The Jewish part of Western Civilization is I think Old Testament, plus the witnessing of people that take the Law seriously has an effect on Christian society. There is a kind of symbiosis. Plus there is the contribution of individual people. The general effect of Western civilization is to grow up in a world in which self improvement and character improvement is important.

Some of the things which were contributed by Jews were the polio vaccine, the process to make nitrogen [ammonia] on a large scale which makes growing large crops of wheat and grains possible, Relativity, String Theory (Susskind, Witten).  Saadia Gaon and Maimonides laid a framework for natural law that was later developed by Aquinas and that in turn provided the basis for John Locke and natural rights which formed the basis of the Constitution of the USA.

Atomic Energy still provides most of the electricity. The list of scientists at Los Alamos read like the morning role call of the Mir Yeshiva.

A great deal of American engineering is from Jews. In my Dad's lab at the Army base at Monmouth, NJ there were about 49 Jews and one German. That is when he developed night vision. And later he created laser communication between satellites for NASA. But these were just two small projects that I am aware of.

Production of radio waves, Hertz.

Neils Bohr, Emmy Noether, Grothendick. 

There are good things about the West. In particular I see the Middle Ages as a period of intense and important philosophical thought and innovations. Also the Renaissance was a great period of innovation. To the degree that the West takes these two periods and builds on them it is very good.
Medieval Thought builds on the strong connection between faith and Reason. The Renaissance builds on the idea of testing and going beyond human limits.

There is a Old Testament aspect of Western Civilization and the Jewish emphasis on fulling the the Law of God. There is also a NT aspect to it along with Roman Law and Greek philosophy.

not to add to the commandments.

In the Torah there is a mitzvah not to add to the commandments. [That is don't add and don't subtract. That excludes groups that add mitzvot and say "Yes keep the mitzvot but in order for you to come your Tikun {soul correction} you need to do this added mitzvah." Even though the added mizvah is not one of the commandments in the Five Books of Moses.  Eg belief in some tzadik is not one of the commandments of the Torah.

But to emphasize one particular mizvah is something we do find in Chazal [the words of the Sages].

And the Torah itself does in fact have one particular mizvah that it considers to be the most important one -not to worship any other god besides the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Thus worship of any tzadik would seem to be excluded.

Another problem with making up new mizvot is the law of Conservation of Morality. People by nature have only a certain amount of energy they can spend on being moral, It is like the law of conservation of Energy. If one adds rituals and mizvot, there is no energy left for real obligations.
And once people are strict in food preparation or other rituals then when it comes to  actual obligations they feel they are already good enough people and don't have to worry about these other obligations.
Thus we find that the most immoral people are ultra religious. This is because they have no energy left to be decent human beings after spending all their mental energy and time on rituals.

Therefore we find in Litvak yeshivas the emphasis is on "learning Torah," and avoiding Bitul Torah so that one knows his real obligations.



What the Torah is essentially doing is to limit the number of possible things you can do to make your life better. When the Torah says don't add to the commandments  it is saying in essence that there is no conceivable ritual you could add to make things better. The reason is that no matter what you would add it would be by definition going against the express command of the Torah not to add. So it might promise great reward but it is a lie. And that is in fact what I think about all cults. They promise things they can not deliver.

frivorce-Divorce

My impression of women in the USA is that too much feminism got to them. That means as some comments have said slavery of the man. Some men do not accept slavery willingly.  I was one like that. Especially growing upon traditional American Jewish values, the prospect of being someone slave seemed less than the best option.

"Taking on the roles of responsible husband and father has always been a tremendous sacrifice for men. However in the past society acknowledged those sacrifices with some perks: respect, a certain amount of deference, male only spaces, some authority over family matters, and property rights. Those benefits are all gone. Yet men are still expected to live up to their historical responsibilities. The amazing thing to me is that men continue to get married at all. "

The woman launches a frivorce  with cash and prizes in virtually every case. Who needs it?

Likewise divorce and court administration officials simply do not care HOW court-ordered quota dollars are ultimately used for the support of the children, if at all. No receipts or accountability required.
All they care about is that the subject (ex-husband) “hits quota”.
Because hitting quota is a good thing.
Never mind that the ex-wife’s new live-in boyfriend has taken the quota dollars to place spinning gold rims on his 2010 Honda Civic.

More and more men are coming to the conclusion that being a woman’s slave (thanks to her daddy the state) is not for them. Why do something that has a really good chance of destroying your life? It’s just not worth it.

Female initiated frivorce for cash and prizes constitutes a kind of tax that is only paid by married men. The fact that frivorce looks random from the outside doesn’t change this.

I repeat: frivorce constitutes a tax that is only paid by (some) married men. It is easy to avoid the frivorce tax; just don’t get married.

The frivorce tax is only paid by married men. An economic fact no one dares to notice.

My advice: I am aware of problems in the West. My answer for this is to learn the Old Testament, the Two Talmuds  and works of Ethics written during the Middle Ages. 
And avoid all cults.

The clash of ferocious Islam against Judaic Christian civilization.

I think that people in the West are not aware of the power that numinious values play in people's lives. Because they are not religious they cant see how religion can be the major motivation.
The Enlightenment intended this. The idea was to create secular societies where religion was a minor trivial play thing. So when people encounter  ferocious Islam, they simply can't comprehend from it comes. Did not Walt Disney tell us "It's a small world after all?" And everyone is the small on the inside and we should all sit around the campfire singing kubaya?

It is a clash of Islam against Judaic Christian civilization.

I used the term Judaic Christian civilization because it seems to describe the Civilization that arose in Western Europe-- that is the “meme” that was the seed of that civilization.
If the term was coined late, that does not mean it is inaccurate.

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I still really believe like the Madragat HaAdam מדרגת האדם that with the right amount of trust in God things would work out for me. Most of my problems I attribute not to lack of God's grace, but to lack of trust. That is: I see lack of trust in God as my own most serious problem,- because it is at the root of all other problems.

Trust in God is incidentally the major theme of the school of thought "Navardok." [that is part of the title of this blog]

 The idea of trust gave me great strength to do things that I felt were right to do, but I would have been scared to do them if I had thought about them too much. For example, going to Israel to live there at a time when it was  very dangerous. Also sitting and learning Torah, though I had no idea where a making living would come from. Both of these things I did because of trust in God along these lines "I will do what is right and God will help me."

Of course later on I fell from learning Musar [Ethics] and trust. Slowly but surely. And as I fell so did God's help.

An advantage of trust in God is you can speak the truth and never be afraid of bad consequences. And speaking the truth always even by itself is an amazing thing. It provides one with a protective shield that nothing can penetrate. And it is a spear that can pierce tall mountains. I found for myself that a commitment to speak the truth always under all circumstances is an anchor that keeps me safe in stormy seas.


Therefore what I suggest is something along the lines of a Navardok yeshiva. That is a regular Litvak  Musar yeshiva but with a emphasis on trust in God. This in fact the basis structure of the Mir Yeshiva in NY when I was there. There was a whole shelf in the Ethics section of only the Madragat HaAdam.

Every yeshiva seems to have a meme. A unit of social information. That is even among the really great yeshivas that I have seen there are differences.  We already know that each school of thought after Reb Israel Salanter emphasized a different character trait. So Navardok was just one approach of many. Slobadka was גדולת האדם the greatness of man. The Mir was more modest. The Mir in NY where I went to seemed to pride itself on being second best. In any case among all Litvak yeshivas that I have seen there is a basic emphasis on worship of God alone and good character traits. Personally I can't think of any one Litvak Yeshiva that is not worthy of support even though there are some I am less happy with.

Still I would have to say one should learn Physics and Math along with the regular Gemara and Musar program. That is the basic modification I would have to say is important.