One of the major ways that universities fail when it comes to subjects concerning Jews is that they do not teach Torah, but they teach peripheral issues about Torah. They teach about Jewish history or about Jewish philosophy [which was always of minor interest to Jews].
Even when they teach Talmud, they do not teach Talmud, but they teach about the Talmud.

Even in first class places like Hebrew University,  they also do not teach Kabalah but about Kabalah.

  If you go to university to learn mathematics you want to learn Math right? You don't want to spend all your time learning about mathematics or the lives of mathematicians!

  The way to understand Talmud for university students is not to learn a lot of Talmud but to learn how to examine one subject. This is like when you learn poetry. You learn how to examine one single poem. Having read lots of poetry does not make one capable of examining a single poem.

  The way to understand one single page of Gemara is by Rabbi Akiva Eigger, the Pnei Yehoshua and R. Chaim Soloveithick [i.e. Chidushie HaRambam (חידושי הרמב''ם)] If you can understand these three people on one single page of Gemara then you already know how to learn. If you do not understand them then you ought to start working on them.

  Halacha also has this in common with Talmud. Knowing a lot does not count. The question is are you capable of understanding even one single Halacah properly.
  It is also like Mathematics in this respect. I don't care if you have learned lots of mathematics. I care if you can solve the one single problem that is being proposed. It does not matter if it is a simple Algebraic equation or a problem in Algebraic Topology. You need to be able to solve the problem properly.
  And in spite of what you may have heard there are no two ways of doing Halacha properly. There is only one way. It is to learn the actual Halacha in the Talmud itself and then trace the development of the Halacha down through the Beit Yoseph and then the Shulchan Aruch with the Shach and the Taz.
If you can do that with one single Halachah, then you understand Halacha; and if you can't do this, then you have no business discussing Halacha at all. It does not matter how much Kitzur Shulchan Aruch or Mishna Brura you think you know.

And Kabalah is the same thing. I don't care if you know the history of kabalah or can decipher medieval script.

If you can't discuss intelligently one single paragraph of the Etiz Chaim of the Ari then you don't know Kabalah.

Just a quick example for this last thing. Atik (עתיק) has circles-(עיגולים)-even after the breaking of the vessels(שבירת הכלים). In Mavo Shearim by Reb Chaim Vital vol 2, section 3, chap 4 the Ari says from Keter of Yosher of Atik (כתר דיושר דעתיק) is drawn inner light (אור פנימי) to all the circles of Atik. However he also says that because of the time elapse between the creation of his circles to his yosher, the light of his yosher does not reach his circles! This is a simple thing and yet it would be hard to find a kabalaist who can answer this except in the usual way of evasion which is meant to cover up ignorance.

The God of the Torah is the God of light and reason, and as a life- and form-giving force, characterized by measured restraint and detachment, which reinforces a strong sense of self. But also the  God of wine and music, and  frenzy of self-forgetting in which the self gives way to a primal unity where individuals are at one with others and with nature.

The modern world has inherited philosophy's’ rationalistic stance at the expense of losing the human. We now see knowledge as worth pursuing for its own sake and believe that all truths can be discovered and explained with enough insight. In essence, the modern,  rational, scientific world view treats the world as something under the command of reason rather than something greater than what our rational powers can comprehend. We inhabit a world dominated by words and logic, which can only see the surfaces of things, while shunning the real world  which cuts to the heart of things.  We belong to a culture that’s bound for self-destruction.

The only way to rescue modern world from self-destruction is to resuscitate the spirit of Torah.

We have no direct understanding of Torah anymore, but we always mediate the power of Torah through various rationalistic concepts, such as morality, justice, and history.



 ecstasy stands as a counterbalance to the thoroughgoing rationality that is so prominent in Orthodox Judaism. In most Torah investigations, the importance of truth and knowledge are taken as givens, and thinkers trouble themselves only over questions of how best to achieve truth and knowledge.

 questions where this drive for truth and knowledge come from and answers that they are products of a particular, wrong view of the world. Deeper than this impulse for truth is the impulse to lose oneself in ecstatic frenzy.
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He criticizes his own age (though his words apply equally to the present day) for being overly rationalistic, for assuming that it is best to treat existence and the world primarily as objects of knowledge. this stance makes life meaningless because knowledge and rationality in themselves do nothing to justify existence and the world. Life finds meaning,  only through prayer while alone is a forest or a mountain top. Art, music,   bring us to a deeper level of experience than philosophy and rationality. Existence and the world become meaningful not as objects of knowledge but as ecstatic frenzy  experiences. ecstatic frenzy does not find a role in the larger context of life, but rather life takes on meaning and significance only as it is expressed in ecstatic frenzy .



 Ecstatic frenzy  gains its strength from exposing the depths that lie beneath our rational surface, whereas
Western philosophy insists that we become fully human only by becoming fully rational.
 rational methods cannot reach to the depths of human experience. that philosophy is a shallow pursuit. True wisdom is not the kind that can be processed by the thinking mind, We find true wisdom in the dissolution of the self that we find in Torah and the Talmud, and music.

a purified  Torah culture can rescue  civilization from the deadening influence of  rationalism.

This process however starts in a highly counter intuitive way.The way to ecstasy finds its basis in Gemara, Rashi and Tosphot.
The thing that makes Gemara Rashi and Tosphot interesting is not the intellectual aspect of it.

Rather it seems to be part of a process that leads a person into ecstasy and fulfillment. But  ecstasy --it would seem can come from God or from the Dark Side. So I think that one of the major advantages in learning Talmud is that it directs one's vector in the right direction.The basic process seems to be learning Talmud for a few years with Musar [medieval books on ethics]-- while trying to improve ones character.  And then Kaballah seems to come in. I can't explain what it is about kabalah [Issac Luria specifically] that does this, but it seems to me that when one learns it after proper preparation [Talmud], it has the effect of attaching ones soul to God. I mean specifically the writings of Isaac Luria. At that point if one is properly prepared and comes to Israel, even for a short visit, the Divine ecstasy seems to take effect.

I would here like to defend the idea of sitting and learning Torah [i.e Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot].
I would like to approach this from a few different angles. The first would be philosophy. From the standpoint of philosophy of Plato there are objective moral values that can be perceived by reason. While this should be taken in the larger platonic context of the question of universals at least as far as right living is concerned it is a clear tradition in Plato and Aristotle  and the later rationalist school that moral values can be perceived by reason. Though certainly Nietzsche was right that most of what people call moral values is their Id projecting itself onto their consciousness. But that only proved that it is hard to reason correctly and we knew that before Nietzsche.Even the intuitionist school does not claim we can easily perceive moral values. [well actually it does look like Prichard did hold that but the modern Intuitionist school headed by Michael Huemer does not hold that way.]

Well if we have gotten this far then we have already closed the gap between reason and Torah to a large degree. We know now that there are objective moral vales but these values are hard to see. We agree we can be distracted by our Id. [The Id is an discovery of Nietzsche, not Freud incidentally.]
 We know that according to the Rambam [Maimonides ] that Saadia Geon that the ground and basis of all Torah law is in reason, not divine decree. Both the Rambam and Saadia Geon reject the ground of Divine decree for Torah and say rather it needs to be ground in reason. [The reason they both do this is they did not want the laws of the Torah to be arbitrary].

So far we have now got philosophy and the Torah to be rather close.We know that the project of the Gemara [Talmud]] is to use reason to understand the Divine Will as expressed in the Torah. And the Torah was given as the Rambam says because not everyone is smart enough to start from scratch and find a moral path.

Part of the reasoning here is also based on the idea that morality is hard to decipher and also that there is no mathematical algorithm to decide any issue in moral at all. that means we are all left with the arduous task on using reason the decide what objective morality would have to say about any given issue. this is exactly what the Talmud is trying to do.

It is also possible to defend the idea of sitting and learning Torah from Bava Sali.
The existence of people that did this and did succeed in some way to come to some kind of spiritual levels in which they no only gained wisdom in life for themselves but for others also is powerful recommendation of following the path of Torah.
In this essay I am not dealing with specific question that must arise in people minds when they hear this--in fact the major question that people have on this is an ad hominum argument and not worthy of discussion in the  first place. So not all people that are in their exterior dress are following the path of Torah in their deeds? Is that supposed to be a kashe [question ]on the Torah??

People will automatically use any system they are a part of to get ahead and use it for money, and power.

 People will automatically use any system they are a part of to get ahead and use it for  money, and power. . If we would complain about this, then we would have to complain about Capitalism and Communism and every other system that exists.

But people also have another trait--they want things to make sense. The Love of truth may be the weakest of human  passions, but it still exists.

Because of this last trait, it seems to me that I should show how Torah is justifiable. [That means classical Torah--The Old Testament [Tenach], the Gemara [i.e. the Talmud Bavli].] But to justify Torah we have to go out of Torah into philosophy. This is how the Rambam/Maimonides did it, and Saadia Geon. You can't justify Torah on its own terms. To find a ground of justification, you need an external ground.
Since Reason has been in retreat in the Western World since the rise of Post Modern Philosophy, most people do not think that philosophy can justify Torah, and they also think they do not need Reason to justify it.

Now I should admit that my intention here is not to teach philosophy, but rather to explain why it is justifiable to sit and learn Torah [Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot.]
To do this I can't use Aristotle like the Rambam did. I have to go to a modified Neo Platonic approach like Saadia Geon and the Chovot Levavot [Duties of the Heart] .

The intuitionist school of G.E.  Morse and Prichard is close Kant school is better.
The Intuitionists are I think ignoring some of the real problems posed by Kant.

Now I get to the meat and potatoes of this discussion.
Frege wanted to expand the "a priori." [Things knowable by reason].  He wanted this to include all possible traits that can be derived from reason about objects of reason. The critique of Wittgenstein on this was true. But it was used by later incompetent philosophers to  backfire on Kant himself and to deny the existence of the a priori and of metaphysics all together.

One example of a priori I would like to suggest is in mathematics. It is the number two. You don't literally stumble over the number two when you walk in the street. But few people would be inclined to deny its existence altogether. At least to deny it it would seem you should have some strong proof. At least strong enough to deny common sense. And it does not seem that my knowledge of the number two is dependent on chemical reactions in my brain. Let me ask you to complete this sequence: 2 is to four as 4 is to eight. Eight is to 16 as 16 is to 32. Then 32 is to 64 as ... fill in the blank. Is this dependent on what I ate for breakfast this morning? If so, then you, my dear reader who ate something different [I had  eggs] would have to come up with a different answer.

[I should mention that one of the major ways that people that learn Torah think of it is as something that is applicable to Jews only. But this is clearly a mistake. Because objective values  are by definition applicable to everyone and perceivable by everyone. And Torah does claim that it is objective.
And though many commandments are addressed specifically to Jews. still the value system of the Torah is universal. and in fact the Rambam says the Torah is for "anyone that wants it." [In the Laws of Gerut. keeping Torah in no way depends on getting other people to accept oneself. This is an open halachah in the Rambam.

Some people keep Torah as a means of social identity. And this is lamentable. Torah should be kept because it is true.

a philosophy program at universities that deals with Metaphysics

I would like to suggest a philosophy program at universities that deals with Metaphysics.

And in particular I am thinking about the nature and origin of Evil.

This is something barely noticed by Western Philosophy up until Schopenhauer.  
But to deal with Evil in a philosophical way my suggestion would be to have a university course that would deal first with the pre-Socratics  and Schopenhauer.

This suggestion could not be made while British and American philosophy departments were still in the Dark ages. Recently the fallacies of post Modern Philosophy have become apparent even to school children and it is high time for some real philosophy to be done. John Searle wrote that L/A linguistic analytic philosophy of the twentieth century  is "obviously false."


Obviously the actual Book of Aristotle, "Metaphysics", would have to be tackled also but that it seems would require it s own separate course.
Obviously Schopenhauer is very important for this issue, but one does need a little background in Kant to understand his basic thesis.
In fact without Schopenhauer it is hard to find any philosophical justification for the existence of evil at all. 

I agree --but I think in a university course, you should need only a few introductory lectures to get the orientation right and then you can go to the actual material after a few weeks. After all you don't need to have learned all of Kant to understand Schopenhauer.]

prohibitions that are from the sages דרבנן if they are intended or not.

It looks like R. Yehuda in the Gemara does not make any distinction in prohibitions that are from the sages דרבנן if they are intended or not.
[This subject is part of a large Tosphot in Yoma. I just wanted to bring up one little point that I think is interesting.]

This approach of R. Yehuda seems to be contrary to the way the Rambam understands Rabbinical law.
To the Rambam, the Torah gives permission to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem (or people with what the Torah considers ordination--not the ordination that is common today) to interpret the law based on the thirteen principles of how to derive laws from verses and also to make a fence around prohibitions. [Also, they had some traditions of what is considered work on Shabat and other oral traditions that they have to hand down.] This we see in the verse in Deuteronomy "you shall listen to all they teach you." [The whole verse says basically when you have cases in Torah Law that come up, and you can't decide, you shall go to the supreme court in Jerusalem and follow all that they teach you.]

The Rambam makes it clear that it is not up to every individual to decided how to interpret the the law. This is clearly stated in the Torah itself.
But the law to listen to the Sanhedrin is specially a law to not ignore them. And this can't apply to an unintended act. When one forgets the law he is not ignoring anything.

The resolution to this is that the Rambam  in fact decided in a "thing not intended" like R. Shimon and not like R. Yehuda.


I hope it is clear what I am trying to say. We have two arguments between R. Yehuda and R. Shimon. One about work not intended. The other about work done  for a different than purpose the work was done in the tabernacle in the desert. The question here is on R Yehuda. If we understand a rabbinical decree in the way the Rambam does, then how does the opinion of R. Yehuda make sense? That is the question I intend to answer in this short essay.

The big issue I have not addressed here is if there is in fact any authority to make extra decrees not in the Torah and from the commentary on Pirkei Avot from the amoraim it seems there is no such authority. This book is called אבות דר' נתן and it is included in every edition of the Vilna Shas. The basic idea there is on the Mishna "Make a fence around the Torah" and the general approach there is to say that Adam HaRishon added to the command of God [don't eat and do not touch] and that  caused him to fall. R.Yose said there "Better ten hand-breaths high that stand rather than 100 yards high that fall." There the Gra makes a few corrections to the text. I showed this to Rav Eliyahu Silverman the Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva that goes by the path of the Gra in the Old City of Jerusalem and he agreed with me that that is the meaning of that commentary on the Mishna

The basic issue is that often there is a dilemma, Keeping some decree might interfere with some more serous obligation. Or with דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה--the way of the earth. I have in fact found this to be the case often. Instances abound. Being careful about things one is not obligated in often turns out to cause one to ignore real obligation. Just take for instance the morning prayer that is a decree. Though a great thing in itself, it can take time from learning Physics. And to the Rambam learning Physics is in itself the fulfillment of the command to Fear God which is one of the most important commands in the Torah

 I think that the Torah itself is in need of some kind of interpretation in many places where the simple explanation just does not work--like the flood of Noah for example. [The Rambam  has already told us that Genesis chapter one is not to be taken literally. So I say well then let's see what Isaac Luria says that it means!] the female waters..

On a side note-- I have noticed that some people on their own tend to spend more time on Breslov books than on Gemara.
Now Breslov books are inspiring, but they are not the Written or the Oral Law. They have emotional appeal. worship of tzadikim is one basic problem because the Torah tells us not to do idolatry. At least Breslov is honest about this what they are doing. Most other groups put on a nice face to hide the rot under the surface. The Gra saw this and put the whole movement into Excommunication. Which means not to go anywhere near them because when one ignores the excommunication, it goes upon the one ignoring it. See the Laws in חרם in Shulcha n Aruch.

I mean to say that Herem is more strict than nidui (rebuke). And since the herem of the Gra i valid therefore the laws concerning herem ought to be observed