26.4.16
religious teachers against marriage and dating
Do not let religious teachers use a shiduch [marriage and dating] as a way to trap and control you. That is common practice with religious teachers and is extremely dangerous. The one and most important principle of my Dad was to be self sufficient. He would have seen through the religious teachers attempts to control people by means of the manipulations of the shiduch as extremely disgusting and would have run from them as fast as possible.
There are I think exceptions among people so devoted to Torah that they simply have to learn Torah all day and have no choice but to accept a kollel check. That I think is fine and even admirable. But they are people that learn Torah all day. They are not religious teachers.
________________________________________________
This is just an example of a larger problem I have mentioned before that every area of value--when it deteriorates, does not become less. It becomes opposite.
This is just an example of a larger problem I have mentioned before that every area of value--when it deteriorates, does not become less. It becomes opposite.
25.4.16
religious teacher. religion is away of seeming to be better than they are.
If you want to learn Torah you have to marry the daughter of an authentic Torah Scholar and do not hang out with the wrong crowd. It does not matter much one wants to learn Torah. If he marries a girl that is not the daughter of an Litvish Talmid Chacham, it is impossible to learn Torah. You need to set your goals on the right kind of girl.
That is not the same thing as a religious teacher. religious teacher are the possessed by the force of anti Torah. I am talking about authentic Torah scholars which is very different kind of thing.
In the USA women are about as bad as possible. The Jewish world there is worse. And frum religious world makes no difference. If anything, it is a million times worse. One needs a בת תלמיד חכם [daughter of a true Torah scholar]. Or just a regular girl. But the danger is the religious world. Especially for someone that has no experience.
But for many people, religion is away of seeming to be better than they are.
That is not the same thing as a religious teacher. religious teacher are the possessed by the force of anti Torah. I am talking about authentic Torah scholars which is very different kind of thing.
In the USA women are about as bad as possible. The Jewish world there is worse. And frum religious world makes no difference. If anything, it is a million times worse. One needs a בת תלמיד חכם [daughter of a true Torah scholar]. Or just a regular girl. But the danger is the religious world. Especially for someone that has no experience.
When I was in Shar Yashuv my future wife [a girl I knew in high school] was sending letters to me and when I was in the Mir she was calling me sometimes every day and sometimes once every two days. She is not the daughter of a Torah Scholar which had the result that is usual. But she is was a good shiduch anyway for other reasons. A Rav Getz and Arye Kaplan suggested to me to marry her. Arye Kaplan said, "If you wait for a shiduch from the frum world, they will offer you a בעלת מום (someone with something wrong with them) that you will not be able to discern until it is too late." That is, at least with her I knew her and her family very well and I knew her character.
It occurred to me today to my world view on a firm footing. That means to explain what it is and how it relates to other world views. The reason this seems necessary is that I have noticed other world views out there that in some way directly contradict my own. And other that have some good points but I do not accept all the points. It seems necessary also because Ann Rand did not position her world view in relation to other people and that seems to detract from her value.
One needs to position himself, so people can relate to what you are saying. Also, you need to give weight functions in front of each value to show how important it is.
The basic center is the Oral and Written Law. That is the Old Testament, plus the Oral commentary that was received tradition until it was written down in the two Talmuds.
The world view backing this up or that I think is implicit inside of it--the world view that provided the foundation for the Oral and Written Law I think is the Rambam's Guide For The Perplexed and Saadia Gaon's Emunot VeDeot.
Both are Neo Platonic. But the Rambam leans heavily towards Aristotle.
Thus the questions and issues brought by Kant and Hegel are pertinent and need to be addressed.
I lean towards a kind of composite between Kant and Hegel and Schopenhauer. I accept the "dinge an sich" (thing in itself) which I think is clear in the Rambam. Revelations reveal the dinge an sich. There is a hierarchy of dinge an sich until you get to the "ding an sich."(singular. Absolute Trancendence.)
[I lean towards Kant in this, that this hierarchy is in the nature of the unconditioned realities. This is not like Hegel in which the contradictions are in the objects and concepts themselves, and need to be brought into action through time.]
You can see this in most medieval books of Jewish ethics Musar. That even natural sciences they considered revealed by Revelation not by Reason. I have personal reasons for my world view and empirical observations.
The most admirable, moral, decent people I every knew were my parents so obviously what every they said or did must have an important effect on my world view. Plus I had an experience with the Ding an Sich that I can only understand today by means of Kant's idea of unconditioned realities. So that is a highly personal reason that others my not relate to.
Also because of my studies in Musar and Gemara I am very much in favor of the idea that people have aright to their property and the fruits of their labor. Government taking that from them I see as theft unless it is part of the Constitution or some contract that people have agreed to beforehand.
One needs to position himself, so people can relate to what you are saying. Also, you need to give weight functions in front of each value to show how important it is.
The basic center is the Oral and Written Law. That is the Old Testament, plus the Oral commentary that was received tradition until it was written down in the two Talmuds.
The world view backing this up or that I think is implicit inside of it--the world view that provided the foundation for the Oral and Written Law I think is the Rambam's Guide For The Perplexed and Saadia Gaon's Emunot VeDeot.
Both are Neo Platonic. But the Rambam leans heavily towards Aristotle.
Thus the questions and issues brought by Kant and Hegel are pertinent and need to be addressed.
I lean towards a kind of composite between Kant and Hegel and Schopenhauer. I accept the "dinge an sich" (thing in itself) which I think is clear in the Rambam. Revelations reveal the dinge an sich. There is a hierarchy of dinge an sich until you get to the "ding an sich."(singular. Absolute Trancendence.)
[I lean towards Kant in this, that this hierarchy is in the nature of the unconditioned realities. This is not like Hegel in which the contradictions are in the objects and concepts themselves, and need to be brought into action through time.]
You can see this in most medieval books of Jewish ethics Musar. That even natural sciences they considered revealed by Revelation not by Reason. I have personal reasons for my world view and empirical observations.
The most admirable, moral, decent people I every knew were my parents so obviously what every they said or did must have an important effect on my world view. Plus I had an experience with the Ding an Sich that I can only understand today by means of Kant's idea of unconditioned realities. So that is a highly personal reason that others my not relate to.
Also because of my studies in Musar and Gemara I am very much in favor of the idea that people have aright to their property and the fruits of their labor. Government taking that from them I see as theft unless it is part of the Constitution or some contract that people have agreed to beforehand.
Popularity of the cult that the Gra signed the excommunication on
We can understand this if we look at popular artists.
Think of a stadium filled to capacity with screaming Beatles fans; or the baseball fans who stand for hours in line to watch the Boston Red Sox break Babe’s curse; or dead-headers who devoted their lives to following the Grateful Dead; or the red carpet on Oscar night where people strain to glimpse their favorite celebrity arriving by limousine; or the lines of mourners at Graceland who gather each August to pay homage to The King. Our affections for our favorites are exclusive: there are people who know every word of every song on U2’s Joshua Tree, but nothing of Van Halen. There are readers who adore Mark Helprin, but snore if the subject is Borges or Calvino. For and Against mark the passions of a fan. We all have our idols. What comes over us when we give ourselves up to such frenzy? What makes a fan possible?
We know about this sort of frenzy first hand. We are post-Woodstock after all. We honor great singers, actors, novelists, playwrights, musicians, tennis and basketball icons, and other bigger-than-life people. They appear like sudden meteor showers, steam across the sky, lighting up the night for moments, hours, or even years until they drop from view and then from memory. While riding high, their fans gaze at them, reporters hound them, strangers ask for their autographs; their glamour and riches make them the wonder and envy of many.
The mystery of all great artists is that they cannot call up their talent at will, nor can they pass it on to others. Unlike knowledge, which is shareable, the artist is alone in the grip of something greater than himself that he cannot control and cannot understand. By force of the divine, the poet becomes the primary magnetic ring, while his imitators are just the “middle ring” through whom the Muse “drags the soul of human beings wherever she wants, transmitting the power by hanging it upon each successive member of the chain. And as if hanging from the loadstone a great chain of choral dancers, teachers, and subordinates are hung from the sides of the rings which hang from the Muse.
He, too, finds himself drawn in by the power of this or that Muse. He becomes transfixed by this or that celebrity, awed and pressed to favor him, look to him, to seek his company and counsel as though the star knows whence his talent and fan affection arise. For a while, it is as though men agree that “to be thought divine is far more noble ” than to be considered a master of knowledge or expertise. But when the bright light burns out, as it will and must, the star and his fans will be left as much in the dark as they were before he shot across their night sky. Throughout that heady time, though, other pressing matters—of education, goodness, justice, and governance—must be left on the back burners of life. Such is the danger of a culture of celebrity, however unavoidable it is.
For although it makes all the difference to humankind who the magnetic man on stage is—Billy Graham, Mahatma Gandhi, or Adolph Hitler—every inspired man must have sharp awareness of his incredible power to make us forget ourselves utterly. He will continue to glow in the night sky only so long as he succeeds in honing that power. How he succeeds or why, he has no clue. How he was chosen, or why, he cannot say. He is flying intoxicated toward a horizon he cannot see, dragging his fans with him, and he and they neither need nor want an explanation. The glory, fame, and the seductive glamour provide all the fuel he and his fans require. Perhaps it is his divine and unavoidable fate. But we participate in his journey at our peril, whatever his message, whatever his song.
Think of a stadium filled to capacity with screaming Beatles fans; or the baseball fans who stand for hours in line to watch the Boston Red Sox break Babe’s curse; or dead-headers who devoted their lives to following the Grateful Dead; or the red carpet on Oscar night where people strain to glimpse their favorite celebrity arriving by limousine; or the lines of mourners at Graceland who gather each August to pay homage to The King. Our affections for our favorites are exclusive: there are people who know every word of every song on U2’s Joshua Tree, but nothing of Van Halen. There are readers who adore Mark Helprin, but snore if the subject is Borges or Calvino. For and Against mark the passions of a fan. We all have our idols. What comes over us when we give ourselves up to such frenzy? What makes a fan possible?
We know about this sort of frenzy first hand. We are post-Woodstock after all. We honor great singers, actors, novelists, playwrights, musicians, tennis and basketball icons, and other bigger-than-life people. They appear like sudden meteor showers, steam across the sky, lighting up the night for moments, hours, or even years until they drop from view and then from memory. While riding high, their fans gaze at them, reporters hound them, strangers ask for their autographs; their glamour and riches make them the wonder and envy of many.
The mystery of all great artists is that they cannot call up their talent at will, nor can they pass it on to others. Unlike knowledge, which is shareable, the artist is alone in the grip of something greater than himself that he cannot control and cannot understand. By force of the divine, the poet becomes the primary magnetic ring, while his imitators are just the “middle ring” through whom the Muse “drags the soul of human beings wherever she wants, transmitting the power by hanging it upon each successive member of the chain. And as if hanging from the loadstone a great chain of choral dancers, teachers, and subordinates are hung from the sides of the rings which hang from the Muse.
He, too, finds himself drawn in by the power of this or that Muse. He becomes transfixed by this or that celebrity, awed and pressed to favor him, look to him, to seek his company and counsel as though the star knows whence his talent and fan affection arise. For a while, it is as though men agree that “to be thought divine is far more noble ” than to be considered a master of knowledge or expertise. But when the bright light burns out, as it will and must, the star and his fans will be left as much in the dark as they were before he shot across their night sky. Throughout that heady time, though, other pressing matters—of education, goodness, justice, and governance—must be left on the back burners of life. Such is the danger of a culture of celebrity, however unavoidable it is.
For although it makes all the difference to humankind who the magnetic man on stage is—Billy Graham, Mahatma Gandhi, or Adolph Hitler—every inspired man must have sharp awareness of his incredible power to make us forget ourselves utterly. He will continue to glow in the night sky only so long as he succeeds in honing that power. How he succeeds or why, he has no clue. How he was chosen, or why, he cannot say. He is flying intoxicated toward a horizon he cannot see, dragging his fans with him, and he and they neither need nor want an explanation. The glory, fame, and the seductive glamour provide all the fuel he and his fans require. Perhaps it is his divine and unavoidable fate. But we participate in his journey at our peril, whatever his message, whatever his song.
24.4.16
The traditional Lithuanian yeshiva is based on Musar and Gemara. That is it is a text based religion.
The core text is the Old Testament with the axiom that the Old Testament needs rigorous analysis to understand how to apply it in real life. And that rigorous analysis is the Talmud. There is no claim that the Talmud is infallible. Every page and every word rises, stands or falls according to how logically rigorous they are. There is a claim that it partakes of the holiness of the Torah itself, but only in so far as it corresponds to some abstract objective measure of what the Torah actually means.
That is: it is text based. But there is an axiom that morality is objective and absolute and politically incorrect and not dependent on human perception or ideas. The Torah is given to us in order to help us perceive objective morality.
I am not saying yeshivas even the top and best ones are perfect. In a world where perfection is sadly lacking, they also subject to human flaws. But you have to keep your eyes on the goal post--to come to objective morality. When my father was teaching me how to sail, one thing I still remember he said. "Always keep your aim directed to one single point." [That is point the ship at one point on the shore. Or if you are on the open ocean then one point on the compass.]
How else are we to come to objective morality except by learning Torah? Gemara and Musar [the ethics of Torah]. And avoiding the cults.
The core text is the Old Testament with the axiom that the Old Testament needs rigorous analysis to understand how to apply it in real life. And that rigorous analysis is the Talmud. There is no claim that the Talmud is infallible. Every page and every word rises, stands or falls according to how logically rigorous they are. There is a claim that it partakes of the holiness of the Torah itself, but only in so far as it corresponds to some abstract objective measure of what the Torah actually means.
That is: it is text based. But there is an axiom that morality is objective and absolute and politically incorrect and not dependent on human perception or ideas. The Torah is given to us in order to help us perceive objective morality.
I am not saying yeshivas even the top and best ones are perfect. In a world where perfection is sadly lacking, they also subject to human flaws. But you have to keep your eyes on the goal post--to come to objective morality. When my father was teaching me how to sail, one thing I still remember he said. "Always keep your aim directed to one single point." [That is point the ship at one point on the shore. Or if you are on the open ocean then one point on the compass.]
How else are we to come to objective morality except by learning Torah? Gemara and Musar [the ethics of Torah]. And avoiding the cults.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)