King David was being run out of town by his son.

King David was being run out of town by his son. He left Jerusalem with his closest men including Yoav ben Zeruia. Shimi ben Gera came to curse David and to throw dirt at him. So one of David's men said to David "Why should this dog curse the king? let me go and put a sword into him."

It is famous that King David said to him ''No. Let him curse because God told him 'Go and curse David.'" [Samuel II 16:10]

The sages say at that moment King David became the forth foundation of the Divine Chariot.

The thing I noticed was that that was not the first thing that king David had said. The first thing was "Let him curse because after all it makes no difference. It is not as if God told him go and curse David." But then in the middle of that thought it occurred to David that in fact that is exactly what had happened. "God told him to curse David."
That is: at that moment he changed his mind from, "It is not as if God told him to curse me" to "Yes in fact God told him to curse me."

From this event the Hafez Haim learns that one ought to be patient and accepting when people complain about you.

For all English speaking people out there--I have to apologize because I think you really can not see this in the English translation. It is rather in the Hebrew that you see David changing his mind in mid sentence.

המשנה בתרומה

What happens if one takes less that 1/50 of Truma? [Truma is the part of crops of wheat that goes to the priest]. Or less than 1/10 of Maasar? [Maasar is the 1/10 that goes to the levi from wheat or other kinds of  grain and olives and grapes.]
The Mishna says המפריש מקצת תו''ם מוציא ממנו תרומה עליו אבל לא למקום אחר ר' מאיר מוסיף אפילו למקום אחר.
One who separates a little bit of truma and maasar takes truma from it but not for another place.



The Rambam says two things about this that look contradictory. He says in law 6 that it is truma. Then in law 7 he says one needs to separate truma from it [from the little bit he separated].
Rav Shach brings this down in his Avi Ezri and he explains it somewhat along the lines of the R. Shimshon.
I think that the way the Rambam must have been looking at this is that from the Torah one grain exempts the entire wheat stack.  So the entire wheat stack is considered to no longer have truma in it. But the little he took needs itself to be fixed because there is an obligation from the words of the scribes to take at least 1/50.

This is just one small thought I had about this. But there are still a lot of issues.
The main idea I am thinking is that the sages hold אין ברירה and if they would apply that to the whole wheat stack then it would be not fixable. So they did not what the press the point about the whole whet stack.


In any case R. Shimshon brings the Yerushalmi that that whole mishna is referring to a case when the owner is intending to separate the entire amount afterwards.
הר''ש (רבינו שמשון) מביא את הירושלמי שקובע שהמשנה בתרומה בפרק הרביעי היא מקרה שבכוונתו להפריד יותר. הר''ש כותב כשהוא אינו מתכוון להפריד יותר, החלק שהוא הפריד הוא טבל ואינו משתייך לקטגוריה של תרומה בכלל.



) מסכת תרומה פרק ד'. המשנה בתרומה כותבת, המפריש מקצת תרומות ומעשרות מוציא ממנו תרומה עליו אבל לא למקום אחר. לפי ר' מאיר אף מוציא ממנו תרומה על מקום אחר. הרמב''ם ה' תרומות פרק ג' ה''ו  כתב אם הוא מפריד 1/61 מה שהוא הפריד הוא תרומה, ואז הוא הולך לקחת את הסכום הנותר כי הוא צריך להשלים את האחוז הנכון [שני אחוזים, היינו אחת חלקי חמישים].  ובהלכה ז' כאשר אחד מפריד כמות חלקית של התרומה הוא צריך לקחת תרומה ממנה, מן התבואה שהיא מופרדת. אם משנה הזאת רק היתה מדברת על מעשר הכל יהיה פשוט. ואם היא רק היתה מדברת על תרומה, הכל יהיה גם פשוט. מה שמקשה עלי להבין את זו הוא העובדה שהיא מכניסה את שניהם יחד. נניח שדיברנו רק על מעשר. ובמקום שהוא היה צריך להפריד עשירית אחת, הוא הפריד אחד חלקי עשרים. ויש לנו העיקרון אין ברירה [לדעת החכמים]. העיקרון הזה קובע למשל אם שני בנים של עובד אלילים יורשים את עושרו. אבל בן אחד הפך לגר. אם הדין הוא שיש ברירה, אז הוא יכול להגיד לבן השני, "אתה יכול לקחת את האלילים, ואני אקח את הנכס הנשאר." ועל ידי זה היה מתגלה כי גם בהתחלה, האלילים נפלו לחלק של הבן  העובד אלילים והגר יכול לקחת חלק שלו. אבל אם אין ברירה לאחור [שזאת דעת ר' מאיר], אז הוא לא יכול לעשות זאת. הוא יצטרך לקחת חלק שווה עם הבן השני, ואז האלילים הנופלים לחלק שלו הוא יצטרך להרוס. כך גם במקרה שלנו. אם סוברים שיש ברירה, אז זה יהיה פשוט לומר שהוא לוקח עוד אחד חלקי  עשרים, ואת ערימת הדגן הוא מתוקנת. אם אין ברירה אז ברור כי ערימת התבואה מעורבבת עם טבל וחולין. ולא תהיה שום דרך פיזית לתקן אותה אם רק דיברנו על תרומה, אז גם יהיה ברור לגמרי. החוק של התורה הוא חיטה אחת פוטרת כל הכרי. (אפילו גרגר אחד מתקן את הערימה כולה .נראה לי שכוונת הרמב''ם היא זאת. שני ההלכות הן ומן השיעור שמחוייב מדברי סופרים (אחת חלקי חמישים) אבל מן התורה חיטה אחת פוטרת את כל הערימה. ולכן מה שלקח הוא תרומה אבל מדרבנן הוא מחוייב להפריש תרומה על מה שלקח (האחת חלקי ששים אחת). היינו מדרבנן הפרשה של תרומה פחות מן השיעור המחוייב היא דומה להפרשה של מעשר פחות מן השיעור המחוייב. וזה בגלל אין תורמים תרומות ומעשרות לחצאין. היינו שההפרשה אינו חלה בכלל. [במעשר זה דאורייתא ובתרומה זה דרבנן.] וזה אינו תלוי בדין אין ברירה שאם היה תלוי בזה אז אין שום עיצה שהייתה מועילה לתרומה בגלל ש חולין וטבל היו מעורבים בערימה.



I am not anywhere near to any idea how to deal with the approach of R. Shimshon right now. jut off hand I would say it can fit with what i wrote up above--but I have to think about that.

שיעורין כסדרן sessions in order

Once we come to the idea of learning Torah and the seven wisdoms as important then the question is raised how to go about this?
I have mentioned the idea of learning fast as the sages said לעולם ליגרס אף על גב דלא ידע מאי קאמר-one should learn fast even though he does not understand what he is saying. That is brought down in the Muar book אורחות צדיקים
But I wanted to add another idea about שיעורין כסדרן sessions in order. That is to have small sessions in each subject in which one goes through a few pages in order every day. And then the next day to start where one finished. [You keep the place marker in the book, so you know where to start the next day.] [Actually you keep two place markers in the book. One for when you flip the page and the next for when you get to the bottom of the first page before you start the second.]
In this way, you can finish at least once the entire Shas with Tosphot, the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach,  the Talmud Yerushalmi with all the commentaries on the page, all the Midrashim,  all the writings of the Ari, plus Physics and Metaphysics.

[The way to do the Avi Ezri is in order. Same with Shas and the Ari. This kind of learning in order in not the same as the kind of in depth learning that you do in the Mir Yeshiva. In the morning session. What I mean by fast learning I am mainly referring to the afternoon and evening sessions. ]

To avoid Torah of the Dark Side and Pseudo wisdoms like psychology

"The Seven Wisdoms" (שבע חכמות) were considered essential prerequisites by the Gra in order to understand Torah. He said  that lack of knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms creates lack of knowledge and understanding of Torah by a hundred fold.
This kind of approach is pretty consistent among the Rishonim whether by the מעלות המידות [Importance of Good Traits by Benjamin the doctor], Rav Saadia Gaon, the Obligations of the Heart.

But what exactly is included in the seven wisdoms?


Pseudo wisdoms like psychology [certainly do nor count as wisdom]. Among secular subjects there are subjects that are straight forwards false and contrived like psychology. But still it has a great number of followers because it gives people the chance and opportunity how to manipulate others.


Even in Torah there are plenty of books that are pseudo Torah or Torah of the Dark Side (Sitra Achra), for example, that come from the groups that the Gra warned against.  How they got accepted in the religious world is a mystery to me. [I would have to say that R. Nahman of Breslov is OK and good to learn since after reading the books that brings most of the relevant documents concerning the letter of excommunication signed by the Gra I realized that R. Nahman was not included.]

But there are categories of subjects or authors that I am not sure about if they are included in the list of things one must learn. For example we know from Maimonides the importance of learning Physics and Metaphysics. So he included these two in the list of things one ought to learn. So my question is what does Metaphysics include? Just judging by the Rambam himself it certainly looks to be Plato, Aristotle, and the medieval Ibn Rushd and Farrabi.  . Leonard Nelson  would also have excluded the entire Post Kant Neo Kantians. Cassirer and Nelson had a long and bitter debate about that. My own feeling is that Nelson was right.]

The letter of excommunication the Gra signed.

Is the letter of excommunication  the Gra signed valid? I think so. This is based on the Rambam in laws of oaths where there is some discussion of from where the laws of חרם נידוי (excommunication) come from. In the commentaries there it is explained they come from the Biblical category of איסר נדר [prohibited because of a vow]-that is anyone can forbid his object to another by saying "This object of mine is to you a  sacrifice קרבן."
So at least we see the status of an excommunication has validity. So you can not ignore it even if you think it is based on false premises.

All the more so after it has become obvious that it was not based on false premises.
Clearly the case is much more severe than that letter originally stated.
But the Gra was ignored because the Sitra Achra sometimes is given permission from above to create false structures and formations.
So at least one can be careful about his own self and what he keeps in his home even if he can not tell others about it.

[It is curious why the legal issues involved in this are ignored. I mean even people that seem to strive to uphold the Law still routinely  ignore the חרם (excommunication) and thus come under the חרם (excommunication) themselves.

[That is the general law about excommunication. If one ignores it then he himself comes under it. So I make it my practice not to enter into a place where the letter of the Gra is ignored. ]

Just for further information I ought to mention that I do not think that Rav Nahman from Breslov comes under that excommunication after I saw the actual words of the letter which I found in a book that brought a lot of the original documents.] In fact I think Rav Nahman has some amazing insights. Still the fact that the excommunication in ignored is upsetting.

The fact of ignoring the letter of excommunication means in effect all that ignore it are under the same list of prohibitions which means basically the entire religious world.

The most important point I learned in Shar Yashuv is the importance of learning Torah. But it was not just something that I read about but saw in practice. Later in the Mir was where I learned about trust in God without doing any work.

This came to me more or less in the sense that I became clear to me that learning Torah as a primary goal is, in fact, the world view of authentic Torah--not just made up out of thin air after the Litvak yeshivas made it a central point.
But I do not recall that trust was emphasized in Shar Yashuv. I would have to say that it was specifically at the Mir in NY that the idea of trust in God was emphasized or at least was an undercurrent.

[The idea that learning Torah is the prime goal definitively was not accepted by the secular world. But the idea that work was this great ennobling endeavor made little sense to me.]
[You can see how work became considered the highest goal in life during the revolutionary movements of the 1800's. The peak of that thought was Marxism. The rigorously worked out system. But even after reading Marx's Communist Manifesto and other leftist writings, I still could not see their point. It seemed oddly naive. However I can understand that the revolutionary movements were dealing with a whole different set of problems in which they saw the overthrow of the ruling class and establishing the rule of the proletariat as the highest goal. But growing up in the USA, I simply did not see the same kind of problems that the communists were facing. Maybe if I had grown up in Europe or Eastern Europe in the 1800's I would seen the point of Marx differently.]

It is possible for people to abuse this doctrine of the importance of learning Torah to try to get money from others because of their "supposed learning." But here I am just dealing with the actual doctrine of Torah, not whether it can be abused. Anything in Torah can easily be abused.

In any case the place that you see this idea of learning Torah most directly is in the Nefesh HaHaim. But the Mishna itself is the most obvious source. תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם Learning Torah is equal in itself to all the other commandments. And the Yerushalmi says "even one word"

The essentials of Torah

The essentials of Torah are
(1) Monotheism. God made the world from nothing. And He is one simple being, not a composite. Nor does He have any substance or form. The world is not God, nor is the world godliness.
God did not make the world out of Himself. He made it from nothing. Since this is an essential aspect and belief of Torah it is no wonder the Gra signed the letter of excommunication against people that denied these basic beliefs and yet made a whole show an dance about how Jewish they were.
(2) Midot Tovot =good traits.
(3) Belief that the Torah in divinely inspired.

[The middle point is this: that nothing matters until one has good traits. The good traits are what makes one a mensch [decent human being]. So without good traits, doing any commandments is not all that different from a dog keeping Shabat. This is explained in detail in the Guide of the Rambam and I have mentioned this before.
In short, the Rambam explains  the commandments of reason חוקים שכליים were revealed to Abraham the Patriarch was the for there to be the giving of the Torah to Moses, there first needed to be the level of commandments of reason. Otherwise the commandments of Torah would be indistinguishable from superstitions. The Reshash {Rav Shalom Sharabi} makes a similar point in his Nahar Shalom that the soul of a person is his character traits and the commandments are to food and clothing of the soul. So without good traits, one lacks the very soul which makes the commandments of Torah significant.




[This issue came up on Shabat when I was asked what my opinion about what are the essential aspects of Torah.]