20.8.16
Old Testament
DNA+ Old Testament+ Athens+ Sparta+ Rome = Western Civilization. So the "white thing" is one important factor. Genes and DNA do matter.
Even among Sephardim it was well known that DNA makes a difference. After the Muslim invaded and took Jewish women for wives it was the custom in all Middle East areas to write Samech Tet (Sephardi Tahor) after one's name to indicate that one could trace his ancestry to Jewish fathers before the Arabs invaded. That is one is "pure Spanish" and not mixed with the Jews of North Africa that all had Muslim parentage mixed in.
[I see the Talmud and the as an important part of Western Civilization.
New Testament itself I consider to have some good points and some bad points. The good ones are obvious--that it emphasis important aspects of the holy Torah--compassion. Compassion is something that people like to give lip service to but when in need people know the only place you can go to get help in an emergency is to a Christian. I have experienced this myself and I know I am not alone. [Other people as a rule talk about kindness, but Christians tend to be the ones to do it.]
The Talmud emphasizes the more obvious aspects of the Law of Moses--the actual nitty gritty about how to understand and keep each particular commandment. That is the the Talmud deal with the specifics of the Torah --how to what doe each mitzvah mean in a practical sense. This is also an important aspect of Torah and it is one that Christians ignore completely.
There are people that make a very big deal about keeping rituals that think that because of that they are close to God and the Law of Moses. They are about as from from God and the Law of Moses as it is possible to get.
Nowadays however everything that people look for as a system has to fail. It is something that is part of some Divine plan that the more one believes in some doctrine or in some group that that group will disappoint him and show itself to be the exact opposite of human decency and everything good.
It is called "the Twilight of the gods". So it does not matter what system you believe in. The more you believe in it the more it will disappoint you.
So DNA is one factor but not determinate. People still have free will and there are plenty of memes an paradigms to choose from. And even if one has made a choice to choose a good meme {Like the Bible} there are still plenty of ways of fouling it up.
Best approach that I know of--to be self sufficient and learn math Physics, Gemara, Musar, and survival skills. And the purpose of this learning is all in order to understand and keep the Law of Moses.
Even among Sephardim it was well known that DNA makes a difference. After the Muslim invaded and took Jewish women for wives it was the custom in all Middle East areas to write Samech Tet (Sephardi Tahor) after one's name to indicate that one could trace his ancestry to Jewish fathers before the Arabs invaded. That is one is "pure Spanish" and not mixed with the Jews of North Africa that all had Muslim parentage mixed in.
[I see the Talmud and the as an important part of Western Civilization.
New Testament itself I consider to have some good points and some bad points. The good ones are obvious--that it emphasis important aspects of the holy Torah--compassion. Compassion is something that people like to give lip service to but when in need people know the only place you can go to get help in an emergency is to a Christian. I have experienced this myself and I know I am not alone. [Other people as a rule talk about kindness, but Christians tend to be the ones to do it.]
The Talmud emphasizes the more obvious aspects of the Law of Moses--the actual nitty gritty about how to understand and keep each particular commandment. That is the the Talmud deal with the specifics of the Torah --how to what doe each mitzvah mean in a practical sense. This is also an important aspect of Torah and it is one that Christians ignore completely.
There are people that make a very big deal about keeping rituals that think that because of that they are close to God and the Law of Moses. They are about as from from God and the Law of Moses as it is possible to get.
Nowadays however everything that people look for as a system has to fail. It is something that is part of some Divine plan that the more one believes in some doctrine or in some group that that group will disappoint him and show itself to be the exact opposite of human decency and everything good.
It is called "the Twilight of the gods". So it does not matter what system you believe in. The more you believe in it the more it will disappoint you.
So DNA is one factor but not determinate. People still have free will and there are plenty of memes an paradigms to choose from. And even if one has made a choice to choose a good meme {Like the Bible} there are still plenty of ways of fouling it up.
Best approach that I know of--to be self sufficient and learn math Physics, Gemara, Musar, and survival skills. And the purpose of this learning is all in order to understand and keep the Law of Moses.
I figure the reason two people developed two eyes instead of one is the classical double split experiment. That is: with two slits you get interference patterns. This gives a better idea of distance than one slit where the particles act as particles, not as waves.
The distance between the eyes in proportion to the distance to the object is a trig function.
The distance between the eyes in proportion to the distance to the object is a trig function.
19.8.16
What we are seeing I think is the death of the gods all the "ism"s, capitalism, communism, and all the cults.
I am looking at this in a global way, but you could take almost any of the ism's. For example the Catholics are headed by a communist pope, and the Protestants have become a kind of Churchianity.
Church now is entertainment of the most superficial type. It is mainly to give sexual stimulus to the alpha male who has all the women listening to his every word. It is mainly geared towards the weakening of the men in the congregation.
The Torah world is no exception. The gods and the yeshivas there died also. It is a global phenomenon.
The main thing that characterizes the world today is disappointment in what ever they believed in.
Family and Home?
I am looking at this in a global way, but you could take almost any of the ism's. For example the Catholics are headed by a communist pope, and the Protestants have become a kind of Churchianity.
Church now is entertainment of the most superficial type. It is mainly to give sexual stimulus to the alpha male who has all the women listening to his every word. It is mainly geared towards the weakening of the men in the congregation.
The Torah world is no exception. The gods and the yeshivas there died also. It is a global phenomenon.
The main thing that characterizes the world today is disappointment in what ever they believed in.
Family and Home?
There is no incentive for a man to marry anymore. A wife to be proud of? Odds are that she’s in open competition with you for status and won’t submit. Kids? Odds are she’s going to take them away. Sex? When she’s in the mood *maybe*.
Throw in the fact that she’s likely to start the process of taking everything away from you including future earnings, time with your kids and beat you in mental submission through counseling and the like? Why would you want to?
Self sufficiency as the most fundamental principle of my Dad.
This manifested itself in many ways. Mainly it was in showing us how to do things ourselves. And also in not accepting help for anything that you can do on your own. In those days there were no computers so I was only allowed to use a slide rule when I could do the calculations by hand. When we went skiing as a family I was allowed to use the ski lift until I could climb the mountain and ski down on my own with no help. This meant mastering outdoor skills and also plain house keeping skills like sewing. Maybe he called this "self reliance." In any case this must have been the most important principle which he tried to instill in me and my brothers.
It was the exact opposite of communities that teach their children to rely on charity.
Thus while learning Torah is important, he did not agree with being in a situation in which one would end up having to relay on people's charity and be using the holy Torah to make a living as in done in kollels.
He held strongly of learning a vocation.
[I do not hold support of kollel's is a good thing because it is doing kindness for people that would never reciprocate. I do not know why this is but the facts are the facts. Te Sages said one that does kindness for one that does not recognize it is as if he worshiped idolatry.]
This manifested itself in many ways. Mainly it was in showing us how to do things ourselves. And also in not accepting help for anything that you can do on your own. In those days there were no computers so I was only allowed to use a slide rule when I could do the calculations by hand. When we went skiing as a family I was allowed to use the ski lift until I could climb the mountain and ski down on my own with no help. This meant mastering outdoor skills and also plain house keeping skills like sewing. Maybe he called this "self reliance." In any case this must have been the most important principle which he tried to instill in me and my brothers.
It was the exact opposite of communities that teach their children to rely on charity.
Thus while learning Torah is important, he did not agree with being in a situation in which one would end up having to relay on people's charity and be using the holy Torah to make a living as in done in kollels.
He held strongly of learning a vocation.
[I do not hold support of kollel's is a good thing because it is doing kindness for people that would never reciprocate. I do not know why this is but the facts are the facts. Te Sages said one that does kindness for one that does not recognize it is as if he worshiped idolatry.]
18.8.16
trust in God
I have tried to deal with the issue of trust in God a few times in this blog without much success because it is unclear in my own mind. You can divide the issue into several parts in order to make what is clear and where the problems are.
The simple part is what was going on in the Mir Yeshiva in NY. Learn Torah and God will do the rest. Don't worry about making a living because when you learn Torah for its own sake God will provide.
That part is the simple unambiguous part.
Then there come the later confusing issues when this structure seems to break down.You get to Israel when people "talk the talk" about trust, but in fact spend all their time and effort trying to get charity from rich secular Jews and the State of Israel and then call that "trust in God". Hypocrisy at the highest level.
Then you get to kollel's in the USA when they don't even bother to "talk the talk." There it is all about using "supporting Torah" as if they are geniuses at the RAND Corporation Think Tank, and are getting paid for their work and services.
To add to the confusion is the history itself of Navardok which made trust their central meme and theme.
This is a statement of the basic ambiguity that surrounds this issue. The difference between what the Torah says and what people do. People that present themselves as authorities in Torah that are insincere, scum bags that darken the name of Torah.
See Cult behavior:
Kollels certainly are cults.
You are not supposed to make a living by learning Torah, nor teaching it. And you are not supposed to ask for charity because you are learning Torah. [See the Mordechai in Bava Batra dealing with the problem of even having teachers for children!!! I kid you not. מה אני בחינם אף אתם בחינם
Being unscrupulous is a trait of kollels. Lying to get money.
But the issue still remains how to come to authentic trust in God and to learn and keep Torah for real?
The trouble that I see is very rarely is any religious group anything but a cult. So to be Kosher Yid one really just has to learn Torah on one's own and give up the idea of being part of any group.
My suggestion is to support the places that I recognize as being "LeShem Shamaim" לשם שמים --for the sake of Heaven. I mean there are a few yeshivas that I was very impressed with that I thought were teaching people good values. Those are the Litvak Yeshivas in NY. Chaim Berlin Mir Torah Vedaat Shar Yashuv. I know little about Ponovitch in Israel, but just seeing the book Avi Ezri of Rav Shach shows me that that place must be the Mount Everest of the Torah world.
The simple part is what was going on in the Mir Yeshiva in NY. Learn Torah and God will do the rest. Don't worry about making a living because when you learn Torah for its own sake God will provide.
That part is the simple unambiguous part.
Then there come the later confusing issues when this structure seems to break down.You get to Israel when people "talk the talk" about trust, but in fact spend all their time and effort trying to get charity from rich secular Jews and the State of Israel and then call that "trust in God". Hypocrisy at the highest level.
Then you get to kollel's in the USA when they don't even bother to "talk the talk." There it is all about using "supporting Torah" as if they are geniuses at the RAND Corporation Think Tank, and are getting paid for their work and services.
To add to the confusion is the history itself of Navardok which made trust their central meme and theme.
This is a statement of the basic ambiguity that surrounds this issue. The difference between what the Torah says and what people do. People that present themselves as authorities in Torah that are insincere, scum bags that darken the name of Torah.
See Cult behavior:
Kollels certainly are cults.
You are not supposed to make a living by learning Torah, nor teaching it. And you are not supposed to ask for charity because you are learning Torah. [See the Mordechai in Bava Batra dealing with the problem of even having teachers for children!!! I kid you not. מה אני בחינם אף אתם בחינם
Being unscrupulous is a trait of kollels. Lying to get money.
But the issue still remains how to come to authentic trust in God and to learn and keep Torah for real?
The trouble that I see is very rarely is any religious group anything but a cult. So to be Kosher Yid one really just has to learn Torah on one's own and give up the idea of being part of any group.
My suggestion is to support the places that I recognize as being "LeShem Shamaim" לשם שמים --for the sake of Heaven. I mean there are a few yeshivas that I was very impressed with that I thought were teaching people good values. Those are the Litvak Yeshivas in NY. Chaim Berlin Mir Torah Vedaat Shar Yashuv. I know little about Ponovitch in Israel, but just seeing the book Avi Ezri of Rav Shach shows me that that place must be the Mount Everest of the Torah world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)