Physics and Jewish people

 I saw in high school the drive to succeed in the hard sciences for Jewish people was absent. The recognition that the natural sciences is good thing had disappeared.
It is no wonder the absence of Jewish names in the authentic sciences. With no will or desire to succeed, failure is guaranteed..
 The attitude towards the hard sciences that I saw was a surprise to me. With my Dad and his friends working on SDI Star Wars and the U-2, and the kind of success the USA had had in WWII, I thought it was clear  that the authentic sciences were understood to be good things.
Little did I know. Among Jewish people it was the phony sciences of psychology and other delusions that had all the prestige. Whatever recognition of the importance of the real sciences the immigrants from Eastern Europe had brought with them, had disappeared.

People had lost their direction. It took me some time until I discovered the opinion of the Rambam in the Guide about Physics. I had seen hints to this in the works of Musar but I never really got the idea until one day I opened the Obligations of the Heart by Ibn Pakuda.

Why did people lose their bearings?
 The best idea I can come up with is ignorance of Maimonides. The Middle Ages had a kind of balance between Reason and Faith. When that balance was rejected people lost their bearings. But that is my off hand answer right now. This is an interesting question that requires more thought. 

 I saw in high school the drive to succeed in the hard sciences for Jewish people was absent. The recognition that the natural sciences is good thing had disappeared.
It is no wonder the absence of Jewish names in the authentic sciences. With no will or desire to succeed, failure is guaranteed..
I was kind of a newcomer to Beverly Hills. I had grown up in Newport Beach CA. But the attitude towards the hard sciences that I saw was a surprise to me. With my Dad and his friends working on SDI Star Wars and the U-2, and the kind of success the USA had had in WWII, I thought it was clear  that the authentic sciences were understood to be good things.
Little did I know. Among Jewish people it was the phony sciences of psychology and other delusions that had all the prestige. Whatever recognition of the importance of the real sciences the immigrants from Eastern Europe had brought with them, had disappeared.

The basic structure of an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva is two sessions. The morning for what is called in depth learning of the Talmud --"iyun." That means you sit with a learning partner from 10 until 1200 preparing the material. Then at 1200 noon you go to one of the four classes that goes into the material in depth. The afternoon is for fast learning.

In both yeshivas in NY, Chaim Berlin and the Mir, many of the students in the afternoon went to Brooklyn College. The reason is that the main thing in yeshiva is the morning seder (session.)
This is a very good system except it has been largely taken over by people that use it to develop personality cults around themselves and is no longer about learning Torah.

If you are not in the vicinity of an authentic Litvak yeshiva, do not go to a phony yeshiva. Rather at home get one volume of Talmud and one book of Musar [mediaeval Ethics], and have make you own space a "Makom Torah" place of Torah.

The best choice of Musar is to have one book from the actual middle ages, like the Obligations of the Heart, and one like the Level of Man of Navardok in which there is a discussion about trust in God without effort. בטחון בלי השתדלות 

[One is however required to learn a vocation. Learning Torah does not count as learning a vocation.] [I did not want to hear this while in yeshiva. I was happy learning Torah. But I have to admit that my approach was probably a little too much based on lack of awareness of the Rambam's opinion that learning Physics and Metaphysics is a part of the Oral Law. If I had known that I would not have considered learning Physics as "Bitul Torah,"  wasting time that could be used for learning Torah

[If you have not gone through the entire Old Testament and two Talmuds at least once then you should have set aside each day about an hour for going through them page by page word for word. Do not worry if you do not understand. What you think you do not understand goes in subconsciously anyway.]

If you are not near a Litvak yeshiva then at least get Rav Shach's Avi Ezri which is the most easy to understand approach to learning in depth. You could try to do it on your own  learning Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam.  That book is an important classic.   

The basic structure of an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva is two sessions. The morning for what is called in depth learning of the Talmud --"iyun." That means you sit with a learning partner from 10 until 1200 preparing the material. Then at 1200 noon you go to one of the four classes that goes into the material in depth. The afternoon is for fast learning.

In both yeshivas in NY, Chaim Berlin and the Mir, many of the students in the afternoon went to Brooklyn College. The reason is that the main thing in yeshiva is the morning seder (session.)
This is a very good system except it has been largely taken over by people that use it to develop personality cults around themselves and is no longer about learning Torah.

If you are not in the vicinity of an authentic Litvak yeshiva, do not go to a phony yeshiva. Rather at home get one volume of Talmud and one book of Musar [mediaeval Ethics], and have make you own space a "Makom Torah" place of Torah.

The best choice of Musar is to have one book from the actual middle ages, like the Obligations of the Heart, and one like the Level of Man of Navardok in which there is a discussion about trust in God without effort. בטחון בלי השתדלות 

That is a concept I was never able to act on except twice. Once when I went to yeshiva in NY in the first place. The only other time was when I went to Israel. Besides that I have found it hard to trust in God without any effort.

r89 G Minor 6-8 time  r89 in midi  r89 nwc

Art at its best in to capture something transcendent in Nature.

Art at its best in to capture something transcendent in Nature. It is not to copy it, but to capture its essence. Schopenhauer went into this in . 



The idea is that the transcendent numinous reality has existence that depends not on the subject nor object. But it can be perceived by intention. [I do not know if that is how Dr Ross would put it.

Early medieval Europe.

Early medieval Europe. There was something definitely special going on then. The question then is how to deal with the problem that such an society entailed. How to combine it with the better aspects of the Enlightenment? My suggestion is at least a re-emphasis on the great books of the time.

 Also classical education which was the basic books of Aristotle on Logic plus the few others books from late Rome--plotinus.

Personally I feel there is a lot to gain from both the Mediaeval period and the Renaissance.

Jewish people are already aware of the importance of the Rishonim, the Rambam and Tosphot in particular.
For Jewish people education was already spelled out by the Rambam: Torah, Physics, Metaphysics. By the last two he was referring to two large sets of books by Aristotle. Today I would have to say modern Physics would have to be in place of Aristotle's Physics.


I should mention that this kind of education is not too far away from what I was doing anyway in high school. I was certainly interested in the mediaeval period though my time was limited because of school work.