music files of the q series and exodus 10

New songs for the glory of the God of Israel q86 (q86 midi  q86 nwc)  q84  (q84 midi  q84nwc) q83 (q83 midi  q83 nwc) q82 (q82 midi  q82 nwc) q81 (q81 midi   q81 nwc) q80 (q80 midi q80nwc ) q78 [q78 midi [q79 midi q78 nwc ]  i am not saying any of these are so great. It is just I put on this blog the better pieces from NY and Uman and CA a long time ago. These are just the newer ones and I did not really get them into any kind of decent form. I am sure they all need editing. q77 (q77 midi  q77 nwc)  q76 [q76 midi  q76 nwc]    q75 [q75 midi  q75 nwc  ] e67 [e67 midi  e67 nwc]        exodus10 [exodus 10 midi exodus 10 nwc  q85 (q85 midi) g2 [g2 midi g2 nwc] q74 [q74 midi    q74 nwc]   q73 [q73 midi q73 nwc]   q72 [q72 midi   q72 nwc]

 q71 (q71midi  q71nwc) q70 (q70 midi  q70 nwc)

Islam A nice video from England.

This explains some of the problems that England is facing because of letting in Muslims.

It seems to me to bring out some very important points and I listened to it from start to finish. It seems very relevant to what is happening in the USA and in Europe and it also shows why Muslims in Israel are violent. I highly recommend this video.

What some refugees carried with them.

Someone asked me if I would teach them Talmud. I said how could I refuse such a question. even if the Dali Lama would ask me I would have to oblige. Still it is best to put yourself in a environment of people that are good at it  and to whom what the Talmud says matters. It is in a way like an apprenticeship. That is during the Middle ages there was a thing as an apprentice that would be given to a guild at the age of five and all he would do for years would be to sweep and cook and clean. But just by hanging around with experts something would get absorbed. Then after some time like that they would start to teach him. And after some time he would in fact become an expert. Talmud is like that. There is something going on inside that you just will not be able to see by just reading the words. You need to learn from an expert.

מדרגת האדם The Levels of Man, by the Alter of Navardok a disciple of Israel Salanter

1) Trust in God I want to decouple from faith in God. That is I want to get to trust in God but when things don't go the way I want them to I do not what my faith weakened. I what to retain faith that there is  a first cause and that he is not the world, but that he made the world something from nothing and he does run it in a way that has a purpose.  I do not want that faith to be weakened even if nothing would go my way.

2) But if I could get to this point in which my faith is secure, I would like to add trust in God to it. This is a more difficult issue than the first. It means to have trust also when things don't go my way. I still would like to believe that even when everything goes wrong this still is his will either as punishment for things I do wrong or as a warning or because of some good that will arise from it.

3) If then I could get to step two I would like to find some kind of aspect of trust where I in fact believe in God enough and strongly in the way that the Madragat Haadam was talking about "from here we learn that one needs no effort at all but what is decreed from Heaven will come to one automatically without any effort at all."

For this kind of thing see מדרגת האדם The Levels of Man, by the Alter of Navardok a disciple of Israel Salanter

Saadia Gaon was the first to write specifically on Jewish philosophy and set the stage forever after for Jewish philosophy to be neo Platonic.

  Saadia Gaon was the first to write specifically on Jewish philosophy and set the stage forever after for Jewish philosophy to be neo Platonic. Even though the Rambam did move into the orbit of Aristotle still the later people like Crescas and Albo try to move the pendulum back to Plato. [Even  mystic people like Avraham Abulafia and the Ari were building on a Neo Platonic framework.]

This is relevant for me because out of my own reading of philosophy I came out with a  Kantian (of Kelley Ross) which is really a modification of Platonic thought.   I wrote in some essay what brought me to this approach. Mainly it was experience plus seeing some of the problems in other approaches.  [There was a lot of time that I spent on Hegel and Spinoza and the Intuitionists, and some time on John Locke. ] I am not saying I am any kind of philosopher myself. Rather I was just looking for a coherent world view to be able to deal with reality.

I mean that even though I have a neo Platonic point of view there are significant modifications and improvements that this needs. That is I don't think everything in Kant and Kelley Ross is automatically included in the Jewsih Philosophers of the Middle Ages. This is unlike Dr. Feser who I believe holds that all true insights of later people were included in the Scholastics. 

The Sidur of Saadia Gaon tells us some things that we might not know. I thought for a long time the basic blessing in the morning before the Shema was  elongated. But I was not sure about what part. The reason is that it seemed to me there was something in it that was essential besides the first sentence and last. That is I did not think it was like a simple Bore nefashot with a חתימה
[ending]. Someone showed me that in the sidur of Saadia Gaon, the first blessing is, in fact, just the first sentence, then the one sentence after that, and then the last חתימה [ending].

At any rate, my opinion is that the writings of Saadia Gaon are important because Yidishkeit has gone way off the path already for too long.

I see the attempts to undermine the Constitution of the USA to be the rise of the Dark Side.

Democracy was criticized by Herodotus. He said in it the wicked make strong alliances to destroy society, but the good simple people are suspicious of each other. Thus it is destroyed from within. This is clearly what is going on in the USA. This is a reason that the founding fathers of the USA said it can not survive unless the people are moral. \
Though the type of system that Herodotus critiqued was a pure democracy, still the same applies to a republic as we can see from Rome.

 Just so my opinion should be clear--I see the attempts to undermine the Constitution of the USA  to be  the rise of the Dark Side.