Evil is contagious. Do not hang out with the wrong crowd.

An example of how there are hidden influences from one person to another  is purely biologicl temrs is a woman's period.


Sapolsky {Stanford} says people girls can make their periods simultaneous.

That is  when girls live at home they have a certain time frame when they do not see and then a time frame in which seeing blood is possible.  anywhere from 30 to 40 days.

When they live together one girl can affect the others so that their periods coincide.  This is so well known to biology students that he heard one girl bragging to another that in the summer camp she was at she had all the girls synchronized with her after a very short time.

If you have listened to Sapolsky a little you would know where he is going with this.
That there are lots of hidden biological things that affect people and cause them to act in certain ways.
So what you learn is you have to be very careful with whom you hang out.
If you hang out with bad people or insane people be sure this will get into you eventually.

That is to say evil is contagious.

Kant

I spent a good deal of time in philosophical and religious searching. The thing I settled on  as representing the most accurate picture of reality is the Kant school . That is in terms of question like "How do we know things?"  and in terms of questions on meaning and in terms of the ultimate nature of things. Mainly this was  process of excluding nonviable options. That is going through a lot of different thinkers and trying to evaluate if what they said made sense to me.

So I do not take a religious fanatic approach to Torah. Hard to explain what that means. Mainly that only sanctioned religious leaders have the truth. That seemed to me to be utterly false. But on the other hand I felt there is  a deep truth in the Law of Moses and in the Oral Law. So I needed some way of making sense of things.

I could go through the whole list of philosophers and thinkers that I went through but their names would not mean much. [Some more thoroughly than others.]

A lot of philosophers hit on some deep aspect of truth.  But in many of their systems I found flaws. So that is my basic approach in terms of the question of meaning.


How did I go about this? Here are some of the factors I used: Observation of people, assuming there is some connection between what people do and their world view. Internal observation. Common sense. A good deal of learning in depth so as not to dismiss off hand anything just because at first it seems problematic. A good deal of Physics and Math and Torah.

Appendix: I like the critics of Kant very much because of the light they shed on Kant.
The intuitionists, Prichard, Michael Huemer, G.E Moore have some great ideas but in the long run I think they did not try hard enough to understand Kant. I have a great deal of respect for John Locke and the empiricists and the rationalists, but in each there are serious flaws. Both in each individual school of thought and also as general approaches. Of course Plato and Aristotle are  great but still I had to find some approach that made sense to me. I was not able to just depend on ancient thinkers that were dealing with different issues.

Some critiques on Kant simply miss the point and do not understand the issues between the rationalists and the empiricists which lead him to his conclusions. A lot of modern philosophers are simply innocent when it comes to Physics, so what they say in that area and conclusions they draw by what they think they know are usually "off." Some have been overly awed by science. Some have "Physics envy." I do not want to go into it all right now. My point is my approach comes mainly came from eliminating other possibilities

Another terrorist incident? You can bet the mainstream media will say that Islam had nothing to do with it. They will blame it on guns.

Who has that authority to interpret Torah?

I had a blog a few years ago where dealt with different ways of interpreting the Torah

But I did not deal with the question who has that authority?

Mainly I considered the question settled by the approach I saw in the yeshiva of Rav Freifeld in Far Rockaway. That was Shar Yashuv. Later at the Mir Yeshiva in NY I saw the approach was the same so I did not think much about it afterwards.

The idea is mainly that we depend on "סברא" logic along with the Oral Law. That is in order of precedence: The two Talmuds, Rishonim[mediaeval authorities], Achronim [authorities after Rav Joseph Karo].

There is a mixture of faith mixed in with this. That is though the Gemara does not claim Divine inspiration  we give it more authority than if it would be simply a product if human minds. We assume it is inspired to a lesser degree than the Bible, but still that it is inspired.

This is a settled question--or it should be. Recently I have seen many people to grab authority from the Talmud and claim it themselves. Usually-with intention to legitimize some kind of idolatry of some individual.

Appendix: I imagine an expanded essay on this might be in order. Mainly because of the amount of confusion I have seen on this issue. The actual Oral Law is  the two Talmuds. But they do not actually state a legal decision except rarely. Also it is sometimes hard to resolve contradictions. So we go by rishonim, Rif, Rambam, Rabbainu Tam, all the authors of Tosphot, etc. There is an assumption that rishonim are never wrong on any point of logic. This is always in fact the case. Achronim can be wrong and often are. Especially on points of logic. But in any case, they do not have the authority of a rishon except for the Gra. The main use of achronim is to understand the rishonim.

As far as Halacha goes achronim have no authority except in so far as they can help understand the rishonim.


The achronim that wrote on the Shuclchan Aruch [Shach, Taz, Ketzot, etc.] are very valuable if you have learned the subject in the actual Gemara Rashi and Tosphot.
The Achronim that wrote on Shas like Rabbi Akiva Eiger are great --but again -only because they shed light on rishonim.









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Music for the Glory of God r78,r77,r72 and r seven four in mp3 and midi

R78 B Minor R77 F Minor r72 3-4 time r74 G Major

r78 midi r77 midi r72 midi a> r74 G Major in midi format

"Torah with Derech Eretz."Shimshon Refael Hirsch and Rav Cook.

When I have doubts in life about the proper path it helps me to look back to the basic approach of my parents. This path was what could be called "Torah with Derech Eretz." Which means the Law of Moses along with learning a vocation and good character traits.  The way I try to go about this is to have small sessions daily in each area of value. That is a little music, a little Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot, and Musar, a little Physics. etc. That is I strive for balance. I strive for the center.

I admit this is limited in so far as when  some doubt about a specific issue arises, there still is no advice but to go  to God directly in prayer.

This Torah with Derech Eretz was is in the Mishna, Pirkei Avot and the Rambam was decided the halacha like this.  This path became known as the path of Shimshon Refael Hirsch and also of Rav Cook. But Rav Cook had a extra emphasis on the Land of Israel also.

There have been times when I experimented with different kinds of review in learning. I can not say what works best for everyone. But I wanted to mention something that I found helpful. I a have mentioned that the Gemara in Avoda Zara has this idea  of one should just say the words and go on.  And I think that is right. But a few years ago with a text in Quantum Physics I did a slightest variation on this. I would get to the end of  a chapter,  and then instead of gong on to the next chapter, I would go back over the last one in reverse order, section by section. This I think can be helpful for others, so I thought to mention it here. The idea is let's say chapter 2 has ten sections. I would (after reading the whole chapter straight),  go back to section ten. Then nine, then eight. etc.

You could do this with the Gemara itself. When I was in Yeshiva in NY the emphasis there was how many times you finished a chapter. There was one store-owner I remember who did chapter three of one tractate a whole bunch of times.