What the religious world does is put all the emphasis on rituals and the worship of religious teachers.

The prophets end with זכרו תורת משה. Remember the Law of Moses.
The Law of Moses is composed of several areas of value. One important area that is largely forgotten is character traits and the whole area of what is called בין אדם לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man. This is the reason why Lithuanian Musar yeshivas are important.Because they strive for this balance.
What the religious world does is put all the emphasis on rituals and the worship of  religious teachers. That means it is really a different religion than Torah.
Still that is not to say the ritual part of Torah is not also essential. One needs a balance.

I believe in capitalism from a different aspect. That is from learning Torah and Talmud. In the Talmud, property is not considered to belong to the government, but to the individual. And not just taking it by theft or fraud is considered to transgress the command not to steal, but even if the court awards one money that does not really come to him by the law of the Torah (din Torah), that is also considered theft.  Reading Ann Rand later on reinforced this. But Ann Rand was really just emphasizing a point I had seen before, that Socialism is theft disguised as virtue.

But to get a really full fledged defense of capitalism I really had to wait until I read Kant. I do not know if I was trying on purpose to come out with a defense of private property.  I was after all interested in the argument against it. I read the Communist manifesto and Rousseau and approaches that defended the State as opposed to the individual. But these approaches never seemed to hold much water. Especially Marx. To me what he was saying seemed ridiculous. He had some concocted theory that things have as much value as much labor went into making them which is patently absurd. Things have as much value as people want them, not as much time and labor went into making them. You can work all year long on making a pin. It will not be worth more than if you spent less time.

There was  effort from the communists to get the collage curriculum in the USA to feature anti capitalist  thinkers. A lot depends on what he reads and digests in his or her college years. As for me even in my yeshiva years I continued reading left wing and right wing thinkers along with the Talmud. I read Lenin, Sartre, etc. Still the more I read the less they made sense. They would start out with some nice sounding principle and think they and proved it. And then by that dubious principle proceed to demolish normal moral values. You can see how reading the Talmud was for me a relief of logic and sanity from the inanities and absurdities of Lenin and Sartre. The contrast could not have been more stark.
[Sadly though I did not get to Kant until years later. That was a stupid mistake on my part. I had seen him in some private home and could have borrowed him if I had wanted. So instead it took me many years until I finally got to Kant.]

However there is a use for Marxism. It can harness the greed of people to gain power for central government. This is how it played out in the USSR and in China. But I do not think that is a good thing. It all depends if you think the state is more important or the individual.

Every mortal is born with a equal measure of good and evil.

The Ancient Greeks in order to gain allies when Xerxes was coming to invade  sent to potential allies this idea. They said, "Every mortal is born with a equal measure of good and evil. No exceptions." Thus Xerxes would not, and could not, have unlimited success.

Some people like Bava Sali [Israel Abuchatzeira] in their  own way applied this idea to their own lives.  They said there is a limit to how much good and pleasure they will have so they voluntarily limited it. It is well known that Bava Sali fasted most of his life from Shabat to Shabat.

marriage delay.

Women in the western world today are too comfortable, too spoiled, too pampered, too soft, too selfish. 

Getting to the nub of it,  women are willing to marry if, and only if, the man involved is absolutely perfect in every way. He has to be hot, fit, sexy, exciting, monogamous minded, with a good job and money in the bank, and his own living arrangements. He has to be ready made, off the shelf perfect, with no added input and no assembly required. He can’t be a diamond in the rough or a work in progress. He can’t be a young guy just starting out, he needs to be established and earning very good money, and he has to have all these things first, before he’ll be anywhere close to worthy of consideration.

That’s what’s driving the marriage delay.

Almost all Divorce Petitions are issued on the grounds of the husband’s Unreasonable Behavior, and what you may ask would such behavior comprise? Anything you like! but some of the most popular are, leaving the toothpaste-cap off, leaving the loo-seat up and forgetting the mother-in-law’s birthday. In other words, whim. No man ever complaines in a petition as to his wife’s behavior.

I wanted to suggest two types of sessions in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. One is just saying the words and going on and the other is in depth learning. The in depth learning depends on if you have  a learning partner or not. When I have found myself without a learning partner -which is more often than not- I suggest just to take one chapter and just run through it from start to finish. Then the next day do the same thing. And thus continue at least for forty days. I admit I did not do this myself with Rav Shach but rather other people like Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam. This idea of lots of review  I mainly picked up from my first rosh yeshiva and his son who were always talking about the importance of review.

Talmud Bava Metzia 98a. Tosphot first word משכחת. It occurred to me to ask what seems like a simple question. To Rabbainu Tam to take an oath of  a guard one needs כפירה הודאה ואונס. Why is not just כפירה or אונס enough? Is that not the same thing as מודה במקצת where we say מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? I guess because it is different than the case of a loan. By a loan we say he takes an oath because he really wanted to deny the whole thing but אין אדם מעיז פניו בפנע בעל חובו because the lender did him a favor by giving him  a loan. But here with a guard the person that gave the guard something to watch did him no favor.
The question on this is:
But then there would be more of a reason to have a person that denies the whole transaction to take an oath, not less.

What I mean to say is this we say מודה מקצת takes an oath because two things cancel. There is a reason to say he is denying only part when he could have denied the whole thing so let us believe him. To cancel this we say אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו. So then normally our starting position is there should be an oath, because 1-1 is the same as zero.







It also occurred to me a simple way to explain the question of Tosphot on Rabbainu Tam. Rava asks on Rav and Shmuel "if there is a migo then there would never be a case of a שומר taking and oath." The question of Tosphot on RT is that to RT the case of  a guard taking an oath is never a case where there is a migo.

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בבא מציעא צ''ח ע''א תוספות ד''ה משכחת. It occurred to me to ask what seems like a simple question. To רבינו תם to take an oath of  a שומר one needs כפירה הודאה ואונס. Why is not just כפירה or אונס enough? Is that not the same thing as מודה במקצת where we say מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? I guess because it is different than the case of a loan. By a loan we say he takes an oath because he really wanted to deny the whole thing but אין אדם מעיז פניו בפנע בעל חובו because the lender did him a favor by giving him  a loan. But here with a guard the person that gave the guard something to watch did him no favor.


השאלה על זה:
אבל אז  תהיה יותר סיבה לחייב אדם שמכחיש את העסקה כולה לקחת שבועה, לא פחות.


It also occurred to me a simple way to explain the question of תוספות on רבינו תם. In שבועות רבא  asks on רב and שמואל if there is a מיגו then there would never be a case of a שומר taking and oath." The question of תוספות on רבינו תם is that to רבינו תם the case of  a guard taking an oath is never a case where there is a מיגו because it is always מודה מקצת




בבא מציעא צ''ח ע''א תוספות ד''ה משכחת. עלה בדעתי לשאול מה שנראה כמו שאלה פשוטה. לרבינו תם, שומר כדי להישבע צריך כפירה הודאה ואונס. למה לא  כפירה לבדה או אונס מספיקים? האם זה לא אותו דבר כמו מודה במקצת שבו אנו אומרים מודה במקצת הטענה חייב שבועה? תרוץ: אני מניח כי זה שונה מאשר במקרה של הלוואה. על ידי הלוואה שאנו אומרים הוא לוקח שבועה כי הוא באמת רוצה להכחיש את העניין, אבל אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו כי המלווה עשה לו טוב על ידי שנתן לו הלוואה. אבל כאן עם שומר, האדם שנתן משהו לשמור לא עשה לו שום טובה.
גם עלה בדעתי דרך פשוטה להסביר את השאלה של תוספות על רבינו תם. בשבועות רבא שואל על רב ושמואל אם יש מיגו אז לעולם לא יהיה מקרה בשומר לקיחת השבועה ". שאלת תוספות על רבינו תם היא  לרבינו תם במקרה שהשומר לוקח שבועה הוא לא לעולם במקרה בו קיים מיגו כי זה תמיד מודה מקצת.


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Rav Elazar Menachem Shach

I added an idea here about an idea of Rav Elazar Menachem Shach of Yeshivat Ponovitch.
In short there is question in the Rambam.
First let me say  the Etrogs on an  Etrog tree do not ripen all at once. They can stay on the tree for years. So there is a question what to do about Maasar [tithes]? The Rambam goes with the opinion you go by the time the etrog was picked. But he also says an etrog that goes from the 6th year into the 7th is obligated in tithes. Direct contradiction. Rav Shach says the fruit of the 7th year is not הפקר. They have owners. All Israel. So when his field is being trampled  he would not be obligated in tithes because of trampling,-- not because that from the law they would not be obligated.

I have another answer for the problem, but here I just wanted to defend Rav Shach.[That is since the Etrog has owners it is fruit that is owned by partners and thus obligated in tithes.]


Rav Shach is important-the only area of disagreement I have is STEM [Science, Tech, Engineering, Math]. But in terms of areas of numinous value, I am in agreement with him.  That is that the holy Torah contains all the answers and all the meaning [for human life].