A few thoughts about STEM and the Chafetz Chaim

A few thoughts about STEM and the Chafetz Chaim

1) As far as STEM goes a computer major is probably well on  the way of taking care of the obligation to learn the "work of Creation"

 Rav Zilverman the Rosh Yeshiva of Aderet Eliyahu in the old city of Jerusalem told me once that learning engineering (electrical or other types) can be considered as a part of what the Rambam calls "the work of creation."

2) The Sefer the Chafetz Chaim is important to learn and to keep. I think I finished it at least once with the notes at the bottom of the page. -but probably not more than once.

At one point I believe I tried to get through every single book the Chafetz Chaim had written and probably got through a lot.

3)  I am in fact very impressed with Kant though I did not have a chance to learn him in high school when I was doing my philosophical research.  I have to mention that Kant was saying something stronger than the fact that human beings have a limit to their knowledge. He was saying pure reason –reason totally abstracted away from people also has a limit where it can not venture and if it does it comes up with self contradictions.

4) Simcha  Zissel of Kelm. one of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter.  held very strongly about this idea   to have sessions  in Torah that one does not deviate from at all.

diet and exercise.

My learning partner tends to focus on diet and he suggested a mixer and vegetables. He was not thrilled with fruit because of the Rambam ([Maimonides). [Maimonides thought only a small list of fruit is good like grapes and dates and a few others that I forgot. This makes sense because they are mainly sugar.]







It was not that he disagreed with exercise. Rather he was in a situation where it was not possible and so he focused on diet. He thinks every vegetable has some curative property. He might have mentioned beets to me, but if he did it was only in the general context of vegetables.

For me a mixer became impracticable. So I stick with a knife  and plain simple raw vegetables.
[A woman, (Natasha, in the Ukraine) mentioned beets with sour cream to me and I also found that beets with olive oil is good.]





He also mentioned many other things like  a raw egg. This was in fact how Jews used to have coffee or tea in Eastern Europe instead of cream. The raw egg tends to cancel out appetite for unhealthy food.

I might mention that I think people are too addicted to cooking. Not everything has to be cooked.
A girl, Barbara  from Germany mentioned to me a staple of her diet growing up was yogurt with raw oatmeal.

I should add that his basic approach comes down to what is known as the paleo diet,-but with an emphasis on green vegetables

Holocaust denial

There is a lot of Holocaust denial going around. I find this odd. My grandparents came over to the USA before World War II and so survived. But no one else in my family that was in Europe at the time did. My grandfather Yaakov had a brother Avraham with a wife and seven young children who were all murdered by the Nazis. That was not because of working too hard in  labor camp. 

Reform and Conservative are basically right [because of the most important aspects of Torah are Monotheism and בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man].The general religious world has either zero fulfillment of obligations between man and his fellow man or at a level much lower than gentiles.

I have thought a lot about the proper path in life.

Maybe too much because after all I grew up in my parents home which was  an absolutely amazing experience. The love that was between my parents for each other and for us kids was palpable. You could almost touch it in the air.
Still I was interested in philosophical questions from about as early an age as I can remember.

We were mainly Reform Jews but obviously my parents had a lot more to them than the Reform secular doctrines.

So I got interested in what formed the basis of my parents home --that is the Oral and Written Law of Moses. [The Oral Law most people think of as the Talmud but there are actually a whole set of books that compromise the actual Oral tradition: two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra Sifrei and few others.]

But to defend this tradition in an intellectual way I have to rely on Kant . Maimonides and Saadia Gaon do provide some justification, but because of the onslaught of philosophy and also archaeology I found it necessary to provide for myself  a deeper justification.

Reform itself  got way too much into the "social justice" thing--which is just another word for socialism. The  religious generally follow con men and so are not following Torah at all, and make up rituals in order to seem like they are keeping Torah, and ignore the things the Torah really does require. The religious world is in general made up of mentally ill people.

So I am thinking that Reform and Conservative are basically right [because of the most important aspects of Torah are Monotheism and בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man] but need more learning and keeping of of Torah but not like the people that make a show of religiosity to get money and power. The religious world -it's leaders are simply mad men. [That is all but the few pockets surrounding Litvak yeshivas where Torah is learned and practiced sincerely.] The general religious world has either zero fulfillment of obligations between man and his fellow man, or at a level much lower than gentiles. Honesty, working hard for a living, keeping your word, and general human decency are almost impossible to find in the religious world.


To defend the Torah, I however basically have to depend on the Rambam. That means that Torah is  to bring to objective morality. So in some way I use the Kant  school of thought imply to patch up the gaps.


Appendix. To prove that בין אד לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man is the most important part of Torah you would need the basic set of Musar books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. My first awareness of this really began my first year in Yeshiva when I was learning the Sefer HaChinuch. It was somewhat of  a shock to me to discover a lot of obligations between man and his fellow man are a major part of the Torah.

Israel Salanter tried to correct this flaw but with little success. The Musar movement itself became a kind of "frumkeit" religiosity. Not that this is desirable. The best thing is to keep all the Torah--obligations between man and his fellow man and between man and God. But if there is a choice one or the other obviously according to the Torah itself the obligations between man and his fellowman come first.

This of course goes entirely against the basic tenet of the religious that only they are kosher. To me it seems the truth is exactly the opposite.

S33 B Flat Major

People go through all kinds of problems,

People go through all kinds of problems, psychological or relationships etc. Depressions, OCD etc. I do not know why. I can imagine a bad childhood may have something to do with some of it. 



Still whatever the reasons are there must be a way to break out of it. 
The best way I can figure out  at this point is to develop a connection with some Lithuanian kind of yeshiva where Torah is learned for its pwn sake and to join in as much as possible and also to learn Musar.  That is to say I think there is "numinous " power in Torah learning that can correct many problems   But it has to be authentic Torah from the side of holiness for this to work. Therefore it seems to me best to learn a little Gemara and a little Musar every day either by yourself or in some kind of Litvak Yeshiva situation. I hope this will in itself solve your other problems. 

"Learn how to learn.The problem nowadays is-- in Torah, very evil people claim to be experts. Therefore you have to have someone either from the Ponovitch Yeshiva in Bnei Brak itself, or some authentic Litvak yeshiva.

At some point you ought to "learn how to learn." I am not all sure how this could work in your preset situation and schedule [i.e. most people need to learn a vocation or are already involved in their vocation]. The best thing I would imagine would be to start a kind of "iyun shiur"[in depth session] as it is called on your own. Maybe with just one essay from Rav Shach or just one page of Gemara and working on it on your own.  But the way this would work I think would be you would need one Gemara [like Bava Metzia or Ketubot] and a few Rishonim and Achronim like R. Akiva Eiger. With the proper materials and books you could probably do it on your own. 

The problem seems to be that most people are not in walking distance from any kind of authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. So the only way most people will ever be able to learn Torah is by doing it on their own [and staying away from people that are pretending to teach Torah, but are actually demons as Reb Nachman mentioned in the Lekutai Moharan Volume I:12] [The trouble is the vast majority of people that claim to be teaching Torah - are teaching the Torah of the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side).]


Maybe it is a matter of taste but in yeshiva, I was not ready for Reb Chaim Soloveitchik kind of things, and instead did a lot of Pnei Yehoshua and Maharsha. The issues the later achronim and the achronim starting with Reb Chaim and going up until Rav Shach are very different and deal with very very different kinds of issues. I feel both are important.
Today I would have to say the Reb Chaim et al. up until Rav Shach are more important. But I can not explain why. The main thing is that Reb Chaim deals with more fundamental issues.

In a lot of places I have seen a tendency to skip what is called "לחשבן את הסוגיא" "to calculate the sugia (subject)." --to work out in exact detail what Topphot is saying  before jumping into lamdanut ("global issues " that is how the sugia relates to other places in Shas). This is something that is ignored nowadays, but it is something that Reb Chaim and all the achronim assumed people were doing on their own. Nowadays it is almost completely skipped.

[The first thing you show up to yeshiva is they tell you to get your own copy of the basic rishonim, the Tosphot HaRosh, the Rashba, the Ritva, and the Chidushei HaRamban [Nachmanides] and also the Tur, Beit Yoseph. I can't say if this is all that helpful. Maybe for some it is.But for me learning from great roshei Yeshiva like Naphtali Yeager and Reb Shmuel Berenbaum  was probably more helpful. It is like learning the violin. You can pick up something by reading books, but to actually be able to do it you need someone that is an expert.  The problem nowadays is-- in Torah, very evil people claim to be experts. Therefore you have to have someone either from the Ponovitch in Bnei Brak itself or some authentic Litvak yeshiva.


 But I am just trying to give you an idea of what is involved in knowing how to learn.