American should not be worried about losing the battle to sick homosexuals that are trying to destroy America.
 God allows the wicked in win in court in order to protect the righteous.
People don't understand this because they cant see how losing an important battle could possibility be a good thing. First you cant see this except after many years have passed. Only then is it possible to see how winning an important battle would probably have had effects that only after a long time can you see would have been bad.

The law of limited returns

To a large degree I am still in high school mode. For myself I try to set up a daily schedule of the basic things I think are important. And I even recommend this idea often in my blogs. But I admit this idea is only for a very limited group. For a person to excel at something I admit they have to spend all their time at that one thing.


But for me this does not work very well. For myself I have found that the optimum is attained by dividing the day into small sections. An hour of learning Talmud, an hour of Physics or Math, an hour exercise,  etc.

To some degree this is based on Rav Shick with whom I was involved for a number of years. His idea of learning he based on an idea of the Talmud in Tracate Shabat 63a (say the words and go on) and also on this idea of what he called שיעורין כסדרן [sessions in order]. In modern Hebrew that would have to be called קביעויות sessions in order. [Because today the word  "שיעור" means "class" as in giving a class].
At any rate, this idea originated with the Ari who said to learn every day a session in the Bible, a session in Mishna, a session in Gemara, and a session in Kabalah.


Spreading my learning I have found is better for me. But I can see that there are people that it would benefit to concentrate on one thing alone and by that to excel in it. But for me that never works. I tried it with the violin and I discovered "the law of limited returns." That is for me there is a low threshold of  effort that crossing that threshold does nothing. The  "law of limited returns," can be stated simply like this: There is certain number of times that kissing you wife will not add to marital bliss.
As for the violin practicing more that a certain amount hurt my playing--and my ears. As for Gemara learning I spent about 10 hours a day learning Gemara in NY two great Lithuanian yeshivas in NY.

But in that also there seems to have been a point that I reaching where more learning resulted in less.

The law of limited  returns strikes back.

Music for the glory of God.

j71  [j71 in midi] j72   

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If you want to be in Israel it seems to me that it is best to be in Israel that was settled by the Jews that returned from Babylonian captivity. That is a smaller area than the area that was conquered by the Jews that came out of Egypt.
And I also think that someone ought to make these borders clear.

There are still a lot of issues to figure out here. For example the Talmud in Megilah brings the statement of  Rav Isaac that one can sacrifice in Beit Chonio nowadays. And it relates that to the fact that קדושה ראשונה קידשה לשעתה ולא קידשה לעתיד לבא. The first sanctification sanctified it for it time and not for the future. The second sanctification sanctified it for its time and the future.
And then the Gemara relates this to the argument between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua about the curtains. How that is parallel I don't know.
In any case, we have that that areas like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Safed, Ber Sheva are all Israel proper.
Areas like Netivot were definitely not settled by the Jews coming back from Babylon. But from what I can see in the Rambam they are still Israel, but just are lacking some ingredient. That is because in the seventh year they are not worked but one can eat what grows wild--. The Rash (Rabainu Shimshon) holds those areas are holy only from rabbinical decree.

You can see why people coming back to Israel from Europe would have made a point in settling in areas like Bnei Brak, or Jerusalem in order to avoid this problem.

In any case for people that want to learn Torah --I think only Israelis can really excel in Torah in Israel. They can go to great Litvak Yeshivas like Ponovitch or Beer Yaakov or Tifrach. American places in Israel seem to me to be exceptionally weak in Torah.  Americans I think would be best advised to go to NY and learn in the great Litvak yeshivas there until they know how to learn, and then go to Israel.
Americans  yeshivas in Israel typically can't learn and that includes the teachers. I don't know why this but it is the case. That means even the Mir where people can't learn and think that they can because of their address. Brisk I am not sure about because they only take in the best of all students in the world but how much they actually learn in Brisk I am not sure. So what you have in Israel is basically Ponovitch and its many branches and offshoots that do learn on a very high level. But those places are not for Americans unless there are people there that I have not heard of.
 Why are American teachers in Israel no good? Because their knowledge of Talmud is on the level of Barnes and Nobles. Let's say a person is on the operating table for open heart surgery. Just because they sedate him he asks the surgeon how good are his chances to make it. The surgeon tell him he has nothing to worry about because he was just at Barnes and Nobles yesterday and read a book called Open Heart Surgery for Dummies. That is the level of knowledge of American teachers in Israel.
Attempts to make American yeshivas of the caliber of the NY ones has been an abysmal failure.

Half truths are known to be lies. Leaving out some significant detail that changes the whole picture is in fact liable to prosecution in courts of law. [That is liable under the law of not to lie under oath.]

When people teach half of the Torah--the parts that appeal to the desires of people, that is in effect lying about Torah. It is not authentic Torah.

This is the reason people don't learn Musar. It is like scratching your itch with sandpaper. It hurts. And it does not appeal to sensual desires. No wonder it is not popular.

I admit I am as guilty of this as anyone. At the Mirrer yeshiva which took me  a tremendous amount of effort to get to when I found that the Musar book s were saying without exception that one must work and learn and not use the Torah as  means to making a living nor to be accepting charity for learning Torah it was a message you can bet I did not want to hear. If I had thought that originally I would have stayed in Los Angeles and gone to UCLA. And it hardly made sense to me at that time either. Cognitive dissonance. So I found the books  that told me what I wanted to hear.  I was wrong for thinking I found some some excuse not to listen to the very basic and simple message of Torah to learn a profession and not to use Torah as "a shovel to  dig with." I tried to remedy this later by going to NYU. But to learn physics I found out is better to start young.


My parents were telling me things I did not want to hear so I turned away from them. I thought I knew more.

Musar nowadays has been tailored to tell people what they want to hear.

In Musar from the Middle Ages secular knowledge is considered important. So that message has been edited out since it is not what people want to hear. [Duties of the Heart, Guide for the Perplexed, Maalot Hamidot which has two separate chapters one for the importance of learning Torah and the other the importance of learning "wisdom"].

The anti-Zionism of the insane religious world  today you can bet goes against traditional Musar. They are grasping at straws to try to make sense of their evil and lunatic beliefs. the insane religious world  cover up their lies with lots of rituals thinking that that excuses  them. While they have a point that we all should learn and keep Torah but the Conservative and Reform are much closer to the Torah ideal than the the insane religious world .

Put psychology into the religious studies department of the university.

Psychology is pure pseudo science with all the classic characteristic of pseudo science.
It is not falsifiable. There is no conceivable  experiment to you could point to that would falsify it.
It is just pure religion. And if that is one's religion, then fine.  But the claim to being a science is pure fraud. and there is no religion that is as pure  a fraud as psychology.

People can still study it. I find pseudo science to be fascinating. Put psychology into the religious studies department of the university.

Mainly psychology arose because religious insights into what a human being is proved to be false.
But that is a good thing about religion. It can be falsified. You can follow a doctrine an then see that the leaders or the group itself is highly immoral and if morality and human decency is taken as a mark of holiness then you have falsified the religion. You might not be able to leave it but at least you know the facts. And you might also try to make some adjustments to the system.

Or you might look at the original doctrine and notice how the group itself strayed from it.



Appendix: This is really no surprise to a person that has learned a bit of Kant. To Kant the subject and the object are both in the category of the dinge an sich. That is the essence of what a person is is transcendent. We can know how we act. But we can't know what we are.




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