attachment with God is the highest value

 For you might say that attachment with God is the highest value, so once one has come to any level of that (even just a drop of the Infinite Light), that that should be that. He has come to the goal. But apparently things do not work like that. One can have that highest value, but without balance, it seems inevitable that one (or at least I) will lose it.

To anyone familiar with the book of Reb Chaim From Voloshin,[נפש החיים] this will come  as no surprise. He already stated this fact long ago about the importance of learning Torah. He puts it slightly differently.

The way he puts it is based on the Gemara Yerushalmi  where it says that all the mitzvot do not equal the value of just one single word of learning Torah.[That in turn is based on the Mishna over there in Peah]. The way Reb Chaim puts it is this that even if one fulfills all the other mitzvot with the highest level of Love and Fear of God and Attachment with God and true Devekut.--that does not equal the value of learning one single word of Torah. At first glance it is hard to understand this, but now I get the idea. The devekut only comes through learning Torah.


[The challenge now would be to see if there is any possible integration of Dr Ross's Kantian system with Hegel? ]

I am not suggesting anything that would fix things at this point. Rather I take the basic balanced approach of the Rambam of learning the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics as being the ideal to strive for.

T 62   t62 in midi This is called Bflat but that is because of how it starts but the actual key is F

restrictions that are not obligated according to the Torah

There is a  major thing -- an idea of Reb Nachman about not being מחמיר שום חומרא כלל (i.e. not being strict about anything). This sounds like a trivial idea until you realize that the basic framework of the Jewish religious world is completely made up of חומרות ( restrictions  that are not obligated according to the Torah).

They pretend as if those prohibitions are obligations, and yet prohibitions that are actually forbidden they ignore.

The trouble with this is it is אבן מכשול, a stumbling block in front of the blind. People think they have to be part of the religious world in order to keep the Torah. The opposite is true. The entire religious world in made up restrictions that are  made up out of thin air, or sometimes have some basis in one posek [medieval authority] but most other poskim (medieval authorities) allow it.

[This idea come in Reb Nachman's Magnum Opus in Volume 2, chapter 44 and in one other place that I forget [I think it is Volume 2, chapter 87]. It also is in Sichot HaRan.] [Though Breslov is insane, it is still permitted and  a good thing to learn from Reb Nachman. Rav Isaac Hutner did so and Bava Sali also. But without the context of the Gra, people latch onto misleading statements in his writings.]

This idea is related to another very important idea I wanted to mention,the fact that a cartel of unscrupulous charlatans have taken over the title of ordination and this is a problem from several angles. One is the obvious fact that it is fraud. There is no authentic ordination. That is why only very early Talmudic sages are referred to a having ordination. After R. Yochanan it is rare. And it disappeared completely in the middle of the Talmud period--though Hillel II did have it.

Personally, I do not appreciate being victimized by someone who while posing as an authority disseminates error, however trivial it may seem. And it i not just myself and others that I know who have been victimized. The real number no one knows. And the damage they cause is horrific and yet no one can talk about it because they are fearful of the prohibition against lashon hara. These religious teachers are the most destructive force on earth against Jewish families.
It is not that Reform or Conservative Jews are doing everything right. Rather that they have discovered the rot that lies underneath the facade of holiness of the religious world


So people that make their money by mean of this kind of fraud have to come up with fraudulent restrictions. The most obvious example is in food preparation,-- which is one big scam. But there are many other areas. In short, if you would take out the restrictions that are made up out of thin air, nothing would be left of the entire edifice.--And maybe then you would have time to figure out what the Torah actually requires of you. [To know what the Torah does in fact require, I found the basic set of Musar books from the Middle Ages to be extremely helpful, i.e. חובות לבבות, אורחות צדיקים, שערי תשובה, מסילת ישרים (שהוא אחרי ימי הביניים), שמנה פרקים לרמב''ם










The trouble is this. Ruler-ship, authority, is not something that one ought to grab. The reason being  that it is the same as stealing. Since ruler-ship is שווה כסף--worth money. Thus if it is offered one can accept it, but to take it without it being offered is theft.

The simpler belief system wins.

Steven Dutch suggested that the simpler belief system wins.
The more convoluted it gets,-- the less people go for it. This seems to me to make sense. After all, in Rome when there was competition between Christianity and the Roman gods, the simplest thing was to go with Christianity. Later on there was much effort put into showing how Christianity is reasonable --or at least defensible by some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages. Later on Luther's ideas were also on the side of making things simple. Sola Scriptura is certainly on the side of making things reasonable and simple.

So what weakens Christianity today--if you go by this argument of Steven Dutch -is that it got to be too convoluted.

 

You need not that things should be easy. You also do not need to water things down. But you do need the belief system should make sense and not be self contradictory. It also should make moral sense.

It should not demand things that are prima facie [on the face of it] not moral. [In its origin Christianity succeeded, not because it was easy but because it was hard and demanding.]

Some of the weak points are the Trinity. If you hold by Sola Scriptura, then that is one thing that would have to be let go of. Paul himself is another example of a weak link in the whole chain. The prime opponent  of Peter and James all of a sudden becomes an authority? That is like having Karl Marx give lectures on the benefits of Capitalism.

Some of the positive points are Anselm and Aquinas and Hegel. That is to simplify the belief system does not mean it has to be without depth. Just that it should not be convoluted.

God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world.

"Thou shalt remember the Lord your God because it is He who gives you strength." (Deuteronomy)
The basic idea here is this: God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world. Thus space- time is also His creation.Thus he is not absent from space. But he is not in space either. The entire concept of space simply does not apply to Him. Trying to apply the concept of space to God is like mixing apple and oranges.

There is lot to go into about this but to be short I wanted to bring from the very important commentary with no named author on the first four chapters of the Mishne Torah. There he brings the contradiction in the verses. One says, "Do the commandments in order to fear and love God." The other says, "Fear and love God in order to do his commandments." He answers: There are two kind of fear. One is fear of punishment. The other is awe. Thus the verse intend to tell us to come to the lower fear in order to do His commandments;-- and to do his commandments in order to come to the higher awe of God. Thus the purpose of the commandments are to fear and love God.

This is a great Title D Minor This was written in my parent's home. As you can tell there is something otherworldly about it.


T61 D major [This piece is more recent]

T63

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders to whom there is no obligation of obedience. In other times and places, people that taught Torah deserved respect, but today they are all liars and thieves..
Today, whatever any teacher of Torah says in the name of Torah, it is most likely that the opposite is the case. The  "kollels" are not different. Dens of thieves. [They lie about Torah to gain money people's obedience.]

There are I should mention a few islands of Torah like Ponovitch and the great NY Litvak yeshivas, but these kinds of places are rare, and they do no ask or require any kind of authority. The "prime directive" is  simply this: "Whatever the Torah says, that is what we try to do." That is- there is no attempt to usurp authority from the Torah to themselves.


[This is relevant to the issue of representative government. That is the people in power ought to be people that have been elected by the people, not those who by other means have seized power. ]