The issue is that the Rambam says that the land of Israel was divided among the tribes by Joshua so that when they would go and conquer it would not have the status of the conquest of an individual. [I think that is in Hilchot Trumah.]

You can see why this is important. Jerusalem was never conquered by any of the tribes until the time of King David. So we have now that the land of Reuben and Gad had the status of Israel along with all the rest of Israel. So far everything seems good. But what about Syria? Syria was conquered by the general of Kind David. But it did not gain the status of Israel because Jerusalem had not been conquered at that point. [or at least not all of the seven Canaanite nations had not be conquered.]

But if Joshua had already divided up the land so that no conquest of any area would be conquest of an individual then it should not matter if Jerusalem was in the hands of Israel at that point!!!


  The idea that there are times that the holiness of the land of Israel is not revealed. That is--even though the holiness is always there still it can't be revealed until Israel comes and conquers. That would apparently have to refer to כיבוש בבל when the exiles returned from Babylon. That is because the Talmud says openly that the first conquest did not sanctify the land except at that time alone.


This might help on on the point of joy also. There are lots of kinds of happiness that are evil. E.g happiness at the sorrow of another person. Good traits can becomes bad if misused. Certainly we don't consider compassion on the same level as cruelty. Yet compassion in the wrong time and place is cruel. That does not mean that compassion is bad. Not at all. Rather it can be misused. We find holy things can become profane. E.g. sacrifices that have not been eaten in the proper time period  etc.

It is mainly in Religious Zionist places that you find a combination of learning Torah and natural sciences. In the insane religious world  places you don't see this much. And when the the insane religious world  engage in secular activity it is never in the natural sciences. If they go into science at all, it is always pseudo science. And pseudo sciences are attractive, compelling, and false.
It is hard to balance natural sciences with learning Torah. The tendency is to lose the balance between the two. Or to denigrate one at the expense of the other.
But to ignore one or the other requires a enormous hubris.

Does the collective wisdom of the ages in the Old Testament and Talmud and books of Musar have nothing to tell us today? It requires a large degree of stupidity to think so. But on the other hand can you dismiss the natural sciences as false inventions of man? That seems to require even a greater degree of lunacy and stupidity than the first type.

These are not my considerations alone and they are not idea spun out of thin air.

The most compelling argument for what I am saying is a resort to authority, Moshe ben Maimon. The Rambam. He placed the natural sciences on  a plane higher than Talmud,  but required the Oral Law as proper preparation and foundation.

The easiest way to see this is in the son of the Rambam, Avraham. For the Rambam himself is a bit of a mystery. No one can seem to figure out the right kind of interface between the Mishne Torah {the legal book of the Rambam} and his Guide for the Perplexed [his philosophical work.]

The son of the Rambam provided that interface in his Musar book  מספיק לעובדי השם Enough for the servants of God. There you see in the same characteristic clarity of the Rambam the actual practical implication of what it means to live according to the ideas of the Rambam.

Music for the glory of God,

j12   j17   j16

But from the books of Musar we can that there are kinds of joy that are bad. rrect.
As Steven Dutch writes God's Grandchildren : Some will adhere to the established religion out of sincere conviction but will disagree with important tenets. They will attempt to recast the religion in more personally palatable terms, or possibly work to redirect the religion itself into more agreeable lines. The changes may be real reforms or merely redefinition into something more palatable.

That is a recasting to redirect things  is honest in itself as long as the basic principles of the religion are preserved. That is Steven Dutch's opinion and it makes sense to me.

j12

If the  Confederate Flag is a reminder of slavery that ought to be banned, then are not blacks also a If the  Confederate Flag is a reminder of slavery that ought to be banned, then are not blacks also a reminder of slavery?


Nothing is wrong with slavery. It is just how you treat people is the issue. Whether a person is a slave or not everyone deserves a certain amount of respect-- when they act as decent people.
And when people do bad things they don't deserve respect--no matter if they are slaves or not.

And no one thinks slavery is bad. No one objects to making white people work for black people without getting paid. That is white people are forced to give black people free food  [food stamps] and free health care etc. White people in the USA are however not exactly slaves to black people. They are more like serfs that have to work  several days a week for their black bosses. That is if they work a whole years several months are spent working for black people with no compensation.
Some divorced women have no problem in using their children as tools to make their husbands into slaves.
As Steven Dutch put it: The Issue is never the issue.

j10