For Believers in "Rights" You believe that gay marriage, Internet access, food, and health care are rights. Okay, prove it.

My own idea about this issue is the need to learn about Natural Law starting with Saadia Gaon, the Rambam, Aquinas and John Locke. And then to develop an actual legal system based on natural law and natural rights. Not manufactured rights.

From Steven Dutch

For Believers in "Rights"

You believe that gay marriage, Internet access, food, and health care are rights.

Okay, prove it.

"Proof" does not mean using the Caps Lock key and lots of exclamation points, or calling names or using invective. Anyway, "Fascist" proves nothing except your emotional response to an issue.

No, proof means starting from basic axioms and reasoning, step by step, using logic that can be demonstrated to be valid. See an old-time geometry text for how it's done.

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Well, that's the Declaration of Independence and those rights exist because they are "endowed by their Creator." That, by the way, is the only theory of rights in any of our founding documents. So those sentiments have been nullified by separation of Church and State. Talk about your law of unintended consequence

Here is the link: Steven Dutch Essay

My own idea about this issue is the need to learn about Natural Law starting with Saadia Gaon, the Rambam, Aquinas and John Locke. And then to develop an actual legal system based on natural law and natural rights. Not manufactured rights.

Now Rav Shach I think would not agree with this. I have heard that he held from Torah as the only valid form of government and law. But that was just yesterday that I heard this from my learning partner. But in Torah we do have the law "the law of the country is law" when it does not contradict the Torah. In any case, in a practical sense it is best not to give power to people that think they know Torah. Democracy might be the only safeguard to prevent people that think they know Torah from taking power.

Clearly the theory of the Rambam is that natural law is necessary in order to be able to keep and understand Torah law. [That is from the Guide.]

See this essay Essay by Kelly Ross

A link to music written for the glory of God

n98 n98 midi  n98 in nwc

The booklet on Bava Metzia edited 
 

Rav Elazar Menachem Shach

Rav Shach [Elazar Menachem Shach] was connected with Navardok. He was in fact the Rosh yeshiva of Navardok for a number of years.

It seems to me that most people that did were great in learning Torah passed through the doors of Navardok at one time or other.
And the thing about Navardok was  that it was a Musar [Jewish Ethics] yeshiva. And Musar (Ethics) in Europe meant something very different than what it means nowadays. It was a whole program devoted to character improvement. It was not the twenty minute period before Mincha that you see nowadays.

Also I should mention that every school of Musar had one particular facet of Musar that they emphasized.

For Simcha Zizel was into order. Slobodka was in the greatness of man. Navardok was into trust in God with no השתדלות (with no effort).

So what I wanted to mention now that I have been able to get on the Internet, are two things. One is the importance of the book of Rav Shach. That is called the Avi Ezri. If he would not have gotten on  everyone's wrong side by insulting and offending  everyone, his book would be the most popular book in the Jewish world today. In my opinion it rivals the Chidushei HaRambam of  Chaim Soloveitchik. It is that amazing. Deep and yet completely clear and understandable all at the same time.

[I should mention he was not into secular knowledge. And as a rule he was right. It is just in teh two filed that that Rambam recommended I have to defer to the opinion of the Rambam, that is Physics and Metaphysics.]

The other thing I wanted to bring up is in fact Navardok and that whole idea of trust without effort.
It is known that this is an argument between the Duties of the Heart and the Ramban and Gra.

If you put it all together you get a path that looks similar to what I saw at the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn. That is that one can learn Torah and does not have to worry about making  a living. Though I am no where near this grand vision and ideal still it seems to me to be an admirable path and one worth emulating as much as one can.

To have an idea of what the world is about I think it is important to know Physics. You often hear people discussing the nature of reality who are not familiar with Physics. And that lack seems to disqualify them. I am not saying this is a positive reason to learn physics but at least it is a side motivation that I think is worthy. Who is guilty of opinions about reality without knowledge of physics. A lot of people I know.

But what if you are not good at math.

This is the point of my comment here. To learn Physics I think one needs two things (1) To say the words and go on. (2) 10,000 hours. The last requirement is the hard one. It is the time factor that gets harder as one gets older. For this reason it is important to do this during  the twenties.

The Quantum Enigma.

My suggestion here is a statement by by Leibniz. Representation causes consciousness. Not consciousness causes the representation. It is from this statement that Nietzsche discovered the Id. [That is to say that Nietzsche said that that is the source of his idea.]

So what we have is a case of ontological undecidablity.



As Dr Kelly Ross has noted that Kant's system accommodates quantum mechanics very well.


Appendix. What Nietzsche meant was the representation bring forth the subconscious and makes it conscious. But one can also understand Leibniz to mean the representation creates all levels of subconsciousness and also sub levels.

When it comes to religion I am pretty firmly in the camp of Israel Salanter. That is to say, I like the idea of Musar which is classical books of Jewish ethics. They are based on the value system of the Talmud, but make it easier to grasp than if one would be learning the Talmud directly. Musar avoids the problem that most books of Jewish ethics have today is that instead of presenting the value system of the Torah and Talmud, they falsify it it. Musar has the advantage that it presents authentic Judaism as it relates to values.

The two modifications I would make to the idea of  learning Musar is that I would learning it  with some amount of philosophy. The reason is that many of the concepts come from Plato and Aristotle and it is best to get their ideas directly --not second hand. Also, I would try to concentrate of the school of Musar based on the Rambam and Saadia Gaon. The more kabalistic Musar I think leads to fanaticism.
It is not that I am against learning the Ari. Not at all. But not in the context of Musar.
. The connection between length of days with fear of God. To me that means two things. If I want long days--that is not to waste my days, then learning Musar stretches out the day. The other thing is if I in fact see that my body changes over time--so I do have a need for literal length of days-then also Musar is good for that.
My favorites are חובות לבבות  Duties of the Heart and אור ישראל The Light of Israel by a student of Israel Salanter named Isaac Blazer.

Musar can be divided into (1) Rationalistic Musar [that is medieval Musar], (2) Kabalistic Musar, (3) Musar of the disciples of Israel Salanter which could be called Talmudic Musar in that it mainly goes to the Talmud directly to support its ideas. But that is probably not  a good name for it in that it implies the other two are not Talmudic. It is just the emphasis is different.