There were plenty of jokes even among KGB agents that showed lack of confidence in the Soviet system. One day Khrushchev and Kennedy were discussing the problems in the USSR.

Khrushchev: “We are having trouble feeding our people . Maybe you can send over some shipments of wheat to help us.

Kennedy: “Sure.”
Khrushchev: We don’t seem to be able to produce workable tractors to plow the fields. Maybe you can send over a few shipments of tractors?”

Kennedy: Sure.

Khrushchev: “We can’t seem to get the Communist model to work . Maybe you can send over some advisers to help us implement the perfect Communist society?”

s51  s50  [ s51 midi format  s51 nwc format

[s50 midi]  s50 nwc]

I was thinking about the laws of the Torah and I mentioned before that I thought the, Tur Beit Yoseph was the best book written on Halacha --ever.
But it as noted by David Bronson that the Gra wrote his commentary on the Shulchan Aruch itself. In fact a lot of people saw something important in the Shulchan Aruch. Just take a look at the large Shulchan Aruch and see the amount of commentaries on the page.

I have to mention that when I as doing Tractate Ketuboth I had the Tur Beit Yoseph and Shulchan Aruch Even Ezra that I used as commentary on the Gemara and in that way I found the Tur, Beit Yoseph Shulchan Aruch to be very helpful. [Doing laws of Nida and Mikvah I did the Tur Beit  Yoseph alone and found this really clear].

But I just do not see this learning as being anything but secondary to learning Gemara. And neither did David Bronson.

My dream is a Navardok yeshiva. That is a yeshiva in every city in the world that learns Gemara and Musar and a half hour of halacha. To me that is the essential aspect of Torah. But I have difficulty expressing this dream because sadly places of Torah have mainly been infiltrated by the dark side.

Most teacher of Torah are frauds. it is hard to find truth. For some reason God guided my steps to two very good authentic Litvak yeshiva in NY, but as a rule yeshivas are not good at all. It is preferable to learn at home unless you really know local beit midrash is for Torah for its own sake--which is rare.

The places I can vouch for are most of the regular straight Litvak yeshivas in NY. In Israel there is Ponovitch and its official and un-official branches. I mean there are places that the rosh yeshiva learned at Ponovitch but it is not an official branch. Anything coming out of Ponovitch is authentic and good.
Girls obviously are not supposed to learn Torah but what I think is best is for girls to learn stuff that can help them hen they are married to be a help for their husbands to sit and learn Torah.

As a rule, Torah must not be used for making a living, but when someone is determined to learn Torah God helps with parnasha--making a living.[I am not thrilled with the kollel system, but if people in kollel are learning Torah for its own sake, and not considering kollel as  a way of making a living I suppose it might be OK.]

[Not that I am near learning Torah myself. It is just that once I tasted the sweetness of Torah, but have not been able to stay in it. I found the world of yeshivas to be more of obstacles than help. It is  whole long sad story. However without placing the blame on myself or on anyone else I just wanted to say tat i am very far from learning and or keeping Torah in any shape of form. Here I am only truing to describe the ideal way of going about it and also warning people about the problem of the penetration of the Sitra achra. I am not saying I have any excuse. Rather if I had not walked out of the authentic places I knew I would probably still be learning Torah

בבא מציעא ס''א ע''א There is an argument between רש''י and תוספות on בבא מציעא ס''א ע''א

בבא מציעא ס''א ע''א

There is an argument between רש''י and תוספות on בבא מציעא ס''א ע''א,  first תוספות on the page. רש''י can explain רבינא better but תוספות can answer the question, "Why do you need a verse for the מלווה?" The פסוק for the מלווה in in ויקרא. In the opinion of תוספות you know נשך for כסף and אוכל by the words "Don't take ריבית for money and food" לא תשיך.  Then there is an extra word "ריבית" that you don't need. So you use it for ריבית. Then there is another extra word "נשך" that you don't need. So you use it for a גזרה שווה from the לווה to the מלווה.
 But then you could ask on תוספות, "You have only one word for learning to ריבית. So how do we know that it applies to both כסף  and אוכל?"  Because this is why תוספות made sure to emphasize that the גזרה שווה is open at both ends. So that you learn ריבית in money from the borrower to the lender and ריבית in food from the lender to the borrower.
So תוספות comes out perfect as usual. No surprise here.
The question is with   רש''י . We have that רש''י that uses both words  נשך for ריבית. . So to רש''י I ask, why do you need any פסוק for the מלווה besides just saying to the מלווה "Don't take ריבית." Why do you need to go on to mention ריבית in אוכל and נשך in כסף for if you learn everything from the מלווה?

  רש''י can explain רבינא. We have that רבינא says you don't need the גזרה שווה and learns out everything for the מלווה from the verse about the מלווה. This is fine if there is no extra word. But if one extra word exists "ריבית" by the לווה as it does for תוספות, then how can רבינא disagree with it?

בבא מציעא ס''א ע''א

יש ויכוח בין רש''י ואת תוספות על בבא מציעא ס''א ע''א, תוספות הראשון בדף. רש''י יכול להסביר רבינא טוב אבל תוספות יכול לענות על השאלה, "למה אתה צריך פסוק עבור המלווה?" הפסוק עבור המלווה הוא  בויקרא. להערכת תוספות אתה יודע נשך עבור כסף ואוכל על ידי המילים "אל תיקח ריבית עבור כסף ומזון" לא תשיך. אז יש מילה נוספת "ריבית"  שאתה לא צריך. אז אתה משתמש בו עבור ריבית. ואז יש עוד מילה אחת מיותרת "נשך" שאתה לא צריך. אז אתה משתמש בו עבור גזרה שווה מן הלווה אל המלווה.
 אבל אז אתה יכול לשאול על תוספות, "יש לך רק מילה אחת ללימוד ריבית. אז איך אנחנו יודעים שזה חל על הכסף ואוכל?" בגלל זה הוא מדוע תוספות טרחה להדגיש כי הגזרה השווה פתוחה בשני קצותיו. אז יש לך ללמוד ריבית בכסף מהלווה למלווה וריבית במזון מן המלווה ללווה.
השאלה היא עם רש''י. יש לנו את שרש''י משתמש  במילת נשך עבור ריבית. אז  לרש''י למה אתה צריך כל פסוק עבור מלווה לבד. רק תאמר אל מלווה "אל תיקח ריבית." למה אתה צריך ללכת על להזכיר הריבית באוכל ונשך בכסף  אם אתה לומד כל דבר מן המלווה?

  רש''י יכול להסביר רבינא. יש לנו את זה שרבינא אומר שאתה לא צריך את הגזרה השווה ולומד את הכל עבור המלווה מהפסוק של המלווה. זה בסדר אם אין מילה אחת מיותרת. אבל אם מילה נוספת קיימת כזו "ריבית" על  ללווה אז איך זה יכול להיות שרבינא לא מסכים עם זה.

IDEAS IN BAVA METZIA


Ideas in Shas

What is a man? Someone you can depend on.

The trouble with Nietzsche is that people often do not want to be moral. Nietzsche gives them an excuse for throwing off the bonds of morality. 
 The idea the human nature rebels against morality is mentioned by Thucydides in the account of Corcyra.
There is a point that often people disguise personal ambition with morality. But the fact that any moral system can be misused does not mean it is not valid. Chemistry can be used for destructive purposes and for good oneד also.


Nietzsche does not like people that make money by seeming to be moral. Mainly his fire is directed towards Christianity and Judaism. But what it seems his mostly against is using religion for its cash benefits.

What is a man? Someone you can depend on. Someone you know will keep his word. Someone who will not let you down. And Nietzsche thought most religious teachers were not in that category. He thought they might seem moral, but when it comes to action they are unreliable.


I think it is possible to be sympathetic towards Nietzsche. He was after all facing a serious problem that almost anyone in any kind of religious environment encounters--people that use the religion for cash value.

But he did take this too far.

Personally what I recommend is to learn the Oral and Written Law of Moses {"Torat Moshe"} and to try to keep it. The best way I can  see to do this fast is to get Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and do any  one chapter thoroughly, and also learn Musar-Ethics.

[If you can get through just one chapter of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri you basically already have the tools that will enable you to do Shas. That is you "know how to learn"]. And the Musar puts you in contact with the piety and devotion of the Middle Ages which is so lacking today.
[As far as Halacha goes I recommend the Tur, Beit Yoseph. To me this seems like the best Halacha book. After that I would suggest the Aruch Hashulchan.[The later I did very little of but it is a very good book.]

I have come to see the wisdom of short sessions.

  I grew up in Newport Beach CA which was WASP and very wholesome. It was a great place. For some reason though it has changed. The whole Orange County let in lots of Muslims. I have no idea why. At the time we moved to Newport Beach the property was owned by the John Birch Society and who ever wanted to by property had to be approved by them. Why they let in Muslims is beyond me.

  Later we move to Beverly Hills and Beverly Hills High School made a big impression on me. I had great teachers. But Beverly Hills was close in proximity to Los Angeles and a lot of the negative energies seeped in. [We attended Temple Israel in Hollywood and that is where  I had my Bar Mitzvah. I think R. Nussbaum was there at the time.

  High School was extremely frustrating for me. I did not like to have short 40 minute sessions and then have homework in lots of different subjects. I thought to myself that to do well in anything at all I need to concentrate all my energy on that one thing,

  So when I got to authentic Litvak (Lithuanian)Yeshivas in NY [Shar Yashuv and the Mir] you can imagine I was elated. I could spend the whole day and even a few weeks on just one page of Gemara. I did not have to have my attention divided.

Still, after all is said and done, I have come to see the wisdom of short sessions. Nowadays what ever I learn is always in short sessions.

  I should mention that on my own when I do not have  a learning partner the way I do Tosphot is just to read through the whole page of Gemara word for word in order. And then to move on to something else. Maybe Physics. Or maybe jogging.  Then the next day I take up that exact same page of Gemara and do it again. That takes in fact about forty minutes. And so on and so forth for as long as it takes to start scratching the surface of the holy Gemara.

The same goes for Rav Chaim Soloveitchik or Rav Shach. What I would try to do would be to read the whole piece straight through of Reb Chaim. Sometimes I could not get through the whole piece, but I would try. This might have taken a month or two just to barely start to understand what Reb Chaim was saying. But the idea is that if you keep at it, it eventually goes in.

The same goes for Tosphot. Just keeping at it for a long time [a month or two] seems to result in eventually understanding it.

I look at the Middle Ages for new ideas.

"Like the Renaissance looked at the Ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration, I look at the Middle Ages for new ideas. What modernity needs is a drop of the piety and devotion of the Middle Ages."

Brett Stevens says:

10/01/2016 at 3:20 pm

I concur. Even more, we should investigate what inspired them, which was the notion of pre-classical golden ages in which religion, science, culture and leadership were in unity.

It is worth mentioning here however that the middle ages adopted quite a bit from the classical societies, and were inspired by them. The Renaissance™ used the classical ideal as a means of twisting an otherwise cohesive society toward the individual exclusively.

The idea here that I as referring to is what is commonly known as Rishonim. In yeshivas it is well known that the rishonim [authors on the Gemara that lived in the Medial period] have a level of intellectual logical reasoning that the later achronim do not have. Nowadays in the modern world the medieval period is looked down on. This is sad because in philosophy the middle ages were much much better. They were careful about logic. Later philosophers almost always use circular logic to prove their points. John Locke, Hume.  etc. Medieval philosophers would never fall into such traps --though they do use axioms which today we would consider no valid.