Translate

Powered By Blogger

2.7.15

I am upset by the attacks against the USA. Mainly because the USA, the country that I grew up in, was  wholesome and wonderful, and so unrecognizable from what there is today I simply can't comment on it. It is like the first Temple that Solomon built. I am sad it is gone, but there is not much I can do about restoring it.
Mainly I think it was a communist plot. The idea was to undermine American values in universities, and then Americans themselves would destroy it from within. Most people I know don't think the KGB had that kind of influence. But first of all the KGB was highly compartmentalized. And the part of it devoted to disinformation in the USA would not have been known to other department people. Also, I should mention the budget of the KGB for these kind of operations was enormous. And once you have gotten to people in collage and convinced them of the "truths" of socialism, then even when they becomes senators or judges or even the president, they continue with those same policies.
Today the KGB is gone, and I doubt if Russia has the same goals as the USSR. They might want an expanded Russian empire, but I highly doubt if they are interested in the downfall of the USA.
Today the main threat against the USA are Muslims, but they are not the only ones. The Democrats are hard at work undermining the basis of the USA in other ways.

Music for the glory of God,

b98  [midi] I think I  posted this before some time ago. I am just doing so again just in case. b98 nwc

1.7.15

Music,


I might at the end of this blog put down the basic idea but for now I wanted to say over what I think describes עבודת השם the service of God.  The only place I ever saw what could be described as the service of God was at the two Litvak yeshivas I went to in NY.  It was not just that people were learning Torah for its own sake without thought of compensation. It was a kind luminous numinosity.


לנחמן מאומן יש פרק בליקוטי מוהר''ן שנראה שמתייחס אליי בדרכים רבות. זה לווה מהמורה נבוכים של רמב''ם. והוא מדבר על היתרונות  בהבאת אנשים לעבודת השם.
אני יכול בסופו של הבלוג הזה לסכם את הרעיון הבסיסי אבל עכשיו אני רוצה להגיד על מה שאני חושב שמתאר עבודת השם. המקום היחיד שאי פעם ראיתי מה יכול להיות תואר אמיתי של עבודת  אלוהים היה בשתי ישיבות ליטאיות שהלכתי בניו יורק. זה לא היה רק שאנשים לומדים תורה לשמה ללא מחשבה על הפיצוי. זה היה סוג זוהר


It is my observation that learning Torah for its own sake only happens in Lithuanian type of yeshivas. And so I consider that path alone to be in the category of service of God.







 Kelly Ross who I think is the deepest of all philosopher and the widest.
And he also is not much of an authoritarian. 

I call him deepest because he seems to be always able to zero in on the flaws of philosophies that are considered rigorous and logically exact . For some reason he always finds the major flaw. And he is politically a libertarian or more exactly he goes with the American Constitution.

The other thinkers that are important are Karl Popper (The Open Society and its Enemies), Michael Huemer (The essay which destroyed Marxism.). I mind include Allen Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind) (Closing of the American Mind) and Harold Bloom (The Lucifer Principle) (howard_bloom___the_lucifer_principle).

The thing about all these people are they are not authoritarians. But they are different in many ways.

The most encompassing and systematic is  Kelly Ross.

The question that comes up then is how to reconcile this with Torah. If Torah was solely a issue of personal morality then there would not be  any question. But it is public law also in the sense that the only authority anyone has in Torah is to enforce the laws of the Torah. The Torah gives some legitimacy to a Sanhedrin and to a king  and even to prophets but not one of these can change or modify or reinterpret a single law. They can only deal with the questions what is the law and how does it apply and also to solve contradictions based on the 13 principles.

The best interface between Torah and libertarian ideas I think is Kelly Ross. At least he was reading his material that helped me organize my own ideas into a cohesive system.








30.6.15

Music

j27 mp3 [j27 midi j27 nwc]   j15 mp3[j15 midi  j15 nwc]
Even though we find a lot of good points by the Religious Zionists, still if  you want to come to the service of God you have to have something along the lines of a Lithuanian Yeshiva. That is for a least four years you need to concentrate of Torah  in order to get anywhere in it. And that needs to be done with Musar. That is you need a straight Litvak Yeshiva or you need to do this on your own. And if you can't do it on your own you can at least help others to try to do this. The idea here is that a Litvak yeshiva is a kind of incubator for good Jews.

And you cant get the same kind of effect when you dilute the Torah. That is why traditional Litvak yeshivas learned only Torah.--though at Chaim Berlin people did go to Brooklyn collage in the afternoon. [Rav Hutner was going to introduce secular studies even beyond high school but Reb Aaron Kotler begged him not to do so.]

So you can either learn Torah at home or try to start your own Litvak yeshiva.
But how to start such a thing? If you are learning at home I have already written about how to go about learning Torah. Mainly you need to stay on one page for as long as it takes until you can start to see the depths of the Talmud. You keep at that same page day after day with the Maharsha and Maharam until it starts to open up. And you need  a fast session also.
That is for you alone. at most it is two hours per day. But as for making your own yeshiva you need someone that has fit to teach. That is need to impossible to find. One who knows "how to learn" is very rare. The main places you can find someone like this are in the basic set of Litvak yeshivas in Bnei Brak Jerusalem or NY. That is Ponovitch, Brisk, and in NY the Mirrer, Chaim Berlin, and Torah VeDaat. Anyone who has not learned in one of those place you can be guaranteed can't learn.
Don't be fooled by the frauds.