Navardok and Trust in God. Start Navardok yeshivas again.

I would like to  apply the dual nature of reality to the idea of trust in God. That is we have going back to the חובות לבבות [Obligations of the Heart by Bachei ben Pekuda] this contradictory thing that we are supposed to have total trust in  God with no measure or limit. Yet we are supposed to do effort.
This was a famous theme in yeshivas. Not just Navardok. This came up all the time in Shar Yashuv and in the Mir in NY in reference to shiduchim [going on dates in order to find a proper marriage partner] and also parnasa (making a living).
This dilemma is also brought up in the מדרגת האדם [The Level of Man] by Joseph Horwitz itself.

What I think is there are two parallel levels of reality, objective and subjective. They are parallel but neither causes the other. Quantum Mechanics  is subjective. Neils Bohr: "Nothing exists until it is measured." If you measure the electron it is a particle with a specific place and time. If you do not measure it, it is a wave.

I think trust works in the same way. If one trusts in God totally then the out reality corresponds to that trust. If one does not, then outer reality corresponds to that level.

Thus what comes out from this is that one can sit and learn Torah and not worry about shiduchim or parnasa and both will come to him. The outer reality will correspond to the inner reality.


[[I am being a little short in this essay. I really meant to say that QM is radically subjective. But some people have wanted to give up on locality instead. That is they want reality to be only objective and give up on locality. And they choose to give up on locality. But we know locality is true from experiments done daily using predictions of Special Relativity and General Relativity. Therefore only one option is left. Locality is true and nature is radically subjective. Just for one small example: GPS depends on both Special Relativity and General Relativity. It would be off by several miles if not for the fact that both SR and GR are true. I mean to say the satellites are moving faster than the observer because they are above his head going around the earth from his perspective. So their clock goes slower. But they are further out from the source of gravitation so their clock goes faster. Combine both effects and you have to adjust the clock in the satellite to compensate for both effects. If you would not adjust the clocks in the satellite they would show ones position to be miles off target every day.]

Modern Jewish Music is not very impressive to me.  To me it sounds like it based on modern styles which I am not fond of.-I prefer Mozart, Vivaldi Renaissance and Medieval.  This was the basic taste of the daughter of Bava Sali and Rav Isaac Hutner

The Nefesh HaChaim is about service of God in a comprehensive way.

The Nefesh HaChaim is about service of God in a comprehensive way. It is about learning Torah and prayer. To avoid modern day idolatry and Monotheism. I do not know if there is translation. But even if there was it would probably be Politically Correct. [This is the Musar book by a disciple of the Gra]

Monotheism is mainly the idea that God is one, not a composite, and He is not the world, and the world is not him. 

I might mention that I think part of the reason the Rambam went with Aristotle was that people had been wrestling with  neo platonic thought and monotheism for a thousand years. Neo Platonic thought was the default position but it was hard to get it to go along with simple Torah Monotheism. So the Rambam just jettisoned a lot of Neo Platonic thought and went straight with Aristotle.
So God would be defined as the First Cause. It makes everything amazingly simple. Nothing is godliness except God.

This is important because knowledge of this fact can save one from idolatry. And that in itself is  great thing because  כל הכופר בעבודה זרה כאילו מודה בכל התורה כולה anyone that denies idolatry is as if he agrees with the whole Torah. That is the Whole Torah can be more or less condensed into that one command do not do idolatry. And when one has fulfilled this then he need not seek for tikunim {other corrections} for things. For the the Torah is life and the good.

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 

]

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.