Tthe good Samaritan story

Sometimes I find the good Samaritan story to seem to have affected people.
When I have been in trouble, for some odd reason I find people with a basic Christian point of view willing to help me.  That seems often to me to be in stark contrast to the general apathy or even downright malevolence of people of other faiths (or people of no faith).

For example today I was cold. I had been in a cold river and my clothing was wet. I was on my way home, but at some point I realized my body temperature was going dangerously low. I was beginning to wonder if i could make it back. Out of the blue a car [husband and wife] stopped by to pick me up and take me home even though they had thought I was homeless and they might have to put me up in their own home.

I have found this attitude to be fairly common in the Christian world. A willingness to help. The contrast to people of other faiths could hardly be more pronounced -- they often do as much damage to me as they can while trying to be careful not to get in trouble with the law.


[Other events like this were in Uman on Rosh Hashanah when I was sick--maybe from the strain of travelling. The room mate I had for those few days simply ignored me though I was burning up with fever and could not move , while the owners of the apartment saw I was sick and brought to me food and medicine.

Other events were with a fellow in Kiev that dropped his affairs for a month to help me get my papers together to I could go to the USA. Recently also I was in the hospital in Uman where they treated me for free, and only to help get better materials for the operation did they ask for a a small amount.

What I am trying to say is that this does not seem to me to be normal human reaction that generally consists of malice. There is something about the Good Samaritan story and the Golden Rule that seems to have sunk deeply into Christian consciousness.

[This type of thing was noticed by the Ran of Breslov in the last lesson he gave on Rosh Hashanah [Vol II:8.] There he mentions this fact that מעט הרחמנות הנשארת אצלינו היא בחינת אכזריות. I forget the context but the idea is that because of some reason: "the little bit of compassion that is left by us is in essence cruelty." So you really have a hard time  finding compassion when you need it. I do not have his book to look this up.]

[There are some essays from Bryan Caplan and Steven Dutch which deal with similar issues.]

Bryan Caplan has his essays contra-Christianity on his site along with a rebuttal that I could not down load.
In any case if it would just be my own personal experience that would not say much but I do have at least the Ari and Rav Abulafia. [To see this in the Ari you have to see what he says about the very end of the Book of Genesis.]  Rav Abulafia's opinion means a lot to me but on the same hand he does consider Christianity itself highly negative. It is well known he went to debate the pope.

But to get a clear idea of Rav Abulafia it is helpful to read the Gra's Voice of the Dove קול התור and also the book of Rav Luzatto "The New Corrections" תיקונים חדשים.--That is if this at all interests you. As for myself I have grown weary of these kinds of topics. The book of the Rav Luzatto is not well known. He is more famous for his book the מסילת ישרים but his other more mystical writings shed some light on this subject.


Some sent to me the actual quote from the Ran of Breslov:

Things involved with religion. The problem seems to be that positive value can all too easily turn into negative value, and that seems to be what has happened on a vast scale.

They do not tend to lead towards a more sincere heart.

In any case things involved with religion make me nervous. I think it is best if we do not discuss them. Ayn Rand and Kant are different, but  other issues--even with M. Idel and Abulafia make me upset and nervous. They do not tend to make me happy nor help me be closer to God. If we can just drop it, all the better.
  I can manage to learn Gemara and try to keep the Law of Moses (in private), but besides that of what is involved in religion nowadays just makes me upset and nervous.
The whole thing just got  to be in bad taste.
  [The problem seems to be that positive value can all too easily turn into negative value, and that seems to be what has happened on a vast scale.]
So the approach of my parents to find positive value in Torah but not to make a parade out of it seems best to me. 

music files u56 u57

U-56 A Flat Major  U-57 D Major

Kant-Fries School

 I really have to say that the Kant-Fries School makes the most sense to me. [That is what is called in Germany the Critical school.] That means more or less Leonard Nelson who kind of revived the whole thing and then Dr Kelley Ross.

There are some good reasons for this. One is the the best second seems to be Hegel, but Hegel seems to have enough problems to make his approach not really as good as the Kant/Fries one.
 It is not just the maddening maze of words--which is a challenge. But rather, outside of certain basic insights, he does not seem to have a lot to offer, even after you get by the challenge  of  his writing style. [It is like reading a book of free associations].

Another second best seems to be the intuitionists like G.E. Moore and Dr. Michael Huemer. But there also there seem to be enough problems as Danny Frederick noted.

It is not to say that there is nothing to learn from Hegel or Huemer. But rather it seems if one is going to spend the time and effort, it might as well be on the best thing available.

Of course you might want to avoid all the issues by going back to the Middle Ages. But that also does not seem like much of an option. Too many axioms that just do not seem right. [It is almost medieval you might say.] Even though almost all scholastics were amazingly rigorous about what they derive from their axioms. The problems with later philosophers are the opposite,-- often nice sounding axioms, but amazingly sloppy logic about what they would derive from them. 

It might make some sense to write an essay about this all, but it would just be covering ground that has already been worked on.

I really think that if you do your own work, you will have to agree that that Kant-Fries School is about the best thing out there.

[The reason in Germany the Kant Fries approach is called Critical  is based on Kant's idea that there is a limit to how far Pure Reason can go. ["Critique" means "limit".] His answer was however unsatisfactory. He put objective knowledge into the subject. So you can see the problem with that. The Kant Fries answer is non intuitive immediate knowledge. A kind of knowledge than does not depend on reason, nor sense perception. The best idea to see what this means is to see Dr Kelley Ross's Phd Thesis and the books of Leonard Nelson.]
[One thing Dr Ross noted in his PhD thesis is that Kant requires causality among dinge an sich things in themselves and to me that seems to be fine since interaction with its environment causes a collapse of the wave function to just one state.]

IDF (Israeli Defense Force)

I think there are at least three good proofs in the Old Testament that show it is important to serve in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force).

One is well known already in the Book of Numbers אחיכם יעלו למלחמה ואתם תשבו פה.
["You will sit here while your brothers go up to war?"]

Another is the other less known events surrounding the פילגש בגבעה.
The third are the even less known events concerning Ezra and the building of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.

The major point I wanted to bring out today is about the פילגש בגבעה. The Concubine of Giveah.
There the Tribes of Israel were upset that the tribe of Benjamin had sat by quietly while a terrible crime had been committed. The tribe of Benjamin said "It is not our business. It is not our affair."
The other tribes said, "We will make it your business." At that point in time the grandson of Aaron was around;-- Pinhas. And he asked consul from God directly by means of the Urim and Tumim and received an answer to go to war against Benjamin. One city (יבש בגלעד) did not go up to war. They also said it is not our affair. So after the war with Benjamin was over the tribes went to war with that city and wiped them out.

The same idea that came up in Numbers is here again. To sit by while everyone else has to go to war is not an acceptable course of action.

As was noted by Shimon Buso that when missiles were raining down on the north of Israel, everyone fled south. No one said their learning Torah would protect them.


The other thing is the fact that a lot of people were against the return of Israel to build Jerusalem and the Second Temple. This is gone into in great detail in the Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah.
The book of Nehemiah has a major theme about the wicked people that tried to stop Ezra and Nehemiah from rebuilding Jerusalem.]




[There are problems today that remind me of the problems that Ezra had. Sefardim often make it their most essential business to get rid of Ashkenazic people--especially in Jerusalem. That is just one example. There are many kinds in Israel that make it their business to get rid of anyone not like their own social group. Sometimes this might even be justified. Still, this is  a factor to consider. Aliya to Israel without taking into account this tremendous animosity is ignoring a factor that might come to one's attention later.]
However my first time in Israel was quite amazing. If you can find a good group, then it is probably a good idea. Probably the best idea is to go to Tel Aviv.

group-think

The power of "group-think" is so powerful that often one can get mixed up whether his own thoughts and attitudes are actually his or her own or from the group. The Spartans were well aware of this when they developed their system of keeping the boys and adolescents away from their family and rather had them hanging out with each other in order to develop the kind of group solidarity needed for the kind of warriors they needed to sustain their system.
[In warfare, the whole strength of the Spartan system was the group locking shields together.]


After all how much of your own attitudes do you really think you came up with all on your own?

[The best idea then is to choose carefully with whom you want to hang out with.]

Bava Batra page 75

There are ways to argue for Christianity. One way is from Bava Batra page 75 from a statement of the Gemara that in the future saints will be called by the name of God. Then the next statement is that they are already called by the name of God. And R. Gershom says they are called the absolute name of God.  The first  idea come from a verse in Isaiah 43. The Gemara only quotes the verse itself but to see why the verse means that you have to go to the whole paragraph and get the context.

This is not to say that everything Christians say is right. Rather the automatic dismissal of everything they say is not in accord with Torah. They have some good and important points.

The events of the barber that gave Sanheriv, the king of Assyria, a haircut. The Gemara in Sanhedrin that was G-d coming down in a physical body. The Gemara itself says that if not for the open implication of the verses it would be impossible to say this.


The other most obvious aspect of this is of course Avraham Abulafia, the famous mystic. [Quoted in the last volume of שערי קדושה  and also brought in the Remak.]  [Professor M Idel has made a lot of books surrounding Rav Avraham Abulafia and it is worth while to pick up and read his essays. ] [The Ari also has at least one hint to what Rav Abulafia was saying.]