I have been dealing with the Tosphot on the top of the page in Sanhedrin 63a.

I wrote about this in a blog entry a few days ago but now I want to add.

The way Tosphot is looking at this according to the Maharsha is that "Don't serve" is a exclusionary principle. [It comes to exclude something] We had before that all kinds of services were forbidden and then "Don't serve"  puts the three inner services into one and comes to exclude the three from the normal category.
And then what is left for "Don't bow" to tell us? Only what is left in the larger category--that is- itself.
That is how the Maharsha is explaining Tosphot. [This is the view of R Ami. And this is good because it allows bowing to tell us about the whole category. And this shows why R Yochanan did not accept R Zakai's approach since it has bowing to teach about itself alone. And that is no good. It goes against the principle what ever was in a category and is mentioned separately goes out to teach about the whole category.]
The Maharam adds an important observation  that R. Zakai never needed "Don't serve" to make  any kinds of idolatry into one category. There was no reason in the first place to divide them.[Not like in Shabat where we have אחת מהנה to divide.] [That is: that bowing did not leave the category of "Don't serve" because don't serve was not a general category.]
But to the Maharsha everyone agrees with Abyee that  "bowing" comes to divide. Only  the fact that "Don't serve" took the three inner services out of the larger category means that they don't get divided.
In any case, both the Maharsha and Maharam explain Tosphot well and differently than I was doing. Because I thought that R. Zakai was in fact using "Don't serve" to include all four services. This is clearly not what Tosphot was saying, and it was a mistake on my part.

In the long run, however, it looks like the fact is that R. Zakai is considering R. Ami's idea that "bowing" can be refering to the whole category when it is in fact only referring to itself as wrong.
But the way I was putting this idea was sloppy and I apologize for that.

In summary:

What is happening is Tosphot says that R Zakai is not using the "drasha" on  "Don't serve." The way the Maharsha explains that is to say "Don't serve" came out of the general category of service, not the opposite in which bowing comes out. So bowing is in the category and never left it and so does not need to teach anything about the general category. The Maharam deals with it by saying R. Zakai never needed "Don't serve."

[I am not saying everything here is fine. This obviously still needs a lot of work. But right now all I am doing is to try and get how the Maharsha and Maharam understand Tosphot. If we can get that down pat, then we can then go and try to figure out the many obvious questions here. ]

Torah has two things neat about it. One is its luminous, numinous aspect that you get to when you learn in a Lithuanian yeshiva. [Other places or synagogues are worthless when it comes to this aspect of Torah. It has to be someplace on the path of the Gra. ] The other neat thing about Torah is it opens a window to the realm of Light and Holiness. And this last function is what I think it was made for. The first aspect I think is secondary. [My reasoning is based on a commentary on the Rambam that was mentioned in the Musar book Or Israel. That is a foundational text about the Musar Movement of Israel Salanter.]

What I suggest is to learn Torah at home.  For beginners that means the Old Testament, and the Soncino Talmud in English and just plow through them.  

The Rambam thinks people are not inherently moral. Even the level of natural law before Mount Sinai had to be revealed in some way.

 When reading the Guide  for the Perplexed of the Rambam straight it is easy to miss this. This is why Reform Jews are right for making a study of the Rambam's Guide. If you don't make it into a serious subject of study, it is easy to miss important points.
Or what often happens is people come up with their own ideas of what Torah ought to say, and then think that that is what is actually says even though their ideas contradict the Rambam. As if they think they understand the Torah better than the Rambam. Now sometimes they depend on Nachmanides, and that is OK.

There is no prohibition baking a cake for sinners.
But if there is a possibility they will listen you should tell them that what they are doing is a sin.
According to the Gra you should tell them even if you are sure they will not listen. At least I think that is what the Gra holds. And I think I saw something like that in the Shelah once.
  any case baking cakes for them is the best possible thing. White flour and vegetable oil and all the other stuff they put into cakes is like feeding them poison.  Delete the "like." It is feeding them poison. The question is are you allowed to bake a cake for hetrosexuals? I doubt it.

I mainly hold from learning Torah. But I don't think doing this in a study hall or beit midrash or yeshiva makes much sense anymore.

One is supposed to learn Torah all the time. And there used to be places where you could go to learn. Like the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. But no every place is fit because in some places the light of Torah does not enter into the learning. Even though the books are the same the light stays outside.
You can tell where the real Torah is by  signs. In any case, to be on the safe side I recommend learning Torah at home alone and never going near any religious synagogue.

In fact learning at that breslov place I sometimes feel a kind of "help from heaven"  סיעתא דשמיא in my learning. Like just today I walked in and I was already exhausted from running around, but i sat down with a Gemara and looked at a Maharam on a Tosphot in Sanhedrin 63 and it suddenly and instantaneously became clear to me what Tosphot is saying.


David, the fellow I learn with thinks that the best sign of a bad place is when then throw out people that are sincere.

The Ukraine I think has been unfairly treated by Russian Media. I have heard things that imply that Jews are not treated well. And yet this does not seem to me to be accurate. My impression is that Jews are treated like anyone else. And I have seen a lot of effort made to make Rosh Hashanah comfortable for people coming to visit .
In general what you see in Uman is that anyone that owns property anywhere within walking distance of the synagogue of  builds as large a building as they can in order to put in as many people he can for Rosh Hashanah.
And they make efforts to be nice.
The reality that I have seen on the ground does not resemble way Russia Today portrays it.
I could go on with examples but you get the idea.
The funny thing is that I have been treated much worse in places that have reputations for being nice to Jews. Sometime reality does not resemble what the the media portrays. And this seems to be a prime example.

Germany for example is supposed to be nice nowadays but when I was there the Turkish population was very nasty. I think Germany thought they could make up for WWII by being nice to immigrants. But it seems to me that they made a mistake in policy.

Rav Shach [author of the Avi Ezri].  To his way of thinking only Torah is Torah and nothing else. That means learning the Oral and Written Law and doing what the Law tells us. It is hard to argue with this. And he also seems to think learning books about the hashkafa (or world view) of Torah is a bad thing. He applies the verse in Ecclesiastes against making books to books about hashkafa. That is they are bad.
Now to a large degree it is true that most such books are amazingly stupid, and certainly take people away from Torah when they read that nonsense. [They make  obviously false presumptions or else have wolrd views opposed to Torah that they present as Torah and by that manage to pull naive people into things that are not Torah. ]

But what I am confused about is if it is possible to give Torah a slightly wider interpretation? And if so, how wide?

The first step for me is to look at my parents. What did they consider to be Torah? And also parents are the first place that the Torah itself give regarding orientation. Now starting from my own parents makes everything remarkably clear. They had a very definite idea of what constitutes Torah that is the exact same thing as Rav Shach. The Oral and Written Law. That means the Old Testament, the two Talmuds and the halakhic and aggadic midrashim;-- or collectively what is called "The Mesora."(Torat Kohanim, Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta, Midrash Raba, Tanchuma,  and the Mechilta.)
There still would be a wider idea of what Torah is about coming from the side of my parents than sitting in yeshiva and learning I think.
It is that grey area between Rav Shach and my parents that I find difficult to deal with. I think Rav Shach would have held that one should learn Torah all the time. My parents would have thought that a wide range of activities constitutes keeping the Torah like taking the family to the beach on weekends, learning Music, Math, Physics, Engineering. It is hard to know. Because the Torah itself puts parents first I would have to side with my parents, but I can see the importance of Rav Shach and of learning Torah --that is Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot as much as possible,
[Looking at the Rambam and Saadia Geon it seems they were more towards the direction of my parents. The Rambam is famous [or infamous] for his approval of Aristotle and learning Physics and Metaphysics. The Rambam meant by "Metaphysics" not just the book of Aristotle by that name but also the works of Plato--as he calls it "what the Greeks called Metaphysics." That means a wider set of books than just Aristotle.]

I am being short on purpose. Today the world of Torah is not like it was in Rav Shach's time.  Nor is university like it was in my parent's time. The world has changed and so have the rules. In any case, we all need to learn Torah and also Math and Physics,-- and survival skills and an honest profession.
There is no difference of opinion about that. How we go about it will have to differ according to the person and situation.