Bava Batra 92a

It does not seem like a big deal because the questions of Rav Akiva Eiger are often only to one opinion.  In any case in Bava Batra 92a he asks a question on the Rashbam.
That Rashbam in itself is of great interest but just to be short he brings the idea that if a bull gored a cow and the calf is found next to it the law is to divide the amount of the cow and calf in half.-That is like Sumhus. The Rashbam says that is even if either one is sure and the other in doubt.
Rav Akiva Eiger asks that if the one that is is possession of the money is sure then even Sumhus agrees המוציא מחבירו עליו הראיה as it says in the Mishna in Bava Metzia 97 השואל אומר שכורה מתה והמשאיל אומר איני יודע פטור.
The Gemara  says there is a debate. One person says ברי ושמא ברי עדיף. The other person says the Mishna is a case of עסק שבועה ביניהם.
So the Rashbam is talking according to the opinion עסק שבועה ביניהם.

(I noticed this aspect of Rav Akiva Eiger at the Mir in NY. There was some question of his somewhere in Shabat and I noticed an opinion somewhere that would have answered it.)

Tikun HaKlali [general correction]

I tend to believe that the Ran from Breslov was right about the Tikun HaKlali [general correction] mainly because it makes sense to me in itself. Plus this was an area he gave a lot of time and thought and effort towards. If you look at writings of Isaac Luria and previous writers you can see that sexual sin is significant and requires some kind of repentance. But the general ways of going about it seem either impossible or difficult.
Also I tend to give confidence in people that are experts in their fields.--So when Reb Nahman says something that clearly he spent a great deal of effort on, I tend to trust him.

The basic idea is that in the Torah there are different levels of sexual sin. The most famous ones are in Leviticus called the עריות forbidden relations. Some of those get the death penalty and some are merely lashes, but they all get כרת {what the Torah calls being cut off from ones people which more or less means being cut off from one's portion in the next world.} [You can go through the list if you want, but right now I would rather continue my train of thought. Homosexual relations are included in this most severe category.]
After the עריות [forbidden relations] there are other things that are לאווין simple prohibitions from the Torah. Off hand I would say a Kohen with a divorced woman is one example. But there are many other examples.
The aspect and insight that Reb Nahman brings to this is in his Magnum Opus Vol I:29 that שמירת הברית (sexual purity) is the key.
Since "spilling seed in vain" comes under the category of sexual sin, he spent time and effort to find some correction and came up with two things. First to go to a natural body of water like a river that same day. Next is to say ten psalms 16,32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90,105 137 150. [And to intend the Divine Names אלף למד אלף למד הי יוד מם.]


While  I am not expert in Rav Isaac Luria, I would have to say that this idea of the Ran from Breslov makes a lot of sense based on what I do know. The עשרה מיני נגינה [ten types of song] are certainly brought up in the Tikunei HaZohar. The whole thing seems well based on the Ari and the Zohar.
[The actual things Rav Isaac Luria says to do are fasting and certain unifications. Unifications to me seems to work only if the "electric current" is running. If one is disconnected with the Divine light, then they simply do nothing. So Reb Nahman's idea makes a lot of sense.]

The סטרא אחרא [Realm of Darkness] has the ability to give people true spiritual powers to enable them afterwards to trick them.

The events surrounding the fall of King Ahab [the King of Israel] are  not well known. The basic thing was he was together with Yehoshaphat (King of Judah) and all the prophets were telling him to go up to retake Ramot HaGilead.
  Yehoshaphat asked him, "Is there no true prophet here to tell us the word of God?" They brought Mihayu.

  He said, "I saw the Lord sitting on his throne asking, 'Who will go and trick Ahab?' A lying spirit came forth and said 'I will.'

The Lord asked him 'How?' He said 'I will be  a lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets.'[Ahab then in fact went to war and fell in battle.]

To me this seems to be a warning about the problem when some people get some things right and that lends to them credibility. So then they have the ability to cause people to fall later because of their initial credibility.

The סטרא אחרא [Realm of Darkness] has the ability to give people true spiritual powers to enable them afterwards to trick them. [In Lithuanian Yeshivas this kind of phenomenon is well understood and thus people there are more careful.]

[It should be noted that the actual sin involved was not idolatry but rather the fact that Ahab had murdered someone Navot and taken his field-even though it was done according to the laws of the Torah. Two witnesses came and testified that Navot had cursed. That is something there is a death penalty for. At any rate, what I want to point out is בין אדם לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man were the reason Ahab was killed. This goes along with Rav Israel Salanter who did make a point of the aspect of Torah that is between man and one's fellow man. You can see this in particular in the books of Musar of his disciples like Navardok and the אור צפון. [This last one I do not know if it is in print anymore.]]

What I am trying to get to is this: the actual falling at Ramot Gilead was the result of an original sin. That is a first sin that caused Ahab later to be able to be fooled by the lying spirit. This is the issue: to identify one's first sin that caused all the later problems. For the bed one makes that is the bed he sleeps in. Everything goes by the original pattern that one chooses--the original set of rules one decides to go with. If you get that wrong, then you  have no one to blame for subsequent problems.

In other words real, authentic attachment with God is only on a personal private level.

The Ran from Breslov is the only one who warned against false teachers of Torah on a huge scale.

This type of warning you can see in the Talmud itself and also in the Rishonim . But nothing like the force that the Ran from Breslov brings to this issue.

Why this is important is that good intended people can easily be fooled.

This is one good reason to  attend  Reform Temples only-- because that is the only safe way to avoid this problem.  There are other very good reasons to attend Reform Temples --for example the emphasis on balance and the awareness that a good deal of Torah is all about good traits.

The end result of all this is the longing for God and the ultimate meaning of life really has to be personal and at home or in the forest--another point that the Ran himself emphasized.

I should mention that I was very inspired to walk on this path of the Ran [Nahman from Breslov]  and felt great attachment to God while on that path for the few years I was in Safed.
[That is the path of personal prayer towards God while alone in a forest or some other lonely spot.]

In other words real, authentic attachment with God is only on a personal private level.

Is carrying something in one's pocket is considered carrying on the Sabbath?

To me it is not clear that carrying something in one's pocket is considered carrying on the Sabbath Day. In laws about acquisition this issue comes up.  The basic question is if the vessels of a buyer acquire in the domain of a seller. The law comes out that they do acquire in any place the buyer has permission to put his vessels.

The Rashbam over there in Bava Batra says the question is if an object in a vessel is considered to be in the vessel or the domain.

What I mean to say is that it is considered in general simple that e.g. a key in a pocket is not thought to be nullified to the pocket in terms of carrying and in tractate Shabat itself there does not seem to be anything to indicate whether this is so;  one way or the other. But in laws of acquisition in Bava Batra 85 this  comes up.
Now what is a public domain itself is a debate. The Rif, Rambam hold you do not need 600,000 people walking through it every day. Rashi and Tosphot hold you do. So to me it seems putting Rashi and Tosphot together with the above idea that an object in a  pocket is thought to be in the pocket, not in the domain, then there comes out a permission to carry something in one's pocket, but not to take it in one's hand until one reaches a private domain.


What I find is that it is curious that the Gemara does not deal with carrying in a pocket on the Sabbath at all, and yet when it comes to the issue of acquisition it goes into great detail.

If you would hold a direct connection between acquisition and Shabat, then in fact carrying in a pocket would not be allowed because a bag does not acquire in a public domain. But a pocket might very well be better than a bag. The case of the man that throws a divorce into the bag of his wife shows that a pocket that is connected with one's body is different that a bag one is holding.
[The  Mishna says she is divorced but the Gemara puts a few conditions like that the bag has to be connected with her. Incidentally the Rashbam on page 85 in Bava Batra does mention this question in terms of acquisition-- whether the thing in the vessel is thought to be in the vessel or in the larger domain. Putting that together with what the sages say about throwing the divorce into the bag of the wife to me seems to indicate that a pocket in thought part of the person -not the domain. [That is Rav Yehuda in the name of Shmuel, and others.]





[The nice thing about carrying in one's pocket is that a public domain is probably like the Rif and Rambam --just a public street  that is 16 yards wide. Rome was the largest city the ancient world had ever seen and it was a million strong. To imagine the cities of Sura and Pumbadita in Persia were more than 600,000 on public streets every day is just not likely. And the way the people in the Talmud deal with a public domain in Persia is very simple--as if a public domain is common place even in Persia.
[Besides that, a large city is impossible without running water. No city in Persia had anything like an aqueduct of the Romans nor did they have the know-how or type of concrete the Romans had. [The Romans had a special type of concrete mixed with volcanic ash that was much stronger ] Therefore there simply were no large cities like Rome in Persia. Period. At best they would have had to be spread out villages.





The thing to be careful about is not to take anything out of the pocket as long as one is walking outside unless he stands still. Also carrying from a public domain to a private one is forbidden.

connection to a thermal bath can cause a collapse of the wave function

I really do not know if it makes any difference to the Kelley Ross Kant-Friesian system the fact that connection to a thermal bath can cause a collapse of the wave function of an electron even before it is observed. This is a well known phenomenon and is known as coherence lifetime.

The Kant/Fries system depends on questions on Kant that result n the necessity of non intuitive immediate knowledge. One of those questions is the fact that Kant has causality among dinge an sich things in themselves, even before the observer is introduced.


The nice thing about the Kant/Fries system is faith. Knowledge that is not based on logic nor on sense perception. Plus that a lot of the arguments of Michael Huemer and the whole intuitionist school tend to fit in to the Kant Fries system even better than they do with intuintionism. For the intuinionists stake a lot of how things seem before reasoning. But seeming in senses is not the same as seeming to the mind. Thus what Huemer really is arguing for is non intuitive immediate knowledge.

[If you would extract from Hegel all the extraneous things and just leave the good insights and do the same with the intuitionists like G.E. Moore and Huemer, I think you would end up with a system that more or less would correspond with the Kant Fries system.

This is similar to what Dr Huemer himself does with alternative systems. He tends to reduce them to their essential details and then argue against them--which is a perfectly nice approach. Getting through the maze of extraneous words to the basic essence. But then you could do the same with the intuitionists and the Kant Fries School and say they are really in essence the same.

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: