When the Sanhedrin makes a mistake and allows idolatry [or any other of the 42 types of sin for which one brings a sin offering] and there is a person תלמיד שהגיע להוראה that knows they made  a mistake and depends on their decision, then he has to bring his own sacrifice.  [That is the first teaching (Mishna משנה) in tractate Horayot הוריות] But if he actually knows it is forbidden is not he doing it on purpose? (You can't bring a sacrifice for doing a sin on  purpose). The Gemara says it means he thought mistakenly that there is mitzvah to listen to the Sanhedrin even when you know they are wrong. But since there is no such mitzvah, he must bring a sin offering. This is not what you hear in Shabat table Judaism.


But also this brings up the interesting subject of what  the Mishna means by a disciple that has reaches the ability to make a decision [תלמיד שהגיע להוראה]. The Gemara explains this means he has finished Shas [Talmud] and understands it (גמיר וסביר).


At any rate to get to the one point I have been trying to get to through this essay. the two points of Reb Chaim from Voloshin. [Disciple of the Gra]. No favoritism  in decision making. And the law of the Gemara.
This came up in a letter he wrote to a famous rabbi who had made a halacha decision Reb Chaim knew was wrong. He points out in the\ letter he is only interested in the law Gemara. And also that he does not care who makes a halacha decision not like the Gemara. They are wrong period. And this relates to what I was saying at the beginning of this essay. Ordination stopped after Yehuda the prince and Ravina and Rav Ashi were the end of horah the end of the period of decision making (סוף הוראה)
The Maharshal quotes the Rambam about this idea that the period of decision making ended with the last amoraim. And this gives this idea extra weight since the Maharshal was no fan of the Mishna Torah of the Rambam. The fact that people today can claim halachic authority going back to Sinai and are not laughed out of town shows how far we have fallen.

Now here is where this essay should have started-on the question of how to determine a  particular law based on the Talmud and poskim. But I have had a long day. In short what responsible people do is  learn the Gemara with the Rosh and then the Tur with the Beit Yoseph. And that seems in fact to the best way in a practical sense. But to go into the whole topic right now is difficult.

 Basically the Gemara gives the rules for how the decision is reached when you are in a Mishna. Also there are a few rules in the Gemara itself to decide between Amoraim. The commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch  almost always disagree with the decision of the Shulchan Aruch ( שלחן ערוך) based on the Gemara itself or what they call the "poskim" which in their terminology means Rishonim [medieval authorities]. The term was misappropriated for Achronim and is now used as a weasel word.

Doing idolatry by accident

Doing idolatry or any of 42 types of sin by accident means one has to bring a sin offering

There are 43 types of sin for which one brings a sin offering. Six of them one brings a offering that goes up and down.[קרבן עולה ויורד] A rich person brings a goat. A poor person brings two turtle doves. a dirt poor person brings a flour offering. The others not so. The others for people like you and me we would have to bring either  a female from goats or  sheep. But idolatry is different. Everyone has to bring a she goat.Even the high priest. and even the king. but there is a difference between a high priest and the average person. The high priest has to have both a mistaken decision about the law and also be accidental.  העלם דבר עם שגגת מעשה
Abyee uses this fact to show that there can be such a thing an accidental idolatry.
 For if idolatry needs intention then how could there ever be such a thing as doing it by accident.? If you do it by accident without intention you did nothing at all!
[To see this in the Torah [the Old Testament] you have to go to the beginning of Leviticus where it talks about sin offerings and divides the subject into the congregation and the high priest and the individual. And then you have to go to the Book of Numbers [ch. 15] where it discuss the sacrifices for transgressing the sin of idolatry for the individual and the entire congregation, and it leaves out the high priest]





I want to go into all these issues. But I also want to go into  a side issue about the idea of a mistaken decision.  No everyone agrees that the high priest has to make a mistaken decision in order to bring a sin offering for idolatry. Yehuda the Prince says all he needs is to do it by accident. But the Sanhedrin definitely needs to make a mistaken decision in order to bring a sacrifice.
That is: for the Sanhedrin to bring a sin offering they have to rule about some aspect of one of the 43 types of sin that it is allowed and the majority of the Jewish people living in Israel have to follow that decision and act on it. Then they bring twelve oxen and twelve goats.
But if there is an individual who knows that the Sanhedrin made  a mistake and he acts on their decision thinking mistakenly that it is a mitzvah to listen to the sages, then he has to bring his own sacrifice.

The first thing you will ask is the Rashi "Even if they tell you left is right and right is left." That Rashi is brought in the subject of Zaken Mamre. There a person goes publicly against the Sanhedrin.
So now everything is clear. When you know the Sanhedrin made  a mistake you are not allowed to listen to them. But also you are not allowed to make a public statement against them.

I admit Musar (Classical ethics from the Middle Ages) is only a first order theory in ethics

I admit Musar מוסר (Classical Ethics from the Middle Ages) is only a first order theory in ethics, and that this fact is what makes it uninteresting, and perhaps even not effective. The very first Musar book,The Duties of the Heart [חובות לבבות] did however put a second order theory in the beginning of his book. It is a modification of neo-Platonism. But Musar was not meant to be second order (Meta-Musar). But there were people that went through the trouble to give a second order theory, e.g, Saadia Geon, Maimonides (the Rambam). . [ But his basic focus is to find justification for the commandments of God.] A kind of preliminary approach can be found for the commandments based on a mystic approach can be found in the writings of Isaac Luria, but he is dealing with connections in higher worlds and has not brought his ideas down to the human level. But to accept any part of the mystic approach you have to get over the hurdle that Kant made.(note 1) Or you could dispense with the mystic approach completely and settle for the Metaphysical Aristotelian approach of the Rambam/Maimonides or the metaphysical Neo Platonic approach of Saadia Geon and the Duties of the Heart.

My suggestion is to learn Musar with its underlying set of justifications. It is the difference between a doctor telling a person, "Don't eat  such and such" and a doctor telling the same person "Don't eat such and such a thing because you will die in three months if you do, and the reason is that you are allergic to it and it has a cumulative effect." The only problem with this idea is that it is time consuming.
(note 1) You could get over this hurdle with Schopenhauer. But if one tries to ignore it I think one will trip and fall. Just imagine you are running a four laps around the field and there are hurdles in front of you. And you decide to think positive :"there is no hurdle".
Hegal  also is a highly metaphysical system

  I tend to think of Hegel as a kind of intuitionist along the lines of Prichard. The reason I tend to trust Kelly Ross is on philosophical issues I have spend some time learning I have found him to be remarkably insightful. So I tend to trust him also on issue like Hegel in which I know little. It is the same reason that when I learn Talmud with my learning partner and we disagree that I tend to think that he is probably right --since after arguing with him I usually find out that in fact he did understand the material better than me. It is called "faith in the wise."
I think everyone can agree that Hegel has some important points. But he falls flat on his face when he discuss social issues. His best work is analysis of other philosophers and also in making his own metaphysical system.

But the world has fallen into ignorance. Many people claim to be experts in Torah without having done the work.

Torah does not mean Jewish history. It means a basic understanding of the Oral and written Law. That means two things. (1) General knowledge of Shas and Poskim (The 60 tractates of the Talmud and Rif Rambam, Rosh, Tur, Beit Yoseph and Shulchan Aruch. and it is desirable also to have knowledge of the writings of the Remak and Isaac Luria and the books of Jewish philosophy by Maimonides and Saadia Geon in order to understand the basic world view of the Torah

Idolatry.

Does one need intension is be liable?

"One who serves idols from love or fear, Abyee said is liable and Rava said he is not liable." (Sanhedrin 61b)

How does this fit the Mishna (page 60b), "One who serves idols or bows or sacrifices or burns or pours or who accepts it as his god and says 'you are my god is liable.'"

I asked this a few days ago one one of my blogs. Today I want to say over the question again and give a possible answer.
 The question is that if accepting it as his god is not necessary, then what does Abyee do with the end of the Mishna? If it is necessary, then what does Rava do with the beginning of the Mishna?

I hope this question is clear to people. I went into more detail somewhere else on some this blog or the Wine  Women and Transcendence blog.
At ant rate here is my answer. First let's look at the Gemara [Talmud]. The Gemara starts off with Abyee wanting to use this Mishna as a proof, and the Gemara pushes off the proof with a statement of Rabbi Jeremiah who says the first statement of the Mishna means service like its way (the usual way of the idol). From this we see Abyee thought the Mishna is a proof. It occurred to me that Abyee must be thinking that the juxtaposition of the first five cases against the last case means that the first cases don't need the condition of accepting as ones god. And Rava must be thinking that the Mishna is thinking that it only needs to mention this condition in the last clause because there you might think you don't need it since he is saying openly he accepts the idol as his god.

That is all I have to say about this. I had another idea about the Baal Hameor but maybe I will write about that elsewhere. (note 1) I also have an idea about Kant I have wanted to write about for a  few days (mainly the fact that his "thing in itself" the "dinge an sich" is a position in epistemology, not metaphysics. (Kant says it exists but its character depends on the subject ) That has been noted before by Dr. Kelly Ross in California but he derives it from a short statement of Kant, while I wanted to show that it is a central position of Kant but I just have not been able to find time for an essay about this). [Kant is very important in order to understand the Rambam but I just can't go into this issue right now]

I also would like to go into some detail about the idea that Abyee uses for a proof about the high priest having to bring a sacrifice if he make a mistake about what is considered idolatry. The Sanhedrin also does this and I wanted to go into some detail showing how this contradicts the idea of Daat Torah. But no time today.

(note 1) That his idea that sacrifice exodus 22 would only exclude service in  a way of honor to idols that one usually sacrifices to and not to other kinds of idols makes sense. You can see this by this idea: what does sacrifice tell us-not to sacrifice to idols that one usually serves in some other manner or idols that in fact one usually sacrifices to. That excludes kissing or hugging or any other type of serve to those particular idols. But it does not tell us anything about other kinds of idols.  
  That is, to acquit a way of honor or dishonor to idols that such is not their way we need the verse, "How do they serve?" Deuteronomy 12. This is not really a big deal but it does show how what the Meor Hagadol is saying is not just some ad hoc distinction but is required by the logic o the subject.

Reform Judaism

Reform Judaism says Torah is about Social Justice. But a simple glance at the Torah will show anyone that that is not true. Torah is about keeping the commandments of God.   Yet Reform Judaism does have a point in so far as they are using an idea of the Rambam. To the Rambam the purpose of many of the commandments between man and his fellow man is to bring peace to the country. But even here Reform is not representing the Torah accurately. Justice as the Torah understands it is very different from what Reform Judaism understands.  Even though given a choice of a Reform Temple and  an religious synagogue  I would  go to the Reform temple. In fact, even if given the choice to go to an religious synagogue or stay home I would stay home. And I would pay real money to avoid going anywhere near an religious synagogue.

What is wrong with an religious synagogue  is what the sages of the Talmud teach us about the evil inclination to serve idols  There was some point the sages of Israel decided to pray to God to take away the desire to serve idols. They saw it come out of the Holy of Holies in the form of a small lion of fire. So we see where there is holiness there is also great evil. Reform is great in ways the religious will never dream of. But they still need to start learning and keeping Torah.

The area Reform is right about is the fact that the Torah emphasizes the between man and his fellow man part of the commandments as the first priority.  The religious certainly claim to be trying to keep all the commandments of God but that is clearly not true. They certainly do not even attempt to keep the part of the Torah that deals with the relationships between people.That is why I will not go near them. Even though I respect the fact that they take one part of the Torah very seriously.

But Reform has a real problem about that "social justice" nonsense. It is a weasel word for socialism and anti Americanism which is directly opposed to the Torah.

Still anything is better than a religious synagogue that is simply a place of gathering for demons. You cant go there ad come out clean. It has to take  its  toll on you and your family. 

idolatry

Introduction: There is a chapter in Sanhedrin which deals with the question one what types of  crime deserve  execution.

Part of that chapter deals with idolatry.

And to start out the subject the Mishna gives a list of six things that are liable.
"One who serves an idol, one who sacrifices to it, one who burns a sacrifice to it, one who pours a libation in front of it, one who bows before it and one who accepts it as his god and says, 'you are my god.'"

That is the six are : the four regular types, plus service according its way and then words with intention.


Later on the Gemara (Babylonian Talmud) brings an argument between two sages Abyee and Rava (two amoraim (people that lived in the time of the Talmud)) if idolatry needs intension.

My comments here deal with the question of how do they learn (understand) our Mishna?







 Talmud Sanhedrin page 61 side B. The way I used to think about idolatry was that its essence was to accept another being as one's god -a being that is not God.  In this context God would be considered as the First Cause. But that is clearly wrong. We have an argument in Sanhedrin 61b. One who serves an idol from love or fear Abyee says he is liable and Rava says he is not liable. So certainly to Abyee, the essence of idolatry is not accepting it as one god. And there is no reason to think Rava disagrees with this. It is just that Rava adds an extra condition. So idolatry is serving another being that is not God,  and Rava adds a condition that one accepts this other beings as ones god. [I am not saying any of this is clear. I am just saying what it looks like the the Talmud is holding this as the definition of idolatry. I so far am not claiming I have any idea what this means. I assume it has something to do with numinousity that comes from some being that is not God. But that is just my guess.]
But  now let us look at the Mishna 60b. It lists several ways to be liable (sacrifice, burning, pouring, bowing) and then lists another way: "One who accepts it as his god and says, 'you are my god.'" This on one hand seems to be like Abyee. That is because the condition accepting it as ones god is not necessary to be liable in the previous cases. On the other hand this looks to be not like Abyee. After all if saying "You are my god" to an idol is liable, then to Abyee there should be no reason to add an extra condition "accepting it as ones god."


The next thing I wanted to say today was in reference to a Rambam that explains "from love or fear" to mean
"love" of the beauty of the idol and "fear" is fear that the idol should not hurt him. Why would the Rambam say this? I did not mention this before because I was learning like Rashi and that made the most sense. [I forget why.] Rashi says love and fear means love and fear of a person.
At any rate, the reason I think the Rambam says his explanation is this: Abyee agrees that walking into a house of an idol and bowing down thinking it is a synagogue is not liable because his heart is towards Heaven. With Rashi there seems to be little difference between love and fear and this last case. In both cases he is not serving the idol with any kind of intension. With the Rambam it all makes sense why he would be liable to Abyee for love and fear and not liable when his heart is towards Heaven.

This is these ideas stated in Hebrew for anyone that might be reading this that speaks Hebrew better than English:
)סנהדרין סא: הקדמה. המשנה מונה שישה דברים שחייבים בשביל עבודה זרה. העובד עבודה זרה, זביחה, הקטרה, עירוי, השתחווייה, והמקבלו כאלוה ואומר לו אלי אתה. הגמרא מביאה מחלוקת בין אביי ורבא אם עבודה זרה צריכה כוונה. אני הייתי רגיל לחשוב שעיקר עבודה זרה הוא לקבל אותה כאלוה. עכשיו ברור שזה אינו נכון. לאביי אפשר להיות חייב גם אם אינו מקבלו כאלוה. ואין סיבה לחשוה שרבא חולק על עיקר פירושו של עבודה זרה. אלא שהוא מוסיף תנאי.) סנהדרין סא: המשנה מונה ששה דברים שחייבים בשביל עבודה זרה. האחרון הוא המקלו עליו כאלוה ואומר לו אלי אתה. מצד אחד זה נראה כמו אביי בגלל שבשביל העבודות הראשונות כנראה לא צריכות לקבל כאלוה. מצד שני זה מראה לא כאביי שאם האמירה אלי אתה מחייבת אותו למה צריכים גם לקבל עליו כאלוה?)סנהדרין סא: מחלוקת אביי ורבא. אתמר העובד עבודה זרה מאהבה ומיראה, אביי אמר חייב. רבא אמר פטור. הרמב''ם מפרש מאהבה מאהבת היופי שלה, ומיראה מיראה שמא תריע לו. רש''י מפרש מאהבת אדם ומיראתו. הסיבה שהרמב''ם מפרש כשיטתו היא שאביי מודה שמשתחווה לבית עבודה זרה וחושב שהוא בית הכנסת לא כלום הוא שליבו לשמים. להרמב''ם מובן שיש חילוק גדול בין מאהבה ומיראה שחייבים וליבו לשמים שלא כלום הוא




The critique on Musar is when I told my learning partner that it is first order morality. I said it is about things you have to do, not justification for why you have to do them. I said, "That might be why you never found it interesting." He said: "That would explain why it seems to be not effective in correcting people's character as it is supposed to."

I am not saying I agree with his assessment. But you should know that he has never been enthusiastic about Musar. Almost to the degree of seeing it as a waste of time. I hold the exact opposite. My impression of Musar is that it is important to understand the Torah's point of view.  Without Musar people tend to come up with a lot of crazy ideas of what they think the Torah ought to be saying. Not that there is anything wrong with being independent but it ought to be after sufficient research. Has a person finished Shas and Poskim and all writings of  the Ari and the Gra and the Rambam and Saadai Geon? Then he can have his own opinion about what the Torah says. Everyone has  a right to his own informed opinion. No one has the right to an uninformed opinion. Ah but he does not have time for all that study? Then he has no right to an opinion.
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