesty is a virtue.
(c) It is wrong to burn children just for the fun of it.

The anti-realist must disagree with such claims, not of course in the sense of asserting their contraries, but in the sense of holding them false. He would not say happiness is bad, but he must insist that happiness is not good. Yet surely, if those evaluations are either true or false, they are true, rather than false.

This objection may appear to border on begging the question. But what we have to ask ourselves is this: what arguments is the anti-realist able to offer against moral realism; and are the premises of any of these arguments more initially plausible than each of (a)-(c)? We must choose between rejecting (a)-(c) (along with all other moral claims), and rejecting the anti-realist's premises. Only if he can adduce some premises that are (jointly) more certain than any of (a)-(c) can he hope to convince us to resolve the dilemma in his favor.

Perhaps the anti-realist would deny he is committed to holding all first-order evaluations false. Perhaps moral claims contain one or more false presuppositions and are for that reason neither true nor false, just as "The King of France is bald" is neither true nor false because it presupposes but does not state that there is a King of France. Nevertheless, at least this much is clear: the anti-realist of the 'error theory' variety can not hold moral claims to be true. So whether or not he accepts the law of excluded middle and concludes that "Happiness is good" is false, he must at least maintain that it is not true. And from the point of view of maintaining our first-order moral discourse, this is no improvement. A claim that contains false presuppositions is as clearly unassertable as a claim that is false. I cannot say, "The King of France is bald, but there is no King of France." And nor can I say, "Murder is wrong, but there are no objective values," if the existence of objective values is presupposed in first-order moral claims.


Consider the statement: Value judgments are universally false

This theory is really quite outrageous. It implies, among other things, that it is not the case that people generally ought to eat when hungry; that Hitler was not a bad person; that happiness is not good; and so on. I submit that this is simply absurd. I feel much more confidence in those denied judgements, as I think nearly everybody does, than I can imagine feeling in any philosophical arguments for relativism. At least, I think it would take an extremely strong argument to shake my confidence that happiness is preferable to misery, or the like. And there does not seem to be any argument at all with that import. It is hard to see how there could be.

things designed to trap one mind in a world of illusion.-

False wisdom not based on objective reality but man made inventions and legal conventional and usages are things like languages or psychology and other pseudo sciences. psychology and other pseudo sciences fall into this category of man made illusions.

They are things designed as traps for one's mind into a world of illusion.--like many of the false eastern cults would have wonderful inspiring books that were also consciousness traps in this way.

This that the Rambam/ Maimonides clearly held were good and important subjects of study were sciences based on objective reality-things he called physics but clearly meant to include chemistry. Also when he emphasized learning Aristotle it is not the same thing as what is called in later centuries, “philosophy.” It is in fact a real crime against Aristotle to put him in the same box as madmen like  Sartre. When the Rambam/ Maimonides emphasized Aristotle he was not referring to the madmen called philosophers of the twentieth century.


What does the Rambam expect to accomplish with getting people to learn Physics and Metaphysics [in his terminology]? In the Guide he expects Physics to result in Fear of God and metaphysics in Love of God. While in the Yad HaChazaka he seems to include both effects into one also for both subjects. How I ask can this work?
I claim that what the Rambam means by love of God and fear of God is not what modern terminology refers to. 
Nor did he mean people that know how to use the right buzz words about halacha and frumkeit .

I have not time to defend this here but the Rambam thinks that Fear of God starts when one learn Physics and this opens a spring or a well deep inside of him that is not visible on the surface. And it might never get to the surface. It is deeply buried inside a hidden region of the consciousness that the person himself is never aware of

I am still on electricity on Sabbath and work not for its own sake.

I am still on electricity on Sabbath and work not for its own sake. If we look at the Talmud in Sabbath in a normal way we see that the Talmud is accepting Abyee that he is not intending the work and saying it is pesik reish and he does not care if the work happens that this Gemara is understanding teh whole idea of not intending the work different than the rambam. And this is a good thing. For the Rambam does not poskin like Rabbi Shimon, rather like Rabbi Yehuda. So by this we get an opening into how we might possible explain the Rambam. But where is this opening? If we simply ignore this Gemara and just look at the rambam things seem to get worse. Once there is a pesik resiha then automatically the intention goes onto the work.


Besides this I should comment that so far there does not seem to be any difference between a work not intended that is pesik reisha and a work not done for its own sake.

It could be at this point it might be wise for me to open the Reb Chaim Solovechik.  

Is a Jew obligated to serve in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force)?

I consider the fact that Muslims are at war with Israel, puts Israel in a defensive position. And as we see in the Talmud in Eruvin [as brought in the Rambam] this is something for which that one can carry on Shabat. It this puts it in the category of Milchment Mitzvah . At any rate we can safely say it is a mitzvah. And we know the Halacha that if there is before a person two mitzvot: (1) Learning Torah, and  (2) Another mitzvah (even the smallest mitzvah), then one has to stop learning to do the mitzvah.
In conclusion, people that do not serve in IDF  are not kosher Jews.
And the Ultra religious that object to this are not on the level of the Rambam to be able to disagree with this. And frankly, most of them don't know how to learn anyway. [Just because they dress up like with black clothing  does not mean they can learn.] So why even care about what they say?

[ Ultra Orthodox  are going with the idea of the super-organism to decide  and not on actual Halacha. What I mean is that Ultra religious have been trying to form a super-organism called Ultra religious which would in  theory be divided into two parts. One  would form the ruling Brahmin class of the Jewish people. Then there would be the untouchables, the secular Jews, who would be supporting them by hard labor. This model of the Jewish people is not based on the Torah, so it is no surprise that many Jews in Israel are not in favor of it.]

Electricity on Sabbath

This blog is mainly for philosophy but right now while it is on my mind I wanted to discuss an important Tosphot in the Talmud as it relates to the subject of electricity on Sabbath This is the Tosphot in Kritut 20b-second on the page. First I want to point out that today I glanced at the Reb Chaim Solovetich on this subject an he in fact says something about the Rambam that I was saying about Tosphot.
I said a simple idea.: according to the idea at the end of that Tophot you have an answer for the original question without having to turn the whole subject/sugia into an issue of work that is not done for its own sake. The idea is to say that the whole issue is a pesik reisha [inevitable event] that is not acceptable to him. The Aruch says that to R Shimon he is not liable. Now we can say that to R. Yehuda he is liable and so you have explained the sugia.
[and this fits like a glove into the sugia since in fact we know he does not what the coals to be burnt--it is clearly a not intended act.]




Reb Chaim simply says what I said and puts it into the Rambam. And gives a good reason why it should be so.

This is a point I have said already a few time son my other blog. But right now I wanted to mention an important reason why tosphot puts together the idea of unintended work along with a work not done for its own sake after he gives his idea that the own sugia is talking about work done not for its own sake.The reason is that he is trying to say that to R. Yehuda that not only is it a work done not for its own sake but also it is not intended and still he says he is liable--because it is a work done not for its own sake. And this explains exactly why in the next Braita that the Talmud brings that it only says it is a work done not for its own sake and does not mention that it is not intended --because it is intended and yet still R. Shimon says it is not liable. This is the usual way of the Gemara to show the stronger side of each opinion.

Now it is this next Braita in which he is stirring the wood to get warm but he is not trying to make coals that we see that if one turns on a light on Sabbath to have light but not to make a filament that it is a work done not for its own sake.--even if you accept the idea that this is a work of building. [What I mean is that this idea of turning on a light being building is already highly doubtful in my eyes.]


[Just for a bit of background. To the Rambam, to make a coal on Shabat is  work. We in fact see this in the Talmud itself in Kritut. This is in fact not related to the reason the Chazon Ish said lighting a light bulb is forbidden. But in either case it is a work not done for its own sake. This is a type of work made by people who have nothing better to do all day that to think of what they can forbid other Jews to do on Shabat ]

System builders--the heyday of this was in pre World War I Germany

The main Jewish System builders were the Rambam/Maimonidess and Isaac Luria
[The main branches of Isaac Luria were Shalom Sharabi and Moshe Chaim Lutzato. They organized the system of Luria in an impressive way but they were not system builders.]

[The first thing you need for any legitimate system is self consistency. That is why I am dismissing all the kook Kabalah and Chasidut out there. But the Ari'zal himself is very impressive.]


There is something nice I noticed about Rabbi Isaac Luria. Even if you question his system it still is pretty impressive.

I don't know if there is much or a connection but it is hard not to notice the similarity between Hegel and the Luria System. It is not just the groups of  triads. I have not mentioned this in my blogs because I am trying not to say anything nice about Hegel if I can help it. I am literally horrified by some of the things he writes. And no one learns  Hegel without somehow changing in some fundamental way.

And this relates to the fact that I have also been trying not to say much of anything nice about the USSR--the prime Hegelian system.

I mean I am in a unique position to see a lot of the good they accomplished but my horror at any type of Authoritarian system prevents me from being very complementary.