the meaning of the Law of Moses.

It is a great privilege to be able to get on the Internet and speak about the greatness of the law of Moses. I would like to take this undeserved opportunity to discuss it. I see there is some confusion about the meaning of the Law of Moses.

Shimshon Refael Hirsh I think did the best job of putting the basic ideas into modern understandable form. The Musar Movement of Reb Israel Salanter was working  in the same vein but I think Rav Hirsh did a little better job simply because his approach does not lend itself so easily to be misused. Musar can be sidetracked easily.

Mainly what I would like to defend here  is (1) the idea that the Talmud is connected with the Law of Moses. Also  I would like to defend the idea that  (2) it has not been nullified. And third that (3) it should not be used as  prop for idol worship. That might be too much for one short blog entry.
 The best living examples I saw of how to live according to the Law of Moses were my own parents.
And they were not as strict in ritual observance as in the more important parts of the Law. But they did not deny the importance of all aspects of the holy Law of Moses. So while admitting that there were certain aspects of the Law that they might not have been doing with ultimate perfection still I think it makes sense to describe their approach.
My parents were Reform Jews, so they did see religious fanaticism as a bad thing and in most cases a kind of mental illness. But also they were quite aware that keeping the Torah as it was given, not more nor less, is very very important.

So they saw the Ten Commandments as the core. Not to lie and not to steal and to worship only God alone.

The validity of the Talmud depends on Reason. While at the core there is a basic assumption of the meaning of the Law of Moses, but in deriving the details there is no claimed authority except logical rigor. Who ever thinks more logically wins the debate

Reform Judaism has gotten off track with the adoption of social justice as a goal instead of the law of Moses. But at least they are Jewish. No Jew would every join the religious world thar worships human beings.

At least I would like to take the opportunity to mention the Musar of Reb Israel Salanter.  I found this very helpful in understanding the basic approach of the Torah. I mean one could learn the Tenach [Old Testament] and the whole Oral law and still not have  very clear idea of the basic values of Torah.

One thing you see in Torah that is important is Fear of God. "What does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear HIM?" That is pretty open and plain. And what way is there to come to fear God except by Musar--that is the books of ethics  written during the Middle Ages that explain the basic approach of the Torah.

I grew up in an area that was John Birch Society and never encountered any problem. I see American Nationalism and wholesome Judaic - Christian values as important. There is much I disagree with in Christianity but I do not see it as a threat. I see the Left however as a very serious threat to me to the USA and to mankind. It is my impression the Left does whatever possible to hurt the Jewish people while pretending to be freinds and to turn the USA into an African 3rd world country

I deleted that blog entry about religious teachers. I would rather not talk about such things. It is really because I am trying to warn  about a truth that I know to be true and have never seen an exception to that I decided to write about it. But I still am upset because I know there are people that learn Torah for its own sake in Litvak yeshivas and I do not want to be critical of them. religious teachers when ever they could cause damage to me and my family never hesitated. All the while claiming to be pro family. religious teachers here means people that are paid to do rabbinical duties. It does not refer to a different class of people that are occupied with learning Torah for its own sake.

Introduction: You have a lender and a borrower. The borrower had a field at the time of the loan and bought another field later. There are two buyers of the fields. The lender does not pay. He defaults.
The lender gets his loan paid by the first field and the buyer of the first field gets his קרן (the amount he paid) paid back by the second field. Tosphot asks: Why is there a second field? The second answer of Tosphot is the first was made a guarantee for the loan. The old Tosphot answered because the lender already collected his שיעבוד ("Obligation.)" That is to say at the time the loan was collected there was no second field. The borrower bought it after part of the loan was collected. The old Tosphot holds the lender at that point can not keep on collecting any and all property until the loan is paid


The idea here is that the lender gets paid back by property that the borrower owns at the time of the loan. That is even if the borrower sold the property. This has an equivalent in modern day law. You look when you buy a home to make sure there are no previous obligations on the home. You hire someone to do a background check.

But furthermore in the document of the loan usually it is written "all property that I will buy in the future will be subject to this loan---to pay it back in a case of default." [What if this was not written? That a different subject.]

Why I bring up this subject here is simply because the first answer of Tosphot holds the lender must go after the first field. So in terms of this law we have a מחלקת ראשונים and argument--which field must the lender go after? [In my notes  I wrote the possibility that this is related to an issue of when one borrows and then borrows again from someone else and then buys a field]
The older version of Tosphot is brought in the Maharsha. It comes from something called "תוספות ישנים" which is an older version of Tosphot before the editing process began the the 1200's. We do not have  a lot of these. You can find them mainly in Yevamot. But the Maharasha found one that applies to our case.


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 בבא מציעא י''ד ע''ב.  There is a difference between the answer of תוספות about אפותיקי and the version of the תוספות ישנים that says there is a second field because the lender already took his שיעבוד. The answer of  תוספות ישנים is that there is a second field because there was only one field at the time the loan was collected. Then the lender bought another field. Then the first buyer collects from the second field. According to this if there had been a second field that was bought later the lender would have had to have gone after it. That is the exact same idea as the second answer of תוספות about the אפותיקי. There also the only reason the lender went after the first field was because it was made a guarantee for the loan.
Therefore in terms of law about which field the lender must go after the second answer of  תוספות and the  תוספות ישנים hold the lender must go after the second field, if he can. But the second answer of תוספות and the  תוספות ישנים will differ in the case that the lender has already collected part of his loan. The  תוספות ישנים holds once he has collected any part of his loan according to the circumstances at the time, then he can not collect again. The second answer of תוספות about the אפותיקי holds he could continue to collect.


 בבא מציעא י''ד ע''ב. יש הבדל בין התשובה של תוספות על אפותיקי ואת הגרסה של התוספות הישנות שאומרת יש שדה שני כי המלווה כבר לקח את השיעבוד שלו. התשובה של תוספות הישנות היא כי יש שדה שני כי לא היה רק שדה אחד בזמן ההלוואה נאספה. אז מלווה רכש עוד שדה. ואז הקונה הראשון אוסף מהשדה השני. לפי זה אם היה שדה שני אשר נרכש מאוחר יותר המלווה היה צריך ללכת אחריו. זהו הרעיון בדיוק כמו התשובה השנייה של תוספות על אפותיקי. שם הסיבה היחידה שהמלווה הלך אחרי השדה הראשון היה כי הוא בוצע ערבות להלוואה. לכן מבחינת החוק, התשובה השנייה של תוספות ואת התוספות הישנות מחזיקות  שהמלווה חייב ללכת לאחר השדה השני, אם הוא יכול. אבל התשובה השנייה של תוספות ואת התוספות הישנות תהיינה שונות במקרה שהמלווה אסף כבר חלק ההלוואה שלו. התוספות הישנות מחזיקות שאם  פעם אחת המלווה אסף  חלק של ההלוואה שלו בהתאם לנסיבות באותה העת, ואז הוא לא יכול לאסוף שוב. התשובה השנייה של תוספות על אפותיקי מחזיקה שיוכל להמשיך לאסוף.

r84 edited in mp3 [r84 in midi]

The Mediaeval approach

The Mediaeval approach was to see the glory of God in his creation. This at least I saw a lot in the mediaeval books of Musar like the Obligations of the Heart.

To me it sounded like they were saying to learn Natural Science but did not want to actually come out and say so. But it was close enough to bother me. I was in yeshiva when I was seeing this and that was not a message I wanted to see. It would have meant that my parents were right all along that wanted me to go into Math and Physics.[Of course they never said anything even remotely like that.They were not about to try to use their influence in that way. But when they saw my interest in those areas they were very encouraging.]