King David told Solomon to execute Yaov.

I am pretty sure that King David was upset with Yoav for killing Absalom. He could not tell his son Solomon to kill Yoav for that however,--- since it was justified. So he said it was for Avner ben Ner and Amasa.[Why did King David not send Yoav out to get the guy that rebelled after Absalom? I think David never really forgave him.]

The events with Yoav are sad. I think  King David would have not been able to do anything without Yoav. That makes Yoav's end particularly tragic.[King David told Solomon to execute Yaov-and he did.

there were no kings in Edom until Yoram

I asked a certain person in the Litvak study hall about the Gra's comment that the kings of Edom were around the time of Moses. He answered this question very well in pointing out that the verse about the kings of Edom says they reigned before there were kings in Israel. [I was asking about the fact that the book of Kings says there were no kings in Edom until Yoram the son of Jehoshaphat.]
But then he noted the odd fact that I had not seen. --The verse in the Torah says there were kings in Edom before there was a king in Israel. The verse in kings says there were no kings in Edom until Yoram --and that was long after there had already been kings in Israel for a more than a hundred years.

What occurs to me is this. King David as is well known conquered Edom. So the kings of the book of genesis refer to the kings of Edom before Moses and the last one at the time of Moses. After that we have no information. But then when David conquered Edom, they by definition stopped having kings. So the verse in the book of kings is referring to the time that Edom came out from under the yoke of Israel and began having their own kings again.I think this makes sense because at that point the book of Kings does not name the kings of Edom. So it is safe to assume they were not the ones mentioned in Genesis.

[A woman that rebels against her husband for no valid reason.

I was learning in the local study hall and for some reason the issue of מורדת came up. [A woman that rebels against her husband for no valid reason.] This was a surprise to me since the usual public lectures over there have do do with everyday minutia in law. That these bigger issues.  To me is is a difficult issue because once I has occasion to be talking with a granddaughter of  Bava Sali who was in fact thinking of asking her husband for a divorce. I advised against it but today I believe I was wrong.  It is never a simple issue. Sometimes there does seems to be a good reason for woman to leave.


In the Rema's [R. Moshe Iserless] correspondence there is a letter about this issue.

The basic issue issue is that marriage is more than a contract--but not less than a contract. So just like when you sign an agreement in business, that is binding even if one day you wake up and do not feel like fulfilling it. Still there are valid reasons that a woman can leave.

The daughter of Bava Sali asked me to agree with her daughter's feels that she ought to leave her husband. I did not agree and probably I should have listened.

So I ask how can you tell if some thought or urge come from the side of holiness or not? Or even if you adopt certain principles how can you tell if they are accurate or at least always accurate?

It seems to be the in thing nowadays for woman to accuse men of sexual crimes.

It seems to be the "in thing" nowadays for woman to accuse men of sexual crimes. It has gotten to be almost like a modern fashion. It is the "In Thing" to do. It gets the woman attention  and sympathy she could never get in any other way--especially for ugly, fat women. Even one of the founders of Category Theory had to go through this. Also John Searle. There just does not seem to be any down side of making false accusations.

[When was the last time you heard about an attractive female making accusations? Can't remember? Neither can I. Making false accusations is what ugly women do nowadays instead of raising cats.]

For women, there seems to be nothing to lose. They either are believed and gain money, power sympathy. Or else they don't. But there is (in their view) no loss involved. Their reputation never gets tainted. And the person they accuse, never really gets free of it because in the back of people's mind there is always that sneaking suspicion ""Just maybe.." [I should add that there is a down side to making false accusations that they are not aware of. יש דין ויש דיין. There will be a day of judgement.]

In  England there is a down side to be making false accusations-- for then the lawyer fees are reversed. It seems to me that this would be a good policy to implement in the USA and Israel also.
[This is not my original idea. I saw this a few years ago on the internet that someone suggested this remedy.]

I think a lot of this has to do with the general mentality. Women thought they could do this because in the USA, there used to be an implicit assumption that women are righteous and men are jerks. So women felt all they needed to do was to say a false statement about some guy they did not like, and that would be accepted as evidence. And in fact in the USA, that is exactly what happened. Nowadays this phenomenon is less common since police are looking for actual evidence--not simply accusations by  fat, stupid, hysterical women.

small sessions.A lot of people that think they can not do math would discover that in fact they can do math. It just gets absorbed in a different kind of fashion.

The idea of small sessions seems to be important to mention. I mean that besides learning fast, there is also an important idea to divide the sessions small digestible bits. That is like doing a few pages in one book and putting in a place marker and then closing it and going on to a different book. This idea seems to work best for me in terms of most areas of learning.

Sometimes for me doing a lot of pages in one book does not seem to add much. I find for me small sessions works better.


[My own small sessions are mainly in Physics and Math. As for Torah, on the few occasions I manage to get to the local Litvak study hall I try to find just one or two pieces in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri to go over every day until I feel I have got the basic idea.]

I think this idea of learning fast by saying the words and going on ought to be more widely known. The person that made the most effort to emphasize this approach was Rav Nahman of Breslov but he would not have been using it for math and Physics, but for the several divisions of Torah learning. In any case, I think it is an amazing piece of advice. A lot of people that think they can not do math would discover that in fact they can do math. It just gets absorbed in a different kind of fashion.

learning Math and Physics is a tikun

I thought it relevant to mention that from an early age I had a great interest in Physics and Chemistry. In part it was just my own curiosity about how the world works and in part from love and admiration for my Dad. But neither of my parents actually indicated that they wanted me to go into those fields. They definitely let my own interests guide me.

But I also think that they saw a numinous kind of value [holy value] in those fields along the same lines that you see in early Rishonim like  Ibn Pakuda (Obligations of the Heart) and Maimonides/ Rambam.

In the Rambam, Physics and Metaphysics takes on a dimension that you do not see much. To him, learning these two subjects are a fulfillment of the commands to love and fear God.

But as he points out in the Guide, the intention of learning these subjects has to be directed towards the goal of coming close to God.[That is in the parable of the king at the end of volume 3.]

If I may, I would like to suggest that I also see something in these subjects that one could call "tikunim"(corrections). Tikunim is an idea mainly associated with Rav Nahman of Breslov. With Rav Nahman saying certain parts of Torah have a corrective power for various problems.[The list is too long to go into here. In short,  for almost any problem you can think of, he has some verses or sections of Torah that are a correction for it. But I think he means to say them daily for 40 days in a row of more until the problem is solved. Not just to say them once.]

The most famous example is the ten psalms (16,32,41,42,59,77,90,105,137,150). But there are lots of other examples in his writings.
So what I am thinking is that the very act of learning Math and Physics is a tikun. [Though there is support for this idea in the very beginning of Rav Nahman's major book and in other places inside it, I am not depending on those places since people can argue that that is not what those place imply. But in the Rishonim the issue is much more clear.]

approach of my parents to make the most sense: balance.

I find the basic approach of my parents to make the most sense: balance. What I mean by that is that found a lot of good and important ideas in the books of Rav Nahman of Breslov but I think I took things too far. I could have stayed with the basic Litvak approach of the Gra and not gone overboard.
After all there are some major points the Gra pointed out that one does not really get in the framework of Breslov, that is the learning Torah thing and trust in God.

It seems to me the point is like that Thomas Reid made about Isaac Newton. If Newton had tried to come up with a theory about everything, he would have failed miserably and would not have benefited anyone. But he confined himself to one question. How to understand gravity, And from that people have benefited. So when you learn from a tzadik like Rav Nahman, it best to limit yourself to what he actually says and take it as answering the basic issues that he brings up.
I mean it is human nature to want a general world view that makes sense of the whole picture. But that world view ought to include balance and certain amount of awareness of one's limitations on how much do we really know?


The approach of balance was also emphasized by Rav Freifeld my first rosh yeshiva, and also Rav Shmuel Berenbaum of the Mir--but that is not really part of my nature. I tend to take things to their outer limits. But anyway I found the path of balance to be hard since I realized to excel in anything I needed to concentrate on that one thing.


The point of balance however is not to have just a collection of good values. If lay out all the parts of a car --that is still not a car. It is car when all the parts are put together and working together in harmony.

So just to be clear, I see an ideal schedule daily as including Rav Shach's Avi Ezri (the essence of the Oral Law, Math, Physics, Music, outdoor activity exercise.