I would like to recommend the general path of the Gra of straight Torah. But I see that for some reason the Gra was ignored then and now. If not for the idolatry aspects of the group that he excommunicated it would be enough the sexual child abuse that almost every child undergoes in their institutions. Why this is still ignored today is a mystery to me.

This is always swept up and covered but it is  areal phenomenon. The arrests and police records are public for anyone who wants to investigate.

Male bees mate once with the queen and die within seconds of mating. The semen goes into the queen bee with explosive force. [You can hear it if you are standing nearby.] The penis and associated abdominal tissue is left inside the queen. What a way to go!



That is their whole function. They do not do a drop of work but sit around all say watching TV or supposedly learning Torah when in fact they are simply talking and chatting.
My feeling is that humans are not very far from this paradigm.
I am some sympathy for men as I am one myself. There is some kind of paradigm shift going on.

There are still talented men. But as a rule it is the females nowadays that are reliable to get a job done not the men.

Thus even though girls are not allowed to learn Talmud, still Jewish Philosophy I think should be top priority for them. Because they need awareness of what the Torah actually holds and not listen to the idiotic men who simply don't know but think they know. [A short list: That means Saadia Gaon's [אמונות ודעות, מורה נבוכים, אברבנל, יוסף אלבו, קרסקס, אבן גבירול]

WHAT should I say?
—Since Faith is dead,
And Truth away
From you is fled?
Should I be led
With doubleness?
Nay! nay! mistress.

I promised you,
And you promised me,
To be as true
As I would be.
But since I see
Your double heart,
Farewell my part!

Thought for to take
‘Tis not my mind;
But to forsake
One so unkind;
And as I find
So will I trust.
Farewell, unjust!

Can ye say nay
But that you said
That I alway
Should be obeyed?
And—thus betrayed
Or that I wist!
Farewell, unkist!

Sir Thomas Wyatt, d. 1524

r6 i1 i3 i6 i8 i15  i20  l26   CHS Some of these might need editing but I think there are probably Ok for right now. e8  e72 e71

There are Americans that want a return to the 1950's. This is admirable.

The reason is that the USA then was in fact a highly moral, wholesome, and decent society. These are the people that are interested in voting for Trump. That is because they think that will go either in the direction of correcting the fall of the USA into moral depravity, or will stop the fall, or perhaps even reverse it.

My own feelings about this are based on the Talmud. That is a few things stand out when you learn Talmud. One is private property. It is impossible to read any page in the three "bavas" that does not hammer in this point. [Bava Kama Bava Metzia Bava Batra]. The other thing is family values. And simply learning Ketubot of any part of Seder Nashim drives this point in.

I know there are lot so people that are against family values and against private property. That is they whole Democratic party. But I believe that is only because they never learned Torah.

The danger is the Democrats  are geared towards getting legal and illegal votes. Thy are galvanized on election day. The reason is nothing matters to them but raw power. Republicans are just not all they much concerned.

In Maimonides (note 1), I found the idea of learning Physics and Metaphysics as being a kind of service towards God that  is even higher than learning Torah. But by the time I discovered this, I was not able to spend as much time on either subject that would be required to gain any high level of competence. So I started learning, simple by the idea brought in Tractate Shabat page 63: "In learning one should say the words in order and go, on even though he forgets, and even though he does not understand what he is learning." See the Musar book אורחות צדיקים that goes into this idea at great length.

(Note 1) The place to see this in the Rambam/Maimonides is the the "parable about the country of the King" in the Guide, the introduction to the Guide, last two laws in chapter four of the Mishne Torah, and chapter three of Laws of learning Torah.

In the above mentioned parable the Rambam puts scientists and philosophers closer to God than people that know and keep the whole Torah perfectly. In the beginning of Mishna Torah, he says the first four chapters [which are Physics and Metaphysics] deal with ideas that are called "Pardes." Then in Laws of Talmud Torah he says One should divide one's day into three parts. The Written Law, the Oral Law and the Gemara, "and the subject called Pardes is in the category of Gemara."

[Just for clarity-I am not saying to do this all the time. Rather to divide one's time between the Oral and Written law and also Physics and Metaphysics, and survival skills. Metaphysics in the language of the Rambam means 13 books of Aristotle named The Metaphysics. It is statements of the Rambam that refer to Aristotle in a highly complementary way in his commentary of the Mishna which caused it to not be learned. Have you ever seen a Mishna with just the commentary of the Rambam? Of course not. And now you know why.]



ברמב''ם, מצאתי את הרעיון ללמוד פיסיקה מטפיסיקה כסוג של שירות כלפי אלוהים כי הוא אפילו גבוה יותר מאשר לימוד תורה וקיום המצוות. אבל עד גיליתי את זה, לא הייתי מסוגל לבלות כמה שיותר זמן על הנושא שיידרש כדי להשיג  יכולת גבוהה. אז התחלתי ללמוד, פשוט מעצם הרעיון שהובא במסכת שבת ס''ג ע''א בלימוד, אחד צריך רק לומר את המילים  וללכת להלן  אף שהוא שוכח ואף על פי שהוא אינו מבין מה הוא לומד. ראה בספר המוסר אורחות צדיקים.
.לעולם לגרס אדם אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
המקום כדי לראות את זה רמב''ם הוא המשל על המדינה של המלך של המורה הנבוכים, שני הלכות האחרונות בפרק ארבעה של המשנה התורה חלק א' , ובפרק ג' הלכות לימוד תורה. במשל הנזכר לעיל רמב''ם מעמיד מדענים ופילוסופים קרוב יותר לאלוהים מאשר אנשים שיודעים לשמור על התורה כולה באופן מושלם. בתחילת משנה תורה, הוא אומר ארבעת הפרקים הראשונים שהם ענינים של פיזיקה ומטפיסיקה נקראים פרדס . ואז בהלכות תלמוד תורה הוא אומר אחד צריך לחלק את היום לשלושה חלקים. חלק אחד ללמודהתורה שבכתב, ואז התורה שבעל פה וחלק אחד ואת הגמרא,  "והנושא שנקרא הפרדס היא בקטגוריה של גמרא"


Ultimately most people are not interested in the hard parts of Physics nor Aristotle's Metaphysics. The Rambam here is giving a motivation--that it brings to two major goals of Torah Love and Fear of God when one sees and understands the wisdom of God in his Creation. But there is another motivation also. Most people do want to understand the world they live in. This maybe is not high on their list of things to do every day but it is is  a fundamental need. And this is also I think a good motivation to learn Physics and Metaphysics.

To some degree our own souls and the souls of others are hidden. But there is a surprisingly easy way of seeing the state of any person's soul. See what they talk about when they are relaxing among friends.  If they are not on guard but just relaxing and chatting their essence, their inner desires because expressed in words.  And you can see the same for groups. When you walk into the place where they gather either to learn or talk, what do they talk about? This shows their inner state. Then you can see if their noble flowery words about what they do and think match the true reality.

 If their conversation is all about how to get secular Jews to give them money and what is wrong with secular Jews then you know you are not dealing with an elevated spiritual community. Even if they insist on how spiritual they are, you already have a guarantee measuring stick. You can see if the claims are the same as the facts. You can see if they are just some cult around a leader, or if they are into Torah. You can see if they are building a cult based on the lie that they are all about Torah while in fact building their power base.

For this reason I have suggested that people learn only in Litvak yeshivas because only in such places have I seen the words match the facts.