Litvak yeshiva

When I was in Shar Yashuv [Rav Freifeld's yeshiva in Far Rockaway] and in the Mir in Brooklyn I did not want to hear about secular learning. This was in spite of the fact that Rav Freifeld told to me to take classes in Brooklyn College.
This was as you can see not a matter of my belief system, but rather I felt I had found something amazing, awesome, powerful and full of holiness in the Litvak {Lithuanian} Yeshiva.

I had already had a full stomach of secular learning for the past 12 years from kindergarten until 12th grade.
But this was more of a matter of finding a kind of synthesis between learning Torah and keeping Torah. These two things were tightly bonded in the Litvak Yeshiva environment.

[I have not been recently a strong advocate of the Litvak yeshiva in recent years because of later experiences as I have hinted to a few times. But I have not gone into these later experiences for a few reasons. The main thing is: "Abuse does not cancel use." The fact that people can misuse an institution does not invalidate its proper use.]

This applies to institutions as much as anything else. Maybe even more.

Nowadays the religious world is against the secular learning not from any kind of involvement in Torah. The religious world sadlly gives a great living example of everything wrong with religious fanaticism. The religious world has external rituals but not the essence. [But they do have the "cult of personality" which  is not really any different than any other groups that do the same.]



[I should mention that after the few years at the Mir I did not do much learning Torah. So to me it is clear that without those few concentrated years of learning Torah I would not have gotten very far.

The fact is the Enlightenment was an attack on religious values. But was motivated by much of the kind of behavior I have seen in the religious world. So what I try to do is to keep a sense of balance.

[This aspect of balance in keeping Torah I saw in my parents, and in Musar. But Musar is generally misinterpreted to mean religious fanaticism. But then I also saw it in the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam and that book is harder for people to willfully misinterpret.

Reb Freifeld I should mention stressed lots of review. To a large degree I have to agree with this.It i just hard to find the right balance. Recently in learning gemara and Rav Shach I have found review to be the only way to make progress. And now I am seeing this in Physics also.

I have to mention that Rav Freifeld held so strongly about review that even for beginners like myself he was very firm about it. Ten times review for anything you learned. That was his "thing."

I should mention that in spite of all I have written, one must keep in mind to have loyalty to Torah, --not towards any yeshiva. If a yeshiva helps provide an environment where you can learn, then by all means support it. But if it is just a private country club [as so many are] for some supposedly elite group, then do not go near it.


[I did not ignore Rav Freifeld. It as rare to get to ten times review but I tried. And recently I would take one basic page of Gemara or chapter of Rav Shach and just read it through every day --which is not exactly what Rav Freifeld was saying to do but I have found this to be workable. [My learning partner David Bronson was extremely stubborn to stay on every word in Tosphot until we would get it-as you can see from my notes I wrote on the subjects in Bava Metzia we learned together.

Music for the glory of God

U2 D Flat Major  U2 in midi format  u2 nwc

רמב''ם הלכות גניבה פרק א' הלכה י''ד.

רמב''ם הלכות גניבה א' הלכה י''ד The רשב''ם holds in פרק השואל the גנב can pay back שווה כסף not just money, but rather anything that is worth money.

The proof of רב שך that the רמב''ם hold by the רשב''םis hard to understand.
His main point is the fact that the owner of the object can ask for the pieces back.
The point is that if the רמב''ם would be holding like רש''י and the רא''ש that the גנב must pay back unbroken vessels or money, then paying back the broken pieces does not fit with that. But the way I see it neither does it fit with the רשב''ם. If he can pay back any שווה כסף anything that is worth money, אhen what gives the owner the right to ask for those piece specifically?

That is one way or the other we need to find some reason the owner can ask for the pieces back. But what ever that reason is, it can not have anything to do with the argument between the Rashbam and Rashi and the Rosh.

רמב''ם הלכות גניבה פרק א' הלכה י''ד. הרשב''ם מחזיק בפרק השואל  שהגנב יכול להחזיר שווה כסף ולא רק כלים שלמים אלא כל דבר שהוא שווה כסף. ההוכחה של רב שך כי הרמב''ם מחזיק עם הרשב''ם קשה להבין. הנקודה העיקרית שלו היא העובדה כי הבעלים של האובייקט יכולים לבקש בחזרה את שברים. הנקודה היא שאם רמב''ם היה מחזיק כמו רש''י והרא''ש כי הגנב חייב להחזיר כלים שלמים או כסף, אז לשלם בחזרה את השברים לא מסתדר עם זה. אבל כמו שאני רואה את זה, זה אינו מתאים עם הרשב''ם. אם הוא יכול להחזיר כל דבר שווה כסף , מה שנותן לבעלים זכות לבקש את השברים דווקא.  דרך אחת או אחרת אנחנו צריכים למצוא סיבה שהבעלים יכולים לבקש בחזרה את החלקים. אבל מה שתהיה הסיבה, לא יכולה להיות עמה שום קשר עם הטיעון בין רשב"ם רש"י והרא"ש.

The State of Israel and the statement of Shmuel in the Talmud: The Law of the State is the law.

The law is quite simple is understand.  It is that men have  common goals which are the objects of their rational will, that the state is a contrivance that they have worked out to help them realize that end, and that its authority over them rests on its being necessary for that end.  If it is politically obligatory at times to obey a law that one regards as bad, that is because the state could not be run at all if the citizens could pick and choose which laws they would obey. Ultimately, therefore, political obligation, even that of obeying a morally bad law, is a moral obligation; and when, as occasionally happens, it becomes a duty to disobey, the ground is still the same.  I believe that this simple doctrine is what the Gemara and all the rishonim [medieval authorities] are saying. [Credit goes to Reb Moshe Feinstein and Reb Aaron Kotler who both pointed out the connection between the State of Israel the statement of  Shmuel in the Talmud.]


The religious world assumes if they were in charge then everything would be peachy. This is not true. I have never seen any situation in which religious people got involved in that they did not make it a thousand times worse. Whatever Torah they think they are keeping it is certainly not the Torah from the realm of Holiness.




Does it follow that since the state is a necessary means to our major ends, we should in all circumstances obey it, that we never have the right to rebel?  Not at all.  Our view would not only justify disobedience in some cases; it would require it.  If the state is regarded, not as sacrosanct or an end in itself, but as an instrument to certain great ends, then when it becomes so corrupt as to cut us off from those ends rather than further them, when it serves its purpose so badly that it is better to risk chaos for the sake of a better order than continue to suffer under the old, then resistance becomes a right and a duty.  

  This will be an extreme and desperate case, since it will obviously be better as a rule to obey what we regard as a bad law and try by persuasion to get it amended than to seek the overthrow of the power which supports all laws alike.  
  But there is no doubt that when government has ceased to serve its major ends, the people who have fashioned it to serve those ends have a right to replace it with something that serves these better. 

The argument between Dr. Kelley Ross [the Kant Fries school] and Hegel.

I admit I am profoundly disturbed by the argument between Dr. Kelley Ross [the Kant Fries school] and Hegel. [This argument is an inheritance from the differences between Hegel and Fries. Also there is the fact that the Marxists made extensive use (and still make extensive use) of Hegel though they reject more than they accept.]

It does not help much the fact that Hegel himself says on occasion outrageous things like his treatment of Newton.
My own feeling about this is that Both Hegel and the Kant Fries School have  a lot to say that is valuable and important.[This is like the difference between Plato and Aristotle. There also it is hard to decide.]

The truth be told is that if you would whittle down the argument to looking simply at the difference between the two systems--the differences would not be great and almost complementary.


The normal thing to do in this case would be to learn Kant and Hegel thoroughly, and yet I have time constraints that make this impractical today.


Both Hegel and Dr Ross are important for two reasons, rigorous logic and scope of vision.
Today philosophy has sunk into deep meaninglessness as Allan Bloom already noted in his Closing of the American Mind. You need a certain scope in philosophy because that is the very essence of what it is--to make sense of the world. But also you need logic and reason, because otherwise anyone can say anything that appeals to people. If one is not constrained by reason, then he can say anything, and the only limit is what people like to hear, not what is true.


The reason all this s important is that the defend Torah by means of the medieval books e.g. the Rambam and Saadia Gaon is difficult when the make use of axioms that no longer seem valid.

To actually defend Torah seems a lot easier by means of Kant and Kelley Ross.

Music for the Glory of God

U1 A Minor

The major source of evil is the refusal to leave a cult once one realizes its true nature.

סור מרע in Psalms it says to "go away from evil". Not the term you would expect  לא לעשות רע--not to do evil. The reason is  the main evil people do is because they refuse to leave some cult that they joined and now recognize as evil, but refuse to leave it. This is the constant temptation of all mankind. This is major source of  evil. The refusal to leave  a cult once one realizes its true nature.

This is easy to see in real life and also in the Rambam who says it is the nature of people to be drawn in their opinions after the people they associate with. See Howard Bloom in The Lucifer Principle  concerning the power of the super-organism.