I have been looking at the trial of Joan of Arc for the second time. And I think it is perhaps the most disturbing document I have ever seen outside of the Guide of the Rambam. It is hard to know which one bothers me more and for what reasons.

The Rambam I have not looked at for some time so for now perhaps I will limit myself to a few random thoughts on the trial.
I think the most disturbing part of it is that some of the approach of the church authorities seems true.
If it would be all cut and dry--a righteous girl sentenced by evil judges, then there would be nothing more to contemplate.
The worries about schismatics seems that she herself agreed with. Of everything that they said to her there seems to be little that she herself would not agree to--except the point that the judges did not accurately represent the way things are in heaven.

The way Western Civilization has gone down the tubes since then seems to indicate at lot of what they were saying is true. Visions can come from the Sitra Achra.[The dark realm].  The worry about the weakening of faith in the church has led to an  atheistic Europe and USA and a protestant church that seems to be problematic- to say the least. At least one can say that nothing Luther did led anyone to be a better human being. If anything it led to a complete destruction of faith. And Joan would be the first person to jump up and agree with me.

From a strictly halachic point of view, it is clear that the Catholics preserved Divine Simplicity. The schism that produced the Protestants clearly is uninterested in that. [That is Catholics believe like us that God is simple and not a composite and has no material aspect or substance. They have  a hard time defending this but they still try to.]



{I am not saying the Catholics got everything right. Rather they are the closest to belief in the Torah. The better approach is of course the Litvak yeshiva.}

I mentioned in passing to someone about my connection with the Bava Sali family and they asked me for more details. It is perturbing to me to be reminded about Bava Sali because it reminds me of my responsibilities that I have not fulfilled and can't fulfill. Learning and keeping Torah and helping others also to do so.
Litvak yeshivas seem to me to be the best way to go about getting close to God.
I think that it was by spending a few years in two Lithuanian yeshivas  that helped me that when I got to Israel that I gained a kind of spiritual light that helped those years be really amazing.It is not that I had any kind of "Ruach Hakodesh" [holy spirit] or anything like that. It was simply a kind of feeling of attachment with God that was really intense.

At some point, I rebelled against it, so I do not expect it to return. But I can at least recommend to others the amazing path that helped me --that is the basic simple straight Torah approach you find in almost any Litvak Yeshiva. [The best one are obviously Ponovitch and the regular Litvak NY yeshivas.]

I know my concept of including Physics, Math Music and survival skills into a yeshiva is radical departure of the approach of those that think all secular studies are  bad.  There is on the other hand those that think all secular studies is a great thing and that is obviously quite terrible as we can see.
My approach is that that having some secular studies is a good thing, but most of it is bad. The fact that people pursue secular studies for the sake of a vocation does not turn bad into good.

I asked Rav Zilverman [Old City of Jerusalem] once about electrical engineering  and he thought that it is in the category of natural sciences that the Rambam recommended.

Litvak approach

I think the Litvak approach can be contrasted with the approach of the "pursuit of happiness."
I think the Gra's approach that forms the foundation of Litvak yeshivas is the "pursuit of morality."

The fact that limiting the amount of time spent on Musar in from the European Musar Yeshiva which spent enormous amounts of time on Musar to the American version which spends much less time is more based on the fact that the amount of time does not seem to increase the effect. It is the law of limited returns. That is there is a limit of how much you can learn it per day that increases any good effect. In fact there might be a maximum point. After that perhaps learning more Musar begins to detract  and start to create immorality? I think there is plenty of evidence to that fact. We all know Mashgichim [teachers of Musar in Litvak Yeshivas] are pretty poor examples of human beings. Therefore the best idea is the 20 minutes and the 15 minutes of Musar in the afternoon and evening and the ret of the day Talmud [Gemara] Tosphot Maharsha and after that the basic achronim Pnei Yehoshua, Reb Chaim of Brisk, Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.

   

It is possible to understand the idea of idolatry in a Kantian sense.  I might try to give some background about what I mean but the basic idea is simple. God is one, not two or three and he is not a composite. According to the Torah he is not the world nor is the world him. He is the First Cause that caused everything that exist to exist. That is to say he is transcendent and one and ideas of form and substance do not apply  to him.
With Schopenhauer we get further that he is the only unconditioned reality, though that is not like Kant.
What you get from this is a kind of clarity about God but also you get the idea of a limit how far human understanding can go about him. That is the apt title of the Critique of Pure Reason.

This helps to understand the idea of idolatry--which I found very difficult to understand. The major help I found about idolatry was reading the book of Daniel and later learning pages 62b in Sanhedrin and on-ward. [ie 62b -circa 64]. Of course the Nefesh HaChaim was helpful to some degree in the place where he deals with the problem of worship of people.[That is the chapter where he explains the idea of service of God as intending to get attached to God through prayer (I think.) I don't have t to be able to look it up.]


So in short unconditioned reality is unconditioned reality and thus idolatry is simply trying to make it concrete.

s13 G major

Litvak Yeshiva

I have been trying to think of a good argument why a Lithuanian Navardok Musar yeshiva is a good idea. But the whole day I have not been able to come up with any argument.

My major motivation for trying to argue my point is I already know that a Litvak yeshiva is an amazing experience. I would in fact call it perhaps the peak experience of my life if not for later on being in Israel and raising a family there.
But that in itself is not an argument because there are people I have encountered who had less than happy experiences in yeshiva, and not all yeshivas are created equal. But I also have not even wanted to argue for the great two yeshivas that I was in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY.

What motivates me to argue for Navardok is the idea of a Litvak yeshiva that places emphasis on trust in God. My reason is that I see myself in my own life that when I trusted in God everything went my way. When I stopped trusting in God and started doing השתדלות human effort, everything fell apart.

Many years later I was doing some review of some books of Ethics [Musar of Reb Israel Salanter] and I was surprised to see the that Reb Israel, and his disciples and the Musar Book Obligations of the Heart all preached the idea that if one can not make it with God, then the best advice is to help others get close to God's service.

What occurred to me was this new idea. That maybe this works for individual things. That is- if I am lacking some good character trait, and I can't seem to get it no matter how hard I try, then perhaps helping others get to that trait might help me by way of reflection?

The only modification I would make would be to add Physics and Math to the regular Musar and Gemara approach. And of course Music and survival skills.

These six things I see as pretty essential. Most of the other stuff I learned in High School today seems to have been a waste of time. And even then it did.