Just to defend myself, let me, mention that the present day calendar has no basis in the Gemara so we have to go by the actual molad, the time when the moon and sun are at the same longitude. Second day of Yom Tov is more complicated. My feeling about it is that the the reason for it is a debate in the gemara. One holds it is  a law derabanan. Rav Asi holds it is a custom [and that is the law]. But it is not a custom dreamt out of thin air. It has a reason. That is perhaps we might forget the actual time and have to go back to witnesses. So I say, fine, let's go back to witnesses. Once the supreme court in Jerusalem determines the date let them send witnesses by airplane. That is the original custom was not based on there not being a court. Rather it was based on not knowing the right time, and thus having to depend on the court.
Now if it would be a custom established by the Supreme Court, then it would have to be nullified by  a supreme court that is accepted by more חכמי ישראל. But the Supreme Court in Jerusalem did not establish it. It was a custom started in Babylon by the local people  because of the worry of forgetting how to calculate the molad and having to go back to going by the Supreme Court which would have to send witnesses. That is why even outside of Israel any place where witnesses can reach in time never has two days of Yom Tov. For example in Mitzraim. Therefore this law has nothing to do with being outside of Israel. It always depends on where witnesses can reach.

The point here is that the reason the religious world ignores these simple facts is not because they are hard to understand. Rather they simply do not care what the Torah says. Their religiosity is all smoke and mirrors. It is the same reason the Supreme Court thinks it can regulate what you grow in your backyard under the interstate commerce clause. It is not that they are so dense as not to understand the Constitution. It is rather that they do not care what it says.

I wanted to answer a question on the הרמב''ם

 I wanted to answer a question on the הרמב''ם. In the אבי עזרי על  הרמב''ם in הלכות טוען ונטען פרק ו' הלכה ג we see that רב שך defends the רמב''ם by means of several factors. כל factor by itself would not be enough. The הרמב''ם writes that we believe the husband when he says the wife he just married was not a virgin. The reason is simple. We can not say she was not מדקדק (she was careful in her words) when she is coming to ask for money. But we can say that a person that is getting out of  a debt is not careful in his words. But just to make myself a little more clear let me just add some background. The רמב''ם chapter ו law ג of טוען ונטען says: "A person comes to court and says you owe me מנה. The other says in court להד''ם, (I did not borrow). Then two witnesses come and say he borrowed and paid back. He must pay the מנה because כל האומר לא לוויתי כאומר לא פרעתי "Anyone who says 'I dd not borrow' is as if he said 'I did not pay back.'" And the other needs no oath because the borrower is already considered a liar." To defend this law רב שך needs  ר. עקיבא אייגר, the קצות, the נתיבות, the ר''י מיגאש.
 But to be as short as possible, let me just say he needs that "Anyone who says 'I did not borrow' is as if he said 'I did not pay back.'" is not an open confession. It is simply a statement that implies the result. That is like the רשב''ם says about a different case in בבא בתרא ל''ד. But in order to say that it does not imply the result automatically, it is necessary to say he was not careful in his words as the נתיבות says about the law one can go מפטור לפטור. That is the exact same law as the one in chapter ו law ג except that the borrower changed his plea before the witnesses came]. But we can only say that he was not careful when he is trying to get out of an obligation, not when he is asking for money. How do we know this? Because of the fact that the רמב''ם הלכות מלווה ולווה when the מלווה is not believed by a מיגו when he changes his plea from "It is a good document" to "The document was forged (שטר מזוייך) but I had a real document and it was lost."  So when he comes and says פ''פ (פתח פתוח) מצאתי, he is believed even though she has a מיגו that she could have said משאירסתני נאנסתי. But why should we not believe her. Do we not say a מיגו?  And a person can go from פטור לפטור. The reason is she is not going from פטור לפטור, but asking for the whole כתובה מאתיים.

[I should mention I am taking a guess here about מפטור לפטור. I have no books to look anything up and even when I read Rav Shach's Avi Ezri,]




 רציתי לענות על השאלה הזאת על הרמב''ם. באבי עזרי על הרמב''ם בהלכות טוען ונטען פרק ו' הלכה ג' אנו רואים כי רב שך מגן על הרמב''ם באמצעות מספר גורמים. כל גורם בפני עצמו לא יהיה מספיק. הרמב''ם כותב כי אנו מאמינים הבעל כשהוא אומר שהאישה שהוא נשא לא הייתה בתולה. הסיבה היא פשוטה. אנחנו לא יכולים להגיד שהיא לא מדקדקת (לא הקפידה במילים שלה) כשהיא מגיעה לבקש כל הכתובה. אבל אנו יכולים לומר כי אדם כשהוא רוצה להפטר מחוב אינו זהיר בדבריו. רק להוסיף קצת רקע. הרמב''ם פרק ו' ה''ג של טוען ונטען אומר: אדם מגיע לבית המשפט ואומר "אתה חייב לי מנה." השני אומר בבית המשפט להד''ם, (לא היו דברים מעולם. אני לא לוויתי.). ואז שני עדים באים ואומרים שהוא לווה ושילם בחזרה. הוא חייב לשלם את המנה כי כל האומר "לא לוויתי" כאומר "לא פרעתי". ולמלווה אין שבועה כי הלווה כבר נחשב שקרן. "כדי להגן על החוק הזה רב שך זקוק לר. עקיבא אייגר, את הקצות, את הנתיבות, ואת הר''י מיגאש. אבל כדי להיות קצר ככל האפשר, תן לי רק לומר שהוא צריך שהדין כל מי שאומר, "אני  לא לוויתי" הוא כאילו אמר "אני לא פרעתי.'" אינו אומר שזו הודאה מפורשת. זה פשוט ההוכחה שמשתמע מכך שלא פרע. (זה כמו הרשב''ם אומר על מקרה שונה בבא בתרא ל''ד). אבל כדי שזו לא תהיה תוצאה אוטומטית, יש צורך לומר שהוא לא היה זהיר בדבריו כמו הנתיבות אומר על החוק שאפשר ללכת מפטור לפטור. החוק הזה זהה לזו בפרק ו' הלכה ג' פרט לכך שהלווה שינה את טענתו לפני שהעדים באו.  אנחנו רק יכולים לומר שהוא לא היה זהיר כשהוא מנסה לצאת ידי חובה, לא כשהוא מבקש כסף. איך אנחנו יודעים את זה? בשל העובדה כי הרמב''ם כותב בהלכות מלווה ולווה שהמלווה לא נאמן ידי מיגו ברגע ששינה את הטיעון שלו ממסמך טוב להמסמך מזויף (שטר מזוייף) אבל אומר היה לו מסמך אמיתי, וזה אבד. אז כשהוא בא ואומר פ''פ (פתח פתוח) מצאתי, הוא נאמן למרות שיש לה מיגו שהיא יכולה לומר משאירסתני נאנסתי. אבל למה אנחנו לא מאמינים לה. האם אנחנו לא אומרים מיגו? ואדם יכול לעבור פטור לפטור. הסיבה היא שהיא לא הולכת מן הפטור לפטור, אלא מבקשת כל הכתובה מאתיים

Spiritual Abuse. Quilt of Cults

 A movement that appears  sound with regard to the central doctrines of the Torah, but whose actions and practices are cultic (or cult-like) in nature, can still be considered a cult.  

Thus  the religious world is just a  Quilt of Cults. The issue is not the lip service they pay to Torah in order to look good. The issue is their inner unclean and unholy essence from the dark side, Sitra Achra.  

Reb Nachman rightfully went into this in detail, but that did not help the groups called by his name. Their leaders are just as much cult leaders as any other of the cultic groups. But at least Reb Nachman did focus attention on this important issue [as the Na Nach group never tires of pointing out]. Religious teachers are generally  demonic. Telling women they need to go to these satanic leaders is  a recipe for disaster. [There was one group that the leader said all women need an adviser that is not their husband, and out of 3000 people after two years only a handful were still married. ]

Religious addiction is one problems with cults. And they feel they need to be supported by society in order to support their addiction.Unconditional aid is a social disaster. [Reb Nachman also never tired of this issue. It starts in LM volume 1 chapter 8 and goes up until volume 2 chapter 8--the last lesson he ever said.]

Divine realm

I should say right out that the way I defend Torah is by separating to levels of reality. I hold anything in Torah hard to understand in this world must be referring to some Divine realm. I mentioned this once to my learning partner. Clearly knowing a drop of Isaac Luria is helpful in this respect. [The Rambam held in a similar vein.]
Plato himself has two levels of reality though he links them by some mysterious process called participation. Kant and Hegel also. But to Kant there was no bridge. To Hegel there is a bridge- dialectics which it seems he thought was a kind of group endeavor. 

[Plato was forced into his opinion because of Parmenides. Kant was forced into his because of the problem that all character traits of things depend on the subject. That is Decartes, and also the problem between the rationalist and empiricists and the problem in his on home town between the Pietists and the school of the rationalists of Germany (Johann Salomo Semler,)]
The way Kant navigated between these two extremes was to find a ground of validity of each one, and thus one could know the limits of each one.

The problem is Leftism. I mean to say while the right is splintered, it still seems to be a much better approach, even in its original formulation of being on the side of Monarchy. But my feeling is the original constitution of the Virginia Colony  made the most sense with the obligation of belonging to some church [I do not think they were thinking about Jewish people at that point or what they would have said] while the government would stay out of religious affairs.  

My impression was that original constitution was inspired in some way by John Locke but I might be mistaken.

[This balanced approach was not taken by later colonies that left out all religious obligation. That does not seem right to me. Perhaps they thought the trouble was in the churches themselves with lots of problematic doctrines. And that problem has not seem to have been abated. I guess they could have chosen the best ones, and forbade the less desirable ones;--but instead they choose to say that Federal government ought to stay out of religion altogether. Anyway, I think some of the Founding Fathers were Deists anyhow, so it would not have made any sense to have clause that one has to belong to some church. Instead they focused on the mechanisms of government and tried to get that part right. That seems to work well. In that way they left the power to the states to support whatever religious orders they saw fit- and that seems to have worked well until recently. Even the Mir yeshiva in NY I think was getting state funds for being a  institution of higher learning. So this approach of the founding fathers seems to be a pretty decent model of government.

Hegel and Dr Kelley Ross.

''The second sphere of those manifestations of spirit which are more closely related to philosophy is the area of religious representations in general. Here belongs primarily religion as such, then mythology and the mysteries, and even to a certain extent poetry. Just as the first area of which we spoke had in common with philosophy its formal element, the I and the form of universality, so what is common here is the other side, i.e., the substantial element, the content.''

"...how man is conscious of God, i.e., how in consciousness he represents God, this being the objective form or determination of thought whereby man sets the essence of divinity over against himself, represents it as something other than himself, as an alien being in the beyond. The second characteristic is to be found in devotion and cult, which constitute the overcoming of this opposition, whereby. man raises himself to God and becomes conscious of his unity with God’s being.''

Introduction to the History of Philosophy.

Source: Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy, by Quentin Lauer, S.J. with a new translation of Hegel’s Introduction to the History of Philosophy;

Translated: from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, Hamburg, 1940.

It is hard to see here much difference between Hegel and Dr. Kelley Ross of the Kant Friesian School of Thought. Hegel is not coining a new term for holiness an attachment with God like Otto does with "Numinous" value, but still the message is obviously the same.

tying oneself to a "tzadik"

One of the problems of tying oneself to a "tzadik" is not just the problem that Reb Chaim from Voloshin noticed that it is the exact same prohibition in the Torah of not to type or bind one's soul to any idol. But furthermore when one allows someone to shadow his life as his 'spiritual leader' and dominate his thinking, he takes on the quirks, oddities and idiosyncrasies of his 'spiritual leader'. He becomes a disciple alright, but not of God. I have seen leaders who had produced hundreds of disciples--but every one of them had his obvious mishegasim [bad character and nutty habits] Their God-given distinctiveness has been absorbed by their hovering 'spiritual leader.'
Mainly the way I see it the problem all began with the movement of the Shatz and Natan from Gaza, his false prophet. An examination of the microfilm copies of Natan's book will show I think from where most doctrines of the religious world come from. [Not from the Ari Isaac Luria or Musar.] 
But I am not claiming any special insight into this outside of just plain horrific experiences. I was duped just like everyone else and fell for the polished image of respectability. I in fact fell harder than most and because of that I realize the sinister nature of the religious world. If I could go back today I would imply have stayed in the Mir Yeshiva in NY and not budged an inch. Or if I had to go to Israel--as I felt I needed to based on the Ramban-then I should have made it my business to be in an authentic Litvak yeshiva or Religious Zionist one. The trouble is this: outside of the authentic Litvak and Zionist places, the religious world is a large quilt of cults.


[No disrespect intended towards Reb Nachman who was a true tzadik, but even a true tzadik can make an occasional  mistake --even in doctrine. I think a close examination of the Cherem of the Gra will show it did not apply to Reb Nachman,