Rav Shach,

Rav Shach, the Rosh yeshiva of Ponovitch, [who wrote the Avi Ezri] obviously held from the basic Litvak yeshiva path along with Musar. Though my idea of education is a drop wider but the basic approach of Rav Shach I have to admit is probably the best. I mean for sure one needs at least a good four years of straight Torah learning all day in order to get anywhere.

[For me four years was not enough. I only barely began to skim the surface after three years in Shar Yashuv and then another three in the Mirrer in NY. All I mean is at least four years.



And though I am critical of  places that use the name "yeshiva" that are really just club houses and have nothing to do with Torah, still the great yeshivas like Ponovitch and the great New York Litvak yeshivas are really amazing places. [i.e. Torah VeDaat, Mirrer, Chaim Berlin.]


My parent's approach however was more along the lines of  a balance between Torah and Derech Eretz [Derech Eretz has a dual meaning of being a mensch (being just and acting right in all circumstances) and also doing honest work for a living and not depending on charity.] [I really liked the Litvak Yeshiva World, but it was too close to other groups that are Sitra Achra סיטרא אחרא [the Dark Side]. And the boundary is porous. Not only that, but the divisions are not well defined. [I mean the Sitra Achra penetrated the boundary.]

If you do not have a yeshiva in your area the simple thing to do is to get one Tractate of Gemara [if you need English then the Soncino is best]  and one book of Musar {Ethics. The Obligations of the Heart is best.} If possible then one of the basic books that go into Gemara in depth like Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or Reb Chaim Solovietchik's Chidushei HaRambam.

A good reason to learn Torah is that people need help from problems.  Instead of going to people that can not help, the best thing is to go to God's word.

I also can not recommend any yeshiva  a such but rather to learn Gemara, Musar, Math, and Physics.


For some people yeshiva might be a workable option. For others nor. So I can not recommend yeshiva , but rather learning Torah and keeping Torah, jogging and survival skills.


Yeshiva is a stave of reed. It looks sturdy, but if you lean on it, it breaks.  They claim to be there to help the public but they are in fact there to help themselves. What makes this upsetting is people think they represent Torah values.

s34 in mp3 and midi and nwc

s34 G Major

ditto in midi format ditto in nwc format

What should be one's education?

The kind of Seven Wisdoms (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) that were mentioned by the Gra. In the introduction to the translation of Euclid by Rav Baruch of Shkolev a disciple of the Gra he quotes the Gra as saying "To the degree one lacks knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree there will be  a lack of knowledge of Torah."
Then  there is the Rambam's view of Physics and Metaphysics as being part of Torah itself.

[It was in fact awareness of the view of the Rambam and the Gra that encouraged me to take the step to start this kind of learning after I had  been against it as I was part of the religious world.] See also the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות in the Introduction where he brings the seven wisdoms and also the second chapter.

Here I am dealing just with logistics. But having dealt with that then the question comes up, what is the effect of  a liberal education, or what should be the results? What effect does it have on one's soul?
Why is simply sitting and learning Torah not enough? Or is it enough?


Appendix: I mentioned before that my basic approach is Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music Survival skills. [As you can see I have left out a lot of the liberal arts and included a few things. Also I did not include what the Rambam meant by Metaphysics-- that is the set of books of Aristotle by that name. The reason is I am not so thrilled about philosophy.]

Reb Nachman called religious teachers "Jewish demons"

Even though I am critical of most yeshivas nowadays, there were two great yeshivas that I was at in NY, Shar Yashuv and the Mir. At Shar Yashuv I was there sometime and the Rosh Yeshiva [Rav Freifeld] probably saw that I was frustrated in not making much progress. He made a promise to me that after a year and a half I would be able to learn. It occurred to me today that (if I do not have the time-line mixed up) that his promise came true. I think the first year we were doing Chulin. The next year, I think, was Ketubot. If this time line is correct, then  it was when doing Ketubot that I started asking questions from his son-in-law, Rav Naphtali Yeager,  and that is when I discovered what it means "to learn."
I think I must have described this elsewhere,- but mainly the idea was that I would come up to him with a question, and instead of answering it, he would have me recite the whole Tosphot. Within that context he would not accept the adding or subtracting words from Tosphot to make it make sense. And there would be no whitewashing problems in Tosphot. Nor would he accept making up principles. These thing that most yeshivas do were considered completely "traif"--pseudo intellectualism, and simply dishonest. Then he would how Tosphot by some turn of  phrase was attempting to answer some deep question. It is hard to explain but in the two books I have links to in this blog I have tried to show what it means to learn Torah.


But the yeshivas in Israel and in other places in the USA were pretty bad. The  Lakewood Kollel in LA did their best to break up my marriage after returning to the US from Israel. The other religious people there were if anything even worse. I discovered that when Reb Nachman called religious teachers "Jewish demons" he was not exaggerating. [LM Volume I: 8, 12, 28.] [That however, might be considered as "lashon hara"[disparagement ] and an insult to demons.]
These were the same people making a whole song and dance around me as if we were all one big happy family when they were trying to get a donation from my parents.




[No offence intended towards the great gaon, Reb Aaron Kotler.] I would rather not go into this in detail, but I did mention a few times that the signature of the Gra on the second excommunication ought to be considered valid, and if I had accepted it in that way, I would not have gone through this problem.

In any case, I have said it before, and I will say it again. In LA the only kosher places I know about are Temple Israel in Hollywood [Reform] and Mount Sinai Synagogue [conservative]. I think the religious mainly use rituals to cover up un-kosher insides [like the sages of the Talmud said about the pig. It shows itself to be kosher by stretching out its split hooves, but covers the fact that it does not chew the cud.]
The most basic assumption of the religious is that only their version is Kosher. I think it can be shown from the Oral and Written Law that only their version is treif (not kosher). little of what they do or say has any connection to the holy Torah at all except in appearances. It is all one big act to get money from secular Jews.

Monotheism of the Torah

Rav Shick [of Breslov] spent a great deal of effort and he must have printed  more than several million pamphlets trying to change the paradigm [world view] of Torah from Monotheism to pantheism.

I wrote an essay on this a few years ago that brought up the basic points, but was a little too sharp {I admit.} Since Rav Shick was claiming this as if Rav Nachman had supported this, I included critiques on Breslov.

But in that essay I brought some  of the relevant points: Spinoza, the Upanishads, where pantheism is held by. And I showed it has no support from the Ari''zal based on a least four of five references I brought there from beginning of the Eitz Chaim.

I did not bring up possible places of support like the Remak [Moshe of  Cardavaro] or the Shelah. Some suggested also the Ibn Ezra.

I discussed this once with Israel Rozen a friend mine in Jerusalem, and he pointed out that the Nefesh HaChaim does not actually support pantheism,-- even though some people understand it in that way.


All I wanted to say now was the clarify the basic idea of Monotheism of the Torah as understood by the Rambam and Saadia Gaon. That is that God is one and not a composite. And he made the world something from nothing. יש מאין. [ex-nihilo]. That is to say,-- that even from God's point of view nothing exists without him making it exist every second --but not that it is Him. He made everything from nothing. The world is not Divine. [Causality does not imply identity though Buddhism and Hume both conflate these issues. Buddhism has to do this because of the fact that there is no substance that continues in time. So they have to adhere to some form of causality to get identity. But I can make a tuna fish sandwich, but that does not mean that I am a tuna fish sandwich.

As Dr. Kelley Ross wrote on this issue : "Since the approach of Buddhism to the world is to break attachments, so that one does not suffer because of relationships to things, a simple way to do that is to say, in effect, that there are no things. If nothing is substantial or has any essence, this will do that job. What we get instead are the doctrines of "momentariness," "no self nature," and "relative existence." If everything exists only momentarily, then nothing is durable, and we lose that characteristic of substances. If there is no self nature, then there is nothing in things that makes them what they are, and we lose the existence of essences. If things only exist relative to other things, then (1) nothing exists independently and we lose that characteristic of substance, and (2) nothing has its own character, so we lose that characteristic of essence. So what is actually there? Well, what we see is the "form" of things, the external appearance. Since there is no self nature and things only have relative existence, what are things in themselves when we take away everything else? Well, Emptiness. This is not nothingness (a major heresy), but neither existence nor non-existence nor both nor neither. In other words, we can't say or comprehend what is there. Later, in Mahâyâna Budddhism, we get the doctrine of the Heart Sutra that "Emptiness is Form, and Form is Emptiness."

Unfortunately, Buddhism always had difficulty with the implications of all this fundamental metaphysics. The loss of substance and essence takes with it identity, so that it becomes difficult to say that an individual, like the Buddha, achieves Enlightenment and Salvation. The individual, in fact, does not survive beyond the moment, and so it is a different being who achieves Enlightenment from the one who existed previously, and a different being in turn who achieves Salvation. Buddhism attempts to substitute causality for substance, so that what I am now is simply caused by what I was before. Unfortunately, this does not restore identity. If I make a tuna sandwich, and so cause its existence, this does not mean I am the tuna sandwich. Causal connections can be within substances or pass between them, and the identity relation is contributed by the substance, not by the causality. In the end, Buddhism seems to settle into the notion of "provisional existence," which is durable and identical, and then, with some other expedients, ceases to worry about the matter. The popular belief, indeed, is that Buddhism is about finding one's true self, not about finding that there is no self at all (anatma or anatta, "No Self"). "

The Rambam thought this principle was important enough to spend the second volume of the Guide on it.

Yeshivas have fallen as institutions

Yeshivas have fallen as institutions for the sake of learning Torah. Most are more likely to cause damage than to help one grow. Therefore the best thing is to  learn Torah at home  That is to go through (word for word) every last word of the Oral and Written Law.
Most yeshiva s have become self serving bureaucracies.

It is in truth hard to tell exactly how they changed or when or why. I am pretty sure my experience was not limited to me alone. The basic story line seems to be consistent. They started out in Israel and the USA very much "for the sake of Heaven." Then it seems they became more alone the lines of private clubs for the head macho man and his goons.

The best approach is that of Reb Israel Salanter learn Musar [Mediaeval Ethics] and do what it says. That is very different than the yeshiva thing.  The Musar movement has become a kind of  "frumkeit" movement. The leaders of Musar and the Yeshivas are Baali OCD [masters of the Obsessive compulsive disorders.]

In short the frum world certainly  a different religion than Torah. But even the Torah World got the "frumkeit" virus (religious nonsense virus).

Part of the trouble is the song and dance they make to pretend "We are all one big happy family." This is a sin of "You must not place a stumbling block in front of  a blind man,"אל תתן מכשול because later when these same students they made the show and dance for actually come into a time of need, there is no question all these fair weather friends will turn their backs on them.  And I would be transgressing the sin of "Thou shalt not stand by the blood of your neighbor"  אל תעמוד על דם רעיך'if I did not warn people about this.

The belief system of the Torah is not pantheism but rather Monotheism.

The disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin brings in his book (the Nefesh HaChaim), the verse  אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו "You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him," to mean that not only is God the only god, but also the only independent power in the world.   This verse is commonly used to support pantheism. I wrote an essay showing that the belief system of the Torah is not pantheism, but rather Monotheism. But for now I wanted to show what the verse really does mean. It means there is no independent power in the world. But there is a world that is not God. But it is not separate from God. No one can help or hurt you without the permission and will of God.   Reb Chaim himself goes into this in this way:  from the perspective of God nothing can exist without Him. But from our perspective, the world is not God.
But he also says it is  a סגולה, a help, to keep this in mind, that no one can help or hurt you without God's permission and will. This whole thing is  reflected in Quantum Mechanics which shows that the world is radically subjective. It does not exist until it is observed. So it all depends on one's perspective. That is to say we know locality and  causality from Relativity. And with Quantum Mechanics, reality can be either non-local or subjective. Therefore we know that the second choice is true. Reality is local and subjective.[I was critical at one time of this point of Reb Chaim and I thought it should not matter one' perspective. It is thus and thus or it is not by the law of the excluded middle. I am pretty sure I was  not the first to voice this critique on the Nefeh Hachaim. It is common for people to think that this is pantheism but it is not. The Rambam and all the rishonim have made a point that God is not matter, and has no matter or form. He &;utterly simple. He is not a composite. He has no ingredients Thus most of the books in the religious world nowadays are explaining the Torah in a way contrary to the way the Rishonim understood the Torah.
[We know QM is true from the double slit experiment. One slit, the electron acts as a particle. Two slits, it acts like  a wave. We know Relativity is true from GPS. The satellite moves with respect to you so you have its goes slower by  some microseconds.You are closer to the centre of the Earth so you go slower by some microseconds. So you adjust the clock on the satellite accordingly. If you would not correct for these two effects the GPS in your taxi would be off every day by a few kilometers.] התלמיד של הגר''א, רב חיים מביא בספרו פש החיים , הפסוק אתה הראית לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו לומר כי לא רק שהוא האלוהים האל היחיד, אלא גם את הכח היחיד בעולם. פסוק זה משמש בדרך כלל כדי לתמוך הפנתאיזם. כתבתי מאמר מראה כי מערכת האמונות של התורה היא לא הפנתאיזם, אלא מונותאיזם. אבל לעת עתה רציתי להראות מה הפסוק באמת אומר. זה אומר שאין כוח עצמאי בעולם. אבל יש עולם, וכי הוא לא אלוהים. אבל זה העולם אינו נפרד מאלוהים. אף אחד לא יכול לעזור או לפגוע בך בלי רשות ורצון האל.ר 'חיים עצמו נכנס בזה בדרך זו: מנקודת המבט של אלוהים אין דבר יכול להתקיים בלעדיו. אבל מנקודת המבט שלנו, העולם הוא לא אלוהים. אבל הוא גם אומר שזה הוא סגולה(לעזר) כדי לשמור את זה בחשבון, כי אף אחד לא יכול לעזור או לפגוע בך בלי הרשות של אלוהים. כל העניין הזה משתקף במכניקה הקוונטית אשר מראה כי העולם הוא סובייקטיבי לחלוטין. הדבר לא קיים עד הוא נמדד, כמו שאמר בוהר. אז זה הכל תלוי בנקודת המבט של המתבונן. כלומר אנחנו יודעים סיבתיות מהיחסות. ועם מכניקה הקוונטית, יודעים שהמציאות יכולה להיות או לא מקומית וסובייקטיבי. לכן אנו יודעים כי הבחירה השנייה היא נכונה. המציאות היא מקומית וסובייקטיבי. הרמב''ם וכל הראשונים החזיקו שיטהשאלוהים אין בו חומר, ואין לו שום חומר או צורה. הוא לגמרי פשוט. הוא אינו מורכב. אין לו מרכיבים. אנחנו יודעים שמכניקת הקוונטים נכונה מן ניסוי שני הסדקים. חריץ אחד, האלקטרון מתנהג כחלקיק. שני חריצים, הוא מתנהג כמו גל. אנחנו יודעים שיחסות נכונה מלווין מיקום הגלובלי. הלווין נע ביחס אליך וכך זה ממשיך איטי ידי שבעה מיקרו שניות ממה שאתה. אתה קרוב יותר למרכז של כדור הארץ וכך הלווין ממשיך יותר מהר ממה שאתה ידי ארבעים וחמישה מיקרו שניות. אז לך להתאים את השעון על הלווין להיות איטי שלשים ושמנה מיקרו שניות.