two schools of thought that came from Kant, Leonard Nelson and the Marburg school.

There are two schools of thought that came from Kant, Leonard Nelson and the Marburg school. [Both based on early interpretations of Kant.

If you look at Cassirer's (from the Marburg) critique on Nelson you can see an important point -that a priori knowledge has to be with the limits of conditions of experience. So it looks to me that both schools had some important points.

But what I would like to suggest is that Nelson and Hegel are not as far apart as Nelson thought. To Nelson we have a kind of knowledge that comes not through pure reason and not through experience and has no intermediate point at all: immediate non-intuitive. Though Hegel does not have that he certainly expands the role of reason itself far beyond perceiving contradictions as Kant thought. But Hegel mechanism is far different from Nelson's. It is the dialectic. Which is right I am not sure. But I think all three schools of thought are important.
[As opposed to Twentieth century philosophy which just a result Physics Envy. Empty and ridiculous.]

My search for truth ultimately led me to learn Gemara which which is an area of value of Numinosity. Still that leaves issues of world view aside. Gemara is mainly about how to keep the commandments of the Torah and does not deal with world view issues at length.

So even though it is a great thing to concentrate on one thing at a time and not get too spread out, it still leaves a lot of important questions unanswered. To some degree Saadia Gaon and the Rambam fill gaps left over.
[Though you could argue about that. There is a tendency to seek out in Rishonim hidden truths. Still there is a more relevant issue. It is that world view affects actions. From what I can see the religious world is a disaster zone in terms of decent character traits. You can not be holy if you are not a decent human being first. So in my view, the world view issues have not been addressed well.

To some degree I made up for that by learning the books of Rav Nahman who does deal with the larger issues in a powerful and relevant way.

Today my view is that learning Gemara is one important area of value, but there is a separate area of value that is philosophy. So if I could I would simply plow through the basic works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Leonard Nelson, Hegel. But there seem to be time constraints. 

The religious world is anti Torah. But they are anti Torah in a way that is disguised.

The Gaon of Villna issued a warning and then later Rav Shach. In fact on the actual letter of excommunication --the top signature is of the Gra. So why is the supposed religious world completely filled with what both these great tzadikim warned against? Because the religious world is anti Torah. But they are anti Torah in a way that is disguised. They camouflage themselves with things that seem  Torah-dik.

However, I do not think the excommunication applies to Rav Nahman for reasons I mentioned elsewhere. So I feel free to follow his good advice and even bring on this blog ideas from him.

My tendency to to make peace between scholars of I can. However there are times when you have to draw a line. The Jewish religious world though it presents this facade of holiness, is very much on the opposite side--the Sitra Achra as can be easily attested for by the countless of people that have been burnt and destroyed by it --those that were seduced by its appearance of holiness.

I usually like to make peace, but for peace you have to be able to tell when something really is a Trojan horse.

I think my own motivation for going to learn in a NY yeshiva was a philosophical quest for the truth.And to some degree I think I found that in terms of numinious value [as per the Kant Fries School]. Learning Gemara is important--but I lost a sense of balance. Getting involved in the religious world tends to make one crazy.

beginning of Reform Judaism.

Rav Nahman was the only one that warned about the Dark Side in the religious world openly. The more I see of it, the more I am alarmed. But it is hard to know what to do. I thought at one point to mind my own business, but it gets worse at an exponential rate and it is "in your face".

Even if you just try to avoid the religious world in total, they still get in through the cracks.

This is probably not a new problem as you can see in the Bible and the false prophets of Ahab. further warnings are given in the Gemara. But Rav Nahman was the first to pin point the issue: "Torah Scholars that are Demons." That would be  right in the beginning of his major book in section 12 and 28. But it comes up in lots of other areas. So what does it mean? In a practical sense I think the meaning is clear. Avoid the religious world. But could Rav Nahman have meant that? Maybe when he was alive he was able to warn his disciples about whom to avoid. But nowadays? How can you tell?

So it is possible to understand the reasons for the beginning of Reform Judaism. It was probably for these exact reasons.

I was thinking of King Yoshiyahu who got rid of all the idolatry in Israel during his reign. He must have been alarmed at the same kind of phenomenon that I am seeing nowadays.


[After I wrote that above essay, it occurred to me why Rav Nahman used the terminology of demons for religious leaders. He must have been referring to their malevolence. -I mean to say that clearly Rav Nahman was basing himself on the Zohar and the writings of the Ari where the subject of Torah Scholars that are demons comes up. But my question is why did Rav Nahman choose to concentrate on that issue and in such a way that sounds not nice? It must be that he noticed what i noticed. In the Jewish religious world the leaders tend to rejoice in doing harm to innocent people that they feel they can hurt without repercussions. While being extra nice to secular Jews they think they can get donations from.

The main subjects emphasized by the Rishonim -that is the Oral Law, the Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.

The main subjects which I would like to do are the main one emphasized by the Rishonim especially the Rambam--that is the Oral Law, the Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics.

As I am having trouble getting through the basic material I thought at least I might share the idea with others in case they might succeed where I have not.

The Written Law--that is clear.

The Oral Law is the actual written account of the written law in the two Talmuds. Sifra Sifri, and the  Midrashim. But even though I did manage to get through Shas -a lot of it was done without Tosphot. If I could go back and try again today I would do every single Tosphot.

Physics --even though the Rambam was talking about the Physics or Aristotle still I think it applies to today's  also. So that would go through classical, the Quantum, and then Strings. Strings is important because it seems to be the only way to make sense of things like quarks.

Metaphysics would be Plato Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant Hegel.

The way I would do this would be the idea that is brought in the gemara and a book of Musar the אורחות צדיקים and Rav Nahman's idea of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on.

To that I would like to add the idea of שיעורים כסדרם sessions in order. That is you take one book and go through a few pages, then put in a place marker and then take a different book and go through a few pages, etc.
[Not all the above sessions every day. You have to work out how it might work for you. For example you might want to get through the Jerusalem Talmud with the commentaries. So that is something like 40 minutes on one page alone. Then you might want a session in Physics. That might be a math session in Algebra which is a part of Physics. As Michael Humer noted--there are no bare facts. Nature expresses herself in Math and by math. As Heidegger put it: nature itself allows herself to be understood only by a priori knowledge. (And that is a puzzling fact all and in itself.)


But the main goal is to try to finish Shas and all the Oral Law and Physics and metaphysics at least once,

Jacob sent Joseph to see his brothers from Hebron to Shechem. That is about a week of hiking at least! What were the brothers doing up in Shechem? And why send Joseph by himself halfway through the land of Canaan to get a news report?

Eliyahu and Elisha crossed the Jordan River before Eliyahu was taken up into Heaven. They were coming from Jericho. So they crossed into an area that was outside the original border or Israel as defined in the book of Numbers. But was that area occupied by the tribe of Reuben and Gad?

Who was the king of Israel in the time of Elisha? Yoram the son of Ahab? Or Yehu?

Jacob sent Joseph to see his brothers from Hebron to Shechem. That is about a week of hiking at least! What were the brothers doing up in Shechem? And why send Joseph by himself halfway through the land of Canaan to get a news report? And it is not as if the Canaanites were all the friendly by that time after what had happened in Shechem.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

It was a few years ago that I was sitting in Hebrew University and looking at micro films of old manuscripts of Rav Avraham Abulafia and I came across some positive statement  about Yeshua [Jesus]. That was on the day before Hanuka. I kind of froze in my seat because I was not sure what to think of that. I knew that the Rashba [An important Rishon] did not hold of Rav Abulafia at all. But I also knew that the Remak (Rav M. Cordovaro) and Rav Haim Vital were quoting him as legitimate. Also the Chida brings him (Rav Haim David Azulai). It got to be the night of Hanuka and I decided to go with Rav Abulafia even though I knew that would send me on a trajectory that was far from what I had been doing until then.

Why did I decide that? because I figured the Rashba was more of an expert in his particular field of Gemara, while Rav Abulafia was more of an expert in his area.

[Besides that I had been learning the books of Rav Isaac Luria and  Rav Nahman of Breslov already for a few years so I anyway had a kind of mental framework in which it is possible to understand the importance of true tzadikim. I also had been looking at the book of Rav Haim Vital in which the root souls of lots of different tzadikm is brought. That is the book where the Ari was explaining to Rav Haim Vital that the soul of Rav Haim Vital was from Emanation. [Most souls are from Creation]. So I already understood that there can be souls that stem from Emanation.]


I ought to mention that in the meantime someone from Mea Shearim came to Hebrew U. and put all the books of Rav Abulafia into readable script and printed them and you can even buy them in regular Hebrew.

Appendix

[1] Just for some background --the Rashba was a Rishon that had serious issues with Rav Abulafia. But even before I was looking at the manuscripts I was aware of the Rav Haim David Azulai who stood up for Rav Abulafia and that gave a lot of support in that direction. If the Rashba would be expressing an opinion about some passage in the Talmud, that would be more important. But in terms of his opinion about Rav Abulafia, that seems to me to be out of his range of expertise.]

[2] The idea of certain souls being from Emanation is brought down even before the Ari. However Rav Isaac Luria -the Ari- goes into a lot more detail than you can find anywhere else. So there is nothing particularly damming about saying a great tzadik has a soul that is from Emanation (i.e. Divine).