A conversation about race in Starbucks

Race is the beginning when Nature starts to make one species into two species. And once this process starts there is no stopping it. You can't fight biology. And if you try, then biology fights back.

For an example you have one species in one area. Then for some reason part of the group gets separated. At first the two species will develop different characteristics based on female choice and environment. For some time they will remain one species, but with different characteristics. That is called "race."  After some time they will become two different species. So race is simply the beginning of when Nature divides one species into two.
Any disagreement between Nature and political correct positions is not really a contest. Reality will win out every time.

The reason this is so difficult to say, even though it is perfectly obvious, is that there has been for some time an attempt exterminate WASPS [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] . [I would use a stronger word: a war against wasps if I could. But war might be too strong a term. Let's say at minimum there is a conspiracy to wipe out WASPS.] And there is a concern that if they become aware of this attempt, they might try to prevent their extinction. So it has become P.C. to say: "There are no WASPS". Or rather, there are no races. But, in all species, there are races. And they are always the beginning of an uncross-able divide.

My learning partner mentioned to me that the problem with Germany was not racism. He noticed that there have been  black Germans for hundreds of years. There was and still is not a bias in Germany against others races. The major problem was that they did not like Jews. That is not a issue of race. Racism and being anti-Jews are very different things. And though I realize that Germany has gone far to make amends as far as that is possible, still I think confusing the issues of WWII with racism is a smoke screen. The problem was not racism. The problem was being anti -Jews.

In fact, if we consider the idea that Esau was a brother of Yaakov, then Germans and Jews are one race.

Gra told him that to the degree one lacks any knowledge of any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in his understanding of the Torah.

Baruch of Shkolov wrote in his introduction to his translation of Euclid a statement of the Gra about secular knowledge. He writes that the Gra told him that to the degree one lacks any knowledge of any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in his understanding of the Torah.
This statement of the Gra is rarely quoted, but Litvaks are aware of it to some degree.
The significance of this is the statement of the Gra in the Shulchan Aruch about not learning secular wisdoms. The Rema and the Rambam write about the Pardes and there is a note from the Gra that is a  polemic against learning philosophy. It is very uncharacteristic of the Gra. One person wrote after that that that note in Shulchan Aruch is not from the Gra and he knows who put it there אני יודע את האיש ואת שיחו "I know the guy and his talk". Later on people claimed the note is authentic.
Since the note deals with general secular wisdoms and contradicts what we know the Gra said elsewhere it seems reasonable to say like the first opinion that it is not authentic.


We know Rav Hutner [The Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin] sent his students to learn in Brooklyn Collage in the afternoons to learn a honorable profession and not depend on using Torah as a way of getting people's charity. And Reb Shelomo Freifeld  [The student of Rav Hutner and the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv] in fact told me to go to collage. In fact he ordered me to go to collage.
[Eventually I did listen, and  majored in Physics at the Polytechnic Institute which is connected with NYU. ] I am not a good example for this matter. My parents also wanted me to go to collage. It was the only thing that they exercised their parental authority about. And it was about the only thing I refused to listen to them. On one hand today it looks like a good thing I went to yeshiva in NY instead. Yet the way NY was I think I could very well have spent 1/2  a day in yeshiva and 1/2 in Brooklyn Collage. [But who knows? At the time it seemed to me that I needed to concentrate on just Torah alone. And at the Mir as a student you were not supposed to take time off to go to university. That practice was only at Chaim Berlin yeshiva and Torah VeDaat


Appendix:
The Seven Wisdoms
1) Grammar
2) Rhetoric
3) Logic
4) Arithmetic
5) Geometry
6) Music
7) Astronomy

(They want to divest from Israel. Sure go ahead. The first PC microprocessor was invented in Israel. Let them all turn off their computers. The intel 8088 was invented in Haifa )

There is a lot of  antisemitism out there. Mainly in universities.
(They want to divest from Israel. Sure go ahead. The first  PC microprocessor  was invented in Israel. Let them all turn off their computers. The intel 8088 was invented in  Haifa )


Any time a guy has his wife take away his children, and his house, and his money, who gets blamed for it? His wife? Of course not. And when blacks are making a war on white USA, who do you think gets blamed for it? Blacks? Of course not. You know who gets blamed.
This is the major characteristic of Wasps-White Anglo Saxon Protestants. They go all out for some dumb ideal like equality or some other such nonsense. And then when it turns sour, they keep on enduring it. And enduring it... and enduring it.... Until it explodes in their faces.  And then they go in the exact opposite direction. No tolerance for anyone,-- especially Jews. And in the meantime who is blamed? Jews of course. Most Jews would not consider the Feminists or Howard Stern or Wasserman to represent Torah ideals. Not even Reform Jews. No one said to make them poster boys for Jews in the first place. And no one said there is anything special about Jews except in so far as we attempt to keep the Law of God. And we are the first ones to admit we don't do a good job at that.

[And no Jew who believes in Torah voted for the anti-Semite traitor to the USA in the Black House.]

Now this was the idea of Chaim from Voloshin that Jews have the quality of combining Divine Traits. That is you find Divine traits like Power or Kindness, etc. All ten sepherot. And wasps often take hold of one trait. That is why Jews are necessary--because they have the quality of combining opposing traits to bring balance to the situation. [See the Nefesh HaChaim by Reb Chaim the disciple\ of the Gra.]

Now I am not going to put all the blame on the Wasps. It has been suggested that there was a certain amount of animosity towards Wasps even before all this. The minimum requirement today to be anyone anywhere is to have something bad to say about Wasps. [Personally I developed a good amount of respect for Wasps. All my elementary school and high school teachers were wasps and they were all very good. Some were outstanding. I had a girl friend who was a wasp and she fit all the stereotypes you see about smart girls. She was smart without even trying. I think she got, according to my memory, a  1198 on her SAT. That is she missed two points from a perfect score.]

It just goes to show we should have stayed out of the civil rights movement  which was a clear war against wasps, and now it is blowing up in our faces. I can't imagine why anyone would have thought civil rights for clear and open enemies of America could possibility be a good thing.

I any case, I  told people a long time ago that tolerance towards Jews and Asians is very different than tolerance towards people who main goal in life is the destruction of White America. But no one was listening. No one.

And if you want poster boys for Jews I can think of a lot better choices. E.G. Susskind, Gregori Pearlman, the thousand and one Jewish professors of Physics and Math all over the world, the roshei yeshivas of the Mirrer yeshiva in NY, and etc.
And I don't recommend being open or tolerant of Jewish cults. Cults are bad for everyone.
Wasps should learn  to discern. There are things they ought to be tolerant of and thing they ought to exclude.There is a golden mean.
Since tolerance became a big thing, people lost the ability to discern the difference between good and bad people.

The Oral Law is not a porous concept. It is fairly well defined

The Oral Law is not a porous concept. It is fairly well defined. The two Talmuds, the Mechilta and Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta, and the Midrashim. When the Zohar came out there was (and still is) debate if to include it in the set. But later on books are at best are commentaries, not the thing in itself.

With so many people trying to pull you into their cults, it is easy to lose focus on this.

So I suggest either plowing through this material on your own at home after work, or to find a straight Lithuanian yeshiva in your neighborhood to go after school or work to do this.

I remember when I was at the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY, there was some kind of after school program where students from the local high schools would come in the afternoon to learn Torah and get credit at school for this work. I don't know why this has to be a solely NY kind of thing. Why could it not be in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Baltimore?
However care should be taken to exclude cults. There is a significant danger level that very damaging cults could take advantage of this arrangement. For that reason I have stressed that this should be only with straight Lithuanian yeshivas. And these types of places can be hard to make. In fact in the whole world there are only a few in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and Flatbush. There is something hard about making such places. I could count the sum total of legitimate Litvak yeshivas on two hands.

What makes a legitimate Lithuanian yeshiva? Certainly lack of "shtick" games plays a role. Schedule also. But I think the main component is the Rosh Yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva has been learning for about twenty years before he became a rosh yeshiva. He is not a novice. He has not been spending his time making money for the yeshiva. he has been learning. He is like a doctor who did his time in pre med and then in med school. Without that period of training he is not a doctor but a dangerous quake.
[Most roshei yeshivas are in dangerous quakes because of the fact that hey did not put in the time.]

The students are also a factor. If you have to pay them to learn then they are not worth money. No one ever paid students to learn in Torah VeDaat, the Mirrer yeshiva or Chaim Berlin. Frankly it is hard to know why people learn in these places but something motivates them. And what ever it is that motivates them better not be money if you want the place to be authentic.

Appendix: I did not take part of that program teaching high school students Torah. I am not sure what they were teaching the students. I assume it was not Gemara, Rashi, and Topshot. It was probably something more basic like the Five Books of Moses in Hebrew. That is my best guess. In general people go through the Five Books of Moses anyway every year but the students were secular students so I assume they were probably needing an introduction. My own background was such that in fact I did spend time on the Five Books of Moses before I got started on Talmud. That was at Beverly Hills High School and in the Reform Temple, Temple Israel of Hollywood. And even later when I got to yeshiva I spend my first year doing a lot of work on the Five Books of Moses. It was only in my second year that the Talmud studies started taking precedence.

Ramban (Nachmanides) concerning the meaning of idolatry.

In the Ten Commandments there is a verse not to have any other gods on my face. לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני. What does this mean? Later on there is a verse "I will send my angel before you". אנכי שולח את מלאכי לפניך. That verse was written before the golden calf incident. So it is not a reaction to the golden calf but rather a good thing.

 The basic idea of the Ramban seems to center on the idea (in software) of network presentation. That is there is a level of the network that is presented to the user. Behind that is a whole network of connections. There is the satellite up-link, and the hardware transistors, and many subprograms, until you get to what the user is actually seeing.
To the Ramban this is פני "my face" and Metatron and the angel that God promised he would send before the children of Israel. That is  the level of interface between God and his world. It is the interface that God chooses to be his representative.
To choose another representation is idolatry because there is nothing behind it. [or perhaps there are bad things behind it.] It is not the representation that God chose to be his representative.


Exodus XX:3 and XXIII:20, 21 would be the relevant places to look at the Ramban.

After the golden calf, God said he would send an angel to guide them, but to the Ramban that was not the angel that was promised before the event of the golden calf which was Metatron.

That means that pantheism is wrong. There is a point at which God's representation stops, and things becomes created from nothing. And not anything or everything can be a presentation of God

Now at this point my learning partner tied this in with something that Rav Nevental --the rav of the old city of Jerusalem said about their making their own representation being the major sin. But the Ramban goes even further and explains that the golden calf simply did not have the software network behind it in the first place.

Appendix:
1) I mean to say here that the Ramban is making a distinction between angels. He equates "my face" with Metatron, and angel of the covenant, and the statement "I will send my angel before you to lead you into the land of Israel." That angel will be an emanation of God. On the other hand there are times when angels are created beings. An example is after the golden calf when God said he would send an angel before them.
2) In any case if you want to see this in more detail then get yourself an English translation of Nachmanides by Chavel. [Or read it in Hebrew on Exodus chapter 20 verse 3.]
3) This explains to us why in yeshivas there is a lot of emotional input into understanding the Oral Torah. That is because what we see here is even if you get the presentation 99% accurate but are wrong on one small thing--that is idolatry.
4) The Ari makes the same distinction as the Ramban but put it at the bottom of Azilut. Question: does that imply a contradiction? No See the Reshash. Shalom Sharabi's Nahar Shalom. [This is printed by the Kabalah Institute at the back of the Eitz Chaim of the Ari.]

The Ramban [Nachmanides]

The Ramban [Nachmanides] has a little piece on Exodus XX:3 which relates to idolatry.

For example he seems to be saying worship of human beings is not a good thing. And it does not look like he makes a distinction whether the person is a tzadik (saint) or not.
[If you only read English, you can look in the Chavel translation.]
Now the Ramban  brings this idea about Nebuchadnezzar, but still what he says there seems to be applicable to the worship of any human being-- including even the greatest tzadik imaginable.
It seems that what he says there goes against the idea of התקשרות [binding oneself in spirit] to a tzadik.
[See the Nefesh Hachaim also in relation to this issue.]

But not only that but if you look at the little piece in the Ramban that comes right before that part, you can see in his treatment of worship of constellations that he says things that seem to not correspond with Reb Nachman.


We also see in the Ramban that people did go to Moshe to ask for a blessing or to ask him to pray for them. [That is at the beginning of Parshat Yitro].

Appendix: Since some people might not have the translation of the Ramban available in their area, I would like to say over the basic idea as well as I can remember it. The Ramban says that one type of idolatry is to worship people. The idea behind it was that when they would see a great person who had great success, they thought that by binding themselves to that great person they would share in that person's spiritual powers. And the Ramban said that that was the opinion of Pharaoh.
That part seems to go against the idea of binding oneself to a tzadik.
But in the part right before that he talks about worship of stars. He says the intention was to give the constellation power by this worship and then when they would have that added power they could bestow it on its worshipers.

If this is true, (I mean the opinion of the Ramban), that can explain a lot of things.

At least it helps me understand why when people get involved with hasidim that they often seem to lose instead of gain. But maybe there is some kind of invisible line that people cross into worship of a human being and when they cross that line they lose holiness instead of gaining it.

He brings a statement from the sages of the Talmud that when there is judgment below there is no judgment above. What is judgment below? It is when a person judges himself on everything he does and says;- and asks himself, "Is it was really right what I did?"

  When a person does not judge himself below, then there is judgment above in Heaven. And when there is judgment above, then when the judgement comes down into this world, it is clothed in everything. Everything becomes a messenger to do the judgement on the person it was decreed upon. So when a person has fear of something in this world, it is because the higher judgment is clothed in that thing, like a prince,  robbers,  or thieves.

The amazing implication is that when you are afraid of something--anything, you have  a way to be saved. Learn Musar.

Appendix:
1) Musar means two sets of books: 1) Medieval books on ethics, 2) books written by the direct disciples of Israel Salanter.

I can give a few names if people want. חובות לבבות Duties of the Heart, אורחות צדיקים Paths of the Righteous, מדרגת האדם  Level of Man. אבן שלמה Perfect Rock.
Musar has the Umbra, Penumbra, Antumbra.

The main body of  Medieval books and Israel Salanter's. Outside of that like a penumbra are books that are not that exact set but are close, like the Shelah, or the Reshit Chachma.
When I was at the Mir in my spare time I tried to go through them and I can say from my own experience that they do have a remarkable effect on people that learn them.
But if possible I think it is better to do this in a kind of Lithuanian yeshiva environment.
And it is wise to avoid cults that call themselves "yeshivas" but do not have this basic Litvak approach.
 In order to qualify as Musar a book can't be about philosophy, or kabalah, or a commentary on anything. It has to be straight Musar or else it does not have the desired effect.