My parents had a polynomic theory of value. But not being philosophers they did  not put it in that way.

For me that means there is a continuum of positive value and an opposing continuum of negative value.

 Bu my parents added one value-balance. And the general scheme was called by one name "to be a mensch" i.e.  decent human being.

The way I see this is you could take almost any mitzvah and emphasize it. And that would be a good thing to do. Either mitzvahs between God and man  or mitzvot between man and man. Just to give you an idea of what I mean. Take  the importance of talking with God.
The Gra saw the prime value as being learning Torah. I think that no matter how you cut the cake it would be great if a person could spend all day long just talking with God an asking to come close to his service. Or doing some other mitzvah. Or learning Torah. Or doing kindness. Building a hospital or soup kitchen. But I try to strive for some kind of balance between all areas of positive value. And I try to discern in each area of value what its opposing value is --in order to avoid it.

That is there is authentic Torah. And that is holy. And there is pseudo Torah that is unholy. There are the natural  sciences that are good. And there are pseudo sciences that are bad. Same with Music. and Art and literature.

Ideas in Talmud
 Ideas in Talmud Title Page


Ideas in Bava Metzia  [This is a summary of the learning I was doing in Uman with David Bronson up until about page 104 at which point I had to struggle on my own.]



Dear Readers. The Ideas in Talmud book I edited a few times since the last time I printed it. The other one I think is still the same as a month ago. In the meantime I have been trying to learn Rav Shach's book on the Rambam. [I.e the Avi Ezri by Rav Elazar Menachem Shach of Ponovitch] But I don't have a lot to add to his analysis. Mainly I am learning it in order to gain greater clarity in the Rambam. I really don't think I have the merit to learn Torah. The obstacles are so great that even to  to learn one word of Torah is like pulling teeth. But I thank God for even that one word as if I had found a vast fortune.

I also edited the Ideas in Bava Metzia because I think one idea there was a mistake.--on page BM 110. I think when I wrote it I did not understand the idea of Tosphot. Actually I still don't understand what Tosphot is asking but at least I wrote my question properly. --that is that Tosphot wants to ask on Ravina that if he is right the the regular case in Bava Batra about the guy that has  field three years and the other says he stole it the second guy would be believed because he could have said משכנתא דסורא/
I don't get this at all. as far as I can see in our case in Bava Metzia 110 we have two guys that both agree it was  משכנתא דסורא. And there Rav Yehuda holds from a migo for the person that at present still has the field though he is not the owner and Ravina says we believe the owner and does not believe the migo of the other. I might not be writing this right but you get my point. Tosphot question works only to Ravina and Ravina is the one guy that does not hold from a migo. and also in Bava Batra if he would say משכנתא דסורא who says we believe him? We only are believing him here because both agree it is a משכנתא דסורא. I may not be writing this correctly --but I don't have to. I am simply asking two questions. You don't need any standards of rigorous logic to not understand something.

Maybe I should just write this straight in English. Two guys come to court. Both agree the case is that of משכנתא דסורא. A משכנתא דסורא is a case in which one persons loans money to the other. as a guarantee for the loan he gets the filed of the borrower. And he eats the fruits of the field. And after ten years the field goes back to the borrower even if he pays back nothing. But in our case they are arguing if instead of ten years their agreement was for three or five years. Ravina says we believe borrower. That is to say he gets back his field after three years. Rav Yehuda says we believe the lender and he keeps it for five years. The reason is he could have said he bought it.  Tosphot asks if Ravina is right then in the case of two guys coming to court, one says I bought this field and we know it has been in his possession for three years and the other says he stole it the second should be believed because the second could have said משכנתא דסורא. Two questions. Here Ravina does not hold from migo and we have seen that migo is only mentioned by a guard. To learn it elsewhere we need some compelling reason. Maybe Ravina does not hold from it anywhere except by a guard. Another question. Here is a case where both agree it is משכנתא דסורא. Who says in the case in Bava Batra where one says he stole it and the other says he bought it that the accuser would be believed if he saidמשכנתא דסורא?


Now Tosphot answers his question thus: It is  migo to take out. That is a good answer. But I still don't see why Ravina should hold from any migo except the one the Torah says openly.
that is you believe the borrower here because we know he owns the field. the other is just eating teh fruits.We don't believe the other by a migo because it is  migo to take out. and also a migo of the owner would not work after three years in bav batra because it too is  amigo to take out.--i guess? or would you not say here you should believe the migo of the lender because for no the file dis in his temporary possession and the fruit  in any case is in his possession.! If only I had  a Bava Metzia to look this up! But like I said--i was thrown out of almost every yeshiva I ever walked into. And in exile from places of Torah at the best I can only grab a NY minute with Torah from time to time.

About Sucah

In the first Mishna in Sucah the Rav from Bartenura brings the Gemara which says if the sun and branches are even on top then the shadow is more on the bottom so it is kosher. כדאמרי אינשי כזוזא מלעילא כאסתירא לתתא
If you are in a desert and you are trying to spot a fighter plane in the sky, the way to do it is to look for its shadow. The reason is the shadow is always much larger than the plane itself. What is puzzling about this is the fact that the Gemara seems to consider the shadow on the floor to be the determining factor as to whether the Sucah is kosher or  not. It says that being equal is OK because on the bottom the shadow is more.
According to this reasoning then the top סכך (branches) could be much less than the shadow because of the bottom the shadow of the סכך (branches) will be expanded. That means this Gemara is a puzzle because it says on top the סכך (branches) and sun need to be equal.

[I had a small copy of the  Mishna [on Moed] I carried around with me for years so that I would not forget my learning as I was being thrown out from every yeshiva I stepped foot in. For some reason I was not just unpopular, but literally thrown out (sometimes physically, sometimes it was from the sound of people saying I was there for their hot-dogs and other times I was accused of much more horrendous things. But the main thing seemed to be the intent to get rid of me more than the accuracy of the accusations.) from every yeshiva I walked into. Maybe I am not worthy to learn Torah? And if I happened to be married they made sure to correct that situation as fast as they could also. So for me to hold on to Torah was hard,--and still is.
I still have great problems when it comes to keeping Torah, internal and external. This tells you part of the reason that I think Torah with Derech Eretz . Torah with work =  that is a regular job and not to use Torah to make money. That  is  a better approach than Torah all day. It is mainly because the Torah all day approach seems to have the law of limited returns working against it. It is like drinking water. The Torah is after all compared to water. There is a certain point one can get to that drinking more than his stomach can hold can be dangerous.

  Just to be clear yeshivas should throw out people as many as possible, But not people that are  there to learn Torah for its own sake. There is nothing wrong with throwing out trouble makers. But trouble makers are not usually whom they throw out. Just the opposite. It is usually the sincere people that get thrown out.


   But in any case if yeshivas existed in order to learn Torah, then this would be inexplicable. But if they exist in order to use Torah as a business or as a way to get out of army service, then this makes a lot of sense. They don't want people that learn it for free or for its own sake. The solution to this is not easy. But the general direction I would take would be to separate Torah from Money. Torah should not be paying profession because when it is that attracts the flies.




In any case in that copy of the Mishna I wrote a possible solution to this dilemma. My solution is the fact that there is no exact mathematical solution to the problem of diffraction. I mean to say that every shadow has one area that is dark, and another area that is half dark and half light. That area can extend to infinity. So when you say the shadow on the bottom has to be more than the light, it is not clear what that means. The area of the shadow can be infinite.  Therefore the Gemara held only when the shadow and סכך (branches) on top are equal is it kosher.
You could perhaps also suggest to take the dark area as the key factor. You could call it 100% shade. And then when that gets to be 49% light call it not shade.  I don't know why the Talmud did not choose this approach? Besides I wonder if we could go by just the dark area alone? But again the Talmud does not seem to want to focus on the dark area either. Instead it chooses this path where on top they are even and on the bottom the dark area is larger. Maybe a physicist could come up with an explanation of what the Talmud is saying here and why it choose this path?

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In the first משנה in סוכה the רב from ברטנורה brings the גמרא which says if the  סכך and צל are even on top then the צל is more on the bottom so it is kosher. כדאמרי אינשי כזוזא מלעילא כאסתירא מלבר
If you are in a desert and you are trying to spot a fighter plane in the sky, the way to do it is to look for its shadow. The reason is the צל is always much larger than the plane itself. What is puzzling about this is the fact that the גמרא seems to consider the צל on the floor to be the determining factor as to whether the סוכה is kosher or  not. It says that being equal is OK because on the bottom the צל is more.
According to this reasoning then the top סכך could be much less than the shadow because of the bottom the shadow of the סכך will be expanded. That means this גמרא is a puzzle because it says on top the סכך and shadow need to be equal.


In any case in that copy of the משנה I wrote a possible solution to this dilemma. My solution is the fact that there is no exact mathematical solution to the problem of diffraction. I mean to say that every shadow has one area that is dark and another area that is half dark and half light. That area can extend to infinity. So when you say the shadow on the bottom has to be more than the light it is not clear what that means. The area of the shadow can be infinite.  Therefore the Gemara held only when the shadow and סכך on top are equal is it kosher.
You could perhaps also suggest to take the dark area as the key factor. You could call it 100% shade. And then when that gets to be 49% light call it not shade.
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 במשנה הראשונה בסוכה הגמרא אומרת שאם הסכך והצל שווים על גבי הסוכה אז הצל הוא יותר בתחתית כך שהיא כשרה, כדאמרי אינשי כזוזא מלעילא כאסתירא מלבר. אם אתה במדבר ואתה מנסה לזהות מטוס קרב בשמיים, הדרך לעשות את זה היא לחפש צלה. הסיבה לכך היא הצל הוא תמיד הרבה יותר גדול מהמטוס עצמו.  התמוה על זה הוא העובדה שנראה שהגמרא שוקלת צל על הרצפה כדי להיות הגורם המכריע בשאלה האם הסוכה כשרה או לא. זה אומר שלהיות שהם שווים למעלה הוא בסדר כי בתחתית הצל הוא יותר. על פי היגיון זה אז סככת העליון יכולה להיות הרבה פחותה מהצל בגלל שבתחתית הצל של הסכך יורחב. זה אומר גמרא זו היא חידה כי זה אומר על גבי סכך והצל צריך להיות שווה. הפתרון שלי הוא העובדה שאין פתרון מתמטי מדויק לבעיה של עקיפה (דיפרקציה). אני מתכוון לומר שלכל צל תחום אחד שהוא כהה ואזור אחר שהוא חצי אור וחצי כהה. האזור הכהה יכול להאריך עד אינסוף. אז כשאתה אומר הצל בתחתית צריך להיות יותר מןמהאור, לא ברור מה זה אומר. האזור של הצל יכול להיות אינסופי. לכן הגמרא מחזיקה שרק כאשר הצל וסכך על גבי סוכה שווים זה כשר. אתה אולי יכול גם להציע לקחת את האזור הכהה כגורם מפתח. אפשר לקרוא לזה מאה אחוז כהה ואז כשזה הופך להיות ארבעים ותשעה אחוזים  לקרא לזה לא צל. אבל הגמרא לא בחרה בדרך הזו.

Religious fervor and fanaticism

The major problem today is a kind of excess of religious fervor in unhealthy directions.

This takes lots of forms but a good deal of the trouble I think is setting religion above reason as if it was immune to critique. I would like to go into this but I am tired and it has been a long day.
But in short what I see is something that has been named religious fanaticism.
What brings me to this issue of היכלי התמורות. This is actually a long subject in the Zohar.   when people discover  מפורסמים של שקר lunatic charismatic leaders this comes from the fact they get caught in the היכלי התמורות the "Intermediate Zone" [as Aurobindo so aptly put it].[That is the see  good ideas and so they get attracted and get involved  and then drop learning Torah and start following any one of the insane leaders of a movement.

So while fervor to keep the Torah is a great thing what happens is people get sidetracked by false teachers. And they teachers are given amazing powers to do miracles and to know future things by the Dark Side --in order to seduce innocent Jews and other people.

So what I suggest is to learn Torah in a authentic Lithuanian yeshiva--at least part of the day, and to avoid cults with tremendous fervor. If you don't have a Litvak yeshiva in your neighborhood then at least try to start one.  That means in essence learning Talmud from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. And the afternoon one should go to university. [That is the seder of Chaim Berlin and it was also of the Mir.] You could reverse this also and learn Torah half the day in the afternoon and evening. But it has to be authentic Torah that is straight forward Gemara Rashi and Tosphot.

Religious fervor and fanaticism can be directed towards good goals. One could for example be a fanatic about honoring one's parents. That is after all what the Talmud calls חמור שבחמורות the most important of all important mitzvot. But that is not usually on the agenda of insane, charismatic, religious leaders. The last thing they want is people to listen to their parents.

The main good thing about Breslov as a movement is it saves people from worse movements. But it has the problem that when people are on a good path it derails them.

However there are a lot of movements that are cults, but it is less obvious, because they strive for a good image.
There are some that have trans-personal powers. Some with actual powers from the Dark Side. Not one is a Torah scholar. That is none of them "know how to learn." They get called the name of respect, but they can't learn. They get these powers because the Satan gives them miracles in order to deceive people and push them off of decent paths they are already walking on.


Part of what is happening with religious fanaticism is that reason contributes to the representation of the "ding an sich" (Kant's thing in itself). That is reason is only able to reach into unconditioned realities when there is some aspect of them that is empirical. When it tries to reach into regions of unconditioned realities that have no empirical aspect then it creates anti-monies--contradictions. So this is what is happening in people's minds when they reach into these regions-- they create self contradictions  in their minds. Or maybe that is just some people. I think Yaakov Abuchatzaira and his children and Bava Sali did spend a good amount of time learning Isaac Luria and apparently held very highly from him.

Trinitarian creed

The  Trinitarian creed obligates Christians to believe x=y= z but x not does equal z. [The Father= God= Son but Father does not equal the Son.]
Christians could try to solve this with predicates, but predicates have problems. I forget who noticed this but the idea was that adjectives on God if you make them somehow  part of God they have to be onto-logically first. This makes again problems with Divine simplicity.


See Boethius in his book On the Trinity. He tries to use predicates and he does use divine substance. But Jewish people do not believe that God has any substance or form. Not even spiritual substance. Or infinitely spiritual substance. God has no substance nor form. Even what is called the Infinite light the Sefer Yetzira calls "created light." That is even the light of God is a creation.


There is also the problem of assigning Divinity to a human being.

But  I didn't think that assigning divinity to a human was much of  a problem because we find this in the Talmud in Sanhedrin with the barber that gave to Sennacherib a haircut.
And we know it means it literally because it says if not for the verse then it would be impossible to say. If it was not literal  then it would be possible to say. So it has to be literal.
 But then I mentioned why Christians were forced into this quandary. They want to absorb the Son into the Godhead so as to preserve monotheism. They don't want a fluid boundary between God and his creation. Creaton has to be ex nihilo. They don't want anything to be God except God -- the one and only simple unity. The problem you get when you have neo-Platonic things like emanation is the boundary becomes blurred. And that is characteristic of polytheism.
This provides a defense at least for how Christians were forced into an untenable position. They could also resort to Kant and thus not be worried about contradictions in unconditioned realities. When  pure reason enters into unconditioned realities it encounters self contradictions because unconditioned reality is not a place where reason can go and still be valid.
So there is a defense of Christianity. Still to me it simply makes more sense to drop the Trinity. Why makes such claims? Can't they just follow someone without making him into  a god?


The problem is than anyone that follows a certain human leader tends to get into the problem of Creation ex nihilo.They may not say so but they tend to.

The best approach I think is straightforward Monotheism. God is a simple one. He is not a composite. And he made the world something from nothing. And he is not the world and the world is not him. And no person is God or a part of God. There can be holy people whom it is good and important to follow but it is best not to assign "divinity" to them. That is I think Christians bit off more than they can chew. But I am sympathetic. I realize that for human beings to be decent takes enormous effort. If anyone less than God Himself says be decent humans will always find some reason to be animals. So when they ascribe Divinity to the Son then I say fine if that it what it takes in order to listen to his advice then so be it. [The Alter of Slobadka in the beginning of his book out kindness as the most important principle of Torah. Rabbainu Yerucham of the Mir said the same. So I figure what ever it takes to get people to be decent is good.]

I realize to some people Jewsih identity is the main thing in life and they must look afoul of what I write here in defense of Christians. And I can see their point to some degree. But I concentrate more on Torah and it is vastly more important than Jewish identity.

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My approach would be to make schools based on the Rambam (Maimonides) idea of learning the written Law [Bible] the Oral Law [the Mishne Torah of the Rambam], Physics [String Theory], Metaphysics {Plato, Aristotle, Kant.} 


This seems to me better than any other schools because within Physics is contained areas that are legitimate ways of making a living--for example Mechanical Engineering. Mechanical Engineering is really just a sub-branch of Physics that at a certain point starts veering off into it own directions.
Also learning the Rambam straight was definitely the idea of the Rambam. And he said it contains the entire Oral Law. So when he says to learn the Oral Law later in the Laws of learning Torah he is not referring to Talmud but rather to the Mishne Torah itself.  However to understand the Mishne Torah today I think it is necessary to learn it with the Chidushei HaRambam of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. [Clearly one should look up the specific place in the Talmud from where the Rambam derives his law in order to get a proper idea of what he is talking about in an in depth session. But that should be separate from a session of just reading the Mishne Torah straight.] [One should find the Kapach edition of the Rambam which is based on original manuscripts of the Rambam from Yemen from the time of the Rambam.] In effect this is what Litvak yeshivas do anyway. The morning is preparation for the shiur. The shiur (class session) then is on the Tosphot and Rambam along the lines of analysis of Reb Chaim from Brisk. That means it is in effect learning the Rambam in depth.


When the Rambam says Metaphysics he says he is talking about what the ancient Greeks called Metaphysics. I would like to add that I think he is referring specifically the the 13 volume set of Aristotle called the Metaphysics.

If the idea of the Rambam about Physics and Metaphysics would be his alone I might not take his opinion so seriously. But you can see the same opinion in the חובות לבבות Duties of the Heart. In chapter 2 of שער הבחינה and the מעלות המידות from Binyamin the doctor --another Rishon.
All schools that stemmed from the geonim held from this. The anti Rambam people however did not and that is the reason why today some people are against this. But here I am only trying to present the opinion and approach of the Rambam which I think is the right approach.


There is also an important point here. It is an idea from the Talmud about learning "דרך גירסא", in the way of just saying the words. This is how I think learning should be in general because otherwise people get bogged down.
 You need to start out your learning in the morning  saying the words and going on and then you will be able to get through the entire Written and Oral Law, not just the Rambam but also the two Talmuds and all the midrashim and rishonim and all known Physics and Math,including Abstract Algebra and String Theory--and to understand them better than if you got bogged down on every detail.

In any case I think that learning by saying the words and going on is important. This refers to both Talmud and Physics and Math.