Ideas in Talmud

I might mention that I never learned Hebrew except a small amount in Hebrew school and Temple Israel in Hollywood when I was a kid. In yeshiva I did not spend any time on Hebrew at all. So some of my writing is the usual Talmudic kind of Hebrew you see in the Rishonim. Other parts are what I learned from the Old Testament which differs from the Hebrew of the Rishonim. And some of it comes from being in Israel. That is just a warning - since you might notice my style of writing varies. It is not two people writing. It is one person --that is I.

[The most obvious example is I take things like שנה to be feminine because of the Old Testament. שדה I take to be masculine. ]
Here is the link to the book  on Talmud and also to the book I wrote before that on Bava Metzia

Ideas in Talmud

Ideas in Bava Metzia


My main focus is as you can see in trying to understand Tosphot.
Rav Shach has a focus on Maimonides  and that kind of focus started with Reb Haim HaLevi [The Brisker Rav].

an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva

Therefore I should explain what yeshiva was when it was idealistic. The basic idea was you would sit and learn Talmud from about 18 years old until some father of a daughter would come into the yeshiva and ask the rosh yeshiva [teacher] who would be a good match for his daughter. Then 6 dates would be set up between the two on Saturday night. After 6 dates  an announcement was made.
After the marriage the son in law would be supported by his parents and then her parents alternatively.
He would continue to learn Torah.
The community would be surrounding the yeshiva and it would be isolated from the outside would by invisible barriers, mental barriers,- rules that were eagerly accepted and loved. The rules were voluntarily accepted by all and followed by all. The rules were the Torah-the oral and written law of God. And the ideal was to learn Torah all one's life. Learning Torah was the life goal.

After some years the young man would begin to work at some job.


What happened to change all this? Success.  When an organization is successful and there is money and power, then the people at the top tend to be the most materialist in direct opposition to the kinds of people that started the whole thing. Greed and corruption got to be the norm. It is like the Olympic committee that gets all the perks. The country that hosts it looses money. So Norway simply turned down the opportunity to host the Olympics.



Though in its pristine form the system should work well. It did not for me. So I am hesitant to recommend a return to it. For me no one helped find my wife. She came running to NY to get me. The only thing people at the top did was to try to ruin my marriage when they got the chance.
So the yeshiva world certainly has gone down in quality. Thus my present day recommendation is the Beit Midrash--an informal place to learn Talmud with no official aspects at all. Simply a place for learning Gemara for whom so ever wishes to learn Gemara. I was hoping to do this on my own but that did not work very well. I can not seem to even make my own small a place into a place of Torah. Still I can hope to encourage others.
That is all I am saying is this. Even if the whole world has turned  Torah into a business, still one can by himself learn Torah for its own sake.

[What I am saying here is a lot really depends on your own situation. If you have an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva in your area that as far as you can tell are learning Torah for its own sake and not for money then by all means join in. But if there is nothing like that are perhaps the places that are near you seems to be either all about using Torah to make money or perhaps are insane asylums as many yeshivas are, then it is best to learn Torah at home. Learning at home should at least in theory be easy. All you need is a Gemara  and a book of Musar.]

The Cold War

There were more than a few incidents in which individual soviet soldiers decided not to launch a nuclear strike against the USA, though the circumstances warranted it. I think there were occasions in which the officer involved was demoted.

There also was caution on the side of the USA. President Eisenhower was being urged to launch a nuclear strike against the USSR by the Secretary of the Navy, but instead decided to begin the U-2 program to see what the Soviets were up to. That showed him that, in fact, the Russian were not preparing any kind of invasion or launching of missiles. My Dad was the leader of one the teams that developed the cameras for the U-2.


The other incident in which the officer was ordered to launch missiles against the USA if he saw a missile launch against the USSR, and he decided not to launch. He was demoted. (He had seen only one missile on the screen, and decided it was a computer glitch. He though if the USA wanted to attack why would they launch just one missile?

S18 A Minor

s-18 A minor

massive welfare for blacks

My learning partner said the problem in the USA  is virtue signaling. That is it is considered good to show compassion therefore the middle class largely voted for massive welfare for blacks because voting for compassion makes them feel good. And the costs were thought to be distributed among a lot of people. So voting in such a way did not directly hurt the person voting immediately.

A positive aspect of Christianity

The positive aspect of Christianity is that Jesus was basically saying the same thing as Reb Israel Salanter.-that the main thing the Torah wants is love and fear of God and good character traits. That is what is called בין אדם לחבירו.
There is another advantage that they are based on and model it on the words and actions of  a true righteous person--that is Jesus himself. [This fact I would not have known outside of learning Avraham Abulafia, a medieval mystic. Recently all his books were printed, but I had to go through the microfilms to discover this fact.]
The negative aspect is they deify  a person.

That is to say I accept that following a truly righteous person helps one to be right with God. And that without a good example it is almost impossible to be righteous on one's own.
It is human nature to need a good example to follow--not just good words.

Not only that but if you weigh these two aspects I think the fact of following a righteous person outweighs the negative aspect of deifying that person.

Still that does not mean that deifying a person is good. Rather it is idolatry.. Still what you see in Torah is that compassion and  kindness outweighs the sin of idolatry. For example you see this in the first chapter of אור צפון which is the collected talks of the Rosh Yeshiva of Slobadka. You see this also in the Talmud itself in terms of the generation of Achav when God ignored the sin of idolatry because they practiced loving kindness one with the other. But He was strict with the generation of the destruction of the second temple because even through they had Torah and Mitzvot still they did not practice loving kindness.

That being said -it is better just to sit a learn Torah, Gemara and Musar. If all that is too much,  then just Musar.

[What brought this on is I see people  are seeing communism does not work, Capitalism has big drawbacks. religions tend to be problematic. Since people are seeking the truth I have here set down my basic idea of what truth is as best as I can see. That is Musar is how I see things. That is I think correction of bad character and fear and love of God are the main things to concentrate on.

[I should mention that Avraham Abulafia is brought down by Chaim Vital in the last volume of his Musar book Shaari Kedusha. Also Professor Moshe Idel has done a lot of research on him. The PhD thesis of Moshe Idel was on A. Abulafia. The actual printed books I only saw after I had done as much work on that sugia as I cared to do. Nowadays you could probably order the entire set in the USA. ]


The two negative aspects of Christianity are nullification of the mitzvot and worship of Jesus, however these are aspects only of Pauline Christianity, not Peterine Christianity as has been well known for at least 150 years since the Clementine documents have been known about.

[Books of Mediaeval Ethics]

In my own approach to Musar [Books of Mediaeval Ethics] I have tried to go more with the Rambam than in the other approaches.

As is well known every school of Musar had a different emphasis. My own approach is to take the idea of Isaac Blasser [the first and foremost disciple of Israel Salanter] that the main thing to emphasize is fear of God. But to get to fear of God I would take the idea of the Rambam of learning Physics and Metaphysics.
This I know is a departure from the traditional schools of Musar.
Most of them were against secular studies completely to the degree that they ignored the fact that the very books the Musar movement was founded on take the approach of the Rambam.
Still I realize that there are different schools of thought in the movement and I do not want to imply any of them were wrong. I can see the amazing effect of going to any Musar Yeshiva has on most people (except the Mashgiach himself who is suppose to be teaching it.)

I think that with in mind that every human enterprise has the flaw of being run by humans, still the Musar movement deserves consideration.
I see other ideas that have been suggested to help either individuals or larger groups. Most of the ideas come under the group heading of religions of political structures.

No one that I have seen emphasizes Musar on a global scale. And that is sad because I can see how it could help almost anywhere.


The Renaissance was caused by a return to the the ideas and writings of Ancient Athens and Rome. By taking of what was great from them it surpassed them in many ways. I also have seen the Middle Ages as having elements of greatness that the modern age lacks completely..
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Though Musar is founded on specific books the basic idea is universally applicable. That is the main thing is to work on one's מידות character traits and the way to do that is by learning books from the Middle Ages that emphasized that and explained it. For books like this have a background that is religious but the emphasis is on character.