These are in mp3 format. Next I am putting here the same files in midi format.
19.12.15
I wanted to explain in a simple way how to learn Talmud. This I how will be more simple than the other essay I wrote on this a long time ago.
1) Bekiut. בקיאות. That is to learn fast. What I suggest is not a Daf [a whole leaf.] Rather what is called in the USA "a page." That in Hebrew would be an עמוד a column. You start at the top of the page and just say the words in order until you get to the bottom. Then you do every Rashi and every Tosphot Maharsha and Maharam on the page. The next day to go to the next page. And you keep on going until you have finished the two Talmuds and the Sifra Sifri and Tosephta.
That is the fast session. It should not take any more than 40 min. and if you don't want to do the maharasha and maharam the first time around then it should be about 25 minutes.
2) The next session is the in depth one. עיון. For this I found the best thing is to stay on one page of Gemara for a long time. That is to do every single commentary I can get my hands on on that page and do as much as I can in one day. Then the next day I do the same. This should go on for about 40 days at least. It is what people dislike about Lithuanian yeshivas.But the Litvak yeshivas are right about this. People that think they can get the depths of the Gemara without this are usually mistaken.
[The basic commentaries are the regular rishonim and if you can get them the best achronim are the ones coming from the school of thought of Reb Chaim Soloveitick and Rav Shach.]
Also if you are in NY then you ought to make every possible effort to get to one of the authentic Litvak yeshivas. That is if you are going to learn Torah from anyone you have to make sure it is from people that in fact know how to learn. And those kind of people are very rare. The authentic places in NY are the Mir in Brooklyn, Chaim Berlin, and Torah VeDaat, and Shar Yashuv.
[In Israel there are a few more. Ponovitch seems to be the best but Brisk is a close second.]
Why to go to a yeshiva? Maybe you think it is better to spend $30,000 to get a degree in gender studies? The Talmud will still be around when gender studies have been consigned to the garbage bin of history.
Appendix: I used this method for Mathematics and Physics also. But I cant talk about this since I have not made the kind of progress I had hoped. Part of the problem is that my time was limited in how much effort I could spend on these two subjects. Starting at a time when physically I was weak and there were enormous demands on my time and also the terrible problems I was going through I think limited how effective my learning method could have been. Learning Physics 20 minutes in the morning is not means I could not expect teh same results as when I spent 11 hours a day on Talmud.And learning when one is young is not the same as learning as one gets older.
What I recommend today to anyone that will listen is to divide ones time half and half between Talmud and natural science.
1) Bekiut. בקיאות. That is to learn fast. What I suggest is not a Daf [a whole leaf.] Rather what is called in the USA "a page." That in Hebrew would be an עמוד a column. You start at the top of the page and just say the words in order until you get to the bottom. Then you do every Rashi and every Tosphot Maharsha and Maharam on the page. The next day to go to the next page. And you keep on going until you have finished the two Talmuds and the Sifra Sifri and Tosephta.
That is the fast session. It should not take any more than 40 min. and if you don't want to do the maharasha and maharam the first time around then it should be about 25 minutes.
2) The next session is the in depth one. עיון. For this I found the best thing is to stay on one page of Gemara for a long time. That is to do every single commentary I can get my hands on on that page and do as much as I can in one day. Then the next day I do the same. This should go on for about 40 days at least. It is what people dislike about Lithuanian yeshivas.But the Litvak yeshivas are right about this. People that think they can get the depths of the Gemara without this are usually mistaken.
[The basic commentaries are the regular rishonim and if you can get them the best achronim are the ones coming from the school of thought of Reb Chaim Soloveitick and Rav Shach.]
Also if you are in NY then you ought to make every possible effort to get to one of the authentic Litvak yeshivas. That is if you are going to learn Torah from anyone you have to make sure it is from people that in fact know how to learn. And those kind of people are very rare. The authentic places in NY are the Mir in Brooklyn, Chaim Berlin, and Torah VeDaat, and Shar Yashuv.
[In Israel there are a few more. Ponovitch seems to be the best but Brisk is a close second.]
Why to go to a yeshiva? Maybe you think it is better to spend $30,000 to get a degree in gender studies? The Talmud will still be around when gender studies have been consigned to the garbage bin of history.
Appendix: I used this method for Mathematics and Physics also. But I cant talk about this since I have not made the kind of progress I had hoped. Part of the problem is that my time was limited in how much effort I could spend on these two subjects. Starting at a time when physically I was weak and there were enormous demands on my time and also the terrible problems I was going through I think limited how effective my learning method could have been. Learning Physics 20 minutes in the morning is not means I could not expect teh same results as when I spent 11 hours a day on Talmud.And learning when one is young is not the same as learning as one gets older.
What I recommend today to anyone that will listen is to divide ones time half and half between Talmud and natural science.
18.12.15
I wanted to mention that electricity on Shabat I dealt with along time ago in some essay. It is true that Reb Chaim Ozer did say it is forbidden when it came out. But he could not have known what it is. The electron was only discovered later. So it was a simple case of people saying something is forbidden when they had no idea of what it was that they were talking about.
Every person should have some ideas about his own limits. Forbidding electricity before anyone even knew what an electron is [or that it even existed] is a good example of having an uninformed opinion.
That is not the only example, but it is a good one.
Having fear of God, learning and keeping Torah is a good idea. But you can't get there by making up prohibitions. If you want fear of God you have to start out accepting what the Torah says, not trying to fit it into what some people want it to say.
Every person should have some ideas about his own limits. Forbidding electricity before anyone even knew what an electron is [or that it even existed] is a good example of having an uninformed opinion.
That is not the only example, but it is a good one.
Having fear of God, learning and keeping Torah is a good idea. But you can't get there by making up prohibitions. If you want fear of God you have to start out accepting what the Torah says, not trying to fit it into what some people want it to say.
17.12.15
Uncovering of the Will. Here I want to present the idea that there is not a window to to the Ding an Sich (the thing in itself, the Will) but from the Ding an Sich.
I should start with an apology or an excuse why I am not going with G.E. Moore, Michael Huemer, and Prichard.[The Intuitionist.] The reason is that Hume's critique of a priori involved more that just limiting pure reason to find things that can be derived from definitions. The idea was also that there is nothing to check a priori knowledge against.-No way of checking your homework. No measuring stick.
This essay is probably the only real new idea I have ever come up with in philosophy.
But to present it properly I would in fact have to do more background work in Schopenhauer and show why he rejected Kant's dinge an sich (things in themselves) for his ding an sich (the thing in itself)--the Will. Also I would have to present an argument to show it can be revealed-and that is all too much for a single essay.
Kant and Ross
.
Here is Ross's treatment of Kant's Ethics.
My own feeling about all this really starts from Schopenhauer. That is the dinge an sich (the Thing in Itself) is the Will (that is the First Cause). Then the world is a representation of this Will. That is Schopenhauer in a nut shell. What I think to add to this is that the Dinge an Sich needs to be uncovered. But I also see graduations of Being [note 1.]. And the good self is a representation of the Dinge an Sich. [Not the bad self which is a representation of the opposite.] And that good self needs to be uncovered. [note 2]
[note 1.] I am building here on Aristotle and also on an idea I had a few years ago that goes like this. modes are things that apply to substances. That is the substance is the unchanging layer underneath that does not change. Water can be hot or cold. But water itself can go out of existence. I can boil it. What is water a mode of? What underlying substance is it a mode of?
[note 2] I am not going exactly with Kant here. I agree the Ding an Sich (the thing in itself) is covered. We can only tell that it exists but its characteristics are only phenomena. But I think the ding can be uncovered.
This is different than Heidegger. What I am saying is that though to Kant there is no window to the ding an sich ((the thing in itself)) still I hold the Will reveals itself. And that we can participate in its revelation by morality. That is the the representation or emanation of the will is half subject and half object.
Appendix
1) איה מקום כבודו. "Where is the place of his glory?" The graduations of being are from Aristotle. [I relate very much to this idea of searching for God. Where is the place of his glory? מלא כל הארץ גבודו.
2) And this is a teleological approach to morality. But also deontological ethics -the rules are what brings to revelation of the Will. This I am basing on Maimonides {Rambam}. That is natural law was the first revelation to Abraham. Then came the later revelation of Mount Sinai that was not independent of natural law but built on it and also is in fact deontogical. We can see this in the Talmud itself. דורשין טעמה דקרא. We go by the reason for the law--not by the law according to Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. The Sages disagree -and say we go by the law, not by its reason. But they agree there are reasons and that they are known. As we see in the end of chapter 9 in Bava Metzia,.
The Rambam goes into all this in the Guide and here I am giving just a quick sketch of my ideas based on the Rambam. Dr Ross also has an essay on his site which goes into the Rambam and gives some details I have left out here.
3) What I left out from the above essay is that both natural law and Mount Sinai Law needed and need revelation. They are both uncovering of the Will. To Maimonides neither is accessible to human reason.
the whole creation is to reveal the glory of God based on the verse כל הנקרא בשמי ולכבודי בראתיו יצרתיו אף עשיתיו everything that is called by my name I have created for my glory and also formed it and made it. And it was all made by ten statements and so every part of creation reveals some different aspect of the ten statements. Now even though "the whole world is full of his glory" still there are places where his glory can't spread to--that is bad places. So how do they exist? By the hidden statement. That is the highest of all the statements. So when a person seeks God from there he returns to the highest level.
4) The self is to Kant also what we call the ding an sich. This is important for his transcendental deduction. the self can be connected with the Will by speaking truth always the truth which is the light of God is contained inside of one.
5) The dinge an sich of Schopenhauer and Kant are not the same thing. What I meant to show up above is that they are related. The Dinge an sich is contained in the smaller dinge an sichs
This essay is probably the only real new idea I have ever come up with in philosophy.
But to present it properly I would in fact have to do more background work in Schopenhauer and show why he rejected Kant's dinge an sich (things in themselves) for his ding an sich (the thing in itself)--the Will. Also I would have to present an argument to show it can be revealed-and that is all too much for a single essay.
Kant and Ross
.
Here is Ross's treatment of Kant's Ethics.
My own feeling about all this really starts from Schopenhauer. That is the dinge an sich (the Thing in Itself) is the Will (that is the First Cause). Then the world is a representation of this Will. That is Schopenhauer in a nut shell. What I think to add to this is that the Dinge an Sich needs to be uncovered. But I also see graduations of Being [note 1.]. And the good self is a representation of the Dinge an Sich. [Not the bad self which is a representation of the opposite.] And that good self needs to be uncovered. [note 2]
[note 1.] I am building here on Aristotle and also on an idea I had a few years ago that goes like this. modes are things that apply to substances. That is the substance is the unchanging layer underneath that does not change. Water can be hot or cold. But water itself can go out of existence. I can boil it. What is water a mode of? What underlying substance is it a mode of?
[note 2] I am not going exactly with Kant here. I agree the Ding an Sich (the thing in itself) is covered. We can only tell that it exists but its characteristics are only phenomena. But I think the ding can be uncovered.
This is different than Heidegger. What I am saying is that though to Kant there is no window to the ding an sich ((the thing in itself)) still I hold the Will reveals itself. And that we can participate in its revelation by morality. That is the the representation or emanation of the will is half subject and half object.
Appendix
1) איה מקום כבודו. "Where is the place of his glory?" The graduations of being are from Aristotle. [I relate very much to this idea of searching for God. Where is the place of his glory? מלא כל הארץ גבודו.
2) And this is a teleological approach to morality. But also deontological ethics -the rules are what brings to revelation of the Will. This I am basing on Maimonides {Rambam}. That is natural law was the first revelation to Abraham. Then came the later revelation of Mount Sinai that was not independent of natural law but built on it and also is in fact deontogical. We can see this in the Talmud itself. דורשין טעמה דקרא. We go by the reason for the law--not by the law according to Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. The Sages disagree -and say we go by the law, not by its reason. But they agree there are reasons and that they are known. As we see in the end of chapter 9 in Bava Metzia,.
The Rambam goes into all this in the Guide and here I am giving just a quick sketch of my ideas based on the Rambam. Dr Ross also has an essay on his site which goes into the Rambam and gives some details I have left out here.
3) What I left out from the above essay is that both natural law and Mount Sinai Law needed and need revelation. They are both uncovering of the Will. To Maimonides neither is accessible to human reason.
the whole creation is to reveal the glory of God based on the verse כל הנקרא בשמי ולכבודי בראתיו יצרתיו אף עשיתיו everything that is called by my name I have created for my glory and also formed it and made it. And it was all made by ten statements and so every part of creation reveals some different aspect of the ten statements. Now even though "the whole world is full of his glory" still there are places where his glory can't spread to--that is bad places. So how do they exist? By the hidden statement. That is the highest of all the statements. So when a person seeks God from there he returns to the highest level.
4) The self is to Kant also what we call the ding an sich. This is important for his transcendental deduction. the self can be connected with the Will by speaking truth always the truth which is the light of God is contained inside of one.
5) The dinge an sich of Schopenhauer and Kant are not the same thing. What I meant to show up above is that they are related. The Dinge an sich is contained in the smaller dinge an sichs
16.12.15
I saw and experienced something unique and amazing at the Mir yeshiva in NY. That was a combination of character development along with fear of God. But this was not in words. I have heard people that can talk the talk about having good character but do not walk the walk. The Mir was different. It was like the basic combination of learning Torah along with Musar accomplished something that each one could not do on it own.
Where things go wrong in the religious world is when rituals become primary or group identity instead of character. It is when activism to make movements takes the place of character development.
So within the context of the Jewish world I can see clearly what can help- because I was a part of something very special. {That is the Mir Yeshiva}. And I can see all the cults that claim to have this special energy of Torah how much in delusion they are. But outside this horizon, I can't see very far. That is, I can't really tell what could be a tikun [correction] for all mankind, because my vision simply does not extend that far out. I can only report on the things that I saw that were amazing and good and helpful for everyone that got involved in them, and I can warn people to stay away from everything else that I saw is evil and corrupts everyone that touches it. But outside the Jewish world I can't see very well. Mainly, I can tell that Christians have some very good and important points, but I can see that some of the doctrines are a bit off. But of what is out there, I can definitely say they are better than anyone else. [It is common with me to have one view point but to see the merits in an opposing view. I have a Kantian world view but I can still see the good points of the intuitionists like G.E. Moore, and Prichard]
Appendix: Musar refers to two very short sessions at the Mir of learning books about character improvement and Fear of God. The idea is very similar to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts before the boy scouts fell into the trash. In fact before the downfall of the boy-scouts they even had a few points that were not contained in Musar like outdoor skills and teamwork ethics.
I should mention that neither the Mir nor Shar Yashuv my first yeshiva was into group identity as a form of worship. They were into Torah. But not oblivious to the great minds of history. There was a time I was frequent by Reb Freifeld and played there my repertoire of Mozart, Bach, and other music geniuses. I did this also in Reb Shmuel Berenbaum's home. And Reb Freifeld made sure I continued my philosophy studies on my own and it was while I was there that I rounded out my education with a good deal of western literature,
Where things go wrong in the religious world is when rituals become primary or group identity instead of character. It is when activism to make movements takes the place of character development.
So within the context of the Jewish world I can see clearly what can help- because I was a part of something very special. {That is the Mir Yeshiva}. And I can see all the cults that claim to have this special energy of Torah how much in delusion they are. But outside this horizon, I can't see very far. That is, I can't really tell what could be a tikun [correction] for all mankind, because my vision simply does not extend that far out. I can only report on the things that I saw that were amazing and good and helpful for everyone that got involved in them, and I can warn people to stay away from everything else that I saw is evil and corrupts everyone that touches it. But outside the Jewish world I can't see very well. Mainly, I can tell that Christians have some very good and important points, but I can see that some of the doctrines are a bit off. But of what is out there, I can definitely say they are better than anyone else. [It is common with me to have one view point but to see the merits in an opposing view. I have a Kantian world view but I can still see the good points of the intuitionists like G.E. Moore, and Prichard]
Appendix: Musar refers to two very short sessions at the Mir of learning books about character improvement and Fear of God. The idea is very similar to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts before the boy scouts fell into the trash. In fact before the downfall of the boy-scouts they even had a few points that were not contained in Musar like outdoor skills and teamwork ethics.
I should mention that neither the Mir nor Shar Yashuv my first yeshiva was into group identity as a form of worship. They were into Torah. But not oblivious to the great minds of history. There was a time I was frequent by Reb Freifeld and played there my repertoire of Mozart, Bach, and other music geniuses. I did this also in Reb Shmuel Berenbaum's home. And Reb Freifeld made sure I continued my philosophy studies on my own and it was while I was there that I rounded out my education with a good deal of western literature,
Talking with God as one talks with a friend.
This is I think very important advice because without it one loses his center. It is not just that one can get caught up with secular activities. Even learning Torah can put layers and layers of ideas between oneself and his own center--(the dinge an sich - the self in itself).
This is I think very important advice because without it one loses his center. It is not just that one can get caught up with secular activities. Even learning Torah can put layers and layers of ideas between oneself and his own center--(the dinge an sich - the self in itself).
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