A cure for one's spirit and body.

Faith in the wise gives good advice for all human problems. Some wise men were expert in certain areas but not all areas. Other wise men were good in different areas. Therefore faith in all the wise gives good advice for all problems.

Why I bring this up is that it occurred to me concerning a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter, that is Isaac Blazer. In the beginning of his book אור ישראל (Light of Israel). Over there he brings the idea that learning Musar [Mediaeval Ethics] is a cure for one's spirit and body. [It is easy to miss this but if you look there you will see that is what he says.] (He brings the idea from Maimonides.)


Musar itself as a movement seems to have lost its momentum. Still the basic idea is sound --that the medieval sages had the best idea of what the actual requirements of Torah are.

The best idea today I think to get a good idea of what Torah requires from one is to learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and the books of the Gra and the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter like Navardok etc.

Closing of the American Mind

Philosophy has relevance for politics as noted by this article [Abbeville Institute]

There they are criticizing a South [Southern States] bashing book based on sloppy research and sloppy ideas about natural law.

Getting world view issues straight has seemed to me to be important for a long time, but academic philosophy I began to notice even while in high school was a dead end.--and as John Searle put it so well about 20th century philosophy "it is obviously false."[Both British and Continental.] Allan Bloom also noticed the same thing in his Closing of the American Mind.

[I think John Searle might have been referring to a good suggestion made by Frege to expand the category of a priori. That was a good idea, but sadly led to idiotic post modern philosophy.  Dr. Kelley Ross noticed this, and it might be what John Searle also is thinking. ]


In any case to be short I think the best thing in Philosophy is the Kant-Friesian school which I think in Germany is called "the Critical School" because of being based on Kant. [Leonard Nelson's books were apparently printed in Germany which is the beginning of the Kant Fries school]

But I have a lot of respect for Hegel also, and the Intuitionists like Dr Michael Huemer. To me each one seems to be making some great points.



My own feeling about Philosophy is the best idea is the suggestion of the Rambam to learn the Metaphysics of Aristotle and Plato and Plotinus. After that, I think Kant and Hegel are important.

In terms of how philosophy relates to politics, the best thing out there are the Federalist Papers by Madison and Hamilton and others. [They were written to convince NY to accept the USA Constitution.]


[The reason I think philosophy got to be so awful is that mainly idiots go into it and teach it. The best idea is of Allan Bloom. Simply throw out the social studies and humanities departments of  all universities.]

Torah with balance.

To me it occurred the thought that the path of my parents {Philip Rosten and Leila} is not that hard to define. One thing that I thought made it hard to define is that it was never expressed openly. But then I realized that there were certain well defined components of it.
It might be hard for me to defend each point, but still the essence was six major points.
(1) Math (2) Physics, (3) Music (4) straight Torah (Litvak) (5) an honest upright vocation (6) outdoor and survival skills.

The reason this was hard for me to realize is that generally they expressed approval of good  wholesome things, and disapproval of unwholesome stuff. There was almost never a "you must do" or "must not do such and such."


So to be brief how can I defend each point? Well to start out with Math and Physics. This was something they expressed great approval of in countless ways. But this approval was mainly directed towards me because of my inherent interest. So that aspect of my parents I think was not so much noticed by my brothers;---even though it definitely was very much present.
Music was important to a lesser degree. Even though our home was mainly Reform, still Torah was very important to my parents--the Oral and Written Law. The vocation aspect was something my brothers noticed more than I. The outdoor skills aspect was there, but again not discussed. It would take a longer essay to each with each point.

You could argue on each point because little was said openly. Rather it was just approval or disapproval. To give an example. My father sent my younger brother and me to the Boy Scouts and also always emphasized self reliance, and as a family we went up to the mountains often. Music and the violin was something my father did, but again only showed approval towards me because I  showed interest. His main career was as an inventor. That is the first night vision device, and much more  stuff plus laser communication for NASA satellites for SDI (more well known as "Star Wars"). So his interest in Math and Physics was quite present but not necessarily expressed openly.

[It goes without saying that family values and being a decent human being were the highest priorities but taught more by example than by words.]

[He had volunteered for the US Air Force and became a captain but did not pursue that as a career. ]

Rav Avraham Abulafia

Though I would not say anything about it without the authority of Rav Avraham Abulafia about Jesus after the fact it is possible to discuss the issue. For one thing the Gemara in Sanhedrin about the fact that God had come down from Heaven and became a physical body in order to give the king of Assyria a haircut.

We also find that saints and Jerusalem and angels are called by  the Name of God. [As is brought n Bava Batra פרק הספינהs  page 75 side B]

In any case, the Gra said that all the deep secrets of Torah are contained in the midrash [That is the non legal parts of Gemara and the actual midrah. That is Midrash Raba and  few other neglected books. The trouble seems to be that there is no place to put Midrash. It is not exactly Musar. Nor is it exactly Gemara.  One learning partner I had at the Mir found an elegant solution to this problem - he used to learn Midrash at night after the two regular day time sessions.

So it is possible to ask what is the meaning of the Midrash in Sanhedrin about G-d giving  the king or Assyria a haircut. The actual events are well known. The previous king of Assyria had already taken Israel, and then the capital city of Samaria. Then his successor took the cities of Judah, and then the King of Judah sent a bribe to him to "lay off". After that instead of laying off, he sent his armies to take Jerusalem. The attempt to take Jerusalem was unsuccessful to say the least. To me it is not clear where the King of Assyria was at the time. He might have joined his forces outside of Jerusalem or maybe not. In any case, he was occupied with a different war near a neighboring state. Then he went back to his capital city and there the incident the Gemara relates took place.  Apparently after two failed wars he was unpopular. He got a haircut to disguise himself. He then was killed by two of his children.

The whole issue of Jesus as understood by Rav Avraham Abulafia really is treated best in the books of Professor Idel at Hebrew University. In those books he concentrates of Rav Avraham Abulafia and gives him a thorough academic treatment--much better than what one could figure out on his own by reading Rav Abulafia. Though in my case it was reading the actual microfilms at HU in around 1992 to got me to see clearly what the approach of Rav Abulafia is. I should mention that even though people nowadays have not heard of him, he is quoted at length in שערי קדושה by רב חיים וויטל the major disciple of the Ari.

[I ought to mention I did not make a major study of Rav Abulafia myself, since at the time his books were published I already had started on other subjects. ]
The place I found his books was in Jerusalem but they might be already in NY.]

הכרת הטוב gratitude

You do see the idea of  הכרת הטוב gratitude coming up in a few places. And this was for me a kind of painful message since  after I got to my first real authentic Litvak yeshiva in NY Shar Yashuv, Rav Freifeld made it clear to me that he thought I did not have gratitude about how hard it was to make an authentic yeshiva. And that certainly was true. It did not occur to me until later how much effort it takes to create "the real thing."

In any case, one place this comes up is with Moses who did not want to hit the Nile River with his staff because it had once before [80 years before that] had saved his life. So when God told him to strike the river with his staff, he gave it instead to Aaron.

Later I saw this idea come up in Musar in the book "Obligations of the Heart" and in a few other places. In the חובות לבבות (Obligations of the Heart), Gratitude takes a central place as being the reason for many of the commandments.
[I saw the concept come up after that in places I forget. But clearly it is essential. It occurs to me now one place might have been the Shelah who I think mentions the reason Joseph did not tax the priests in Egypt because they had acquitted him of the crime he was accused of.]

[To actually learn good character traits {Musar} was not actually a part of the program in Shar Yashuv. It is not a Musar Yeshiva, but it is a Litvak Yeshiva. I only began to learn Musar at the Mir in NY. Still my impression is that to actually learn good traits depends more on things like the Boy Scouts and learning the value of team work and dependability in actions rather than in books.]

letter of excommunication that the Gra signed.

There is an argument to support the idea of being careful about the letter of excommunication that the Gra signed. That is the idea that is brought about a certain disciple of an Amora who heard some amazing claim by R. Yohanan [Bava Batra]. That disciple did not take them seriously until he actually saw the evidence. Then he came back and said over what he had seen. But it was clear that before he had seen he did not really believe. Thus he was considered "to be making fun of the words of the sages." [That disciple had seen angels carving pearls that were 30*30  yards. How great a level he must have been on to be able to see angels. Still his great level did not change  the facts.  ]

Thus even though one has seen evidence to show the Gra was right, that does not take him out of the category of making fun of the words of the Gra.

Nowadays however the Gra is universally ignored even when there is copious evidence to support him. That seems even worse than the event in the Gemara where that disciple believed R. Yohanan after he had seen the evidence..

[There s another argument that I have mentioned once before based on some of the commentaries that bring the idea that a excommunication gets its legal category from the concept of "oath." That is different than what is called a "Shavua". An oath "neder" is the concept that one can forbid his own property to himself or to others. See the beginning of Nedarim where this is explained in detail. So if an excommunication has legal validity then that makes it forbidden to ignore, even if one does not agree with it.]

בבא בתרא דף כ''ז ע''א תוספות

בבא בתרא דף כ''ז ע''א תוספות. The way תוספות explains עולא is this. If you have a circle with radius 16 and wrap a string around it for .66  אמות, you get the length of the inner חוט to be רדיוס הפנימי times שש.  The length of the outer circle רדיוס החיצוני times שש
So then if you flatten out the area between the inner and outer circle, you get a מלבן  with a triangle at the top. The area of a triangle is חצי base times height. That brings up from the 768 square אמות of עולא up until the 833.3 of the משנה. The difference is 65. Does all that work? What would be the regular way of figuring it out? You would take the area of the large circle minus the area of the small circle. Does that come out the same as תוספות? There is a slight discrepancy. But  תוספות is making an approximation.

בבא בתרא דף כ''ז ע''א תוספות. דרך שהתוספות מסביר עולא היא זו. אם יש לך מעגל עם רדיוס 16 ועוטף את חוט סביבו  עבור 0.66 אמות, אתה מקבל את האורך חוט הפנימי להיות רדיוס מעגל הפנימי פעמים שש. אורך החוט על מעגל החיצוני הוא רדיוס החיצוני פעמים שש. אז אם אתה לוקח את השטח בין המעגל הפנימי והחיצוני, אתה מקבל מלבן עם משולש בראש. השטח של המשולש הוא חצי של הבסיס פעמים הגובה. זה מעלה מ 768 האמות המרובעות של עולא עד 833.3 של המשנה. ההבדל הוא 65 בערך. האם כל זה עובד? מה תהיה הדרך הרגילה? היית לוקח את השטח של המעגל הגדול מינוס שטח המעגל הקטן. האם זה יוצא כמו תוספות? יש פער קל. אבל תוספות הוא עושה קירוב.