The modern world can't confront Islam. It [Islam]does not fit into any category that people can understand. In the modern world we are used to cherishing freedom of religion. And Islam is a religion. It goes against everything the West accepts as basic fundamental rights to try to dictate to others that their religion is bad. The easiest thing is to blame Israel. That at least has the advantage of being something people can understand and relate to.

What else could the world do? Call it a political system? It is not that [though it has political goals].

The problem is not so much how to confront Islam, but rather an identity crisis of the West itself.
People don't know who they are anymore. In Christendom people knew who they were. Christians. And in the USA for about 200 years people knew who they were and what they stood for. Freedom and Democracy for all. Jews knew who they were. And Communists also.
None of this applies anymore. Americans are embarrassed of their heritage. Christendom is such an obsolete concept I can't even remember how to spell it.

I would like to deal with this problem in more depth but suffice it to say the modern world is facing problems that it can't understand and does not even have the conceptual categories to define the problem.
This is bad news. Once this happened before. The old world had passed away in World War I. The kings and old categories were gone. In that vacuum grew Nazism and Communism.

My solution to this dilemma is simple. Learn Torah. I mean the Oral and Written Law of Moses.


I can imagine that some people might not like this. It is strong medicine. But it is about the only thing I can think of that would give Western Civilization a chance to get back on its feet.

The world is shedding old categories, and entering a new phase. In  restless sea one needs a map. But not any map will do. The Law written on Two Tablets of Stone is what the world needs. [There is more to the Five Books of Moses than that but that is the essence. And the essence of Torah is what people need.

The Musar (Ethics) movement has a connection with Kant.

The Musar (Ethics) movement has a connection with Kant.

The problem that Musar ((Ethics)) was meant to address was the disconnect between obligations between man and his fellow and and obligation between Man and God.  The idea of Israel Salanter was that by learning mediaeval books of ethics one tends to correct this disconnect.
Kant was also concerned with the problem of radical evil. He thought there are only two principles. One decides to act in accord with objective morality, and then he is totally good. Or he or she decides act only for self interest, and then he or she is totally evil. {This would mean that one decides to act only in the interest of the group he or she is a part of, that is also totally evil. This explain what is wrong with Islam--in that personal morality is not important. The spread of Islam by the sword is the major thing.} Kant in an uncharacteristic way saw a solution to this dilemma. His solution was surprisingly close to that of Israel Salanter, i.e. to be part of a community that the requirement for membership is commitment to objective morality. That is a Musar Movement.

But any movement  can be hijacked sadly. Still the basic approach of Musar I think is right, and it is important to find people of like mind. [If I had been smart, I would either have stayed in the Mir Yeshiva in NY which was a Musar Yeshiva, or even in Israel after I made aliyah, I could have gone to the Lithuanian yeshiva of Rav Fievelson the the Old City of Safed --but sadly enough I did not have to foresight to see how important Musar is.]

In Tana De'Vei Eliyahu: God said to Elijah,  the prophet, "I will let you know some of my traits. Sometimes you have people that have not a drop of Torah or good deeds in them, and yet when they turn to me and are involved very much in praying to me, then I pay attention to them, as it says in the verse 'He turns to the prayer of the empty one.'"

1.) Tana De'Vei Eliyahu  is one of the standard Midrashim. It has similar status and authority as the Midrash Raba and Tanchuma.

2.) The idea of "private conversation"is first that it is private. It is in a place where no one else is around. Also it is not from  any prayer book. It is ones own words that one says to God.

3.) I should mention that this is the only kind of prayer I feel has any  validity. The standard prayers I think are a waste of time. If one is learning Torah then he is not obligated in the standard prayers. That is a regular Halacha in the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch. If one is involved in learning a vocation the time that is most important is right when he gets up in the morning. To spend that time running to shul to half heatedly say words he does not mean and then to start his studies means he will not get very far. This is why in fact people that do this can't do anything well. This is because all their efforts and energy is not going into real prayer and not going into their work either.

4.)  prepare a pack lunch and go into the forest every day all day long to talk with God. I actually tried this for  a few years in Safed. I don't this anymore. But I still feel that when things are confusing for me that there is no other address to go to but to God directly.

A Song for God   h55  [h55 in midi] This might need some editing. I am not sure. It seems a little short.

q64 [q64 in midi]  j100  [j100 midi]

Today in an ironic way is the yartzeit [day they died] of both my father and Reb Aaron Kotler. [Kislev 2 on the Hebrew calendar]. My father did not want me going to yeshiva. He believed in the Oral and Written Torah but that was not the issue. He thought learning Torah is a great thing. The reason he did not want me going to yeshiva was he thought all yeshivas are rabbinical schools or they use the Torah to make money.


To Reb Aaron the most important thing in the world was to make yeshivas.

The result of his efforts was the Lakewood yeshiva in NJ and several kollels in different American cities. One, for example, in Los Angeles. I was there at the beginning of the kollel of Lakewood in LA. They asked me to go to people I knew in Beverly Hills to ask for money for them. Why? Because it is a mitzvah to learn Torah. {That is they were saying since they learn Torah people ought to give them money. We will learn in short order that that is not really what they think. Rather they want people's money, and have found a way to con them to give it to them. A there are always people around to oblige them. A sucker is born every minute.}


This is a hard issue to  resolve. On one hand I never intended to use the holy Torah for money and I thought the type of yeshiva I was going to was really trying hard to learn Torah for its own sake and not for money.

On the other hand I learned the hard way that my father was right. I was for some years in Israel after learning at the Mir in NY. After a period in Israel my wife and I decided to return to California. When we got to LA the people in the Lakewood Kollel told my wife to divorce me because I was learning Torah.
Thereby giving me direct proof that my father was right all along. But not just that but since then I have seen many others proofs to my father's position.
So what we have from this is in fact it is a great thing to learn and keep Torah and the more effort one puts into this the better. But we also learn that there are people that claim to be learning Torah and claim that it is  a mitzvah to give them money. One should avoid these types as much as possible. They are extremely dangerous. And they give  a bad name to Torah. After people experience religious teachers, no wonder they are turned off from Torah. Who would not be? It is up to people that care about Torah to remedy this situation and do what ever is possible to stop this scam.

[No offence to Reb Aaron. He should not be held responsible for all the jerks that came out of his yeshiva. He was after all only intending for the sake of Heaven. But by the same token we could say why blame communism for the millions that Stalin murdered? Or why blame Nazism for what Hitler did in the name of Nazism? Maybe it was a few jerks that did not understand Nazism?]

So what I think is that we already know that kollels are against the Torah. If the Torah itself says this is forbidden and people choice not to listen and pretend that what they are doing is Torah then why blame the Holy Torah? 

 Once people think they are God's gift to mankind the trouble begins. [I should mention my critique here is not against Reform or Conservative groups whom I have generally found to be upright. Not am I criticizing people that learn Torah for its own sake as should be. And many people like that are around in Israel and in NY yeshivas. One bad batch does not spoil everyone else.

What I suggest is we can admire greatness. But we need vision to recognize greatness. In my father and mother were real greatness. The kind of greatness that lives according to Torah --not just learns it.

That is what I suggest is that my father was a more accurate representation of how the Torah wants people to live. The more so called "strict" approaches I think are not accurate and also wrong.

Not all cults are created equal. Some cults are great for keeping people out of worse cults.
And if this is all that would be good about some cult  that would be enough but sometimes a cult even has positive value.  "tzadik"s are often some delusional leader who has enough magnetism to delude others.


The best scenario I can see is not to join any of the cults. But even if one does that is not always a bad thing. I was for example a  part of Rav Shick's {Moharosh} group for about 6 years and I think I got positive benefit out of it. But if I had been smart I would have just stuck with the basic Litvak Mir Yeshiva --straight Judaism approach-- .

Songs of thanksto God for his Kindnesses on me and also for the things that were from his judgments.

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