I recall Allan Bloom [in the closing of the American Mind] brought the idea that the social studies departments and humanities at USA universities were mainly postmodern nonsense.

My basic feeling is to go through the basic ABC's from beginning to end. That is to have one session in the Written Law, one session in the Oral Law starting with the Mishna  and getting up to the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. Then one session in Physics and another in Math. Though the Rambam emphasize both Physics an Metaphysics I would hold off on Metaphysics until I had finished Shas and Physics.

The teachers of Postmodern stuff and PC and pseudo Torah I recommend shooting.



[In short the  major ideas about learning I want to introduce are these (1) דרך גירסה the path of just saying the words in order and then going on with no review until one has finished the book. (2) שיעורין כסדרן sessions in order. That is to have separate sessions  each day in all the major subjects. That is to learn them in order. (3) To learn the Written Law  (the Old Testament), whole Oral Law in order,  the two Talmuds and all the midrashim; Physics, Metaphysics ]

limits of knowledge

(1) What you can derive from Socrates  is that it is more important to know what you do not know than it is to know what you do know. There were plenty of people in Athens that knew how to work as a blacksmith and other professions. But they were not  aware of the limits of their knowledge.

The oracle had said about Socrates that he was the wisest and that meant he was the most wise because he knew that he knew nothing. That is to say that even when he went around in Athens talking with artisans that in fact knew their own professions very well, that did not add up against the fact that they were unaware of what they did not know. Therefore Socrates was wiser that all of them because of his awareness of not knowing anything except that one fact that he was ignorant of everything.

(2) This is one of the difficulties I discovered in yeshiva. Sometimes you could find someone who knew a little Talmud. But along with that knowledge came a kind of hubris  that: "Since we know  Talmud, therefore we know everything." Clearly that is a leap in logic that does not follow

(3) This comes up in Reb Nachman a few times. תכלית ידיעה שלא נדע: "The peak of knowledge is that we should not know." [It comes up in a chapter that is reputed to be from the ספר הנשרף the  book that had his deep lessons that he burnt because he thought the world was not ready for those higher lessons. ]

This also come up in השמטות the lessons that were left out but later included as an appendix. That is where he says all the מידות were מתפשטות until God limited them and that includes wisdom.

[4] In the way Buddhism is presented in the West [and Hinduism also] you get this impression that often people that teach it and learn it are unaware of what they do not know. They do talk about higher knowledge without actually being aware of what constitutes knowledge in the first place and what makes it different from opinion.  Nor does it seem to bother them that if there is no atman-no self then there is nothing that can become enlightened.



[5] I would like to mention Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in this context. Dr Kelley Ross holds that there is a third source of knowledge which is not sensory nor reason. Hegel holds that through a process of dialectics reason can cross the boundaries of reason.
 Though I left Kant for last, still I feel his approach to this whole issue is the best.

I was sick

Yesterday was the first day I actually walked (or limped) in 49 days. I am very grateful to God for sending me to the local hospital in Uman where there is a great doctor [Alexandr Sergevitch] and  a great nursing staff. After I broke my leg  and foot in three places,  I was offered a new apartment by a fellow Sasha and my son came from the USA to take care of me.
So God's mercies are great. However this all still leaves me wondering about what lessons were meant to be learned?



I mean to say-- that there is a principle brought in the Talmud: "אין יסורים בלי עוון" "There are no troubles without sin." So any kind of trouble I have is always with some kind of sin. Either some sin caused it, or that the sin simply took away some kind of Divine protection.
I might have seen this in the gemara Shabat itself or the Gates of Repentance by Rabbainu Yona. [In both places that statement of the sages is brought.] But I think I probably saw it in one of the books of Musar from the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter.

[I should mention I was sick in my stomach after being released [from the local hospital in Uman]  and went to the "hospital of the region" where also there was a great staff of doctors and nurses that helped me get better. In fact after taking the medicine they prescribed, the pain went away within about one or two minutes-and that was about the most excruciating pain I have every felt.


Clearly repentance as a concept is simple: to correct what one is doing that is not in accord with the Law of Moses. That is simply to keep the law of Moses. However what that actually means in practice is  not clear to me. What generally was done at the Mir yeshiva in NY was for people to emphasize  certain basic principles in the hope that that would help to come to keep the entire Torah. So in practice what almost everyone did was to emphasize not speaking lashon hara [i.e.not to speak evil about others] and to learn Torah. Those were clearly the two most important principles at the Mir. One could easily say in my case there is a  need to get back to these two things.

Divine simplicity

Divine simplicity.

The main point I wanted to bring up is that this is the reason I think the (Rambam) רמב''ם made it a point to emphasize that God has no מידות, character traits.
It has been known for some time that introducing ideas into the Mind of God violates Divine simplicity. But what I think the Rambam is doing is even suggesting that even introducing Divine traits violates Divine simplicity.
I think the letter of excommunication that the Gra signed also was intended to guard Divine Simplicity.
Divine simplicity means God is not a mixture of things. (He is not a composite.) Also it means: He has no characteristics that are associated with the physical world. He has no form, no matter, no substance, etc.

In Kings 18 it says the reason Israel was exiled was because they were not keeping the laws of Moses.

In terms of having a good  idea of what the actual Torah requires, the best thing is to learn the Mishna of R. Yehuda Hanasi. This is the book that contains the entire Oral Law. This has the advantage of being the actual Oral Law, and short and concise. It is simple and understandable.
Knowledge about what the Torah requires is needed in this generation since there are too many liars that claim to know this--and even expect to get paid for their false knowledge.

[In theory one could just go through the whole Talmud  but that is a big project. The Talmud itself was written as a commentary on the Mishna so it is best at first to get the basic structure of the Oral Law.]


There are books that gives to the layman basic knowledge of what the requirements of the Torah are. But in my view it is better to go to the original sources.

Some people like layman introductions, but I prefer to go to original sources. For some reason I have always been like this. Even when I was circa seven years old, I preferred learning a collage chemistry book rather than simple introductions to chemistry written for my age group. (My mother offered to buy a simple introduction but I asked her to buy the college chemistry instead.) But since I am not very smart I often go to secondary material after I have read the original sources.

But since original source material is often hard to understand what I do is to say the words in order and to just go on and not worry if I understood everything perfectly. This idea is brought in the Musar book אורחות צדיקים and Reb Nachman also goes into this in Sichot Haran 76.

Exchange of the commandments is a major problem nowadays. People often want to keep the Laws of Moses but then come along people that exchange their commandments with the commandments of the Torah--and then they claim their commandments are in fact what the Torah requires. So to have an idea of what the Torah actually requires is important so that you know what it does not require or even forbids. Mitzvot made up out of thin air is the major problem nowadays.

U-17mp3 G Major [U-17 in midi] [U-17 in nwc]

u-18mp3  [u-18 in midi]  [u-18 in nwc]

 U-20 A Major u-20 midi format  [u-20 in nwc format]

Psalms 92: For You have made me joyful Lord by your works, I will sing about the doings of you hands.

כי שמחתני ה' בפעליך במעשה ידיך ארנן For You have made me joyful Lord by your works, I  will sing about the doings of you hands.

From the standpoint of Maimonides, there is a close connection between learning Physics and Metaphysics with Love and Fear of God.

This has nothing to do with mental capacity, but rather it is simply considered more or less along the same lines as learning Torah.

This you can see is based on Saadia Gaon. Later the Rambam [Maimonides] and the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות  and the מעלות המידות pick up the same theme.

Clearly later on polemics against all secular learning were reactions to the Enlightenment. However some geonim and many other rishonim were against all forms of secular learning unless it is for the sake of a vocation, e.g. Rav Hai Gaon--the last gaon, and the Rashba and Ramban/Nachmanides.


So the issue is simply a מחלוקת ראשונים an argument among mediaeval authorities. And once you have come to realize that, then there is not a lot more to say. An argument among mediaeval authorities is simply one of those things that are un-decidable. They are (as Motti Freifeld [son of the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv] once told me) "אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים" "These and those are the words of the Living God." [That is  a quote from the Talmud about an argument between the sages of the Mishna.]


I should mention just as a side note that nowadays I generally go with the approach that Physics ad Metaphysics are important which is along the lines of the Rambam and my parents. However when I was in the Mir in NY and also in Israel I was going with the "Torah alone" approach.
One way to defend the Rambam approach is by the idea of the hidden Torah inside the work of creation.  That is a mystical concept from Reb Nachman but it does seem to be the way the Rambam is understanding this.
The way I personally do Physics nowadays is the way of  "not trying." That is I just say the words and go on. This is called דרך גירסה and for me it seems to work. This path of learning  is brought in the Gemara and the Musar book אורחות צדיקים


[I might mention the requirement of learning Torah along with this which to me means basically Gemara Rashi and Tosphot and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach which is the best thing in terms of "Lumdut." --deep learning. I might be doing more of that myself if I had any books.]