Some people are attracted to the Dark Side. And others try to avoid it but get caught in it by trying to do mitzvot and good deeds. This is not news. We find in several spiritual disciplines the fact that evil disguises itself as good in order to trick people. And sometimes people want to do good and simply have  a strong urge to do evil even while knowing that it is evil. But they don't try to justify it. They excuse it saying it is not that bad.

I don't have a good answer for the problem of the Sitra Achra. But some of the practices i talk about on my blogs are meant to help myself avoid the Dark Side.

My main model of goodness is what I saw in my parents home. And my parents were Reform Jews. And our home was one of wholesomeness and decency. So to a large degree I try to emulate them.
But I think we were not careful enough in the commandments, so I do try to keep the commandments of the Torah more than what was done in our home. But I try to do this with balance. For I see people that accept some ritual commands of the Torah (which in itself is good), but that leads them to ignore more important aspects of the Law--like loving one's fellow man  or honoring ones parents.

In any case, my basic ideas about avoiding the Dark Side are to talk with God like one talks with a friend, and be especially careful about never saying a lie or anything not even slightly not true. When I found myself sinking, I decided to hold onto this trait with all my might--never to say anything not true under any circumstances, and I believed that the strength of the truth would help me get through everything and hold me up.

A good link to this subject by Kelly Ross attack on morality

Some ideas in Talmud learning חידושי הש''ס


These are ideas in Sanhedrin, Shabat, Bava Kama, and Bava Metzia

Baali Teshuva [newly religious Jews] are at a disadvantage in the frum [Ultra Religous Jewish] world. Everything is the opposite. The frum community acts like hydro-chloric acid to dissolve whatever relationships they have. Their marriages are commonly eroded and dismantled by the frum community. There is certainly no respect for them.
It is a toxic relationship by all accounts I have ever heard of.

Whether you realize it or not, you are in a relationship with the yeshiva you learn in and community you live in.

Here are  things to keep in mind 

Having mutual respect

Trust. Respect is hard to describe. We can tell when we get it and when we don't. Mutual respect means delivering on the things you commit to, showing up,  not talking down to others, and helping people.  Nobody wants to be a part of an environment where mutual respect doesn’t exist.

Imagine being in a relationship where you’re constantly in fear that your significant other is looking to find someone “better” than you. That’s not really much of a relationship is it? You need to be in a relationship based on trust where both you and the yeshiva are going to do your best to make things work. 

 You don’t want to feel like your yeshiva views you as and expendable cog and your yeshiva  wants you to just stick around for a few months and then leave. 

Leave when things are bad

Not every relationship is meant to be but it’s important for us to realize when it’s time to move on. Many of us are in abusive yeshiva relationships and we still stick around. We are talked down to,  we don’t credit for the work we do, we get transferred  without notice,  or we are constantly threatened with disciplinary action. None of these things are healthy. A bad relationship is something that either party can create. An student can take advantage of the yeshiva  or the yeshiva can treat the student as a “cog.” Regardless of who is at fault or why, it’s crucial to end a relationship when things get bad. It’s the best thing for both the yeshiva and the student.

The advice I have here is simple. Keep Torah on your own and don't be dependent on a community. The frum communities that I have seen are in a predatory relationship with baali teshuva. At first everything is made to look hunky dory--all sunshine and love. But that is an illusion they need to instill into the baali teshuva in order to gain their trust.
 But of you in fact have found a community that is in fact supportive then fine. But my feeling is that you need to  have a secular education and learn a honest profession and not be dependent on people's kindness's that can evaporate in a day. The yeshivas are totally dependent on charity. So they have to give the impression they are doing a public service. And maybe some are. At least the NY yeshivas I was in were in fact good places. But those are the exceptions.
What I suggest is the idea of a Beit Midrash, a place where Torah is learned but not paid for. Kind of like what you have in Hillel Centers.


Rav Shach as is known held differently than this. But I think he was thinking more along the lines of yeshivas like Ponovitch or the kind of great Litvak yeshivas where Torah is learned for its own sake. If he would see the situation today, he would agree with me.


What I am trying to say is like my learning partner told me when I brought up the subject of yeshivas. He said it is like what you find in the Talmud "מחזי". That is sometimes the Talmud forbids things because they look like something that is forbidden. So what we have here is great yeshivas in Europe like the Mir or Navardok where Torah was learned for its own sake. And people transferred those places in Israel and NY. But on the side you have people that noticed that they could make good money by starting a yeshiva. and so now you have  vast number of toxic yeshivas compared to the infinitesimally small places that are authentic

.

Music for the glory of God

n101


q1

Philip Rosten

My father' WWII record I can't seem to find. Mainly he served in the European Theater as a captain in the USAF. After that he invented the Infra Red camera telescope that I have a link to on this blog. Life Magazine . Then he worked at Hycon and the headed an operation to make a camera for the U-2 and then he made his own super accurate X ray copy mate machine. Then hired by TRW to make laser communication between satellites of SDI and NASA. Then he went private and invested in the stock market.
He valued being self sufficient in  a way that I think was common in the USA. His parents were Jews from Poland  and they were religious but we went to  a Reform Temple in Hollywood.

There was an amazing amount of love between my parents. And they loved being parents. They had three very different and three wild sons and had an amazing combination of firmness gentleness in raising us. Family vacations I think was the high point of our family.
Skiing sailing and the beach on Sundays. We never did anything on Shabat because we boys had to be in Hebrew school. Jewish family values were very important to my parents.
The Ten Commandments and being a mensch [decent moral human being] were the highest values for our family.

I should mention that he was not thrilled about my going to yeshiva. But the idea was that he thought yeshivas  were using Torah to make money. He did not think that is very good. But learning Torah and keeping Torah were certainly considered as great things to him--but with balance and equilibrium

A presentation of Tosphot Sanhedrin 61. Second to the top. This is only Tosphot. Here I ignore all questions on Tosphot and simply say over what tosphot is saying.

סנהדרין סא . תוספות ד''ה איכה יעבדו.

To make my presentation of תוספות in that little booklet on Shas clearer I want here just to say over simply what the question and answer of תוספות is without any relation to the Baal HaMeor and without any relation to any question I may have on תוספות.

שלב ראשון . We learn the three עבודות פנימיות from זביחה.

שלב שני. We ask why not learn from השתחוויה
That would forbid all רביע שני instead of just the three inner services.
 שלב שלישי. The גמרא asks if we would learn from השתחוויה then what would איכה יעבדו come to permit?
שלב רביעי
   תוספות asks why did the גמרא ask this only on השתחוויה? Why not ask also on זביחה?
שלב חמישי
  תוספות answers because השתחוויה would forbid all ארבעה רביעים and there would be nothing left for איכה יעבדו to do.

What I want to say today is this.  תוספות is mainly interested in רביע רביעי. This is the entire focus of  תוספות. It is absolutely essential to understand this fact in order to understand  תוספות at all.
Because רביע רביעי is the key to understanding  תוספות.
 תוספות is first bothered by the fact that the גמרא asks what would איכה יעבדו come to permit? Why not ask what does it come to forbid? But  תוספות is thinking, OK let take this simply  that the גמרא needs every verse to forbid something and permit something. Fine. No problem. We can accept that. And that makes sense here. We see that איכה יעבדו would forbid רביע רביעי which neither השתחוויה nor זביחה could do. But then we have our problem. Both השתחוויה and זביחה permit רביע שלישי, and זביחה permits even parts of רביע שני, so what is left for איכה יעבדו to permit?

Then  תוספות  says that this question is נבנית on the idea that איכה יעבדו has to permit something. But that assumption is wrong.  תוספות says that the גמרא really meant to ask if we learn from השתחוויה then what is left for  איכה יעבדו to come to permit or forbid? We did not ask this on זביחה because זביחה did not forbid רביע רביעי at all. So we had some use for איכה יעבדו. But we did ask on השתחוויה because if we were learning from השתחוויה then רביע רביעי  would have been forbidden and also רביע שלישי. Nothing would have been left to permit for איכה יעבדו


That is the end of my presentation today of  תוספות. And it is on this approach of  תוספות that I asked some question in  חידושי הש''ס that God granted to me to write.

The difference between תוספות and the בעל המאור is this. תוספות is thinking that both השתחוויה  and  זביחה permit רביע שלישי.
The בעל המאור says זביחה might have forbidden some parts of רביע שני if not for איכה יעבדו.
But for Tosphot there is no such thing.



סנהדרין סא. תוספות ד''ה איכה יעבוד

שלב ראשון. אנו לומדים שלוש עבודות פנימיות מזביחה.

שלב השנייה. אנו שואלים מדוע לא ללמוד מהשתחוויה
שיאסור כל רביע השני במקום רק שלוש עבודות פנימיות
 השלב שלישי. הגמרא שואלת אם היינו למודים מהשתחוויה אז מה היה איכה יעבוד באות להתיר?
שלב רביעי
   תוספות שואל מדוע גמרא שואל את זה רק על השתחוויה? למה לא לשאול גם על זביחה
שלב חמישי
  תשובת התוספות כי ההשתחוויה תאסור כל ארבעת רביעים ולא יהיה שום דבר נשאר לאיכה יעבדו לעשות. מה שאני רוצה לומר היום הוא זה. תוספות הוא בעיקר מתעניין ברביע רביעי. זה כל המוקד של תוספות. זה חיוני להבין את העובדה הזו כדי להבין תוספות בכלל.  רביע הרביעי הוא המפתח להבנת תוספות.  תוספות מוטרד ראשונה על ידי העובדה שהגמרא שואלת מה היה איכה יעבדו באה להתיר? למה לא לשאול מה הוא בא לאסור? אבל תוספות חושב, בסדר בואו נקבל את זה שהגמרא צריכה כל פסוק לאסור משהו ולהתיר דבר. בסדר. אין בעיה. אנחנו יכולים לקבל את זה. וזה הגיוני כאן. אנו רואים כי איכה יעבדו אוסרת רביע רביעי, מה שהשתחוויה ולא זביחה יכולים לעשות. אבל אז יש לנו הבעיה שלנו. שתיהם, השתחוויה וזביחה מתירים את רביע השלישי, וזביחה מתירה אפילו חלקים של רביע השני, אז מה נשארו  לאיכה יעבדו להתיר? אז תוספות אומרים ששאלה זו היא נבנתה על הרעיון שאיכה יעבדו חייב להתיר משהו. אבל הנחה הזו מוטעת. תוספות אומרים שגמרא באמת התכוונה לשאול אם אנחנו לומדים מההשתחוויה, אז מה שנשאר לאיכה יעבדו לבוא להתיר או לאסור? אנחנו לא שואלים את זה על זביחה, כי זביחה לא אסרה רביע רביעי בכלל. אז היה לנו איזה שימוש לאיכה יעבדו. אבל אנחנו  שואלים על ההשתחוויה כי אם היינו לומדים מהשתחוויה אז רביע רביעי היה אסור וגם הרביע שלישי. שום דבר לא היה נשאר לאיכה יעבדו לאסור ולא להתיר

The first is  a link to a small booklet on Shas. Mainly Sanhedrin and Bava Kama. Most of the work was done without  a learning partner so it  and I did not review it  very thoroughly. But it still seems to me to be pretty good.


חידושי הש''ס


This is a work in progress. But as it stands right now it is OK. The only thing is that between lines the formatting goes back to English and that needs to be corrected. But the basic work is still pretty OK as far as I can tell. [That is the ideas are sound but the writing of them is a little stilted.]

עיוני בבא מציעא chapter 8 and chapter 9   The formatting here I was able to change in Hebrew. So you don't get the same kinds of ripples that the booklet on Shas has.


This Bava Metzia booklet was done a lot with my learning partner. But there was a period when I was in Israel in which I did some work on my own. For example the ideas on Bava Metzia page 112 were done without my learning partner. In fact I think with him I did only up until page 104. Also the beginning of the booklet where I talk about Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's idea was done on my own.

None of this is anything to be proud of. Without a learning partner, I don't do very well in learning Torah. And that is a fact. But sometimes there is no choice but to do the best I can given my circumstances.