new moon

I think one should go by the actual new moon which makes now the 9th of Av. That is there is one second when the moon and sun are in conjunction. That is called the Molad. In Tosphot in Sanhedrin 10b the first opinion of Tosphot is that the Molad fixes the time of Rosh Hodesh.


The calendar that is used nowadays was instituted by Meton in Athens. It was adopted during the time of the Geonim but was not used during the time of the Talmud. The whole thing is  a misunderstanding based on the idea of Saadia Gaon of Tradition שמיעה.
He said the calendar is משמיעה from tradition.
What he meant was as he used the concept elsewhere the whole body of oral and written Torah. But what people thought he meant was הלכה למשה מסיני A law to Moses at Sinai. But that is not what Saadia Gaon meant.

That means the calendar is not accurate. It is better to simply go by the actual new moon.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin 10b is also clear in that way. Rosh Hodesh to that Gemara is not dependent on Beit Din. Rather if the beit din declares it at the right time fine, if not then they sanctify the real new moon anyway from heaven.

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I think one should go by the actual מולד. There is one second when the moon and sun are in conjunction. That is called the מולד. In תוספות in   סנהדרין דף י'  ע''ב the first opinion of תוספות is that the מולד fixes the time of ראש חודש.


The calendar that is used nowadays was instituted by מטון in אתונה. It was adopted during the time of the גאונים but was not used during the time of the תלמוד. The whole thing is  a misunderstanding based on the idea of סעדיא גאון of  מפי השמועה
He said the calendar is משמיעה from tradition.
What he meant was as he used the concept elsewhere the whole body of oral and written Torah. But what people thought he meant was הלכה למשה מסיני A law to Moses at Sinai. But that is not what סעדיא גאון meant.

That means the calendar is not accurate. It is better to simply go by the actual מולד.

The גמרא סנהדרין י' ע''ב is also clear in that way. ראש חודש to that גמרא is not dependent on בית דין. Rather if the בית דין  declares it at the right time, fine. If not, then they sanctify the real new moon anyway from heaven.


אני חושב שצריך ללכת לפי המולד. יש שניה אחת כאשר הירח והשמש נמצאים יחד בקו אנך. זה נקרא המולד. בתוספות סנהדרין דף י' ע''ב הדעה הראשונה של תוספות הוא כי מולד קובע את הזמן של ראש חודש. לוח השנה המשמש כיום הונהג על ידי מטון באתונה. היא אומצה בזמן של הגאונים, אבל לא היה בשימוש במשך הזמן של התלמוד. כל העניין הוא אי הבנה מבוססת על הרעיון של סעדיא גאון של "מפי השמועה". הוא אמר שלוח מן "שמיעה" (המסורת). כוונתו הייתה כפי שנהג המושג במקומות אחרים בגוף כולו של תורה שבעל פה ובכתב. אבל  אנשים חשבו שהוא התכוון הלכה למשה מסיני (חוק למשה מסיני). אבל זה לא מה סעדיא גאון התכוון. כלומר, לוח השנה אינה מדויקת. עדיף פשוט ללכת לפי המולד. גמרא סנהדרין י' ע''ב ברורה גם ככה. ראש חודש לזה גמרא אינו תלוי בבית דין. במקום זאת אם בית הדין מכריז עליה בזמן הנכון, בסדר. אם לא, אז בשמים הם מקדשים את הירח החדש (ראש חודש) האמיתי בכל מקרה.


ideas in Shas

Race

Race is the beginning of separation of species. This was the spark that kindled the idea of evolution in Darwin when he saw this.  The idea is you take one species and divide it into different areas. The first difference that appears is color. If they stay separated long enough they become two species.

To me it seems that race is not a social construct but a fact of biology and the way nature begins to divide that which ought to be divided. And fighting nature is futile.

Th thing is according to Howard Bloom we should put the center of gravity on the Super-organism and the social meme that unifies it. Based on that we could say even though Sephardim and Ashkenazim have been separated by time and space still since the Torah is the social meme , therefore they can be united. Clearly that is what Bava Sali thought, even though he did sign his name 'with a (ספרדי טהור (ס''ט after it to show that he could trace his lineage to Jewish people before the mixing that began under Arab rule. Still clearly he though the main thing was loyalty towards the holy Torah. That is even though lineage is a big deal still everyone has free will. and one can still choose Torah no matter what his lineage is.


[I focused on color because that seems to be the first marker. Maybe there are others. Color is what got Darwin thinking and I also noticed the same thing. Take a species lets say squirrels and separate it. Put one set into the USA and the other into the USSR. After some time one comes out grey and the other brown. Same with birds in England. There are lots of examples.]

Religious fanaticism. Ultra-religious people are insane.

Religious fanaticism seems to be related to the hippocampus. That is a lot of what I have seen is the idea of rituals as cause and effect things. That is people tend to think "I did this ritual and thus and thus happened afterwards." So they are connected.

Pigeons have the same thing. If you randomly reward pigeons they will on their own come up with a superstitious belief  system.  They think, "Since I did thus and thus before the food appeared therefore that must have been the cause of the food appearing." You thus can get a whole room full of superstitious pigeons doing all kinds of nonsense because they think that that is the thing that caused the food to appear because it was the thing that they did one time before it appeared.

But if the hippocampus is damaged the effect is much stronger. There is much less of an ability to tell the difference between cause and effect random correlation.

That is religious fanaticism is biological.

Lithuanian yeshivas are obviously aware of this and therefore discourage religious fanaticism. Learning Torah and keeping Torah are one thing. Religious fanaticism is something entirely different.

Thus you get a situation where most Ultra-religious people are insane as we see in reality and in biology..
So while there are some drawbacks to the average Litvak yeshiva, (because it is an human institution like all others  that has failings.) still it is a huge advantage to the other kinds of insanity out there in the ultra religious world.

Nationalism seems to be related to Hegel. I noticed this before but did not write  a comment because I felt I did not know Hegel at all. Still the connection is there. And for some reason I think Allen Bloom might have been thinking along the same lines when he said that "Hegel was the greatest university man that ever lived." So while not recommending a Hegelian State he still obviously saw lot of potential in Hegel. From my perspective this is awkward since my own intellectual framework is close to Kant.

Zionism is certainly related to Hegel. And scholars have said that clearly Rav Kook's ideas were influenced and sometime borrowed from Hegel.

The Alt Right seems pretty much to have the idea of patriotism and nationalism in mind.


You could justify Hegel in this way: he is referring to a plane of existence in which objective idealism is true. The relation between Hegel and Kant is the same as the relation between Quantum Mechanics and relativity. Both are true but refer to two separate planes of existence. We know both are true. GPS proves both Special Relativity and General Relativity every day. The double slit experiment proves quantum mechanics. [GR says the clock on the satellite will go faster since it is further out from earth. SR says it goes slower because it is moving. So you adjust its rate by about 38 micro seconds per day slower.]

Christianity.But in its modern forms Christianity looks pretty bad.

But in its modern forms Christianity looks pretty bad. Still my major complaints are that it is not very convincing. A good deal of the premises seem to be founded on very strained readings of the New Testament. Still for Christian saints of the past I am willing to cut a lot of slack because of the pureness of their intentions.

What I mean is the divinity of Jesus is not supported by the text. Doing miracles has nothing to do with divinity. Answering a question "Are you so and so?" and answering  "I am" also has nothing to do with it. [If someone would ask me, "Are you  Avraham?" I would say "I am".] It is just the common way to answer a question. And if Jesus had meant to use the name of God אהיה (as God said his name is in the burning bush), then he would have had to have said, "I will be."
For the way the English Bible translates it is  a mistake. אהיה אשר אהיה means "I will be that which I will be." Not "I Am."

For a comparison you can look at writings where someone was claiming to be G-d and they make it clear that that is what they mean like in Bhagavad Gita.

Similarly nullification of the mizvot is not supported by the text. [That is nothing that Jesus said would support such a conclusion.]

What Christianity is based on  is mainly Paul's interpretation of Jesus. It is clear that James disagreed with him.

[In other words as far as Christians follow the example of Jesus they do well. But then some people throw in Paul who is the direct opposite of everything that Jesus said. And then they have to change the simple meaning of everything the Jesus said and did to make it correspond to Paul.]


[Wasp’s tend to take their social meme from Luther [even though in theory they come from Calvin]. I am not happy with Luther. The social meme of WASP's does not even come from the NT but rather Luther and Calvin.]

capricious divorce

Children who experience pointless, capricious divorce (I.e., 90% of divorces) simply never recover. Divorcing destroys childhood. It’s hard to survive with so-called adults stealing one’s childhood. You don’t go to work and get married if your primary life lesson is that a woman can take your home, children, money and freedom with a single phone call.
Women tend to look at divorce as a solution to all their unhappiness. And Beta Males only encourage this.   [See this site RedPillGirl]

Divorce fantasy is the many movies, books, TV shows, talk programs, websites, etc. (an entire industry, really), that sell divorce to women as something noble, necessary, and vital for their future growth and happiness in life.  They show women like Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love abandoning her family and leading an exciting life bedding exotic men in exotic locales.  But for large numbers of divorced, male or female, the reality is far different: they are middle aged, well past their prime, and generally wind up much lonelier, must less happy, and much more materially poor than before.  Like all things satanically inspired, the fantasy is swank and sexy, the reality is frequently miserable.

We are still sold an image of the divorced woman as having been abandoned by her husband.  But women now instigate divorce 80% of the time in the United States.  No fault divorce laws make it impossible for many distressed and abandoned fathers to stop the process.  And of course the children are the ones who pay the ultimate price for this process of female marriage abandonment.  Of course there are men who step out, it happens all the time, but the statistics do not lie – over the past 35 years, women have filed the overwhelming number of divorce claims in this country.  Many of those have been filed for frivolous or entirely self-serving reasons.

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