The Torah is also libertarian. It protects liberty by means of negative commandments. For example, instead of arguing for protection of personal liberty and limited government based on the Constitution of the USA and the Bill of Rights, the Torah says it all simply "Thou shalt not steal."

An nice site for people that wish to turn the USA back into a citadel of freedom.
I wish them success.


Freedom is important and I think Ann Rand is an important foundation of liberty. But Liberty I think needs a foundation in the Kant school of thought. Empiricism or any of the other justification of liberty and freedom seem to be to fall short.  Today I think it is mainly the Intuitionist school of G.E. Moore, Prichard, and Michael Huemer that defend liberty, but I think the Institutionist school is a type of quietism. That is to say it is a kind of way for saying you have questions and that is OK because any answer will be impossible to defend.

But that does not mean to vote libertarian. As far as I can see every libertarian candidate has just split the republican vote and effectively given the elections to the Democrats.

The Torah is also libertarian. It protects liberty by means of negative commandments. For example, instead of arguing for protection of  personal liberty and limited government based on the Constitution of the USA and the Bill of Rights, the Torah says it all simply  "Thou shalt not steal."
And in teh Torah there is no special permission given to the King to steal any more than you the local Mafia. As far as the Torah is concerned everyone is equal. Though shalt not steal refers to the loftiest to the lowest.

Music written for the glory of God.

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Gemara Rashi Tosphot

This last one might need some editing but I have to run to my Gemara Rashi and Tosphot session.



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There is a certain amount of Sitra Achra [Dark Side] that got mixed up with Torah world. And that is the major reason that Reform Judaism is right. They might not be doing this by intention, but at least subconsciously they are trying to keep the Torah and at the same time avoid the Sitra Achra problems.
Of course Reform Jews should keep all the mitzvot, down to the last drop. But they are trying to avoid the idolatry and Dark Side that seems inescapable when people get involved in more religious types of groups.

So while I see Torah as a cure for all evils,--but it has to be Torah from the realm of holiness.

Torah of the Sitra Achra is not my own idea of a good time.

However, I am fairly happy with Lithuanian types of yeshivas. As long as someone is following the Gra and the Gedolei Lita [the Lithuanian type of Rosh Yeshiva] I think they are safe.

I say this because on this blog I try to focus on the positive aspects of Torah. But I would be amiss if I did not warn people about the negative forces. And that is after all why most people became Reform and Conservative. They were trying to avoid the Sitra Achra.

[The Torah of the Sitra Achra.
It is hard to know how to deal with this problem. My suggestion is to learn Musar. That is the books of ethics that were written during the Middle Ages along the lines of the Chovot Levavot and the books from the direct disciples of Israel Salanter which deal with Ethics. I have heard of other solutions but from what I can tell all other solutions to this dilemma lead directly into the  dark side.
Musar is the only thing which from what I can tell works to any degree.

But even Musar has problems. Kabalah got into all Musar books and that changed the basic approach of Torah and that Kabalah thing does seem to be the type of thing in which people think they are gaining holiness, but in fact losing it. Not because of any problem in the Ari himself, but people usually get into Kabala without having finished the entire oral Torah first. The Ari warned about this himself.

The way that the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side) seduces people is by saying "Come and do a mitzvah."
 Reb Chaim from Voloshin said a similar idea. "It is better to sit in your room and twidde your thumbs than to seek mitzvot."  That is in the sidur HaGra in a small booklet printed in the back of statements and halachas from the Gra and Reb Chaim

Sanhedrin 63 side a at the bottom of the page.

The Tosphot here is divided into two parts. It is the second part here that is hard to understand. What is the difference between the prohibition of cooking on the festival and serving idols?

Th background you need for my question here is this. You have two verses telling us  not to serve idols. and we have one verse not to sacrifice to idols. [And for every prohibition you need another verse telling you the punishment.] But the second verse not to serve has no punishment written with it. So we assume it is a regular prohibition with no punishment except the usual lashes.
I forget all the details but just for now take my word for it that the first service mentioned in "Thou shalt not bow before them and that shalt not serve them" is referring to service according to the general way that idol is served.  And a death penalty is given for that in a different verse.
Sacrifice to an idol is in the same category.
That leaves us with the second "Thou shalt not serve other gods" in Exodus 23 with no death penalty. and it is referring to all kinds of serve no mentioned in exodus 20. But according to the Talmud in Sanhedrin it gets no lashes either because it is a לאו שבכללות a prohibition that includes lots of things that were not stated openly.
Tosphot is trying to figure out why this "Don't serve" is any different than don't do work on the festival which does gets lashes even though there also the exact prohibitions are not stated openly.
It is what the answer of Tosphot is to this question that I find hard to understand.

Appendix: I have heard it said that love of money is idolatry. And some people want to expand the definition of idolatry anything a person has an obsession with. I strongly object to adding to the Torah. Maybe obsessions are not good but surely if people would thing out their position they would realize that they cant be suggested someone should get the death penalty for an obsession. So if not then why call it idolatry? Call it an obsession.

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A piece of music written for the glory of God in circa 2012 in Uman.


I use a kind of idea that was developed during the Renaissance of 1, 1/2,1.5, 1 in a 4/4 time.
I was reluctant to use this idea until I saw that it was begun in the Renaissance.
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Written also in Uman I think around 2006

 To have  fast session in learning Gemara every day. That is to learn Gemara Rashi and Topshot in this way: say the words and go on. 2) Also to have a similar session in the Rambam with the all the commentaries on the page. 3) Similarly to have a session in Mathematics in the same way. Take the Algebraic Toplogy of Allen Hatcher for example and just start from the beginning and say it word by word until you finish,--and then start again. Four times in a row. If you don't understand at first eventually you will. Things get absorbed into your subconscious even if you are not aware of it. 4) Dito the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach {Elazar Menachem Shach}. This is the most interesting and juicy book of Torah I have ever come across. Sell what you have and go out and buy it. It is on the Rambam and  is is amazingly "Geshmak"  in a way I had never suspected until I picked it up and looked inside.

1) The main thing is to start learning Torah. The Torah will help you out of all your problems.
2) The main thing is Torah.  I believe that if one would start to learn Torah, that everything in his life would change for the better.

3) You have problems I admit that is true. But I have confidence that the power of Torah is so great that it can help one out of all his problems. But not all at once. One needs to keep at it year after year, and eventually he will see how in time everything changed for the better.

I know there are questions about this idea. 
The questions are internal and external. There are people that learned Torah in order to make money. And these people are often nasty.   But that is not a question because Torah has to be learned for its own sake in order to be effect.