The Gra (Eliyahu from Vilnius) concludes that it was only in the time of the prophets that one could go to a prophet and find out what what particular good deed should he emphasize in order to lessen the judgments from on high. Now we just need to learn Torah and do what it says

. But embedded in the very nature of things are solutions to these problems. For we find that a lot of times of Torah refers to the idea that a judgment is made in heaven against some person of group of persons. For example we have Sodom where there was a decree to destroy it. And yet a discussion God had with Abraham weakened the decree and in fact resulted in the coming into the world of Ruth [from the book of Ruth]-- the grandmother of King David.
Naaman the Syrian general had leprosy. He went to Elisha the prophet. Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan river.
  He laughed at that and said "Are not the rivers of Ashur greater the little stream of the Jordan?"
  But his servant said, "What would you lose to try it?"
  He went and tried it and was cured.

The idea is sometimes there is a little thing one can do to turn around his whole life. One small mitzvah. Something that seems insignificant.

The Gra (Eliyahu from Vilnius) also refers to this idea in a few places. But he concludes that it was only in the time of the prophets that one could go to a prophet and find out what what particular good deed should he emphasize in order to lessen the judgments from on high. Now we just need tolearn Torah and do what it says


But the idea that one can lessen judgments by doing some right action is a powerful idea. Especially if you think there actually is such a thing as a way to lessen judgments.
Sometimes in older books you find similar things. The Ari has a certain number of fasts one should do for certain sins. and he would also tell people to concentrate on certain Divine names during those fasts.
To some degree you might think this is an idea that can be abused and you are right.  But chemistry also can be misused, and auto repair manuals also.

My basic feeling is that the best way of lessening judgment is to learn Torah for its own sake. [That is the Oral Law and the Written Law.


Learning Torah in this sense does not mean you have to be doing it all day. What I am asking for is an hour every day of Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot with a learning partner. After that, go to school, or go to work, or go to the beach and pray for waves and surf. [But don't speak Lashon Hara, gosip]
I do not think that God is automatically interested in human good. [See Schopenhauer.] I think that most of the time it is just the moral laws embedded in nature that act to reward and punish people. And there is no reason to think the First Cause has to be concerned with humans. But I also think that when humans decide to turn to Him in truth, then he is concerned.
So the logical thing to do would be to turn to Him, by Torah, prayer, and marriage

 But there was a time that my idea of service towards God was really that of the Gra-. That anything you do beside learning Torah is step down. It was understood that there are lots of mitzvahs one must do in situations when no one else can do them like the law is decide din the Talmud, but still mitzvahs are not considered as precious as learning Torah. And I can't disagree with this because to  a large degree I think it did help me in quite amazing ways. When I learned Torah in such a fashion and with that type of commitment, I got married, had children, had a kosher means of living, went to Israel etc. Everything was working just like it was supposed to in theory. Theory and experiment matched perfectly. I did my end of the bargain-- I learned Torah and God kept his end of the bargain. "Anyone who accepts on themselves the yoke of Torah they take away from him the yoke of government and the yoke of making a living." [Mishna in Pirkei Avot.]

If you have more than an hour to learn, the my feeling is  to learn the Mishna, Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, the Tosephta and Sifri and Sifra and all the writings of the Ari. ''a little is also good.'' and learn every day a little bit of each book. and just open a Talmud and learn a page of Gemara Rashi and Tosphot and put in a place marker and the next day go to the next page. etc. and similarly with all the above sessions. And also all the books of Musar/ethics in the same way.
Don't worry if you do not understand at first. Just say the words in order and you will automatically understand. And if you don't understand right away you will eventually understand. And even if eventually you do not understand--so what? For the greatness of a lot of learning goes above everything else.

The people determined to keep the Torah away from your children, and have destroyed once and for all the American family the enemies of morality, and decency, and the Bible.

There are groups  of people that are dedicated to the overthrow of the USA. Many are in the USA itself. This is not remarkable to see. You can ask them yourself and they will tell you as much straight out. I did that in the 1970's and people said to me openly and exactly what their plans were.' 'We are going to take down America." Quote, unquote.
I claim that this was predicted in 1800 by a  short story about the seven beggars in which there was a  utopia (like the USA used to be), and there was an evil king that wanted to destroy it. But he could not destroy it from without, so he sent in his slaves. The taste and flavor of everything was ruined.  Then a person came along to correct it, and discovered how the slaves had managed to destroy it. By lewd speech, by making a vocation of bringing law suits and one other thing I forget. [Maybe I will look up the story.] [Later note: I might be wrong, but it occurs to me the third thing was dealing with non kosher sexual relations.] The only solution in the story was to send the evil king's slaves away. And when the slaves left, everything returned to normal.

Note: The short stories come in a volume of 13 stories that he said and Reb Natan wrote down. If you only read English I think the "Na Nach" people have a good translation.-- The story I refer to here is the last one.
But here, I think, it makes sense to say over who these slaves are. The present occupant of the White House would be one example.  In a nut shell the evil king's slaves today are the Democrats. The people determined to keep the Torah away from your children, that turned NASA into an outreach program for Muslims instead of getting to space, and have destroyed once and for all the American family, the enemies of morality and decency and the Bible. They are also people that pretend to be keeping the Torah, but using it in fact to destroy Jewish families.



I think there is some support from the Geon Eliyahu from Vilnius concerning this idea also. \" They are (the Zohar says) the "Erev Rav/the mixed multitude" that penetrated the Jewish people from the inside to try to destroy us.



I am not happy to be using the word rabbi for them because rabbi is in fact a legitimate idea. It is the term the Talmud uses for people that had ordination by an unbroken link from Moses and onward. this position ceased to exist pretty soon after the beginning of  the Talmudic period. We say for example Rabbi Yochanan to indicate he had this ordination. He may have been one of the last to get it. Also we have Rabbi Yehuda Ben Levi. Both sages that were right at the beginning of the Talmud period.
People of the Talmud that did not have it are called Rav. A kind of fake ordination was started during the Middle ages and this fraud has continued until this very day among Ashkenazim.  Sefardim on the other hand always called their scholars "Chacham."{wise man or sage} This has the great advantage of not being  a scam.

The best approach to Torah as far as I can tell is that of my father Philip Rosten (and mother, Leila). [Rosenbloom was the original family name.] That would be Torah with the Way of Men.  In Hebrew that is תורה עם דרך ארץ. This might be hard for me to describe because I don't think I ever got the lesson down pat. But because there could be people out there that might understand it better than me so I will give the idea over as well as I can.
If you know Yiddish the best way of expressing this is "to be a mensch." [He was an US Air-force captain, a scientist, and inventor of laser communication between satellites for NASA, etc.]
To be a mensch is actually on one one hand is not hard to describe. It really means going to school learning an honest profession, learning Torah after school. And not using Torah to make money. It means being self sufficient. It is being honest, reliable, loyal and never telling a lie except under extreme circumstances. In fact the Boy Scout motto pretty much covers it.

It is a highly balanced approach. So on one hand we see the Geon from Vilnius emphasizing learning Torah and Reb Israel Salanter emphasizing learning the books of ethics that were written to explain the moral aspects of Torah. And we have  the path of Navardok of Trusting in God with no effort. And all this would be considered important aspects of Torah to my Dad. But it would just be aspects of Torah. Not Torah itself. And it should all be taken with balance and equilibrium.
On the other hand he would see lots of aspects of Torah not covered by the aforementioned approaches.
Truth, Honor, Justice, self reliance, never letting down and friend. Never lying. Working for a living with an honest and clean profession. These are all parts and aspects of Torah. I can't say I followed this very well.

The world was created and sustained by the ten statements of Creation [chapter one of Genesis]. That is the Torah is the essence of everything. So it is possible to serve God through everything. This would go with the Rambam that hold the mitzvas have a purpose, and they are not ends in themselves. And to reach that end Rabbi Shimon holds the actual halacha itself changes. Rabbi Yehuda holds it does not. But all agree that the is a knowable purpose to the mitzvot except for the red heifer.

Learning Torah was considered as a primary value by Eliyahu (Elijah) from Vilnius.


There is no mitzvah to support anyone for learning Torah that learns it for money or who says so. If they say they are learning for money, I think we can trust them. But there is a mitzvah to support those who learn Torah not for money  but for its own sake.
This might seem like a small difference but people are always conservative and strict about things they know well. To me sitting at a baseball game in the stands, the difference between a curve ball and the other many varieties of pitches seems imperceptible. But to the person up to bat, the difference is like day and night.

What I wanted to say was how the idea of the primary value learning Torah comes from the Torah and Talmud.



In the USA, public school used to be a decent option for people. But sadly it has become propaganda  indoctrination centers for politically correct thinking. This is what makes me think the  approach is best where teenagers go to the high school in the afternoon and do their Torah studies in the morning. But normal private schools are probably not that different from public schools nowadays. What people need according to my way of thinking is Torah. An where there is Torah, then everything else becomes right.
What people need to do that have no choice but to send their children to public school is at least after school to give them a religious education. That should be short, but sweet. That would be Torah [the Five Books of Moses in Hebrew], Mishna, Talmud, and Tosphot. [Learning Torah is not to make people religious but to give people Torah values.] That is for week days. For weekends I suggest "Talk with God" camping trips.
That is to go to a forest with supplies. Set up base camp. And then to have to whole day available to wander by yourself and  talk with God. The idea of talking with God is to talk with Him as one talks with a friend or  parents and tell him all ones problems and all that is happening to him or her and ask for help. And also not to forget to thank him for all the good.

How does one go about thanking God?

 How does one go about thanking God? The best way that I can see is to go to a place where no one else is, and to talk with God as one talks with a close friend and to thank him for the good one has in life.  This can be hard to do in a big city. If one is walking alone in the street and talking to God it looks like one is talking to himself. And to get out into the wildness is not always practical. For this reason I suggest a kind of  camping trips that would include time for solitary  prayer and individual connection with God.
 Even though learning Torah was an amazing thing, and something I am very grateful to God that he granted to me to do for the several years I was there, I definitely needed time alone.

Left wing politics has an element of emotion. Just think of the word "Marx." It gets your blood rushing as you clench your fists and scream out: "Let's take down the exploiters! All power to the Proletariat!"
Just think of the word "John Locke." It calms you down. It is not war cry, but a lullaby.
My feeling about this is that capitalism has lost its "punch."
The way I would look at this would be to go back to the intellectual sources of left wing politics in support of the collective (Rousseau,  Hegel) and the sources of right wing politics in support of the individual and individual rights (John Locke). But because all these sources have problems (note 1) I thought to myself to take a Kantian approach. (Kant is similar to John Locke in terms of individual rights. And he lacks the flaws of the pure empiricism of John Locke.)
But Kant is more like a puzzle than a solution. So you do need some kind of modification. The sad thing about Kant is much of the modification that was done became the neo-Kant schools. A pretty miserable lot they are. (I mean here that they deny the existence of the "dinge an sich" the thing in itself.-unlike Kant) Some people simply went straight out against Kant--the intuitionists. [Prichard] Ann Rand apparently thought that Kant said what she learned about him in school (which was not Kant at all, but neo Kant). So she is not much of an authority.


20th century philosophy is usually divided into the British/USA and Continental areas.
"Indeed, to cop a line from John Searle, one he applied to Jacques Derrida, Continental philosophy gives bullshit a bad name. " (Maverick Philosopher)



 (note 1) Rousseau has the problem that his idea of natural man being noble  by nature and it is just civilization which has made him savage is wrong.  The other thing that is wrong is that nature is loving. And his system depends on these two axioms.  And not even left wing people believe in them, or they would go some country where people live close to nature like the Sudan or Somalia. Ever try to manage one day in nature with no tools?
  Hegel is very impressive when it comes to metaphysics. That seems to be his forte. But when he gets into politics he gets into problems. [At least that is how he looks to me. Some people like Schopenhauer had a negative opinion of Hegel even concerning his metaphysics.]
John Locke also has a few problems but in general is impressive. But not rigorous enough for my taste.

A return  Plato in some important ways.--. And that works well with Maimonides. [I should mention  that the Rambam/Maimonides is not at all as radical an Aristotelean as people think. He does have an approach somewhere between Aristotle and Plato and so in that respect looks like Plotinus. But it is different than regular Neo-Platonic thought.]

 (note 2) Transcendental in Kant means beyond the limits of experience. But Torah does not assume God is beyond the limits of experience. And in another point Hegel and the intuitionists are right that reason does a lot more than perceive contradictions. But it would be enough that they perceive self contradictions in Hume

Torah is everywhere and is the life-force of everything in the universe

 Torah is everywhere and is the life-force of everything in the universe.
There are different levels of the revelation of Torah. And he also means not everyone can accept it like it is.
His idea  is mystical. But it has the advantage being able to serve God through everything. When people becomes religious they often join some cult. But one can stay home and serve God where ever one is and with ones own family and friends.



[1] Shalom Sharabi--the Reshash- holds the Torah is the [pinimiut] inner part of the worlds
But how do you define Torah?
[2] Maimonides held that Torah is only the Written and Oral law. But one of the commandments of the Torah is to love and fear God and this Maimonides held was only possible by learning Physics and Metaphysics. [He was referring to the two sets of books by Aristotle called the Physics and the other called the Metaphysics].
So the actual Torah is only the actual text of the Old Testament and the oral interpretation of it--the Talmud.
And he wrote: "Just like you can't add or subtract from the written law so you can't add or subtract from the oral law." כמו שאין תוספת וגירעון שתורה שבכתב כן אין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבעל פה
[3] But there are different levels of revelation of Torah.
The world was sustained by the Ten Statements (עשרה מאמרות) before the Torah was given [ten times it says ''And God said'']
But these statements were hidden. then the ten trials of Abraham were a first step towards the revelation of Torah. The ten plagues on Egypt were the next step to make it possible to reveal the Torah. Then the ten commandments were the actual revelation of Torah. [The idea of the plagues was that one has to get rid of evil before the good can be revealed.]
[4] But because the Torah is in everything, it is possible to serve God with everything.
[5] Knowledge of this sub-level comes not by sense perception and not by logical deductions but by non intuitive immediate knowledge.



In the above essay, I am looking at Maimonides's idea and though I realize it has a simple explanation I am trying to find a deeper justification for it. The way it looks from the Rambam is learning Physics and Meta Physics is to inspire one and awaken him to the deepness and beauty of God's creation. What I am looking for here is the idea that the Physics and Metaphysics themselves are a kind of revelation of one aspect of of God's wisdom contained in his creation.
I am also saying that Torah is a sub-level of natural law, not that it is identified with natural law.
At least this is the way I conceive of these things. Other people probably have different ideas, but that is my approach. It is basically Neo-Platonic but I am using it to justify Maimonides more Aristotelian approach.
I want to suggest a balanced approach. That is we can see  from the Rambam that the natural sciences are important to learn and not at all ביטול תורה they are not bitul Torah wasting time from learning Torah.
But this does not take the place of learning Torah. One still has to learn Torah and the Talmud --not for money, but because learning Torah is the greatest mitzvah. כנגד כולם.
It has been common in the religious world to recommend to young people to do teshuva repentance.


If you go into Torah with trust in God, then I believe He helps. If you go to learn Torah with this in mind I have to agree it is the best approach. But depending on the frum religious world is a mistake. This learning Torah alone approach with trusting in charity works for them because of the social network they are plugged into.
So again if you learn Torah with trust in God, then this is best. Trust in the frum world though is a mistake.




 Pirkei Avot: One is not allowed to make the Torah into a shovel to dig with--a means to making  money.
What people should do is to learn skills that people will pay cold hard cash for; and also learn Torah. But not learn Torah for money, nor to turn it into a profession. And as per the Rambam people should learn Physics and metaphysics--not for a profession, but to come to love and fear of God. [Love and fear of God are considered good things in the Torah. ]