In one place the Talmud says to finish the book even if you forget and even if you don't understand. Avoda zara page19

  [.ליגמר איניש אף על גב דמשכח ואף על גב דלא ידע מאי קאמר ׁׂ[עבודה זרה י''ט

In one place the Talmud says to finish the book even if you forget and even if you don't understand. In another place it says לעולם לגרוס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
("Always one should learn fast even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying.")
And it brings it from a verse גרסה נפשי



I had a lot of trouble with this idea.
Where I was learning Torah, they were definitely emphasizing learning in depth. And would spend a week or two of learning on one page of Talmud.

Eventually I began to see the wisdom of their teachings me in depth
I believe that if I had not gotten the idea of how to do it then, I never would have gotten it.
Where ever I have gone in the world, I have noticed that even among people that learn Torah, few have any idea of how to learn. The most simple basic concepts of Talmud are foreign to them because they never learned with any rigor.
But I do think this fast learning part of Talmud is also important.

And I have applied the idea of fast learning to other areas of learning that I have had to do when I went to Polytechnic [a branch of NY University].

So my idea is for people to get themselves a whole set of Talmud and go through it, with all of the Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot, and Maharsha.
I don't remember exactly but I think this used to take me one simple half hour per day.

[People would positively make fun of me when they saw I was trying to learn fast. In those days, I was not even going very fast. I was  doing tractate Ketubot and I would say over the "shtikle" paragraph twice or more and then the Tosphot twice, and go on.  And there were a few chapters I also did with the Tosphot HaRosh when I did not understand Tosphot.] But that was still way too fast for most people's taste. {Today  what I was doing would be called learning in depth! You see how far this generation has fallen!! Nobody even knows anymore what real learning in depth is.}

For people in Israel that speak Hebrew I want to write an idea concerning Maimonides and Shabat First in Hebrew and then in English

For people in Israel that speak Hebrew I want to write an idea concerning Maimonides and Shabat

First in Hebrew and then in English for English speaking people whether in Israel or elsewhere.

הרמב''ם כתב שאם בן אדם עשה מלאכה בשבת בשוגג הוא מביא קרבן חטאת. היינו ששכח המלאכה או ששכח את העונש, וזכר את השבת. אם שכח כל השלשים ותשע הוא מביא שלשים ותשעה חטאות. זאת אומרת שהוא פסק כרבי יוחנן ששגגת עונש שמה שגגה. אבל לריש לקיש רק שגגת מלאכה שמה שגגה. בגמרא מדייקים ששגגת כל הל''ט מביא ל''ט חטאות. אבל אם שכח כולן במה הוא זוכר את השבת? לא שואלים את זו על רבי יוחנן בגלל שהוא יכול לומר ששכח את העונש. אבל מה ר''ל יכול לומר? מתרצת הגמרא: בתחומין ואליבא דרבי עקיבה.
אבל זה כנראה אינו עוזר להרמב''ם. הרמב''ם משמע ששכח כולן ועדיין מביא ל''ט. במה זכר את השבת? בנו של הרמב''ם תירץ: יכול להיות שהרמב''ם דיבר רק במצב ששכח את העונש. או שזכר איזו תולדה. החברותא שלי תירץ שאין שום סיבה לומר שהרמב''ם לא יכול לומר גם כן תחומים. רק בגמרא רבי יוחנן לא היה צריך את התרוץ הזה. אבל זה כל שכן: אם זדון שבת ומלאכות ושכחת עונש הוא שגגה, כל שכן שכחת מלאכות זכירת תחום שבת

What I am trying to say here is that if you think about it you can see that the only difference between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish is if doing a work on purpose is considered an accident of he forgets the punishment. The is the sole and only point of difference. There is no stated argument between them if remembering boundaries is considered remembering Shabat. The only reason the Gemara had to scrounge around for that was because Reish Lakish needed it. But there is no rational or logical reason to think Rabbi Yochanan thinks that that is not called remembering Shabat.
In my opinion this is an amazing insight from my learning partner. Pure genius.

It is not the first time I have seen things like this from him.




1) Maimonides says if one does an act of work by accident on the Sabbath he brings a sin offering. This means if he forgot that it was forbidden or he forgot the punishment, but remembered it is Shabat. And if he forgot all 39 types, then he brings 39 sin offerings.
2) This comes from the Talmud. In the Mishna you have the same idea (Talmud Shabat 69a).
Forgetting Shabat means one sin offering. Forgetting  work means a sin offering for each type of work.
3) R. Yochanan says forgetting the punishment is also called forgetting. To Reish Lakish only forgetting the work itself is called forgetting.
4) So there is no problem to Rabbi Yochanan. He could say forgetting all 39 types of work is liable 39 sin offerings  because he forgot the punishment.
But to Reish Lakish how can we explain the Mishna? If he forgot all 39, then in what way is he remembering Shabat? In boundaries according to Rabbi Akiva. (R. Akiva holds the 12 mile boundary is from the Torah. )
5) But this answer for Rabbi Yochanan on the Mishna does not help us for the Rambam.
The Rambam seems to imply even forgetting all 39 completely brings 39 offerings.
6) The son of the Rambam was asked this. He said It could be the Rambam is only referring to the clause where he remembered the work but forgot the punishment.
Or he remembered derivatives of the 39.
7) My learning partner suggested that perhaps the Rambam could answer the same thing as Resih Lakish. The reason is this if Rabbi Yochanan [who the law goes like in all cases against Reish lakish] holds remembering work but forgetting punishment is an accident then all the more so forgetting work and remembering boundaries. There is no reason to believe that Rabbi Yochanan would disagree with Resih Lakish that remembering boundaries is also called remembering.
Clearly no one wanted to go this way because they thought: "If we don't hold by Reish Lakish then how could this answer work?" But if you think into it you will see that my learning partner is right.





8) The Lechem Mishna also deals with this question. He disagrees with the answer of the son of the Rambam, but he gives an answer that to me to be hard to understand. The way it looks to me is he wants to answer that the Rambam is thinking of this as forgetting both Shabat and work. But how could that answer the Rambam is beyond my ability to understand since the Rambam himself says in such a situation he brings only one offering. If anyone in the great wide world has a way of understanding this Lechem Mishna, I would appreciate if you shared your thoughts with me.

9) I have mentioned before that for this reason it is important to have in your home a the set of the Chaim Soloveitchik's book on the Rambam, along with his two students' books [Baruch Ber, Shimon Shkopf, and Eliezer Menachem Shach's Aviezri. These four people brought a revolution to the world and a rigorous painstaking logic to understanding the Rambam. So even if they might not deal with my specific question, they would at least have some ideas that might help us.]
( Shmuel Berenbaum, was also learning along these lines but he never printed anything. They recorded his classes towards the end of his life though. That was at the Mir in NY. He was during his life giving the deepest classes in Talmud, more than anyone in the world except for Rav Shach at Ponovicth in Bnei Brak

To talk to God like you would talk to your best friend or your own parents.

1) To talk to God like you would talk to your best friend or your own parents. This should be private, but it can and should be done anywhere.
To tell Him your problems and ask him for guidance to come out of your problems and also to thank him for what you have and also just to discuss things like you would  with a friend.
2) To have sessions in Torah every day in order. That is one session in the Old Testament,page after page. One session in Talmud, the the Jerusalem Talmud, then the Tosephta, Sifiri and Sifra until you have finished the Oral Law. and then you repeat the whole process again.

The Rambam's idea that learning Physics and Metaphysics brings one to Love and Fear of God

To understand the Rambam's idea that learning Physics and Metaphysics brings one to Love and Fear of God. [This is stated most openly in The Guide for the Perplexed, but also shows up in Mishne Torah.] [The Rambam tells us what he means in different places. he says this in elliptical form as he warned us openly that he would write in that way. He defines the "Work of Creation" (מעשה בראשית) and "Work of the Divine Chariot" (מעשה מרכבה) in the beginning (Introduction) of the Guide. Then in the Guide itself, he tells us what is the purpose he sees in these--the Work of Creation to come to fear and the Work of the Divine Chariot to come to love.  This approach of the Rambam is quoted virtually verbatim in all later books of Musar (Medieval Ethics).] (Seeing deep secrets in the מורה נבוכים Guide for the Perplexed is not new. Rav Avraham Abulafia wrote a whole books explaining the deep secrets of the Guide. And Rav Abulafia himself is not  a minor figure. He is quoted at length by both Reb Haim Vital, the disciple of the Ari) in שערי קדושה volume 4 and also by Moshe Kordavero.)






My feeling about the actual way of going about this I mentioned in some blog essay some time ago.
Mainly I think one should get one math book on Abstract Algebra,  Algebraic Topology { Especially Allen Hatcher's book}, and a decent book on String Theory and Quantum Field Theory.
The way to learn this is in my opinion to guard the first twenty minutes when you wake up as if every minute was worth a few billion dollars. The learning you do then and the twenty minutes before you go to sleep are worth a whole day's worth of learning. Bava Sali had coffee and tea in the same cup when he got up for the midnight prayer. (Thus I heard from Moshe Buso his grandson).

I know there are people that think one should learn Torah all day, and not learn any secular things. That was not the opinion of my parents nor of the Rambam. My reasons for siding with the Rambam here is mainly experience. It is not some deep insight I have into the nature of things. It is just that by experience I got the idea that my parents and the Rambam were trying to tell me something that I did not want to listen too and in the end it turned out they were right. So if I can go back and retrace my steps at least I can tell others and hope they benefit form this idea that perhaps the Rambam knew what he was taking about. Perhaps even more so than people that thought that he did not "get it."

[In terms of what the Rambam said about learning Metaphysics, my feeling is the best thing is Kant and Leonard Nelson. That is what is known as the Kant Friesian School in the USA and in Europe it is called Critical Philosophy. However, I also think Hegel is important though there is is tension between Hegel and the Kant-Friesian system. Dr Kelley Ross in his development of Negative Transcendence does openly refer to Hegel idea of a ground or background where contraries like Being and Non Being become one. He mentions this along with Heidegger's Being itself as opposed to "being things."]

If one does an act of work on the Sabbath day by accident he has to bring a sin offering.

If one does an act of work on the Sabbath day by accident he has to bring a sin offering.
If he does it on purpose then if the act is done in front of two witnesses that warned him and said if you do this  you will be doing an act of desecrating the Sabbath and you will be brought to beit din and stoned. If he acknowledges this and says, "I agree and even so I will do it,,"then he is stoned. If any of these conditions are not fulfilled he is not stoned but also he can't bring a sin offering because the act was done on purpose.
This applies to all the 43 things in the Torah for which there is a death penalty. In all cases there needs to be a set of conditions or else the case is thrown out of court.
So what is an accident? Rabbi Yochanan said even if he forgets the punishment but remember that the act is forbidden then that too is called accident. Reish Lakish said, "No. That is called on purpose. Only if he forgets that the act is forbidden is it an accident."
The Rambam says if one forgets an act of work but remembers it is Shabat or forgets the punishment then he is liable a sin offering. Even if he forgets all 39 types of work than  he brings 39 sin offerings.{ Each one is a goat or a sheep.


So he decides like Rabbi Yochanan. But then what about the end of the rambam? If he forgot all 39 types then in what way is he remembering the Shabat? And if he in fact forgot the Shabat then he is liable only one sin offering! Now this Rambam comes from a Mishna and Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish were disagreeing about it. And there Reih lakish said it could be he remembered the boundary of Shabat which is 12 miles from the Torah according to Rabbi Akiva. But this does not help us here. The son of the Rambam was asked this. (Abraham ben Moshe). He said three answers. One is he forget 39 principles but remembered at least one derivative.

I forgot the other two. But I wanted to suggest perhaps the last part of the Rambam is not referring to the first 10 words where he says the case that he forget the work is forbidden. Perhaps the end of the Rambam is only referring to the case where he forgot the punishment.

[I can't be sure that Reb Avraham himself did not answer this until I get a chance to see the Rambam again.]

The idea of the Gra based on Proverbs 3:5 is that one can trust in God with doing no effort, because what is decreed on a person will come no matter what.

1) As for the issue of Trust in God, it looks like the Chafetz Chaim and Joseph Horwitz from Navardok were siding with the Gra. And they were specifically trying to make trust in God a separate variable than doing mitzvot. They both claim that trust in God has nothing to do whether one is righteous or not.
{The idea of the Gra based on Proverbs 3:5  is that one can trust in God with doing no effort, because what is decreed on a person will come no matter what. This is not like the Duties of the Heart that one should do effort also.}



But in their way of thinking, learning Torah is the highest of mitzvot. So they are both thinking that trust in God is not an excuse not to do a mitzvah one is required to do. That is the axial that the Lithuanian Torah world revolves on. That learning Torah is the highest and most important of all.

 
  I myself have an approach I base on my Maimonides and my parents which is more a balance between Torah, prayer, Physics, and Mathematics and self reliance.

  In any case, the point is the same--you do what the Torah requires of you  in order to do God's will, and as for the rest you trust in God.
2) Also I feel that self reliance is an essential part of Torah. I think it is just too easy to fool oneself that he is relying on God when in fact he is relying on the social system he is a part of. There is just too much self delusion in the religious world.

when something is decreed for you from Heaven, then people will ask you to allow them to do it for you.

Should you trust in God, but also make your own efforts to get your needs fulfilled? Or should one sit back and relax and depend on God to do everything for you? This does not seem like a hard question. Even in the Torah, we find working for a living is a good thing. כמו שנכרתה ברית על התורה כן נכרתה ברית על המלאכה. And this seems to be the approach of the חובות הלבבות.
The Sages in the Talmud seem to say otherwise. The רבנן [the students in the local beit midrash--learning hall] did not know what this verse in Mishlei [Proverbs] means (chapter 3: verse 5) בטח בהשם בכל לבך ואל בינתך אל תשען "Trust in God with all your heart, and do not depend on your own intellect." One day Raba Bar Bar Chana was walking with a merchant, and he was carrying a heavy bag. The merchant said to him, "Take your burden יהבך, and put it on my camel." [Tractate Rosh HaShanah page 26 side b].
Elijah from Vilnius (The Gra) said that it does not mean the merchant understood the meaning of the word יהבך when no one else did. Rather, they thought one should trust in God, but also go around getting his needs met. So that caused them not to understand the verse. It should say "your needs" "צרכיך."
But then they saw that Raba Bar Bar Chana was carrying this heavy bag, and he should have had to pay the merchant to take it for him, but instead the merchant asked him to let him take it. They concluded that when something is decreed for you from Heaven, then people will ask you to allow them to do it for you.

From here we see one needs no effort, but what is decreed for you will come to you without any effort on your part at all.
This seems fairly plain. And in fact there were a number of years when I did just this and it worked exactly as stated . But in the meantime I fell from this high level of trust. But I still am aware that this kind of trust in God does work.
But it does not absolve one from doing what the Torah requires of you. So you are supposed to learn Torah and learn an honest profession. You might learn Torah only and trust in God to support you. That is legitimate, But if you are going around asking for charity to support your learning Torah that is not legitimate. Because that shows you are not trusting in God, but rather using the Torah as shovel to dig with.
From my point of view I say to everyone--learn Torah at home. Buy yourself the Talmud (Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds), the Tosephta, Sifri and Sifra, and plow through them. Every single last word. And Musar (Medieaval Ethics) too. (Duties of the Heart, Paths of the Righteous, מסילת ישרים ספר הישר,  ספר המידות לבנימין הרופא etc.--There is a basic canon of Musar books.)

This idea of trust in God is something that I try to say over to myself when I get up in the morning in order to fix this in my soul. [That is I try to say over the verse of Proverbs and the comment of the Gra and he added note where he explained the purpose of the verse is to show that when one trusts in God totally, then he needs no effort at all.