The Path of Bava Sali

I had a session of learning the Eitz Chaim of Isaac Luria with Shimon Buso [the son of the daughter of Bava Sali]

There is a long story involved in this. I met him in a Beit Midrash in Ramot Gimel and he brought me to see his mother and for some reason she was immediately impressed. While there I saw a copy of Shimon Shkop’s book on Yevamot and picked it up out of curiosity and opened up to one essay on Tzarat HaBat.

At any rate that began a long relationship with that family. In Those days I was spending all my time by what is called “Navi Shmuel” which is a beit midrash built over the tomb of the prophet, Samuel. And the daughter of Bava Sali brought her entire family every week there to pray, and then would ask me to give to her and each of her children and grandchildren a blessing.

I did not know what she saw in me. Only after many years that was in NY and then returned to Israel by the Western Wall did she reveal the secret within the hearing of her son, Shimon.

I stayed by Shimon Buso's home for a few months until I moved back to Safed.

I had long involved discussions with Shimon and his mother over a period of several years.

I should mention that she held very strongly about what could be called the basic Lithuanian yeshiva approach.

As for Kabalah, Bava Sali never allowed any “Mekubal” to see him. His Shamash [servant] was under strict instruction when Bava Sali came to Jerusalem not to allow any Mekubal in, under any circumstances.

The grandchildren of the older brother of Bava Sali, David Abuchatzeira עטרת ראשינו, go to a yeshiva in Bnei Brak called Yeshivat Avraham Kalmonovitch. That should already tell you enough. Avraham Kalmonovitch was the founder of the Mir Yeshiva in NY, pure Litvak from head to toe.
And Shimon Buso himself taught Gemara at the branch of Ponovitch in Jerusalem when Rav Shach was the Rosh Yeshiva

The daughter of Bava Sali also mentioned a few books that she recommends by name The Obligations of the Heart [חובות לבבות] the first Musar book and Rav Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch. She was referring to it more along the lines of keeping the laws of Written and Oral Law. She was not referring to learning specifically. Rather it is a shorthand way of saying the law as explained in the Gemara and later Rishonim as brought down in the Tur Beit Yoseph and redacted into the Shulchan Aruch. That is kind of a mouthful. 

Criticism is hard to take but necessary for us to rise above our limitations.

My knowledge of American History is very small. I was in a Advanced preparation American History in High school and did not do very well. The teacher gave me the most seething review of a paper I had every received until then. I found it discouraging. Later I find myself grateful for the very harsh criticism I received from my teachers and Roshei Yeshiva but at the time it was hard to receive and accept. Of course they were right.

In hind sight I realize I gained a lot by my teachers being critical of me. This is a general fact about human development. Criticism is hard to take but necessary for us to rise above our limitations.

I was very used to being the best at anything I would try to do. I can still remember almost every little bit of criticism that anyone gave me because it hurt so much.

The US History teacher wrote a long note in Bold Red Letters a whole two paragraphs that I was not a scholar and that my essay was a poor piece of scholarship. I was comparing the policies of two different presidents in that essay. One was Andrew Jackson.

My first Rosh Yeshiva made it known publically that I did not have gratitude- which of course is true.

   I spoke once to a police officer in my usual arrogant way He said “You have an attitude problem.” I answered "Attitudes change." 

A Police officer in Israel in  told me I have a problem that I don’t treat people with respect.

The director of Star Wars with Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi has this very same theme. And the director of that film mentioned that that was part of his intention in the film to bring out this point --how hard it is to accept criticism from our mentors and yet how necessary it is.

People judge criticism by the intension of the critic. That is not good. Even if the intension of the critic is not positive still we should accept as much possible 

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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.