Philosophy at its best is vertical.

Philosophy at its best is vertical.
To explain what this means let me give an example. Take the Pre Socratics. The whole progression of thought from Parmenides until Plato was one long answer to the question of Parmenides, "How is change possible?"

In this case people today have had to look at the vertical progression of ideas and not concentrate overly much on any one particular philosopher. But in academic philosophy today even at its best almost has to take one particular philosopher and concentrate on him or at best on the small range of commentaries on him.

Sometimes this results in high quality work. You can find courses and books in Israel on Aristotle or Nietzsche or books devoted to Hegel which are of great quality.

But what is lacking here is the vertical chain of ideas.

To understand philosophy today you have to start with Spinoza and Leibniz and not learn them alone but also Locke and Hume. Only then can you get a good grasp on the debate between them and then you can see how Kant answers this debate in a very elegant way. But then to understand Kant you have several branches and side paths that lead nowhere. You need a strong sense of direction and also a highly developed analytical sense to be able to tell when post Kant thinkers doing their normal thing of circular logic.
You need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff also as in Frege.

It also is helpful to know Math and Physics in order to see when people talking in pseudo Physics terms to sound profound but in fact have no idea what they are talking about.
In fact you could say the major problem in philosophy today is that they suffer from physics envy.
  
The problem with Linguistic Analytic Philosophy or Post modernism is that once one has touched it he  can never regain his sanity ever again.


What Kelly Ross is good at is the big picture or the vertical line of thought . Also he felt under no pressure to get a job fast but took his time to digest what people were saying. So he could pinpoint the fallacious in Hume and later thinkers even while making note of their valid ideas.

So what comes out is that we get  a train of thought that starts with the argument between the empirical school and the rationalists until Kant. Then we see Kant's answer to this debate.
But we also see that his solution was a bit too much ad hoc. So we come to Hegel that Reason by some process gets into the dinge an sich

In order to understand the Talmudic tractate about idolatry [called Avoda Zara] it seems to me to be necessary to get an idea of what idolatry is.
 It seems to me to be necessary to understand what was going on in lets say Athens at the time when people really believed in idols.

This would not refer to the philosophers who probably thought most of what was going on in the temples of the gods was ridiculous.

Now for people who were not specifically devoted to one god or the other it clearly was a benefit to have the Pantheon in Athens so that an average businessman on his way to work could make a quick detour to the Pantheon and offer scarifies to all the gods or at least the major ones, (and specifically the one that he thought might have some power over his future transactions).

But of course, there were people that were devotes of a particular god. They would spend as much time  possible in the temple of that god and would do as much services to that god as possible. E.g., devotes of Dionysus would go around in groups in a state of ecstasy and frenzy and do damage as they would go around the city and countryside. (Wine was of benefit to help them get into a state of frenzy.) 

Devotees of Venus would have other services they thought would be pleasing to Venus. But that would not stop them from offering sacrifices to propitiate other gods also.

The major experience of idolatry was not fear of retribution. The god that one was devoted to provided  the meaning of life and of the universe and everything else.


Nowadays that science and philosophy have pushed the realm of religion into the background, we are not aware of how much the gods were a major source of the very meaning of life for the ancients.

The Talmud itself does not deal with any of this. It is interested solely in the laws relevant to the statutes of the gods. The reason is that the religion of the Talmud is monotheism. The underlying assumption of monotheism is that there is a First Cause of everything that exists and that this First Cause provides the meaning of everything that exits. He made it all for some purpose.

Nowadays, we do not find devotes of Dionysus or Venus. People do try to get into states of frenzy and do seek physical pleasures that one might associate with Venus but without being devotes of Venus. But we do find modern substitutes that can provide people with the same kind of experiences  that devotes of the gods had.

There are several major examples but certainly the cult the Gra ut into excommunication would be a good example. Graves of tzadikim [saints] also for that matter. [note 1] The kind of frenzy of Left Wing Politics seems to be also a good example.

[note 1] For the sake of clarity I think it is good to learn the books of a tzadik and to follow his teachings. I think one can do so and should do so without crossing the line into idolatry. But in spite of that there are people would do cross the line.

In fact I think after seeing some of the problems there are in the world of orthodox Judaism that at the very least we can say his understanding of Torah is deep and profound. 

Almost invariably when I was in Israel and I would just mention the name "Bava Sali", the person I was talking to would launch into a story of how he had some problem in his personal life that could not be solved no matter how much he tried, and then he went to Bava Sali for a blessing and the problem was solved. It mattered little if the person himself was religious or not. Just that they needed as much faith as necessary to make the trip to Netivot. [A city in Southern Israel.]

 But the curious thing about this was that between him and his community there was a kind of equilibrium. He himself was a super "separation from this world" type of guy while his community in Morocco were simple working Jews. [More or less religious.]

I have a few observations to make about the whole Bava Sali thing.
I would like to go into his conception of what Normal Torah observance involves and how applicable it is to other people, or even perhaps to gentiles. Also I would like to go into the question that the whole thing seems to have reached an impasse. There are lost more issues but these seem to me to be the more relevant right now.


First of all it seems to me that Bava Sali gives a good explanation of what Torah is supposed to be about. No shtick. That is no games. To him keeping Torah meant keeping Torah in the most simple basic way possible.  [note 1 ] People will always try to claim that Bava Sali supported their particular cult but this is universally not true if you dig into the actual facts. Straight Torah observance would be what defined the Bava Sali path. No beliefs in any person would be considered important or helpful in any way. Only keeping Torah personally. [note 3]  

On the other hand the Bava Sali thing has lost its momentum. The closest of the people to him Chareidi in way very different from the Sefardi tradition. Some people have used the aura of Bava Sali for gain. [note 2]

In spite of the difficulties of the Bava Sali thing, it still provide a rich domain of information about Torah and what it means to keep Torah simply with no games.

The Talmud tends to have a wider idea of what Torah is about than what you see in Maimonides. For example we find Hillel II said there would not be a messiah (ever) because the King of Israel Chizkia fulfilled that role.  And in the Gemara that discuss the opinion of Hillel we do not find anyone accusing him of being an apikorus or heretic. Now we know that the belief in a future messiah is one of the thirteen main principles of faith that the Rambam derives from the Talmud. And it is a clear principle to him that anyone that denies or even does not believe in any one of those thirteen principles is a heretic and not even considered Jewish.

This I do not mean as a question because it is clear that there are other opinions in the Talmud that hold belief in a future messiah is important to the degree that the Rambam stated. And all the Rambam did here is to decide the law as is his usual custom.

My point here is really meant for Reform and Conservative Jews to realize that not only is the Talmud important for them to learn but that it also represents a world view of Torah that is closer to their own understanding of Torah than Orthodox Judaism. This is in spite of the fact that the Orthodox do try to represent their position as being supported in the Talmud. Most often this is simply not the case.

On the other hand there are positions in Maimonides that are closer to Reform Judaism than what seems to be so in the Talmud. Secular studies in Natural Science would be the most famous example.
In a highly ironic way I discovered the position of several medieval authorities concerning secular studies  when I was trying to find Chizuk [encouragement] about just sitting and learning Torah all day.
This happened when I started learning Musar (Ethics) and discovered a good amount of the medieval Jewish authorities were basically saying to go out and get a job and do not use the Torah to make money and also to learn secular subjects. This was the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear from Musar (Ethics) books.
[I thought that sitting and learning Torah was the ultimate goal. 
 
On the other hand we all should learn Torah and do mitzvot as much as possible. And the Reform are wrong for trying to redefine mitzvot into social activism. That is intellectual dishonesty. Mitzvot are mitzvot and averot are averot [sin is sin] You don't get to redefine these things according to your sexual or intellectual orientation. 

There was something unique about Bava Sali [Israel Abuchatzaira] that that can't be attributed to just the fact of his emphasizing doing Torah and mitzvoth or to his miracles. Miracles we know are a dime a dozen. People in every religion take the miracle workers of that religion to be proofs of that religion. But they are not proof of anything because of several reasons. They can be from the sitra achra. Even when they are from the side of holiness still anyone doing certain kinds of service like fasting and general separation from the pleasures of this world tend to gain some kind of spiritual power. Furthermore miracles happen to everyone and have no bearing on the holiness of any individual

In spite of all this there was something really unusualness about Bava Sali.

What I mean to say by this is I want to bring out the idea that there is an essential contradiction between the idea of human perfection as represented by Bava Sali w and the idea of human perfection as represented by my parents and by Albert Einstein, Newton, and Aristotle.


Now we know outside of the miracles of Bava Sali there was by him a essential emphasis of simple and plain old Shulchan Aruch. Neither for him or for others was there any idea of specific things to emphasize. It was just simple keep Torah. [For the general public reading this blog I think the best idea of how to get an idea of what it means to keep Torah in the ideal sense you should find a sefer hachinuch.]


But There was a very different idea of human perfection as emphasized by people like Einstein.

And in between that were my parents that represented the human n perfection in terms of mentchlichkeit.[untranslatable Yiddish meaning basically human decency].

What I mean to point out here is that each of these paths has pit falls and even actual flaws for most people. But what we can do is to try to focus on certain points that are in each path and try to emulate and stick to these basic points as best we can with Balance and common sense.


I would like to point out that the basic path of Torah and mitzvot is a little subtle.Even with the Rambam writing it simply and bava sali showing a good modern example of how to do it --it still is subtle. The problem as Bava Sali said himself all paths are dangerous. That is one can try to do Torah in the most simple ways that would seem to be obvious and yet find himself in situations in which not just he finds the world that he has placed himself in is predatory but also finds himself doing more objective evil than when he was not trying to keep Torah at all.

Some people think the kabala is independent of Plato but that assumption is not only wrong but also tends to create  a kind of weird bubble type of world that people that study kabalah live in. And this bubble world tends to detract from the positive things that people can gain from the thought of Isaac Luria .

It is also know that he sometimes touches on themes from scholastic thought from the middle ages.

None of this is news to anyone.

Mainly it looks roughly parallel. But  the creation is ex nihilo. We know that this is not compatible with Plotinus but rather comes from the Rambam and Saadia Geon. While it is true that Plotinus is not compatible with pantheism but neither is he compatible with creation ex nihilo


So while Kabalah of the Ari [Isaac Luria is pretty straightforward Plotinus in a highly developed mystical form] but seems to be moving in the direction of the Rambam.

OK that is the end of this subject.
Now I just wanted to point out a  one example we have a theme that pops up about tying oneself to the intellect that is contained in everything. This is straight from Plotinus. 

At any rate, one important reason to support the State of Israel is simple. We Jews have taken the trouble to get out of everyone's way. We are not asking for anyone's kindness. We simply ask people not to attack us. And when people do attack us we claim the right to defend ourselves. There is nothing inherent in Torah that should prove objectionable to any gentiles of Christian or Muslim faith. However it is clear that some Muslims hate us because of their religion, not ours. [Not all Muslims but the radical type.] And some Muslims do see Israel as a beachhead for Western encroachment. And that it is. We are bringing the Ship of Democracy and Human Rights  throughout the Middle East. This is something Muslims ought to welcome. [And I am sure many do welcome us, but are quite about their beliefs.]