mystic system of Sar Shalom Sharabi and R. Isaac Luria

The main system of Rav Sharabi you can learn in his book the Nahar Shalom. However I found for myself that simply praying with the sidur HaReshash for a few years helped me get a clearer idea of his system.[I ought to mention that I was praying with the sidur of the Reshash for the unification--not to gain better knowledge of his system.]
[There are two sidurs of Rav Sharabi I ought to mention. For a long time I prayed with the small one even though I knew that Rav Mordechei Sharabi said there were mistakes in it. And in any case I felt, it was less accurate than I needed. Then one great day I was in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem and discovered that in some private home there, the family was selling the actual large sidur of the Reshash.]

It is known that the Gra said that the Ari is speaking in terms of an analogy, not literal like he sounds.

The only one that got support from any world class mathematician was Leonard Nelson. That was the famous Nelson Affair file that David Hilbert kept in his office.

I do not understand why but the school of Kantian thought of Leonard Nelson was well known in the USSR, but almost completely ignored in the West.

[It is an odd fact that the only one of these that got support from any world class mathematician was Nelson. That was the famous Nelson Affair file that David Hilbert kept in his office.
An besides that we know Gauss was impressed with Fries and praised a book of Fries to a student that asked about it.


[I might mention that the correspondence of Godel indicates a kind of two tier structure of the world like the Neo Platonic school. To me it seems very close to Nelson.


[There are people who simply ignore the whole thing and want to go back to Aquinas like Ed Feser. The idea of finding in Medieval scholastic philosophers all the answers is perhaps a true point. There is something amazing about medieval thought. I have no idea what to say about that though.]

Also all of this just refers to philosophy. They all had something to say about politics but that does not seem to be where their insights were very great. On the Contrary--it was English thought [John Locke, De Foe] that seemed to reach the greatest heights when it comes to political thought. 

Michal the daughter of Saul

Michal the daughter of Saul was a kind of tragic figure. Clearly David was in love with her, and visa versa. When Avner ben Ner came to David, David had just one request to make of him, "Bring me back my wife Michal bat Saul." And she saved his life at least one time that we know about against her own father's wishes.

So the fact that she did not have children is sad. But furthermore --who were the descendants of Saul and the Givonim hung? It says in Kings II that five of them were the kids of Michal and then it names the father --the person that was the husband of Merav--her older sister! The Ralbag says that they were raised by Michal, but were not actually her kids. And that makes sense to me. And I can not think of any other possible explanation.

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.