The main idea of marriage is that you need two witnesses in order to be married.
That means you need two males above the age of 13 to witness it. And you need the man and woman to intend to be married. A woman can be acquired as a wife in one of three ways: sex, money, or a document in front of 2 witnesses. Plus you need some kind of words along the lines of "You are married to me by this ring" or "You are acquired to me by this ring (or document)"

The verses from where these are learned from are brought down in Kidushin on the very first Mishna. Plus they use the idea of a גזירה שווה. (That is: when one word is used in two different places, you apply the laws of one place to the other.)
That is דבר ערווה and יקום דבר have the same word so we say to marry requires two witnesses.

על פי שני עדים יקום דבר, על כל דבר ערווה, אין דבר שבערווה פחות משניים That is one verse says "No thing shall stand except by the word of two witnesses" and the other verse says "on everything that relates to  עריות." From this they learn that all things related to marriage and divorce need two witnesses.





Adultery is sex with a married woman. That is not symmetric. A man can be married to two wives. But a woman can  be married only to one man. But if a woman married to a man has sex with another man both the man and woman get the death penalty. The reason for the death penalty is because it come under the category of עריות forbidden sexual relations mentioned twice in Leviticus
[Also, marriage only works for people that are allowed to marry. Thus any of the relationships mentioned in Leviticus can not marry. Thus even if one marries his sister in front of two witnesses, nothing happens. The marriage is not חל that is it never happened. It is null and void. That is the state of marriage can only happen in a permitted situation. Thus the sister does not need  a divorce because she was never married in the first place. And if sex occurred in front of two witnesses they both get the death penalty if there was a warning issued by the witnesses. "Don't do this and if you do you should know such and such is the penalty"


Girl friends are not wives. But there is an argument if a girl friend is permitted.[Or even what such a concept is in the first place. See the Gra on the Shulchan Aruch.]
The Rambam said girls friends were permitted only to kings. The Gra shows from Chronicles I 2:46 that that is not the case.



What is going on in the NT is not the issue here. Rather I am just trying to clarify what the law of marriage is according to the Old Testament.



Paul clearly has other ideas. One idea of Paul is that marriage is not a sin. So the church said that celibacy is best. But if not celibacy then marriage is OK. Then there is the Acts of Paul and Thecla in which marriage is considered a sin. In any, case in the Old Testament things are different.


Oaths and vows are not the same thing as getting married. Vows are נדרים. Oaths are שבועות. The laws in which a father or husband can annul the vow of a נערה [girl from 12 to 12.5 years old] refers to things people take vows for. For example "This loaf of bread is like a sacrifice to me." Thus since no one is allowed to eat a sacrifice from the time it is sanctified until it is offered in teh Temple so she can not eat the loaf of bread. But if her father or if she gets married then her husband hears the vow then he can nullify it if is still daylight. [up until 72 minutes after sunset.] Marriage is not like that. Marriage is a state. It can only be taken off by a divorce document given in front of two witnesses.

Marriage comes in two parts. Kidushin and Chupa. That is even after Kidushin even though she is legally married they are not allowed to live together until Chupa. The Chupa is the act of her coming into his space. That needs ten people.  These difference come up in the laws of vows mentioned in Numbers. The word מאורסת means married buy so far without Chupa.

reason and faith.

In the mediaeval philosophers there is a strong connection with reason and faith.
But they did think that reason had limits. This is not so different than  Kant. But Heidegger thought to exploit the limits of reason initiated by Kant to begin an anti reason movement that would get in contact with real Being.

Part of the problem that I see is that Being has two sides to it. A realm of holiness and a realm of darkness. The exclusion of reason which is the step ladder to Being, can only lead to the opposite side of being. 


Heidegger did see the modern problem. Meaningless existence. But who is the culprit?  Reason? Let's think back to beginning of it all Pericles's Athens. Did was there reason to think others were living more authentic lives? Or today. Perhaps in the Sudan people are living more authentically?
And when people do want to get in touch with Being where do they go but fall straight into the hands of cults? 

My feelings were similar. People had been skeptical of the Enlightenment way before Heidegger, starting from Jonathan Swift. But Heidegger put his finger on the modern problem. My own experience was pretty much like Heidegger describes it. And I found my own connection to Being in Shar Yashuv Yeshiva in Far Rockaway and later at the Mir in NY. 

But the same feelings as a rule lead people to terrible cults and demonic, charismatic leaders. There also people find meaning and the "Truth."

None of this would have surprised the Rambam. To him Reason as understood by Aristotle was a prerequisite before Sinai  could happen. "For Rambam an essential attribute of rationality is its transhuman quality.  Abraham is not, for Rambam, a prophet in the fullest sense of the word (a station unique to Moses of Sinai); rather he is a philosopher of the highest rank who discovers a notion similar to what we would call "natural law. Only after the descendants of Abraham have created a community of natural-law abiding persons who will not confuse a revelation from God with the oracles of intermediary beings is the world made safe for the Mosaic revelation." Sunwall. 

God and the world are not one. The world is not made out of any Divine substance. It is made something from nothing. Ex Nihilo.

The Faith of the Torah is Monotheism. That is that God is One and has no substance or form. And He made the world from nothing. This is not the same as pantheism. God and the world are not one. The world is not made out of any Divine substance. It is made something from nothing. Ex Nihilo.

The actual verse of the Torah reads in full אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו which says "There are no other gods besides God."
If you read the last three words out of context you come out with a false interpretation of the verse.

There is no implication here about pantheism.
 Pantheism mainly comes from the Upanishads. Spinoza also. And as I wrote else where if this point had been proved, I would not make  a big deal about it. But the Upanishads just state it, and Spinoza does not prove it. Spinoza can only get to it by making a premise that is highly doubtful in itself.
This is unlike the way things are done in, for example, Mathematics. In Math, you start with premises which are almost so trivial that there does not seem any reason to state them. For example: the shortest distance between two points is straight line. You don't start out with premises that are highly doubtful, and then go on to prove even more doubtful conclusions.

Besides this, no one held from pantheism. Not Saadia Gaon, the Rambam, Ibn Gavirol, Crescas, Joseph Albo, the Ari, the Ramban (emphasis on last syllable). Abravenal [Not Abarbenal].  Certainly not the Torah Oral or Written.

The idea of Israel Salanter --to learn Musar [ethics] seems to me to be a good idea from the point of view of keeping Torah properly. If fact, I would have to agree that in order to understand how to keep Torah, Musar plus the basic works of Jewish Philosophy from the Middle Ages is enough. I mean in theory to understand what the Torah requires of us does not really require much more than to know what the Torah consider to be good character, and good world view, and to be able to identify and stay away from people with bad character and bad world views.

[Just for background for the public when I say Jewish Philosophy I mean you start with Saadia Gaon and go up until Crescas, Albo  and Abravenal, (not Abarbenal) אברבנל comes from the Spanish and is pronounced Abravenal.]

The thing about Musar which is a bit hard to figure out is the Kabalah connection. I do not mean specifically the Ramchal [Moshe Chaim Lutzatto.] I mean rather that all Musar after the Ari borrows heavily and depends on Kabalah and especially the Zohar. And that tends to lead people off into all kinds of crazy directions. Yet it is standard fare in almost all Musar.--For Example, Sefer HaCharaidim, Reishit Chachma, the Shelah. If fact name me one book of Musar after that that does not depend on Kabalah? Only the books of the disciples of Israel Salanter himself.


Not that there is anything wrong with this Kabalah connection in itself. The Ari after all is good to learn when one is ready for it. But as a rule who learns Kabalah and is improved? No one that I have heard of except  Bava Sali and people that were anyway into "Avodat Hashem" in a way that the Kabalah just added a bit to the intensity.

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Kabalah of the Ari I see as simply a continuation of the Neo Platonic approach of all Jewish Philosophy from Saadia Geon until Crescas and Abravenal. Not only that but I see him as building a bridge between the Neo Platic approach of  Jewish Philosophy and the Aristotelian Philosophy of the Rambam. This seems very good. What I object to are the cults that came afterwards. The Gra did well to excommunicate them.     Not because of false opinions or character. Though both are evident. Lying and fraud are like bread and water to them. Rather the Sitra Achra is their essence. But not just any Sitra Achra but a very specific kelipa.

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When I say the Ari was building a bridge I really mean the Reshash [that is Shalom Sharabi] the author of Nahar Shalom. Without his approach to the Ari, it is very hard to see any connection with Aristotle. The Ari at first glance seems totally Neo Platonic. It is only when you learn the Ari in connection with Shalom Sharabi that you can start to see how this approach incorporate Aristotle and the Rambam's Aristotelian philosophy along with it. If fact you see this clearly in the order of the worlds that the Reshash sets up after the revival of the dead. Right there he is switching from Plato's ideas to Aristotle's forms

a7 A Minor

You can't use science to prove the existence of God. The only two ways that I am aware of is the one I put on the top on my blog:  

 Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. 

The other way is by a proof called the Ontological proof. That is God has all possible perfections by definition. If he would lack existence he would lack one perfection. Therefore He exists. This was put into rigorous logical form by Godel.  I saw this once in Hebrew University and later someone put it on the internet.  This seems to be good but I prefer the basic idea of the First Cause. 

The basic question on the ontological proof was stated by Kant that existence is not a predicate. But we know that "is" is in fact a predicate. But what Kant means to ask is really that logic can not penetrate into unconditioned realities. He is asking a question based on his entire way of thinking--not just a minor observation. And we know that people after Kant have tried to bridge this gap. 

However I think this goes too far into theology. I do not want to assume characteristics of God. Nor did the Rambam. It was enough for him to borrow from Aristotle's First mover to get to the First Cause and that is enough for me. In fact, I would prefer not to assume any characteristics about God at all. I go in this way like the Book of Job. In that book the friends of Job said God is just and we can not understand his ways. The normal Shabat Table Judaism standard fare. But at the end  of that book God comes along and says the friends of Job were wrong. This same point was driven home by Schopenhauer who basing himself on Kant thought that God is the ding an sich--wild, delighting in being unpredictable, with no interest in being considered good. The Will. And the world is just an expression of the Will. 

The concept of חרם (or excommunication) is not well understood. People tend to this of it as an option whether to pay attention to it or not. But in fact it is a legitimate halachic category. It has a regular classification of an איסר נדר. That is if you say about a sheep or goat "הרי זה קרבן"["This is dedicated as a sacrifice in the Temple"] it gets a classification of being sanctified for the Temple in Jerusalem and one is not allowed to use it for any mundane purpose. It becomes a חפצא של אסיר an object that is forbidden to use. The idea of a חרם gets its validity from this same idea. You can see this in the laws of oaths in the Rambam. In the commentaries on the Rambam there is a debate whether a נידוי or חרם come from the category of איסר נדר or איסר שבועה. But there is no doubt that one that transgresses it is considered as if he transgressed a נדר או שבועה and that is a לאו דאורייתא (prohibition from the Torah itself).


When the Gra made a חרם he was not inventing a halachic category but using one that already existed. The reason he wrote elsewhere. The Gra held the teachings of hasidim are from the Sitra Achra and that its energies are fallen energies--miracles given to them like the miracles done by the Golden Calf. Miracles and powers of the Dark Side.


So why is it ignored. The institutions that would normally be following the Gra were infiltrated and taken over. That is Lithuanian yeshivas. [And this also explains what many people wonder about --why are Lithuanian yeshivas  corrupt? Well now you know.]

The answer to all of this is simple. To start paying attention to what the Gra said. It could not be more simple.

The only way now is to be for or against. There is no middle road. I though before I could find one but I see now that was a failing strategy.