And the marriage aspect if the yeshiva world is a major factor.

I meant to explain the social aspect of the yeshiva world a few essays back.

And the marriage aspect if the yeshiva world is a major factor.

But this does not mean this works without belief in the importance of learning Torah.

You cant recreate the yeshiva environment without this basic belief. The attempt to do so is why there are so many cults out there.

While is true that just a drop of learning Torah does not seem to help,  still  if  I had been part of the yeshiva world, then I would  be happily married today. I took myself out of the yeshiva world.  But that does not mean to door back is open.  I can't rejoin the yeshiva world in any realistic way. 

Rejoining the yeshiva world is impossible,  I myself try to learn a little Torah every day and I also pray a little asking God for his help in my own words. And this is about all I can advice others also. Learn a little Torah every day, and try to tell God in your own words how sad you are that you have fallen and you can't find  help anywhere and everyone you know has rejected you. Tell this to God every day and ask him for forgiveness and guidance every day for as long as you live. I believe someday you will start to see things change for the better.

The great thing about Musar is it does not claim to be divinely revealed. It is simply telling over in the basic path of Torah.

I have no idea why you are going through your problems. My best suggestion is to learn Torah and Musar and go to a Litvak yeshiva in order to learn in a Litvak yeshiva environment. The Torah I believe can take you out of your problems 

I do not do this much I admit. But still every word of Torah I manage to learn I consider to be worth more that all the gold in the Federal Reserve.
Yeshivas that are legitimate have no reason to be friendly because they are not trying to make a cult. In order to learn Torah, you do have to overcome the initial ignition obstacles.

An added related idea to the above idea:

My reasoning about the Musar (Ethics) aspect of Lithuanian yeshivas is based on a few things. First Reasoning from the Old Testament and the Talmud I think Musar [Ethics written during the Middle Ages] gives an accurate description of Torah Morality more than any other writings.
This is you might think a weak justification. But for myself when I think of how to repent on my sins I think automatically about Musar. I don't think about any alternatives because all the alternatives seem to me to be intellectually dishonest.  The great thing about Musar is it does not claim to be divinely revealed. It is simply telling over in the basic path of Torah. People that learn it for other reasons than fining out what the Torah tells us will not be good people. Musar is mainly just information. And people can do with information whatever they want and in fact often use it in bad ways.  Still for those who want to know what the Torah tells us there is nothing as accurate as Musar.

Later movements like the one the Gra put into excommunication have the outer form of Torah with lots of rituals but they change the inner essence to be worship of human beings. So it can't be used as a source of information about what the Torah requires of us.


Christians often help others in time of need with no thought of personal reward but rather because of their belief that this is what God requires. This is certainly a major tenet of Torah law which believing Christians certainly put into practice. The trouble is the ביטול המצוות (nullification of the commandments) and the problem of worship of  a person. So that does not seem like much of an option.

 So to know what the Torah [Old Testament] requires of me I feel I need to go to books of Jewish Ethics of the Middle Ages. I should mention my older brother David agreed with me on this issue. I had seen in a book that Fear of God is good for length of days. I understood that to mean Musar. And so when my older brother had a health issue recently I told him this. I mentioned specifically the book Duties of the Heart. I said to him that this book I had seen my friends of our parents as being a basic introduction to what Torah requires of us. And I said that I thought learning it would help him. He said he agrees 100%. (I should mention that all Jewish homes in those days had a least one book explaining the basic ideas of the Torah. In our home was the Old Testament in English and Hebrew plus This is my God  by Herman Wouk

Talmud Bava Metzia Shavuot

In the Talmud in Shavuot [page 44a]

 The question is that the Gemara concludes like Rav  Joseph and that is how the Rambam decides. The question is what does the Rambam do with the Gemara in Bava Metzia in which Rav Nachman says about a משכון [collateral for  a loan] that even though one can use it he is not liable in אונסים [armed robbers].

I also wanted to point out why the Rif in our Gemara in Shavuot says the law straightforwards that the lender that loses the pledge is like a שומר שכר paid guard, and in a case of armed robbers, he loses only the amount of the collateral not the whole loan. The reason is quite elegant. It comes out of the steady progression of the Gemara itself to reach that point.
The Mishna says in an argument about a case when the pledge was lost  that the lender loses only the amount the pledge was worth. Shmuel said he loses the whole loan. [he was talking about when the borrower said so openly.] R Eliezer says the lender does not lose anything and R Akiva says he loses the loan. If the pledge is worth the entire amount then why would R Eliezer disagree? So everyone disagrees with Shmuel. Their argument is about R. Isaac that the lender owns the pledge. But if it was taken not at the time of the loan everyone agrees with R Isaac. So it is at the time of the loan and the disagreement is if a guard of a lost object is considered to be paid or not. But that is only if he needs to pledge. If you follow the logic of the Gemara here you can see why the Rif (Isaac Alfasi) says that nothing matters the lender that loses the pledge loses only the amount it was worth. I can't go into it this minute but by following the logic of the Talmud you can see how he was led to this conslution step by step.

The key is to remember that if we don't hold by Shmuel then it does not matter if the borrower said it is against the  loan or not. And if it is at the time of the loan of not also makes no difference since we go by R Akiva against R Eliezer. And even if the lender needs the pledge we still consider he is doing a mitzvah and so gets the coin of Rav Joseph and so is  a שומר שכר

There is one question I have even though I have not even gotten to learn Tosphot properly yet. The Rif does as I say take all the divisions and throws them out, and most of this you can see in the Gemara itself. The last division though I find difficult. If they all hold by R. Isaac that the pledge is owned when it was taken not at the time of the loan, and their argument is at the time of the loan and it goes by the debate between Raba and Rav Joseph, then there is a difference! A pledge taken not at the time of the loan  is owned, and for a pledge taken at the time of the loan, the lender is only a שומר שכר [paid guard]. So why does the Rif say for a pledge taken even not at the time of the loan he is a שומר שכר. He should say if taken not at time of loan he owns it and if taken at time of loan he is a paid guard.

From what I can tell Rashi answers this question in Bava Metzia. [That is he explains the Gemara there in a way that can help us understand the Rif in Shavuot--that is we can say perhaps the Rif was learning like Rashi.] He says on pg 84 that the pledge is owned completely only until the loan is paid. He says openly that what Rabbi Isaac means is that the lender is not a paid nor unpaid guard. He is an owner. But the ownership only exists until the second the borrower comes to pay back the loan. So this is not what I wrote in my ideas in Bava Metzia and I am sad to say I have to go back and correct my mistake. I was thinking around page that the lender owns the object completely.

Does this help us? Maybe. But still it looks like we still end up that for the pledge taken not at the time of the loan he is more than a paid guard--he owns it and thus is liable even in a case it was stolen by force. That is  a case the paid guard would not have to  pay for. So we still are in a mess concerning the Rif.  And we still have to figure out how all this applies to the case of  pledge in chapter 9 of Bava Metzia.

Though learning Torah is important I do not think it is the only area of value.

It is also important to have  good hobbies even if not for the sake of  a vocation.  Start to learn ham radio and computers and also a trade like being a locksmith. 

The main reason I say this is because my parents were against the idea of using Torah as a vocation. This was not their idea alone, but it is in the Torah itself. כל תורה שאין עמה מלאכה סופה בטילה וגוררת עוון. All Torah that does not have work with it is in the end worthless. 

And though I have heard people make an excuse: the Torah is their vocation. But that is even worse than using Torah for money. It is lying about what the Torah says for the sake of money. It does not get any lower than that.

Someone asked me, "Why do we need society?" I realized right then and there what the cognitive problem is. It is the idea that Nature is loving and benign. Without Society, we would all be living in paradise.

Concerning the presidential debates I don't have a lot to say. Mainly my feeling is that people have  a right to their own money.  I don't see the idea of the Democrats that everyone should have the same amount of money as being a worthy goal. Thus any Republican candidate I am for. It does not matter who it is.
But I realize that I lot of people don't share this view. I encountered this growing up in Southern. California. Then in NY I was there during the time there was a Democratic mayor during which time Jews felt under siege as in a time of the pogroms. Then I was in Israel during the rule of the Left wing Labor party in which I loaned someone 100 shekels and they returned my loan of 100 shekels which at the time [about 6 months later] they returned it to me was worth ten shekels. That is when ever the Left is in Power, they destroy society.

Someone asked me, "Why do we need society?" I realized right then and there what the cognitive problem is. It is Rousseau. It is the idea that Nature is loving and benign. Without Society, we would all be living in paradise.

This is needless to say not like the picture we have from the Oral and Written Law. In the Torah people are not considered to be automatically good. Rather we have a good inclination and a Yetzer HaRa--an evil inclination. Not all of our desires are good and should be fulfilled. People can do evil. And not just because of not having as much material goods as the next guy.

I should not really have to explain this to anyone who has every learned even one page of Bava Metzia. But sadly Rousseau has gotten into everyone's nonthinking.


I should mention that any Republican has values that are much close to the Torah than the Democratic party. To vote Republican is not just a statement of Torah values. It also can prove to be the first step to get out of the low and terrible place that the USA has come to. The world of family values and wholesome society is so far gone that some people have even forgotten that that was once what the USA was like.

I have good deal of mixed feelings about Musar Lithuanian kind of Yeshivas. In one way they are palaces of Torah. One can go to one of these kind of places and gain the type of thing that people come to expect in a character building environment. [It is not the Jewish equivalent of the Boy Scouts because it concentrates on Talmud and Musar learning.--not outdoor skills.] But it still in very close to the Boy Scouts in its basic goals of creating moral decent people.
But it has a higher objective beyond this. It intends to create  kind of community around it. One of the most essential aspects of a Litvak Yeshiva is the "Shiduch."[The marriage offer].
There is no Constitution but still there is a set of unspoken rules. On one hand I would like to advocate this kind of thing for all peoples. But as all human institution it has flaws and is no better than the people that run it.  So while as a concept it is a worthy thing still everything depends on the men and women in charge of running it.
The first generation after Europe had some very great people--Shmuel Berenbaum, Rav Hutner, Aaron Kotler and Moshe Feinstein. But that just goes to prove my point. It was the presence of great and dedicated people that made the yeshiva world in the USA what it was.

Just for background information. The basic idea is you have a study hall in which people study Talmud in pairs or alone. Then at around 12 PM is one class given by a "rosh yeshiva". If it is good yeshiva it is  a class on his own new ideas developed over about 20 years of studying the same material in depth. A lower level is  a rosh yeshiva that reads the ideas of others [like Reb Chaim or the Ketzot etc.] and says them over.  This later type is not a very high level but it also is legitimate.
Then there is "Musar Seder" for learning ethics. The best student is in general offered the hand of the Rosh Yeshiva's Daughter. And often he becomes the next Rosh Yeshiva. The other students are offered the hands of the daughters of other people in the community. How they would make a living after getting married is usually a difficult issue. This I have written about before. But in spite of the drawbacks this is a workable system and as  a rule it produces people of high moral character.

[I am myself in Uman right now which is not a yeshiva kind of environment. But I do try to hold on to learning Torah by the skin of my teeth. It is not easy. That is why I suggest learning in a yeshiva environment if possible.]

The son of the Rambam against Pantheism.

The son of the Rambam [Rav Avraham ] wrote a short book called מלחמות השם  concerning the  attacks on his father, the Rambam. A large part of the book deals with the problems of pantheism. People were unhappy with the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam because it states clearly that the world was created by God and it is not God. It is not made of His Divine substance and has no pieces of Him inside. A lot of people at the time had pantheistic beliefs about the Torah just as all the religious world does today and they were upset that the Rambam was attacking their beliefs.

Nowadays the strategy has changed from attacking the Rambam to claiming that he agrees with their pantheism.

The Rambam held that God made the world and he is not the world. Instead of the idea "everything is Godliness" the Rambam held that only God is God, and everything else is not God.

There has been an attempt to finagle pantheism into Torah by Rav Shick [Moharosh]. And he was doing this because did not read the Guide of the Rambam. So instead of gaining his ideas about Torah from the Rambam, he got his ideas elsewhere.
[I am not happy about criticizing Rav Shick. But still when he is wrong, he is wrong. If he wanted to present the Bahavagad Gita, the Upanishads or Spinoza, then I would not have anything to complain about. But when he presents pantheism as the faith of the Torah I have to object.]




In any case the book goes into the events surrounding the person the Guide was written for, Joseph Aknin. There was a Daniel who had written a lots of questions about the Mishne Torah and the Guide and sent them to Rav Avraham in a respectful manner. And Rav Avraham wrote back answering him. Then after some years this same Daniel wrote a commentary on Kohelet and in a veiled way attacked the Rambam.
At this same time, the people in  France had signed an excommunication against the Guide and the Ramban (Nachmanides) wrote his famous letter pleading with them to rescind their excommunication. Rav Avraham was apparently aware of the events going on in France also.