Abyee holds that one that serves a idol  from fear or love is liable. To the Rambam that means fear the idol might hurt him if he does not serve it. Love means love of its beauty. Rashi says it means fear or love of  a person. In any case the idea is that he is not accepting the idol as his god and still he is liable. Abyee go straight to the case of the high priest that has to bring a she goat if he serves an idol by accident. And Rabbi Yehua the Prince says it even if he serves the idol by accident without relying on a faulty legal decision. Abyee asks what kind of accident is this? If he bowed to a house of idols thinking it was synagogue his heart is towards heaven. If it is a statue then if he he does not know it is an idol and accepted it is he is liable the death penalty--not just a sin offering.
If he did not accept it then it is nothing. So he must have known. So if he knew then why is it an accident? It must be because he served it from fear or love an thought that that was allowed.
Why does Abyee go to Rabbi Yehuda the Prince and not the sages? Because They could say there is no such thing as accidental idolatry except in a case of relying on a faulty legal decision. That is the point I was trying to say yesterday. That is not only do they say the high priest only brings a she goat when he relies on a faulty legal decision but the individual also. I wanted to bring a proof for my idea from the beginning of tracate Horayot. There we have an argument if a individual depends on the decision of the great Sanhedrin [of 71 elders] to serve idols the he is liable to bring a sin offering [also a she goat]. [And the Rambam decided the law like the sages.] It is Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi that says he is not liable.
So what we have in the end of all this is that Abyee can't go to the Sages to get his proof. They could say there is no such thing as accidental idolatry {except relying on a bad legal advice}. What I mean is they probably don't say this. In fact I think it is true they do believe there is such a thing.
But we can't prove it. So Abyee has to go to Rabbi Yehuda.

Since I brought up idols my learning partner mentioned an interesting Meshech Chachmah
משך חכמה

That is the person Meir Simcha Hakohen that wrote the Or Sameiach on the Rambam. This is a book that is the final stage of Jewish thought until Reb Chaim Soloveitchik brought things to a climax in his Magnum Opus Chidushei HaRambam.
Reb Meir Simcha Hakohen  says that with all the miracles that happened because of Moses people might have attributed those miracles to Moses instead of to God. That is how he explains the sin of the spies.
Eldad and Medad had prophesied before that time that Moses would die and Joshua would lead the people to the Land of Israel. [Those were the two people that the spirit of God descended upon when Moshe appointed the Sanhedrin of 70 elders ].  That happened right before the incident of the spies. The spies knew this. They knew that Moses would not take them into the promised land. So they said without Moses it is impossible to enter the land of Israel "because the people there are more might than us." If they thought Moses would be with them this would not have made a difference. They attributed the miracles to Moses

Rabbi Israel Salanter intended there to be a House of Ethics [in every city] that would have books of ethics only, and that people could go into when ever they felt the need for character improvement.


But the books we are talking about here are not Meta Ethics--philosophical ideas about ethics. It is a very specific set of books. It is a two part cannon. Books from the Middle Ages which provide the backbone and intellectual framework. The next part of the set are the books from the direct disciples of Israel Salanter.




The focus of the movement was originally character improvement along with fear of God. [Or perhaps that is just my own interpretation of this movement based on one of the disciples of Rav Israel, Isaac Blazer]. Clearly Navardok thought the main thing is trust in God--along with learning Torah. Slabodka was the "greatness of man." Simcha Zissel had his own take which I never could figure out. [I tried to read his book  Chachma and Musar and could never make out a word.] Ponovicth in Bnei Brak can be considered to some degree to be an offshoot of Navardok ).

The nice thing for me about Musar was in terms of world view issues.

What I am suggesting here is The Musar Movement Act II. Or the Neo Musar Movement. And the idea would in fact be like the original idea of Houses of Ethics that would be open for everyone.
 Now the only time I ever saw an actual House of Ethics was in Netivot in Israel. That was in fact a separate room where people went to learn Musar, and I think in fact it did help people be better that they would otherwise have been.

Another nice thing about a House of Ethics is it is non-denominational. It is not Orthodox, Conservative or Reform. It is just plain traditional Jewish ethics. 

Sanhedrin 61

Abyee goes to the case of a high priest to prove his point that if one serves idols from love or fear, not because he accepts the idol as his god (מקבל עליה כאלוה), then he is liable.
That is he goes to a teaching which says that if you have a high priest that served an idol  by accident then he brings a sin offering only if he depended on his own legal decision or the legal decision of the Sanhedrin. (שגגת מעשה עם העלם דבר) Yehuda the Prince says you only need that he did the act by accident.שגגת מעשה What type of accident is this?
Abyee goes through the logical possibilities and arrives at the conclusion it can only be he know it was an idol but he served it from fear or love.
I wrote about this on the other blog wine women and transcendence but for now I wanted to focus on some thought I had today about this.
First I should mention that the proof of Abyee depends on Yehuda the prince. He can't go to the sages because they have an obvious case of mistake--the priest depended on a faulty legal decision.
At first, I thought to myself that this might explain why we don't go with Abyee in this case. After all the Gemara says openly that we only go with Abyee in six decisions, and this case is not one of them. So I thought "OK this is good to the Gemara [Talmud] and to the Rambam (who decided like Rava here as we all know has to be the case anyway.) [But not to Rava in the Gemara who disagrees even with the idea that Abyee proved his point from R. Yehuda. He says R. Yehuda means by "accidental" that he says "It is  allowed.] That is because Abyee only proved his point to Yehuda, not the sages. The sages could easily say there is not such case as serving idols by accident and the only time someone brings a sin offering for idolatry by accident is when they depended on a faulty decision.

I brought this up with my learning partner and he said my idea is wrong. He focused on the fact that an individual also brings a sin offering for idolatry (Numbers 15) even without depending on a faulty legal decision. [It does not say anything there about a mistaken decision]
[So the sages have to agree that there is such a thing.]

So I asked, "Then why focus on the high priest? Let Abyee go to the simple case of an individual?"

He suggested,  "The Sages might say the individual might bring a sin offering if he depended on a faulty legal decision but not all the conditions were fulfilled for example there was lacking one of the 71 elders."

  But I am confused at this point. It seems to me the sages hold that a individual that depends on a decision of the Sanhedrin even with full conditions is liable. That is what you have in Tractate Horayot page 2 side b.



 So the way I see things [and this is the point I was trying to get to throughout this essay] is that the sages cant be useful for Abyee for they have a simple way for the individual to be liable and the high priest also. It is specifically R. Yehuda the Prince that says an individual that depends on a legal decision is not liable.

Appendix:

1. Rava hold one who serves an idol is only liable if he accepts the idol as his god.
2. The sin offering here is a she goat whether for the high priest or for an individual. The Sanhedrin would have to bring 12 oxen and 12 goats if they made  faulty legal  decision that some idolatry is allowed and the people acted on it.
It is this fact that makes the high priest unique. Because the verse in Leviticus compares him to the people "to cause the people to sin" לאשמת העם. And when the people sin we need two things. One is they depend on a faulty legal decision. the next is that there be an act. And so when the Torah compares the priest to the people we also need these two things

Sleep-walking into World War. Russia and Ukraine

Avoiding  war with Russia is a good idea. I have several reason for saying this. Besides the fact that war between Russia and NATO and the USA would simply morph into WWIII. But there is another reason also.  Donesk  is already part of Russia at least in spirit. And why would anyone think that borders that have been fluid throughout the centuries be worth starting a war for?
 Besides that the USA and Europe already have enough enemies inside them (Muslims).  Who needs more enemies? I think that Europe and the USA have their heart in the right place wanting to stick up for the Ukraine. And that is admirable. But I think the situation on the ground calls for people to step back and let Donsek decide its own fate. And it has already done so.

Also Ukraine and Russia are brothers. Tempers are high right now. this is family feud which if left alone will just work itself out. For other people to get involve dis not polite and could cost the live of millions more.
Maybe I could put this in a different way. I can't stress strongly enough how important it is for all mankind for Russia, Europe and the USA to work together. Not just for the sake of Western Civilization but the very future of humanity

For example lets say you have a p group where every element of the group eventually gets to 1 if you multiply it by itself enough times. This is called a "p to the n" if n is the number of times you are doing this.
Did you know that every subgroup of this p^n that is all the p^n-1, p^n-2, etc are all normal? (normal means gx=xg) I did not know that until I read about p groups in Russian. I also I wanted to share  a way to show how this is true. We will call all the elements of the big group g (i.e. g1 g2 g3 etc) and all the elements of the small group x (i.e. x1 x2 x3  etc.) So what you have is a long string of gx's all lined up with xg's on the opposite side of your equation.
and they all cancel because if you take that many gs with that many x's you get e*e=e*e. What is left on the left side is just one g. and what is left on the right side? Also just one g.

People have heard of Kant's question, "How is synthetic a priori possible?"


First we know that when Kant says "synthetic" he is referring to Leibniz's division of knowledge into analytic and synthetic. But he also means it in a deeper way. He is thinking that some objects are given to the mind. and he is thinking some a priori cognitions are also given to the mind. But then he thinks that the mind does something with them. It combines them into one cognition. [That he calls the metaphysical deduction.]
 This seems to me to just what the Rambam was thinking about acquired understanding שכל הנקנה in LM vol I ch. 25

 That is we have "sechel hanikne" acquired understanding from the Guide for the Perplexed of the Ramabm as meaning knowledge metaphysics- -the unchanging realities in reference to Plato's forms. And to the Rambam it is this acquired knowledge that last for eternity in the next world.

 He modifies this to knowing many things with one knowing. Then he brings the idea that this is what is left of a person in the next world. and then he expands it to knowing everything a human being can know.

My feeling is that it is urgent not to go to war with Russia.

.

My feeling is that it is urgent not to go to war with Russia. True they are sending troops into the Ukraine. And that is not nice. But for this we want to go to nuclear war? I mean that is how wars start. They start with some small incident. And then one party replies. And then other party replies. etc. and tempers grow short. And before you know it bombs are falling all over the place. We don't need a war between NATO and Russia.
Plus consider the Russian position. True the two provinces are on Ukrainian territory. But the people consider themselves Russian.  And in fact most of them probably are Russian. And so Russia sees itself as simply protecting its own people. But even if this were not so, I still think that under no circumstances is a war with Russia justified.

Let us say that Kiev would let these two provinces go to Russia. What would anyone lose?

I might mention that sending military aid is not usually considered a declaration of war. There are lots of levels between sending equipment and advisors as the USA did in Vietnam and  higher levels called small wars. When the USA sends equipment and military aid to different nations, the opposing nations do not usually think that they are justified in attacking the USA. And if they would, the people in the USA would be outraged. There is also such a thing called small wars in which American troops are sent in surgical strikes. You should read about this in the manual of the USA Marine corp, The Small Wars Manual. In any case, I think Russia and Europe and the USA should get along. We are not enemies. And under our noses is growing the most serious enemy to the continued existence of the Human Race- Islam.


This blog is really supposed to be about Torah issues. But as we know human life comes first in Torah law so I thought I should transfer this small essay I wrote on my other blog, Ideas in Torah, and put it here.
I hope this essay does something to reduce tempers and get people to start thinking straight.

The USA has been decommissioning its arsenal steadily for twenty five years. The Russians have been up grading their arsenals. They have underground cities of weapons grade plutonium.

So far the Russians have done nothing except what their policy has always been even in the time of the czars--they consider it their obligation to protect Russians even on foreign soil--exactly like the policy of the USA