I spend a good deal of time on tracatates Shabat and Eruvin.--The reason was force of circumstances. I had spend the previous two years in Shar Yashuv learning Ketubot and Yevamot. So when in my new yeshiva--the Mir in NY-started learning Ketubot, I felt it was time to start something new. So I did Shabat with a lot of the Tosphot, the Tur Beit Yoseph, Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua. [I joined the small group that was doing Shabat in those days with my learning partner Hagi Presher who later became a rosh yeshiva in Russia and with Rav Nelkenbaum who is one of the roshei Yeshiva in NY in the Mir.] I did not however finish everything because in those days I was tried to get through the material as fast as I could, but also to understand it. Recently I put some nice ideas about Shabat (link) in my little booklet on Shas that deals with the most fundamental aspects of Shabat מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה. At the time I was thinking about these things, I was learning with my learning partner, David Bronson, who had  a copy of the Avi Ezri. The fact that he had the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach was very helpful. The main thing about Shabat is the Tosphot in Yoma page 34 or its sister Tosphot in Shabat and Sanhedrin. [Take a look at Rav Shach. The ideas there are astounding in depth and clarity.]

In terms of getting through Shas, I would prefer it if you would do a half a page per day with Tosphot and the Maharasha. Or if you do a whole page, then to still do it with Tosphot and the Maharsha. I think that it is important to get an idea of what is going on in Tosphot in one's early years,- because doing so later is often impossible. This is the reason why the places like Shar Yashuv and the Mir get involved in Tosphot even in the high school years. I did not understand at the time why learning Tosphot was important when I had not even finished Shas once, but now I see the wisdom in the approach of the Litvak [Lithuanian] yeshivas.

The book of Job

The book of Job  is a very important book.The Rambam goes into it in the Guide. My main feeling about the book is this. That the author has a privileged position. That is,- he is in a position to tell you accurately what happened. So though other positions [the friends of Job] have various degrees of validity, still the position of the author is different and should be considered the right position. So when he starts off that "Job had no sin," we should take that literally. And when Job gets punished from Heaven, we should not take that as a punishment for sin. Rather that Hashem (God) wanted to win a  bet with the Satan. Job surely was not at fault for this. And though the opinions of the three friends and then the last friend do reflect some aspects of reality, still they are not in the privileged position of the author. Furthermore, we know this is true because God himself tells the friends that they were wrong and should ask Job for forgiveness. Therefore what we learn is that numinous reality is beyond reason. It is the most basic and fundamental conclusion of Kant and Schopenhauer.  

This is important from a philosophical point of view, because  when you have God himself in the book of Job arguing the same point as Schopenhauer that gives it more weight.  

r97 C Minor  [r97 in midi format]

 [r101 in midi]

r98 F Minor r96 D major 6-8 time  [r98 in midi]

r93 f minor  in midi  r91 F Minor r91 in midi r90 e flat major  [r90 in midi]

Some things are not scale-able. The context of the Litvak yeshiva really works mainly in a small group. There is a kind of mystery in the fact that the Far Rockaway yeshiva of Reb Freifeld for me had a lot  more of the spirit of Torah than the larger more famous yeshiva I went to later.


[What I mean here is that once Gpddard and Von Braun figured out how to make a rocket ship, it was scale-able. The Democracy of Athens was not scale-able. Homemade bread is not scale-able. Certain things depend on size.]

Oral Law - Talmud

Sentences express abstract features, but these are always in a context of other abstract features (what Searle calls the "Network") . Thus the meaning of any verse in the Torah is radically under-determined. You need the Oral Law to get an idea of the overall context of Torah.

A comment on black and white relationships in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I grew up in an all white part of GR [Grand Rapids]. Tremendous. The blacks were on the other side of town. My dad talked me into getting a job on that side of town(at a bowling alley).I also got my first apartment in a mixed part of town. Both were "educational" experiences,to say the least.
At the bowling alley, many blacks would bowl and skip out on paying.I ran out,at first,to yell at them and got jumped those first times. After that,I told the boss, you can run out. He never did either.
At my apartment,I ran into a black guy I knew from the bowling alley. He asked me if he could borrow my car to go to the store. Being a young guy, I let him do it. 3 days later, they found it--150 miles away, transmission effed up. I Couldn't press charges because I volunteered the car to him.
I learned quickly though. Blacks came and went at the apartment. Noisy was an understatement. Drug use and criminal activity by them--you couldn't OVER-EXAGGERATE. I helped the landlords and police catch some of them.One was a possible death by a black thug group that lived together.
I lived on the middle floor.Once,the Orkin pest control people came in to spray in the black apartment below. As I watched TV,the Orkin's must have started spraying, hundreds--if not thousands of roaches ran up the wall behind my TV,into the apartment above. Filthy? 90% of blacks I've been around, live in garbage.
That was then. Now they've come to my original side of town. I've told the stories of having to evict blacks and Mexicans on either side of my current house.They haven't improved one bit in 30 years. If anything, they're worse--because now, the minorities have an attitude. They think they know more than you, but in reality, have the IQ of a banana.
Just thought I'd write a few lines on my experiences also.
-GR Anonymous


link

r97 Midi file C minor 4-4 time I have no  mp3 converter, so here i the plain file.

Here is the same file in Mp3 r97

[r97 in nwc]