events events in Uman

I do not have a lot to say about events events in Uman. Mainly my idea is that the excommunication that the Gra signed is still valid. People ignore it at their own risk.

The main thing about it --if you want to get a better idea of what it [ a חרם (excommunication)] means is to look in the laws of shavuot [oaths] of the Rambam in the commentaries there is brought the debate about what kind of force a חרם has. It ends up being a מחלוקת ראשונים[debate among mediaeval authorities]. No surprise there. The basic idea that comes out that is relevant for us is that it is a kind of איסר נדר (prohibition due to a vow). That is when one says "This loaf of bread is a קרבן (sacrifice) to me" that makes the loaf of bread forbidden to him to eat or even to sell and use the money.

I know this might seem silly to people and I admit to me also it would not make much sense if not for the falsification in the pudding. Not the proof in the pudding but the disproof. An increase in bad character traits indicates not only no spiritual benefit but even a negative effect.
 Did you ever see a pigeon beat up another pigeon because the poor pigeon was getting more pizza crumbs than the aggressor? I saw this in Uman. You would not see such a thing in Uman years ago. On the contrary, even the cats and dogs and chickens got along fine. Something changed. 

I was asked about Numinous reality. Or Holy reality


 The major idea comes from Kant. Kant was trying to answer a few problems. Mainly the problem that both the empiricist and the rationalist both had good points. Thus he came up with the Gothic Structure of the Critique.

The problems in the critique were noted by later people. One approach to iron out the difficulties was this idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge. Things we know not by reason and not by senses.
What is known by kind of thought we can call non intuitive immediate knowledge but it really is a kind of Reason that recognizes or know things beyond detecting contradictions.

So this idea is in some way expanding the areas that reason perceives. One area is numinous reality. Pure content and no form.

Part of the idea comes from Socrates. When he questioned the slave if he knew the answer to a certain problem in geometry. The slave said no. Socrates then asked him a series of questions until at the end the slave came up with the right answer. There are therefore things we know but we do not know that we know. Another aspect of Socrates was to ask people questions about things they thought they knew. There was a series of question until the person contradicted himself and thus showing there are things we think we now that we do not know.

The way I approach Numinous Reality: The Giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) was a beginning of a new kind of thing. That is there have been times when God wanted to bring something important and special into the world, and one such time was  Matan Torah. I really would need to go into this in more detail based on the Rambam in his Guide for the Perplexed.

So to come to Torah"-- an Iyun (in depth session) Shiur in Torah should be in one of several books Avi Ezri, Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam, Baruch Ber a disciple of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik, Shimon Shkop another disciple of Reb Chaim. Or you can take one Tosphot and just do it every day until it becomes clear, The fast session should be to get through the entire Oral Law with Rashi and Tosphot.


That is to say I recognize the Law of Moses as a kind of wake up call for humanity. Thus one should go though the Oral and Written Law. That is simple.The most one needs to do a entire half page of Gemara Rashi and Tosphot [an Amud] is 30 minutes.Add the Maharsha and Maharam with that and you have 40 minutes. So to get through the whole Oral and written Law is simple and short. Ten minutes of the Old Testament and 40 on the Talmud.That is easy as apple pie.


[I am aware of different levels. I know some people have not gone through the whole Old Testament yet in Hebrew so for them it might be a good idea to spend more than ten minutes on this. The best thing is for beginners is to get a Hebrew English Dictionary, Forget the commentaries. They are not worth the time and mostly are very unhelpful.

To tell the difference between numinous reality from the realm of holiness and as opposed to the Dark Side is by character traits. This was an idea of Hegel and it makes sense to me. That there is a strong correlation between holiness and good character.

You see this idea also in Dante. And it comes up in Musar of Reb Israel Salanter very often.

That is in the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter the idea of "midot" character as being primary comes up often. You see in in the Rambam also in the Guide concerning the reasons for the commandments of the Torah

Islam promotes violence against non-Muslims and subversion in non-Islamic countries. Muslims should never have been allowed access to any Western nation. It might be impractical – not to say illegal under American law – to round up all known Muslims within our borders and deport them.

Once a nation admits Muslims, they will proliferate like cockroaches. Shortly after that, the violent fraction among them will use the numbers of those otherwise inclined for shelter, concealment, and support, as their religion dictates. And every terrorist act will be swiftly followed by pleas for “tolerance” and demands for concessions to their creed, by both private and public institutions.

There have been times in my life when I have “pushed my luck” and eventually suffered the consequences. Life has a way of giving you a painful “reality check”. A friend of mine used to call it the “cosmic NO”, when the universe tells you that you need to rethink your approach.

The thirty-year-old graduate student with no prospect of tenure; the thirty-year-old unmarried woman whose youth is starting to leave her; the worker whose career is a string of angry confrontations: there are plenty of people who will likely hit the wall one day. Or, as we used to say, they are “riding for a fall”.

I should mention I was in NY during times when there was extreme pressure and criticism on the police there. If this kind of pressure has expanded into other areas in the USA, then the caution of the police becomes understandable. If the atmosphere  has become  anti police, then there is little motivation for an officer to stick his neck out.

to learn Talmud

The way I found best to learn Talmud was to get the large picture by going through the whole set word for word from beginning to end. But also to be in a Litvak Yeshiva at the same time when you can hear classes on in depth learning to understand how to go into any given subject in depth with Tosphot and Rav Akiva Eigger and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik.
But then after you get the big picture, it is the proper way to concentrate on one Tosphot for as long as it takes.

Similarly in Physics I found this same process. It helps to get the big picture, and also at the same time to hear classes from the professors that know the material well. But then after that, to concentrate on one small subject at a time. When I had only a text I would take one small subject let's say generalized coordinates, or the Beta Function and just keep on going through it word for word for forty days in a row. 

Kabalah as a negative thing

I see some people see Kabalah as a negative thing. They seem to group it together with attempts of things like the New Age cults and such. This was never my impression, but I think this opinion should still be considered.  After all how is it that it got to be so widely and wildly  accepted in the religious world? I am not sure how to answer this? From what I can tell there might be some reason to think the entire acceptance of it as a legitimate part of Judaism might have been a mistake.

In any case it is hard to see any good that comes out of it.

However sometimes it seems  people that were good  did learn the Zohar and the Ari. And that does not seem like a bad thing. After all the Ari is just developing a modification of a neo- platonic system and using it to explain the Torah. Still you have to wonder is there perhaps some kind of bad energy mixed up with the whole thing? Based on what we have seen for the last centuries as Kabalah became popular we certainly did not see people improving in any way because of learning it.

What might be going on is that people are putting anything that smacks of the Dark Side all in one trash basket and throwing it all out without inspecting the particulars of each case. Thus they would be putting the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on and Cabala and new age and Hinduism all together and saying that it is underneath all the same dark side.



In other words, some people are instead of focusing on the positive aspects of their beliefs system are focusing on avoiding the Dark Side in all and every manifestation of it. This is probably a good approach. The reason is that it is easy to be distracted and to swallow the bait. I think people are the most interested in avoiding the Dark Side are probably thinking correctly. The question is how to identify the dark side? But they are not concerned with that. They simply dismiss anything that smells even slightly off.

Now I have never done that myself, and I am probably at fault for this. As I look over things I have read I see I have studied in great depth and detail systems that were pretty obviously from the Dark Side. Maybe I did not care, or maybe I thought it would not effect me. Maybe I thought I was immune?

I have talked about kabalah in particular is some other essay. But just for now let me mention that Im Kal Da  עם כל דא [even though] which comes up all the time in the Zohar is a translation of Im Kal Ze עם כל זה [even though in Hebrew]. It was a phrase invented by the Ibn Tibon family during the Middle Ages.. Therefore not one word of the Zohar can be from R. Shimon Ben Yochai. QED.
In the time of Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai for although one said אף על פי or אף על גב