On one hand I feel I should talk about some of the amazing things I discovered.
One of the most amazing things was Musar, the movement of Israel Salanter for self improvement.


The problem with the Dark Side I have mentioned before. How it got mixed into Torah thought since the time of Shabati Tzvi. But I don't mean just teachings of the Shabatians that are nowadays presented as straight Torah in the world of Orthodox Judaism by unsuspecting people. I mean actual energies of the Sitra Achra (סיטרא אחרא). Miracles from the Sitra Achara by supposed tzadikim. Orthodox Judaism has become pagan. It has a whole Pantheon of gods called tzadikim (saints).
Some people don't care about that. Why should they care? After all what does it bother me if my neighbor worships one god or twenty? But the Torah does care.  And it is the  most important theme that comes up in the Torah from the beginning until the end of the  last book of Chronicles. This means that Reform and Conservative Judaism are actually more kosher than Orthodox, because no matter what else they may advocate, they do not do idolatry. (note 1)


 But because Reform and Conservative synagogues do not learn Musar (Ethics)  I recommend that they a start to do so, and also I think the original idea of Israel Salanter of making houses of Musar/ethics learning is a good step in the right direction.

  A house of Musar is a place that has only first order ethics in it. It is not for prayers, nor for learning Talmud or Halacha. It is only for learning ethics. There are about thirty classical books of ethics that such a place should have. Like the Duties of the Heart and the Nefesh Hachaim from Reb Chaim from Voloshin [the disciple of the Gra]. It is not for second order ethics--justification of ethics even though I think it should have these there also--like the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam.
If people would want to do something for the benefit of the public, my feeling is they should put their money into building a house of Musar. (בית מוסר)




(note 1) The idea is that there is a gap between monotheism and polytheism that is more than the number of gods. Monotheism  is a concept of God that unlimited in power. And he is not the world and the world is not him. By polytheism there is a real fluid boundary between the divine and human realms. But  in Torah thought God is completely different--completely other. He shares no characteristic with anything in this world at all. He has no substance and no form, and this world is not his form nor his substance. But you can find things in the Torah that seem to point to the need for intersession and tzadikm but that is because the Torah is trying to lead people to pure monotheism as the Rambam points out in the Guide for the Perplexed many times. The Torah has vector towards God. And this is what real tzadikim  were trying to point out.

Balance between Jewish values and the life of a scientist and husband and a father.

My father, Philip Rosten had a remarkable balance between Jewish values and the life of a scientist and husband and a father. He knew he had to make his way on his own with no help from anyone but his own parents to help him get started. The brother of his father and his wife were the first to arrive in the USA from Poland and started a bakery on the lower east side of Manhattan. Next came the younger brother Yaakov. His sister in law told him that she has a sister also in Poland that he would like. He agreed to meet her so they sent for her. When she arrived from Poland they married and thus my father and his brother and sister were born. Yaakov also worked in the bakery and sent his children to public school. Philip was interested in the violin and also science but in the end he decided to go into mechanical engineering. He applied to Cal Tech and the University of Michigan. But in the end decided to go to the university of Michigan because it was $100 cheaper than Cal Tech. He went to Cal Tech later for his masters degree. And then World War Two interrupted, he became a captain in the United States Air Force (USAF). [His uniform was covered in medals, but I never found out what they were for.]
After the war, he invented a telescope that could see through fog and clouds many miles away. It was the first successful attempt to focus infra-red light to make a coherent image, and was the beginning of night vision. He got a whole write up about it in Life Magazine. His sister said just to see his picture in Life, his mother would have given ten years of her life. [Later he invented an x-ray copy machine and after that the government recruited him for some highly secretive work at Hychon and to make the camera for the U-2 project, and then for the SDI project.]
But all  this is just background. What was unique about him and my mother was their home life, and their relationship towards their children. There was some kind of amazing intuition they had about their children.
Jewish values were very important to them and we went every Shabat to Hebrew School.[Temple Israel] But Torah values were more expressed in our home than in the synagogue. There was a kind of peace and love that permeated our home that was unearthly. My brothers and I fought and played like normal kids, but when ever we walked in the front door of our home we felt a kind of peace and light. We never ceased to marvel at it. Not that we were religious at all. It was just a kind of  light and peace and spirit of wholesomeness that permeated everything.

. Being self sufficient and working for an honest living were of foremost importance to him.--especially the magic words "to be self sufficient."


A few years later that I was able to start bringing some balance into things. Because I found a polynomic theory of value   That is even though at the Mir I was involved a lot in the Pnei Yehoshua and the Maharsha, but just being there and talking with  Reb Shmuel Berenbaum   a lot I got by osmosis an idea of his kind of approach.  I was accepted into Reb Shmuel's class which was highest level , and I used to go to him for Shabat also.


Just for background. My parents sent my brothers and me to public school. My Torah education was mainly at Temple Israel in Hollywood on Shabat and at home. Only when I was eighteen did I go to NY Litvak yeshivas, first Shar Yashuv and then the Mir. Though the Mir has the reputation of the most advanced of all yeshivas along with Brisk and Ponovitch, I would have to say that Shar Yashuv was not far behind. They do start at beginning levels but when they get up to higher levels they are as advanced as the Mir.]

[Public school I should mention has changed. (Allan Bloom already made the point about the social studies and humanities departments in universities. The way he put it was more or less to say that they are worthless. And that was already in the 1980's.) To the Rambam a great deal of secular studies are in fact bad. His idea of a proper education was the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.]
The best short introduction to Torah is I think the  Musar book from the Middle Ages חובות לבבות
Obligations of the Heart.

What the Torah means when it refers to not doing sin.

The main reason to learn the Talmud and Mishna is to get a decent idea of what the Torah means when it refers to not doing sin. That is to say that one can read the Torah (Old Testament) where it says, "Don't do such and such a  thing" as meaning, "It is not advisable to do such and such." But this is not what it means. It means, "Don't do it," and it gives lists of penalties if one does do it. In fact, it is not all that different from the New York code of  civil and criminal law. It says, "Don't steal, and if you do you will be put into prison." (I am paraphrasing.) You could I imagine interpret that also as saying it is not advisable to steal. But in fact it is a command. "Don't steal" means one must not. This is the meaning of everyplace in the Torah where it says God spoke to Moses saying command the children of Israel to do thus and thus. If someone would interpret such a thing as option if written in a novel and they had to hand in a an assignment analyzing the novel they would get a failing mark.
I think the reason people tend to look at commandments of the Torah as being optional is that many Jews live in Christian societies. And disparagement of the Law is ingrained in Christianity. It is either looked at as a "shadow of things to come" (i.e. not real and not important) or as something no longer relevant since it was fulfilled once, or as a positively bad thing as per the Book of Hebrews.  [note 1]
Another part of the problem is an idea of Martin Luther that the Torah should be understood by each individual as the "spirit" guides him or her. This got to be in places influenced by him to mean ,"If you don't feel like it, don't do it." But it is not an accurate interpretation of what the Torah means when it says, "Thou must not do such and such, or you will be stoned to death." There it means, "Don't do such and such unless you want to be stoned to death."



This is not tolerant. And it is not supposed to be. And I think that tolerance his developed the status of a religion doctrine because I don't think it can be defended by reason. Let say for example we would want  moral values to be subjective and dependent on the observer or the norms of society.
 That implies that if our attitudes were to change in certain ways, then the moral facts would change in ways that are counter-intuitive.  Then it will follow that if we all took an attitude of approval towards Adolf Hitler, then Adolf Hitler would be good.
A similar argument shows that in theory, all the world's problems would be solved if only we could get most people to approve of everything that is presently bad. The bad things would not cease to exist; they would just become good. For example, it is at present bad that there are people starving to death in some parts of the world. But if we could get enough people to approve of famine and the attendant suffering and death, then the world would be improved, since one of the major problems would be solved. Yet this consequence is hard to accept.

The motivation for relativism among  intellectuals is the appeal to the virtue of tolerance. The argument is this: objectivism leads to intolerance because it makes us think that we are right and other people who disagree with us are wrong. This causes conflict, chauvinism, and subjugation of some people by others, which is bad. The only way to ensure a desirable attitude of toleration on our part is to posit relativism as a moral postulate, which will reconcile us to the equal legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of all value systems and thereby enable people with different values to live in harmony, provided they accept the postulate.

 The reply to this political argument is that it is a non sequitur - that is, even if true, all it shows is that it would be advantageous to somehow convince people to believe relativism; but it does not show that relativism is actually true.


 There are both theoretical and empirical grounds for believing that the opposite relation between objectivism and toleration from the one urged would exist - that is to say, it is objectivism that leads to toleration and subjectivism that leads to intolerance,  whereas subjectivism naturally tends towards an unreasoned and arbitrary approach , and it certainly seems that reason would counsel us to avoid destructive conflicts and respect the rights of others, whereas, for example, a purely emotional value system might lead, as it usually has in the past, to fanaticism, xenophobia, etc. If only we could get warring peoples around the world to listen to reason, one is inclined to hope, perhaps they could be convinced to resolve their disputes through negotiation rather than violence - but not if they are convinced that rational argumentation about whatever issues they disagree about is inherently futile.

 The connection is supported by examples: John Locke's political theories, which have probably led more than any others to democracy and respect for universal human rights, are a good example of the kind of conclusions that a serious attempt to identify objective moral values usually leads to. In contrast, the ideologies associated with the two major forms of tyranny of the twentieth century - namely, communism and fascism - have hardly exemplified objectivism. Orthodox Marxism holds that moral values are not objective but are mere fictions invented by the ruling class to further its class interests. The German Nazis held that all values are determined by one's race, that the right was just what accorded with the will of the people, and that moral values thus had no objectivity. It scarcely need be pointed out that the subjectivism that these ideologies embraced did not induce toleration on the part of their followers. Instead, it carried the implication that since reason was inapplicable to moral questions, conflicts of values could not be resolved except by the conflicting groups fighting it out.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 [note 1] Contrary to The Book of Hebrews, Jews do not look at the Torah as an unbearable burden. and we don't consider it  to be from any archangel . We consider the Torah as the greatest gift we have from God. Though we have lots of disagreements about how to go about keeping the Law we still agree that the Law of God is good and life and the light and the truth.
And so anyone who wants the truth and the light and life  and the good ought to learn and keep the Law of God--the Five Books of Moses. And this is repeated constantly throughout the entire Old Testament.
Hey if you don't want the truth and the light just say so, but don't claim the Torah doe snot say what it does say. [If you have even bothered to read it.]

Why do people vote for politicians that are liars? Why does Breslov seem to have a problem with famous people that are liars. מפורסמים של שקר We know there seems to be some kind of trouble when it comes to finding decent leaders. This is such a  sore subject that some people just turn the channel when they hear about it.


 But where do you get fear of God from? Well one thing people complain about the Musar (Ethics) movement of Israel Salanter is that it is all about a highly negative emotion-- fear of God. If you heard everyone complaining about a certain university is it is no fun and all they do all day is math, then you know you are talking about a good university. So if everyone is complain about the ethics books of Israel Salanter and the Musar movement is all they do is give you fear of God, well then you know where to go for fear of God.

So in theory we have a good solution for the USA--make homes of ethics. (בתי מוסר) This would be the same approach to Breslov also. And in fact just about anywhere.
But what is Musar? It is divided into three parts, (1) Medieval books of Ethics, (2) Renaissance books of Ethics that combine Ethics with Kabalah. I am not so thrilled with these but the are a legitimate part of Musar (3) Disciples of Israel Salanter.

Now perhaps I should make clear to people that in secular society there are several  organizations that attempt to do what Musar does. Obviously the Boy Scouts  and Girl Scouts are the first and closest approximation. That is because they deal with one essential part of Musar and that is charter building.
Also  Conservative synagogues and Evangelical Churches try to work on the fear of God aspect. [Reform temples don't work on fear of God much. Other types of churches outside Evangelicals don't seem to work on fear on god much or character improvement. Maybe the Catholics do to some degree]. In any case I think the first and best choice is to build a new Musar movement based on Israel Salantar.

In any case other organizations that already exist and should be teaching fear of God but don't ought to get back on track.
 People worried about the Western world should get a few books of Musar. The books that I liked most were the Stars of Light by Isaac Blazer [disciple of Israel Salanter]. [It is in Hebrew only. Sorry.] Some good books in English: Duties of the Heart,  Paths of the Righteous {Orchot Tzadikim},   Mesilat Yesharim [That is by Moshe Lutzato a Renaissance Mystic]. Don't read them for information. They wont tell you anything new. Read them to work on your character and to build your fear of God.

The main idea here is that people are not automatically moral.There is a two step process that brings people to being decent human beings. One is reason. The other is Torah. That is some Divine inflow from above. With this Divine inflow people recognize what is common sense morality. Without it what is common sense is no longer common sense but highly doubtful.  Musar books from the Middle Ages tend to be very well thought out and combine reason with Torah. It is a powerful mix which helps people become decent human beings which is more of a feat that most people are willing to admit

The Gra however did like the idea of people standing and learning Torah all day. [Not sitting and learning.]] And as far as is possible for me to see he did like the idea of these people being supported.

Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Fathers) everyone reads. Hillel said right in the first chapter, "Don't make the Torah into a shovel to dig with." And in a later chapter when this saying is repeated, Maimonides has a long comment. That little juicy paragraph won a bitter and stinging crusade against him during his lifetime.

The only people I ever discovered that I could talk to about Trust in God and found that we were on the same wavelength were Reform and Conservative Jews.[ They usually coupled it with working, but the concept was clearly central to their way of thinking. ]


Trust in God was a major theme with the Gra. He said one that trust in God even if he does extremely major sins is better than one who is completely religious and does all the Torah and mitzvot but without trust-- because all his mitzvot are for honor and power.
And it is from the Gra that the idea of trust in God without doing anything gets a clear expression. Later the Madragat HaAdam brings it from him in his commentary on Mishlei. [That is the central position of the school of Navardok]

The Gra however did like the idea of people standing and learning Torah all day. [Not sitting and learning.]]
And as far as is possible for me to see, he did like the idea of these people being supported.  So we have two things from the Gra-one is the learning Torah thing. The other is the trust thing. So what I suggest is to change the paradigm from that of learning Torah being a kosher way of making money [It is not.], to that of trust in God that if one learns Torah, then God will find a way to send to him his means of a living or someone to support him, but not that it is permissible to go out and seek such a thing.

Judge people favorably

Judge people favorably.




  I should  mention that the original idea comes from the Mishna, Tractate Avot, " Judge every person favorably."

  I wanted to point out that Reb Chaim from Voloshin--the prime disciple of the Gra also emphasized this idea.
Reb Chaim said, "It is a tested fact that when one has enemies, and he judges them on the scales of merit, i.e. he thinks of them as absolute saints [tzadikim], immediately their hearts will be turned to love him."


 Reb Chaim said to think of the bad person as a saint.  And it reflects something about the\ Lithuanian Jewish mentality. It is black or white. No shades of gray. But Reb Chaim has a point. I can't count how many times I have heard people judge others not nicely and then when countered said "Well, they have a big evil inclination." That is not called judging favorably. That is judging not nicely and then trying to ind some excuse for doing so. With Reb Chaim that possibility is excluded. He says point blank :"You have an enemy think of them as a saint. Period."


) The ten statements by which the world was created form the life force that makes everything exist
There are actually nine statements "God said there shall be ..." The tenth is the first statement, "In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth." In this statement it does not say "God said..." so it is called  hidden statement. In the Tikunai HaZohar it says it is this statement which corresponds to the highest energy of the Crown of God. And it gives the life force for places where God's open glory can't go. For even though God's glory fills the world, there are places it can't go because God's glory and his honor are hidden there. So how do those places survive? How can they exist without the life force from God's energy? The answer is the get their life force from the Hidden Statement. And that Statement can go there because God's glory is not revealed there openly. And since that statement is the highest holiness--of the crown of God, when it turns towards God it goes to the highest heights. So when one has fallen to dirty places where God's glory is not revealed and from there one seeks God and calls out "where is the place of His Glory?" he turns to the highest holiness.
[See the Eitz Chaim of Isaac Luria in the later chapters where you see this. Also see the Remak [Moshe Cordovaro in his Pardes and Or Areiv.]

"So modern Israel is not supposed to defend itself against those whose serious, deadly, stated goal is to destroy them corporately and individually? Then why were they commanded to fight for it under Joshua?
Why did God help them in the seven wars since their founding to survive? Why shouldn't they use all the land they liberated in these wars they did not start or provoke? Beautiful thoughts about Christ's eventual reign over ALL does nothing to answer today's dilemmas. HE will prevail, and perhaps we in the West should attend to our own house rather than attempt to direct Israel. Certainly we need to make a lot of changes!"


The  blog itself  said  this: "It is for this reason that Paul would have scratched his head over the current Evangelical fascination with the modern secular state of Israel and its supposedly Bible-mandated right to do what it pleases with Palestine and its inhabitants. This way of reading the Bible misses the whole point of the story; it robs the biblical narrative of its climax."
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/11/what-would-the-apostle-paul-think-about-evangelicals-and-the-conflict-in-palestine/

That is to say since the Torah predicts a future time of peace in the world Jews should let themselves be slaughtered.  The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Unless  people's idea of universal peace is: "No Jews"



In other words when Christians talk about learning the Bible they usually mean not the Old Testament, but the New Testament. And when they talk about the NT they mean Paul. And when they talk about Paul they mean the Book of Hebrews (not by Paul and highly anti-Torah. And being anti-Torah makes it anti-Jew because all we Jews have is Torah. Torah is not a burden to us. It is the greatest gift we have from God). On one hand it is nice they accept the Old Testament, but they get into theological difficulties trying to get Paul and the Torah to correspond. Some people however did a fairly decent job putting it all together like Aquinas and Anselm and a few writers  from the end of the Roman Empire.]
Sometimes I get the impression that some Christians would be happier if Jews all would just disappear. And then they would Gan Eden right here on Earth. And of course with no Palestinian problem then they Muslims would be their best friends.

But this should not be understood to mean they have nothing. They have  a lot. And the way I see it what they have that is good comes from the Torah.  For I think all good comes from the Torah. So when they learn Torah and take to heart the commandments of God they do well. There are no favorites in this respect.
But it is not just reading the Torah. Rather I think the Torah is contained in everything. It is the hidden light of God. This is an idea that makes sense to me from my neo Platonic point of view. That is the real reality is up "there". "Here" is just some imperfect reflection.

And now that I am on a role about the Torah I would like to quote an important subject--the land of Israel.

We all know the disagreement between the Ramban and the Rambam if living in Israel is counted as one of the  613 commandments. But I wanted to point out that in the verse that the Rambam is bring as proof that it is it says, "If you get rid of the inhabitants, then you will be able to be  in the Land of Canaan. And if you don't get rid of them, you will not be able to stay. I am just paraphrasing it. But the idea is fairly simple even though it must offend some people. But since when is the word of God suppose to be politically correct?
_____________________________________________

I am thinking of deleting this essay because I think some people might see it as an attack on Christianity. I might have meant it more as a critique on the Book of Hebrews and to some degree on Paul also. To some people Paul is the very essence of Christianity. So they might be offended.  Now sometimes it is good to criticize people and sometimes not. Sometimes it is effective.  It seems to me it all depends on  a guess if the person one is talking to can accept it.  Since here I think  there are a significant number of Christians who are sincerely trying to be good people as the Torah defines good I might think twice about criticizing them.
 But it is a surprised to me that when the West is systematically being invaded by barbarian hordes from Africa and Muslims-- Christians can't find any problem except for the Jews.
I know Israel treats Muslims very well.  They have complete and equal right as anyone in Israel. But don't think Israel gets any credit for that. And the way I see it, Israel in fact gets no credit.  Why leave these murderous monsters in the midst of Jews. I say ship them all off to the Sudan. And why should the West get upset at Israel? If the West would be smart it would do exactly the same thing. Right now the West is being systematically destroyed by an invasion of Muslims