Litvak yeshivas on השקפה world view issues

There is little or no emphasis in Litvak yeshivas on השקפה world view issues. The accepted approach is  simple: whatever the Torah says, that is what we believe.
The emphasis is on learning Torah. This goes along well with the idea expressed in Bava Batra ברא יצר הרע ברא תורה תבלין.[God created the Evil Inclination but he also created Torah as a cure for it.] As R.Gershom explains there. Everyone has an opportunity to be delivered from the hands of the evil inclination. ילמד תורה ויהיה צדיק Learn Torah and you will be a righteous person.


[My own interest in world view issues is mainly personal. I realize not a lot of people share this interest with me. Still it seems important to get it right.]

 The basic Mir Yeshiva approach "Learn Torah" seems a lot more important to me than world view issues. Just for clarity I should add "Learning Torah" means basically to take one tracatate of Gemara and to do to thoroughly for about a year with every single Tosphot. The "later on" people like the Pnei Yehoshua and Maharsha also seem very important to me even though neither one is emphasized in yeshivas. [I do not want to give the idea that I understood the Maharsha or Pnei Yehoshua. I would try to review the particular paragraph each about ten times  or more and still only get a vague idea of what they meant.]

The Gemara is not "Politically Correct".

To say in the Gemara Bava Batra pg 14b that "Moses wrote his book and the section on Bilaam and the Book of Job," seems to imply that he did not write the rest. This is just one example of many things I noticed in the Gemara and Rishonim that are not sensitive to people's sensibilities. The Gemara is not "Politically Correct".

The Rambam's high recommendation of Aristotle also is  not PC [politically correct].  It seems to fly in the face of the Gemara itself.

Natural Law and Natural Rights

I did not realize that Dr Kelley Ross had written a letter to the NY Post about an article attacking the Second Amendment. I did not even know he reads the NY Post -- being a Californian like myself.

And there also he brings this idea of John Locke about "natural rights"that do not depend on the will of the Majority. Natural rights is mostly traced to Aquinas who deals with "natural law" in great detail and at great length. But the idea natural  law was also brought  by Saadia Gaon in his Doctrines and Views אמונות ודעות and the Rambam in the Guide.

[The view of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson I think is that the state is created to secure natural rights and that one gives up no rights in order to live within a state. I had seen once a different view -that one gives up certain rights to live in a state  but later I noticed that that view does not appear in the Two Treaties on Government. Also in Dr Kelley Ross's treatment of natural rights, it also doe not appear. And  would have to say that in the Declaration of Independence the view is that the entire purpose of a state is to secure natural rights. So I think that in no sense is the existence of  the state thought to conflict with natural rights.]
The obvious question then is to trace this all back to Saadia Gaon and the Rambam {Maimonides}. Natural Law they both have and natural rights is simply a statement of the laws of Torah as applied. [That is "Thou Shalt not Steal" etc. Meaning one has a right to his own possessions. But what about a state?]


In term of a state I think it is clear that the Rambam holds from a consequence theory--that is you need a state because  no human good is possible without it. As he explains in the Guide, that many laws of the Torah are for the sake of peace of the state.
[As for the kind of government, it seems to me that the Torah requires a king only when the people ask for a king. Look at the actual verse. And that in itself explains why Samuel the prophet was upset with Israel for asking for a king.]

Should there be any such thing as a yeshiva? That is an independent institution--not just a local lace where people gather together to learn Torah or pray. This question was asked of the Gra by Reb Haim of Voloshin. It is unclear if the Gra ever gave any answer.

Clearly people would gather in a local building to learn Torah. But that was never an institution. People would simply learn Torah wherever it was convenient. The whole idea of an institution that you give money to certainly not in the Gemara.




This is related to the question should there be a state. Even if the answer is yes that does not mean that any state is legitimate and only acts within its legitimate range of powers. In fact the likelihood is that even a legitimate state will deteriorate into one that is not legitimate because of the kinds of people that desire power.

At one time during my life I would have answered the question with a booming "YES!" if by a yeshiva one meant a Lithuanian kind of place like Shar Yashuv or the Mir in NY. Today as you can guess my answer is far from affirmative because of the exact same reason why even legitimate states deteriorate. It is the people that are the problem, not the institution.

The Rif learned in fact in something that is almost the exact equivalent of a modern day Litvak yeshiva. It was not connected with the community, but rather was a private institution owned by a particular person.

In any case, the situation today seems to be that most so called yeshivas are private country clubs that one ought to run away from because of the fraud and scams. That is unless we would be discussing the Mir in NY or Ponoviz in Bnei Brak.

U-76 B Flat Major

To get the big picture in the Talmud.

I imagine the best way to do Shas [Talmud] the first time is the way I was learning at the Mir --that is with the Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua. The reason I say this that the first time through Shas I think it is very difficult to have any idea of what the "Lumdus" (note 1) of Rav Shach and Reb Haim Soloveitchik is all about. That is my suggestion. This is not the general way people do it. Most people just spend the morning preparing for the rosh yehiva's class at 12:00 P.M.. Then in the afternoon, to just plow through as many pages  as they can with Tosphot.

It is hard to explain why I think these basic אחרונים [later commentaries] are important. You might say -it is to get the big picture before you get bogged down in the details.



So the Maharsha and the Pnei Yehoshua are perfect for that. You get an idea of the basic issues in Tosphot and the Gemara, but you do not have to spend a whole month on one Tosphot if you had been doing it with the Avi Ezri (note 2) and Reb Haim.
It is like a middle ground of Lumdus,--not too much, and not too little. But just right.
[If you are doing something that does not have the Pnei Yehoshua on it, you should probably change venue. But in any case, most things have something along the lines of the Pnei Yehoshua--like the ערוך לנר or the new edition of  R. Akiva Eiger arranged in the order of Shas..]


(note 1) Lumdus means learning in depth and great detail.
(note 2) Rav Shach's book. It is arranged according to the order of the Rambam like Reb Haim's book the חידושי הרמב''ם

My learning partner emphasized diet  to me --especially fresh vegetables some time ago. After that I started having raw beets and black bread in the morning. But he never took kindly to the idea of exercise. [Though in theory he agrees with exercise because of the Rambam in הלכות דעות]

On the other hand there is one fellow -that sends his whole day in the gym. The older he gets, the more exercise he does.

Both approaches I think ought to be combined.
One thing I did notice, however. The idea of waiting between exercise sessions a full day that I heard from my learning partner does not seem valid. Rather, I think what ever amount of exercise one does ought to be be done every day.

Exercise for some reason in high school revolved around several focal points. Running around the track 4 times [one mile] and sit-ups, push-ups. For some reason squatting and standing was never a part of it. [Squats I think were part of Physical Education in Russia, but not in California.]


I once discussed with the P.E. instructor his views on physical fitness. He said some PE instructors imagine that what they teach in high school, the kids will continue later.  He said that is not his view. His view rather was to get his students as physically fit as possible while in high school and then just hope that later they will continue. [This conversation took place when I was a senior so I might have told him that I was going to Shar Yashuv Yeshiva in NY which meant --not a lot of physical education.] In any case, that four times around the track was done every single day (except weekends) for the entire four years of high school.