Why is it that all religious commentaries on the Torah are so superficial and trite?

The sin of Adam and Eve. The Ari goes into this in detail but his explanations are characteristic of the Ari. That is:- he explains the types of damage that was caused to Nukva {the Female} and to Zeir Anpin etc. It is not a very satisfying explanation.

Reb Chaim Vital in the beginning of Eitz Chaim say the sin was being occupied with the tree of knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life. The Rishonim have also a few explanations.

But what I have wished for was something more thematic. Something that would do more than make superficial sense. And that is not just on that part of the Torah, but on the whole Torah. In spite of this wish, I have never found such  thing.

I mean  something like you would hear from your English literature teachers about  Shakespeare or the Book of Job.

I am not sure how to explain this. But I am not looking for moral lessons, nor "gematriot," nor spiritual revelations. Rather something that you would hear in a Literature Class about Dostoevsky or from a Philosophy professor about the plays of Plato.

Like: "What was the snake thinking? "What was Eve thinking? How can you prove what you are saying, and not just make random speculations? Why did they not die that day? What did Adam hope to gain?" I have wished for something related to the text and not just people using the text to launch into some crusade. And sadly throughout my studies I have never found anything like that.

In other words, when you were in English Literature, what did the teacher talk about in the Book of Job? He or she would ask "What was Job saying? What were the arguments of his friends? How did they differ? How can you show and prove that that is what they were saying? How did Job answer his friends?"

So the same here with Adam and Eve.

Why is it that all religious commentaries on the Torah are so superficial and trite?

I would love to re-read my notes that I took in High School about the Book Of Job just to see how the teacher was analyzing it and see if I can gain any insight about how to see the patterns and motivations in other books of the Torah. The problem is all the commentaries cover up the hidden layers by means of their "explanations"\

I should mention that I brought up this problem with my learning partner and he suggested that Nachmanides fills this role. And from what I have heard from him this seems right. He in fact seems to deal with the basic themes and hows how they are developed within the context of the Torah itself.
The good thing for English speaking people is  Nachmanides on the Torah is in English

worship of people

The major thing which is troubling about groups that present themselves keeping Torah but are idolaters-they is they worship their tzadik-is the hypocrisy aspect of it. The way I see it is that people can either try to keep the laws of the Torah which includes the second of the Ten Commandments "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" or not claim that are trying to keeping Torah and trying to get money constantly from secular Jews to support their supposedly superior life style.

But you can't say this openly nowadays because it is obvious. People only want to hear something complex because of "Physics Envy." The fact that the truth is sometimes obvious does not matter. People want it t be complicated.


I am not sure however how far to go with this. There still remains the question that some of the people like Reb Nachman were tzadikim. The fact that they are also objects of idol worship does not invalidate that. But it does invalidate the groups that do the idolatry.

The Gra put the whole group  into excommunication which has legal implications.For example one is not allowed to pray in a minyan with them. Nor learn Torah from them. Not teach them Torah. Nor sit within four yards of them. The laws differ between חרם and נידוי. [Cherem and Nidui] "Cherem" can be translated as excommunication. "Niduy "is rebuke. The category the Gra put them into was חרם excommunication.

An example of חרם is what you find in the Gemara with Rabbi Eliezer. Though he was clearly a tzadik still the excommunication had halachic validity as he he himself knew and acted accordingly He did not deny the validity of the excommunication.


There is a question how far to go with this. To what extent is it even possible?

Furthermore I want to point out that I would not be mentioning this if not for the damage these groups cause. That is what I suggest is that the excommunication only reflects an objective reality that is there regardless of the excommunication. Not that the Cherem made them bad but they were bad before the cherem. The cherem only addresses the issue of how to act.

The best way to deal with this issue is to learn the basic subject of idolatry from the Gemara itself. That is mainly the Gemara in Sanhedrin on page 63. Learning that sugia in depth helped me come to clarity about this issue.

Outside of that Gemara it is possible to see the problem by the ugliness of their deeds. That is hard to explain. Mainly I mean that it is one ugly deed then that is just a "קושיא" a question. But by that prevalence  of ugly deeds it is possible to draw a conclusion that there is something about the energy that produces ugly deeds as predictable as the setting of the sun and just as often. And it is not bad deeds. Bad deeds are just wickedness. But there is something ugly about their deeds that is not exactly wicked. It is just that their actions are ugly. There is something wrong with them that you hand put your finger on exactly. And it is not just as it applies to one person of the other. Since it is often and constant and perennial you can conclude that there is some ugly energy producing these ugly people and ugly deeds.

n75 a major n76  r3 a major

[n75 midi format]

 Utube The Secret History of Godel

My learning partner sent this video. 

My answer: 
"I looked at it briefly. I don't have the time right now to go through it all. I have seen both incompleteness theorems before. It is the completeness theorem that I thought would be good for you to look at because it would complete the Godel proof of the existence of God. I might have done the work myself but I never got the chance. In any case Godel is very important and very interesting."

I should mention that I am optimistic that my leaning partner has discovered Godel because he might be able to do something with Godel's proof--much more than I can.
It is true that in the book on Talmud, God did grant to me to make progress. But that was only after my learning partner had opened the way by asking some kind of fundamental question or bringing out some important point. That is ideally how a learning partnership should work.





My letter up above also was not written well. I meant to write the "compactness" theorem.



(1) See Schelling. The force that drives from the finite to infinity. The force that drives from infinity to the finite. The synthesis between them.

(2) See Kant's critique on the Ontological proof. See Dr Kelley Ross's Critique on Kant's Critique 

(3) My point is you need to (must) extend the set of positive traits to infinity and that will fill in the missing gap in Godel's proof. This must happen because of the completeness and compactness theorem.
See Mathematical Logic by Stephan Bilaniuk



(4) Godel mainly puts Anselm's and Leibniz's proof in logic symbols. 

 I noticed the self esteem thing got deeply into the Western psyche. But that was a little bit after I had been cloistered in a Musar yeshiva in NY. Musar means ethical works written during the Middle Ages. In Musar pride in oneself and abilities are universally considered the primary sin and the cause of all other sins. Mainly I think they derive this from Proverbs. So when people around me started talking about the importance of self esteem internally I always translated that to mean the importance of being wicked. It did not seem to make sense. I am not sure from where it comes from but I don't think they are getting it from Proverbs.


[Actually I do have an idea of where the self esteem thing came from [Eric Fromm], but I am not sure if that was the original source. I seem to recall some previous source. Nietzsche? I just can't put my finger on it this second.]
Nietzsche: Das Kriterium der Wahrheit liegt in der Steigerung des Machtgefühls. "The criterion of truth resides in the heightening of the feeling of power." The psychologists picked it up from him. That is not rare. Most of their ideas come from Nietzsche.




Later I started noticing even Musar books that were distorting the message of Musar and insisting just like the psychologists that self esteem was a good thing.

Recently more serious psychologists have noticed that they were mistaken and rather that self esteem being a good thing it is the cause of violence and evil.

So Musar really had this right from the beginning. This shows that the idea of Israel Salanter about the importance of learning Musar is really correct.

Appendix: Each one of the major Musar books talks about the evil of Pride with no exception. חובות לבבות אורחות צדיקים מסילת ישרים שערי תשובה מעלות המידות ספר היראה המיוחס לרבינו תם.
And furthermore all the disciples of Israel Salanter said the same thing. Isaac Blazzer, Yoseph Yozel Horvitz, etc.

The self esteem thing as the of cause of evil

The major question which came up when I was in high school was "What is the good life?" This was not phrased in that way. The way people around me put it was in terms of the "search for the truth."

But it was this question that I felt was answered when I got to yeshiva in NY. That is a life of service towards God along with a vocation. Service towards God was largely understood to mean learning Torah along with a life of mitzvot.




This might seem like a trivial question. But that would be wrong. Many places that at least present themselves as promoting the good life in exactly this way--Torah and mitzvot - are highly destructive of the the exact goal they are claiming to advance. What they say and what they do are not in correspondence. The life they advocate is a life of cursing secular Jews (when they are not asking them for charity) and spending their days in  chatting and gossip.

The question of the good life is not an abstract question. It is question that concerns our very souls.
And what is happening before our eyes is a battle for our souls. The movements geared to suck people into them are as pernicious as the Gra foresaw long ago.





________________________________________________________________________________

השאלה המרכזית שעלתה כשהייתי בתיכון היתה "מהם החיים הטובים?" זה לא היה מנוסח ככה. האופן שבו אנשים סביבי שמו אותה היה במונחים של "החיפוש אחר האמת." אבל זה היתה השאלה שהרגשתי שנענתה כשהגעתי לישיבה בניו יורק. כי הם חיים של שירות כלפי אלוהים . שירות כלפי אלוהים במובן של ללמוד תורה יחד עם חיים של מצוות. זה אולי נראה כמו שאלה טריוויאלית. יש מקומות רבים  שמציגים את עצמם  כקידום בחיים הטובים בדרך זו בדיוק, תורה ומצוות  אבל מאוד הרסניים של המטרה הזאת.  מה הם אומרים ומה הם עושים הם לא בהתכתבות. החיים שלהם בם חיים לקלל חילונים בזמן שהם לא שואלים אותם לצדקה ולבלות ימיהם מפטפטים ורכילות

Can virtue be taught? This is the underlying assumption of the Lithuanian yeshiva
That is the idea of learning Torah for its own sake and not in order for it to be  source of money . The idea is that by learning Torah for its own sake one will be taught and influenced to be virtuous and also he will be living the good life.The life of men as men were meant to be.
The Boy Scouts was also founded on this idea that virtue could be taught. [Within the context of outdoor skills.] Nowadays the boy-scouts is not an option but still the basic idea is valid. Perhaps something similar could be done as part of  a yeshiva program. For example to set aside a few hours per week and to bring in some Eagle Scout to teach the students a few skills.]



But we know that it is not possible to teach virtue. There are children of righteous people that are not righteous. If virtue could be taught the righteous person would have tried and succeeded in teaching it to his own children. But it is not innate either. If it was it would be seen when children are young. But many times children turn out very differently than they seem to be when young.

On the other hand we see that  wickedness can be taught. We see people born into a belief system in which evil is condoned. And they follow that path.

From what we know from Howard Bloom [the Lucifer Principle] it is the society the super-organism that is the most determinate.  So if we go with the super-organism idea of Howard Bloom we can see the idea of  a Lithuanian yeshiva is a correct idea. Something that society and one's own family can't do often a good immediate environment can do.

But by the same idea we can see how yeshivas are in general damaging because of the same idea. Most are not authentic and are not good environments where people learn virtue. Most yeshivas are chatter boxs that contrive and scheme all day how to extract money form secular Jews during the short time periods that they're not cursing them.
Yeshivas are  factories of chatter. It is rare to find the real authentic place that learns Torah for its own sake.
 And I showed above one needs a real place of Torah. It is not enough to learn on one's own. But if there is no place around that is authentic what you need to do is to get your own Shas and go through it. [Actually I mean the whole Oral Law. That is the two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra Sifrei and the Midrash Raba. That should not need more than about 40 minutes per day to go through one "Amud" [half a "daf"] with Rashi and Tosphot. [The thing is when you have finished the Babylonian Talmud you go on to the Jerusalem Talmud.]