Muslims  purposely target Jews on campus with insults and many other ways of making them feel no wanted.


Sephardim picked this up technique of subtle harassment from Muslims. They do it to Ashkenazim pretty consistently. But then you have some Sephardim that are appalled at this behavior, but they can't do anything about it. There is always at least one that makes life intolerable for the Ashkenazi until he is forced to leave town. [Unless the area is Ashkenazi and the sephardim are the guests.]

Musar-Ethics has a promise that goes with it from Isaac Blazzer (the disciple of Reb Israel Salanter) of being a cure for all bodily, and mental, and spiritual diseases.

, The way I  decided on what to say when I get up in the morning took time and thought to develop. It is a long and involved story. At the Mir in NY my interest was kindled in Musar (Ethics) one Rosh Hashanah. Then I lost interest. And then recently I asked a fellow  from Bnei Brak to bring some books of straight, normal Musar. The first one was I think the Obligations of the Heart. After that I asked for a book of Musar that is well known in yeshivas called Even Sh'lema and the Nefesh HaChaim  by the disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin and another well know Musar book called Madrgat HaAdam [by Joseph Yozel Horwitz, a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter].

Then while reading these books I noticed at certain time areas of character development that I seemed to be lacking.

Then I wrote down one long paragraph and I would say it to my self right away when I got up in the morning. I forget which one it was but it might be the same one that I still say to myself when I get up: "When a person gets up in the morning and accepts upon himself that day to be mekababel [accept on himself] the yoke of Torah in truth –that is he decides in his heart that he will listen to no one and nothing will prevent him then on that day he will have success in Torah. And according to the deep of his commitment and strength of his conviction to that degree from Heaven he will receive help and he distractions and obstacles will be taken away from him."

After that I decided I needed help to judge people on the scales of merit and thus started saying to myself: "It is a known tested fact that when one has enemies –G-d forbid,- and he judges them on the scale of merit, that is, he decides in his heart that they are true and perfect saints, then immediately their heart will be turned to be his friends." {From Reb Chaim from Voloshin the disciple of the Gra}

A long time after that it occurred to me that I had ceased trusting in God at all and that this had been an important factor in my upward development. So I decided to start saying over a paragraph about trust in God that I had seen in the book the Madragat HaAdam during the middle of the day. But then at some point I started  saying it also in the morning.


The whole paragraph is this: “Trust in God with all your heart and do not depend on your intellect.” (Mishlei Proverbs 3)  That is your heart should be perfect and whole in trust in God and not with just part of your heart and do not depend on your intellect that is You should not say I will trust in God but I am also obligated  to do actions and to depend on my intellect. There it says do not depend even as a staff or support you should not depend on your intellect.

Someone heard in the name of the Gra that this is the explanation of what it says in Rosh HaShanah 25B

The students at the Beit Midrash did not understand the word Yehavka יהבך in psalms [Cast on God your yehavka and he will take care of your burden יהבך]. Then one day they heard a gentile merchant tell Raba Bar Bar Chana “Take your Yehavka (burden) and put it on my camel.”  The Gra said it does not mean the students did not understand the word. Rather it means they thought one should trust in Go an also do effort. Therefore they had a question on that verse. It should say your needs. Then they saw the merchant tell Raba Bar Bar Chana to take his burden and out it on his camel and then they understood that when something is supposed to come to one from Heaven then it will come no matter what and one does not need to do any effort to get it.



Musar Ethics has a promise that goes with it from Isaac Blazzer the disciple of Israel Salanter of being a cure for all bodily and mental and spiritual diseases.

While in my present situation I can't learn Musar [no books available] , I hope at least to encourage others to do so. While the best kind of approach is the Litvak Musar Yeshiva , still if that is not possible at least at home.

Christianity and the Mystic Rav Avraham Abulafia

Christianity I think is mainly based on Paul, and not Jesus at all.  Jesus himself I see as simply a Jewish saint. And one could go further based on the medieval Mystic Rav Avraham Abulafia and claim he was משיח בן יוסף (messiah son of Joseph) foretold in the Talmud tractate Sukka.

That still would not provide any reason to worship him, as the Rambam makes clear.

[I mean to say that the Rambam made Monotheism clearer by going with Aristotle. In that case the idea of the First Cause is absolutely simple and consistent with Divine Simplicity.]

Appendix

Note (1) I mean to say that Neo-Platonic thought up until the Rambam had enough problems  to cause the Rambam to switch to Aristotle, and Aquinas followed him. I used to think perhaps the reason was Divine Simplicity, but now that I am thinking of it, I realize you can have just as much Divine Simplicity with Neo Platonic thought.

Note (2) Avraham Abulafia's books have been printed in Mea Shearim Jerusalem-or you can buy the whole set on line. When I was researching this topic I had to go through the microfilms with that insane medieval script to see what Rav Abulafia was saying. I should mention Avraham Abulafia was the subject of professor Moshe Idel's (at H.U.) Ph.D thesis and later books. }

Note (3) The subject of Messiah son of Joseph comes up a little in the Zohar, but mainly in Moshe Chaim Lutzatto's Tikunim and the קול התור of the Gra and a drop in the Ari {Isaac Luria}. The Gra's book, Kol HaTor deals mainly with the topic of messiah son of Joseph. Maybe there are more sources that I did not run into.

Note (4) I am not saying this is a topic to spend time on. Mainly it looks to me to be "Bitul Torah" wasting time that could be better spent on learning Torah. But still, in any case, I had I think good reason to get to the bottom of this topic.

Note (5) Sorry. I forgot to mention that Rav Avraham Abulafia was respected by Reb Chaim Vital and the Chida.

Note (6) Rav Abulafia went to debate the pope. He was not happy with the Catholic Church. There were orders to arrest him. No one could lay a hand on him.

Note (7) Rav Abulfia's ideas are brought down in the Remak and also Reb Chaim Vital in detail [in שערי קדושה חלק רביעי].

Note (8) The reason I say that Christianity is based on Paul is that if your take Jesus in his own context there is no claim of Divinity nor nullification of the commandments. These are strictly Pauline doctrines.  That is to say major doctrines of the church have no textual support from the New Testament. The said doctrines contradict what Jesus said openly. They depend only on Paul and yet Paul was writing things that contradicted what the disciples of Jesus had written openly in his name.

I should mention:I grew up in John Birch society area. It was basically WASP and very nice. I kind of had a glimpse of Old American Values, and it was a really nice world.

a Litvak yeshiva

Ideas in Tractate Bava Metzia edited Ch 8 and ch 9.

The best place to learn Torah, if possible, is a Litvak yeshiva [called Litvak because "Litva" is the proper name of Lithuania] It is where yeshivas were real and authentic

That is they were made in order to learn and keep Torah --not schools to turn out people that use Torah for money. This was an argument I had with my parents. They thought yeshivas were really meant as means to make money. I tried to convince them that, "No. Rather their pursuit is to learn and keep Torah." Which of us was right I still do not know.
I would say that Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY and Ponovitch in Israel are  in fact for Torah "Lishma" (for its own sake.)

The best idea as far as I can tell is to learn a vocation, and not be in a position in which the only way one can make it is by using  Torah.

It is considered that Ponovitch is the best of the Litvak yeshivas, and Rav Elazar Menachem Shach was Rosh Yeshiva there for some time. From what I can tell this is accurate. Brisk also has a great reputation which is probably well deserved. But the best is probably Ponovitch [which includes "off shoots" (branches) like yeshivas founded by people that went to Ponovitch, e.g. Tifrach.]

S23 G Minor

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.

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.