The Sitra Achra [the realm of Evil] we already know has great power to make itself seem sweet and lovely for the moment,

With Kant all you really have is knowledge based on observation or not based on observation. [a posteriori or a priori].
This comes from Hume. But this to a large degree accepts a very secular idea of the ''self''. The Self that is not a soul is a secular thing. It has no spiritual intuitions, spiritual connections.
This creates a very false self image of what a person is or ought to be for every single individual. It does not automatically deny knowledge based on spiritual intuition but it does so by implication.

This means that people looking into their own lives and trying figure out things tend to miss a significant aspect of their own self being that they can not take into account because they believe it has no relevance nor even reality. Even when they are interested in Torah this makes them incapable of accounting for what they might be doing right or wrong. They also will tend to look at others as selves, but not souls. [Allan Bloom went into this in great depth in his book, The Closing Of The American Mind].

In my own case there were spiritual connections that I had with my parents and Israel and Torah and the Infinite Light  of the Divine Presence, that I ignored because of not being able to take them into account in my mental processing. That led me to ignore the most significant aspects of Torah.  

This is not to minimize the danger of the fact that all intuitions are subject to error. The Sitra Achra [the realm of Evil] we already know has great power to make itself seem sweet and lovely for the moment, though in the end it is bitterness and gall.

I am also quite aware of soul connections that are not at all felt in any sense but are none the less quite real. 

structure of medieval society

Allen Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind) compared the structure of medieval society as a Gothic Cathedral with the vast amounts of pushes and pulls and strains all balancing out. Trying to undo the natural order causes the whole thing to come tumbling down --since we do not know what makes society tick. Thus he saw the Enlightenment as leading to an eventual collapse of the social contract as he thought was happening around 1990.

Our state of understanding how any human society works is on the order of medieval medicine -that all their theories were wrong, and anything any doctor would do would automatically cause more damage than leaving the patient alone. Medicine has advanced a little  since then,- but all our theories of how human society works are clearly  100% wrong; and anything anyone does to improve things just leads to the patient's death all the sooner.

People that claim ordination (סמיכה) nowadays have a halachic category of being liars (הוחזקו כפרנים),

A single person can tell over the law of the Torah. But he does not have the legal status of a Beit Din [court of law בית דין]. That is an argument between R. Abahu with Rava against Rav Acha Bar Rav Ika. As Rav Shach noted, the Rambam does poskin [decide] like R. Abahu that a single person that is expert can judge, but not as a court of law. [The rishonim believed the Rambam decided like Rav Acha bar Rav Ika that a single person can be a beit din and then had to scrounge around for answers about why then three are needed.They were not able to see the difference between deciding a  general law and deciding a specific case.]

[This seems to be one of those cases in which even great rishonim did not see what the Rambam was getting at, and it was only recently in the period from Reb Chaim Solveitchik until Rav Shach that lots of difficult issues about the Rambam came to clarity and light.]

Even a Beit Din [court of law בית דין] without authentic Semicha [ordination] can judge common  cases like loans and admissions, but not most other things that require true ordination. People that claim ordination nowadays have a halachic category of being liars (הוחזקו כפרנים) and when one has the halachic status of a liar then nothing he or she says has any validity. [I hope to get into this issue which comes up in Bava Batra chapter 3.] [This occurs when a person says one thing to one person, and then changes it when he talks to another, which is common with people like that.]

But even things that do not require true semicha--if one gets payment for them, that also has no halachic status. כל דיין שנוטל שכר לדון כל דיניו בטילים. "Anyone who receives payment for judging,--all his judgement are null."

People do take power that is not granted to them. This is common. The Constitution of the USA also limits  power yet it clearly does not work.  The powers granted are Article I. Section 8. That is about 1% of the things the Federal government controls. This started in 1942 in a Supreme Court case about the law farmers must not grow more that X amount of corn. One farmer did so for his pigs on his farm besides what he grew to sell which was under the limit. The Supreme Court said the law was constitutional because of interstate commerce. The farmer was thus not allowed to grow corn to feed his own pigs because of interstate commerce? The reason this was upheld was not because the Supreme Court was from Mars or supremely stupid (don't tempt me), but rather because they could not care less about what the Constitution says. This is a good analogy to what happens in the religious world. The satanic teachers simply do not care what the Torah says as long as they can get away with their scams. The trouble is there is no punishment for them for this fraud. People go along with it because until it hurts them personally they do not care.


The ways to solve these problems are simple. Defund the fraud. [Throw out the satanic teachers]


But furthermore--it should be possible to arrangement things differently in a way that would be more just. Perhaps looking at the USA  and the ways it has gone away from the Constitution might help give us some ideas. I do not spend much time on this but in theory it might be worth the time. Now Reb Chaim from Voloshin in fact came up with this great idea to have the local yeshiva not dependent on the local kahal--which made a lot of sense and still does. But one could go further. Have a negative beit din. A beit din that all they do is to knock down laws that are adding to Torah. 

And that beit din should have power to assign penalties for fraud. Make the fraudsters pay the price of the havoc they have wrought on Klal Israel. [Or just shoot them, and make things easier for everyone.] [At least they could expose the scammers and charlatans,]
I should mention  that the Na Nach group tends to be highly aware of the abuses I have describe here. Good for them. 
What they ought to do is to document every abuse--on film and on paper until people start paying attention. [Get on a video everything so they can not backtrack and change the narrative later to fit their agenda.]
The real problem with people that pretend to teach Torah is not so much that they think they have the authority to do so but rather that they are demons as Reb Nachman pointed out, and their demonic powers are what gives them authority, not the holy Torah. For some reason this aspect of teachers of Torah was left unexplored by most rishonim though it comes up in the Talmud. The Rambam tried very mildly to call them out on this and that was in fact the reason for the first ban on the Rambam.  The best thing in any case is not to bow nor to submit to them and to know that they teach a false Torah.

T35 E Flat Major 3-4 time  t35 midi   t35 nwc

It is possible for teachers of Torah to be satanic as we can can see in the religious community in Los Angeles

It is possible for teachers of Torah to be satanic as we can can see in the religious community in Los Angeles. But there are different levels of evil as brought in the Zohar
The place this really come up in detail is in the writings of Reb Nachman, but it is also mentioned in the Talmud and even the Rambam brings it up.
The mystery is that you would expect them to be better--not worse.
So it is on purpose that I mention the few good and authentic yeshivas in NY and Israel, like Ponovitch, Mir (NY, not the one in Israel), Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat, in order to focus on the good and hope that people will understand what is bad. I also should mention the religious Zionist yeshivas which I generally have a good impression of. [That is what is called "Bnei Akiva".]

But the general level of teachers of Torah is so low and so dangerous to regular Jews that I believe they ought to be purged and eliminated so they can no longer entice people into the Dark Side, Sitra Achra. They are incredibly dangerous. And their connection to Torah is all false and just pretense of wearing black clothing and the right kind of hat. But without hatred or malice, it is best to just get rid of them one way or the other before they can do anymore damage on other families like they have done to so many I am sure my readers have already heard about and know from first hand experience.

a later court of law is not obligated to go by a former court of law.

The רמב''ם in the beginning of משנה תורה and in that  ממרים פ''ב הלכות א-ג is saying roughly the same thing. That in terms of  פסק הלכה a later court of law is not obligated to go by a former court of law. That is הלכה א. But when it comes to תקנות גזירות ומנהגים a later court of law can not disagree with a previous court of law unless it is greater in wisdom and numbers. However a law made as a סייג לתורה a later court of law can not nullify if it has expanded to all Israel. That is the basic law in the רמב''ם and it is also how רב שך understands him. The way you see that this is how רב שך understands the רמב''ם is the fact that in עדויות he says the רמב''ם has to be talking about גזירות ותקנות
In that משנה עדוית א:ה it asks "Why write the minority opinion?" And it gives an answer.   The רמב''ם says there it means a later court of law can decide the law in that way even if it is a minority if it has רוב חכמה ורוב מניין. Why not understand the רמב''ם simply that he means a פסק הלכה? Because the רמב''ם ties it in with the idea that a later  court of law can depend on a minority opinion if it has רוב חכמה ורוב מניין. We already know from משנה תורה the רמב''ם does not require a later court of law to need more numbers and more wisdom when it comes to  פסק הלכה. So in עדויות he must means גזירות ותקנות
רמב''ם בתחילת משנה תורה והן  בממרים פ''ב הלכות א-ג אומר בערך אותו הדבר. זה במונחים של הלכה. פסק בית משפט מאוחר אינו מחויב ללכת לפי בית משפט לשעבר. כלומר זו הלכה א. אבל כשמדובר בתקנות גזירות ומנהגים בית המשפט המאוחר  מחוייב להסכים עם בית משפט הקודם  אלא אם כן הוא גדול בחכמה ומספרים. עם זאת חוק שנעשה בתור סייג לתורה, בית משפט מאוחר לא יכול לבטל אם היא התרחב לכל ישראל. זהו החוק הבסיסי הרמב''ם, וזה גם איך רב שך מבין אותו. הדרך שאתה רואה שכך רב שך מבין את רמב''ם היא העובדה כי בעדויות הוא אומר שהרמב''ם מדבר על גזירות ותקנות. באותה משנה עדוית א: ה' המשנה מבקשת "למה לכתוב דעת המיעוט?" והיא נותנת תשובה. הרמב''ם אומר  שהמשמעות היא שבית המשפט המאוחר יכול להכריע את החוק ככה גם אם הוא מיעוט אם יש לו רוב חכמה ורוב מניין. למה לא מבינים את רמב''ם פשוט כי הוא מתכוון פסק הלכה? בגלל שהרמב''ם קישר אותה משנה עם הרעיון כי בית משפט אחר עשוי  לתלות בדעת המיעוט אם יש לו רוב חכמה ורוב המניין. אנחנו כבר יודעים מתוך משנה תורה שהרמב''ם אינו מחייב בית המשפט המאוחר להיות להם יותר מספרים ויותר חוכמה כשמדובר בפסק הלכה.


I am really tired so I just wrote this fast-but if I could add for the sake of simplicity I would explain how the Rambam is referring to a court of law with the authentic ordination from Sinai, not the phony type in common use today. Also that the Rambam does not mean a court can poskin not like the Gemara. The Gemara is the final pesak as he explains elsewhere.. But I did not have time to go into this because of lack of sleep.

The thing that requires thought here is the way Rav Shach understands that Rambam. It is not as if I never thought abut this. But this way Rav Shach understands the Rambam puts a whole new spin on things.

A legal measure adopted by a later בית דין when the reason for the law is gone is well known to be the subject of a debate between the רמב''ם and ראב''ד. It stems from the כמרא in ביצה דף ה' ע''א.

The interesting thing about it is the רמב''ם in the introduction to the משנה תורה where he deals with a different issue about a local בית דין. There he brings down that no one has the authority to nullify a law of the גמרא. And we have in the  גמרא a set of rules how to decide any הלכה. In any case the רמב''ם had no doubt about that. But among ראשונים there are different opinions on which of those rules takes precedence. The odd thing בהלכות ממרים ב' הלכה ב' does not seem to refer to a בית דין  without the authentic סמיכה from Sinai which no longer exists . In the introduction he seems to refer to the kind of בית דין of three that can judge a very limited  set of things. So in משנה תורה why does he not go into the subject of a בית דין with no true סמיכה. Obviously because  as we can see he felt they had no authority to make  decrees.


 גזירות או תקנות שאומצו על ידי בית דין מאוחר יותר כאשר סיבת החוק היא בטלה, זה נושא לדיון בין רמב''ם וראב''ד. זה נובע מגמרא בביצת דף ה' ע''א . הדבר המעניין הוא הרמב''ם במבוא למשנה התורה, שם הוא עוסק בנושא אחר על בית הדין מקומי . שם הוא אומר כי לאף אחד אין  הסמכות לבטל חוק של הגמרא. ועל שבגמרא יש מערכת הכללים כיצד להחליט  הלכה. בכל מקרה לרמב''ם לא היה ספק בכך. אבל בין הראשונים יש דעות שונות על  כללים אלה. הדבר המוזר בהלכות ממרים ב' הלכה ב' לא נראה שהוא מתייחס לבית דין ללא  סמיכה אותנטי מסיני אשר אינו קיים עוד. בהקדמה למשנה תורה הוא מתייחס לסוג של  בית  דין של שלושה שיכולים לשפוט קבוצה מאוד מוגבלת של דברים.  ברור כי כפי שאנו רואים שהיתה להם סמכות לעשות גזירות רק  בזמן הגמרא

[That is the Rambam was dealing with  the issue of  local beit dins after the Talmud in the Introduction. There is openly refutes the idea of פוסק בתרא saying the later beit din can decide any way it sees. That is a different subject than the subject in Mishne Torah.]


So what you have in the Rambam are three relevant things. The first three Halachot in chapter two of law of ממרים, the introduction to Mishne Torah, the פירוש על המשנה in מסכת עדויות פרק א' משנה ה.
I see Rav Shach has an essay on this subject in the Avi Ezri.

In any case, it seems the main trust of the religious world is to be adding restrictions upon restrictions in such a way that no one can do anything. There is little attention paid to the fact of the Raavad and Tosphot holding that when the reason for the גזירה או תקנה is null then the law itself is null and void.
This applies through wide variety of laws where the reasons are in fact stated as in the case with most decrees.

The problem in the religious world is they relish in making up restrictions (that are neither from the Oral nor Written Law) that limit everyone but themselves. And the restrictions that do apply to them they always manage to find some way out of.
The religious world is really an epi phenomenon  of the Shatz. It is just a different kin of manifestation of the same evil spirit that in infected the Jewish religious world in circa 1668.\
The same spirit in different forms.

The Lechem Mishna asks on the Raavad what about the statement אין בית דין יכול לבטל דברי בית  דין אחר עד שיהיה גדול ממנו בחכמה ובמניין. One beit din can not  nullify the decision of another beit din until it is great in wisdom and numbers. To that Rav Shach answers that the way to understand the Raava is on his explanation  of the Mishna in עדויות א' משנה ה where it says מכיוון שהלכה כדברי המרובין למה כותבים דברי היחיד? Answer: in case a later beit din sees the words of the previous beit din and disagrees. If the later beit din depends on the words of the minority, that is OK.

The Rambam in the beginning of Mishna Torah and in that place in ממרים is saying roughly the same thing. That in terms of  פסק הלכה a later beit din is not obligated to go by a former beit din. That is Halacha 1. But when it comes to תקנות גזירות ומנהגים a later beit din can not disagree with a previous beit din unless it is greater in wisdom and numbers. However a law made as a סייג לתורה a later beit din can not nullify if it has expanded to all Israel. That is the basic law in the Rambam and it is also how Rav Shach understands him.

The way you see that this is how Rav Shach understands the Rambam is the fact that in עדויות he says the Rambam has to be talking about גזירות ותקנות. Why not understand the Rambam simply that he means a פסק הלכה? Because the Rambam ties it in with the idea that a later beit din can depend on a minority opinion if it has רוב חכמה ורוב מניין. We already know from משנה תורה the Rambam does not require a later beit to need more numbers and more wisdom when it comes to  פסק הלכה. So in עדויות he must means גזירות ותקנות
[That is in that Mishna ch 1 mishna 5 it says why write the minority opinion? The Rambam says there it means a later beit din can go with it even if it is a minority if it has רוב חכמה ורוב מניין]