Rav Avraham Abulafia

With Rav Avraham Abulafia it is possible to understand some of the good and some of the evils of Christian history. That is if you take Jesus as being from Kindness which fell into Foundation in Emanation, חסד שנפל בכלי של יסוד then a lot becomes clear. At least to me anyway. But the fact that he was from the root of Joseph, at that time meant that that was only a preliminary phase.

In any case you need to look it up in Abulafia's books and also Profesor Moshe Idel to get the whole picture. 

In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence

"אין עוד מלבדו" Or there are no gods besides God.
In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence.

average good physicist has an IQ of 160

I am realizing something true that was talked about on the Reference Frame the most important Physics blog that I know of. and there they discuss IQ and how the average good physicist has an IQ of 160. [That is top level but not in particular up in Mount Olympus.] Undergraduate Physics is more alone the lines of 130.]But my point is built on the idea of learning all aspects of Torah which to many Rishonim include the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and metaphysics--and learning Torah is not just for the smart people. Personally I admit I can not imagine any time in the future when people will learn Physics and Math for their own sake even without understanding just for the sake of the commandment to learn Torah. But that is my opinion anyway and it is what I attempt to do as well as I can with my low IQ. But even a person as dumb as a grasshopper like me--if you keep with it, you eventually understand.
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Here is the commentWell, Edward Witten is easily profoundly gifted. With IQ 160 (SD15), one doesn't breeze through Jackson's Electrodynamics in a week after a history undergraduate degree or take up calculus at age 10. 160 is the average for first-class, but non-revolutionary, physicists - people like Ivy physics professors. For a physics PhD in general the average IQ is already 133 (SD15), so for a string theory PhD, the average would be like 145-160 (SD15). 

The thing is people with low IQ's like me tend to read laymen's versions of Physics. But that is not an option since most laymen's stuff about Physics is profoundly wrong. If you really want the real thing, then you have to learn the real thing. The is no alternative.

I once had a way of putting together Rav Nahman's ideas that helped make clear why Physics and Math are important. I forget now however the main gist of my argument. It I think was that the highest light of creation is the hidden statement where no holiness is easily found. Thus in my own way i understand Physics the be the laws of God in Creation itself, while Torah is the laws of God as referred to human action.

[The most famous source about learning Physics is the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות he was not alone. The thing is he goes about it in such a way that it is easy to miss what he is saying. It was more helpful for me when I saw the idea in Maimonides who makes it a lot more clear,]

In my two Litvak yeshivas, it was thought that learning Gemara makes one smart. And that intellect is somewhat fluid. The more you learn Torah the smarter you are. Nowadays this seems in accurate. Still I did see something in learning that I think has to be called help from Heaven. That sometimes a good idea would just come to me out of the blue. Also my two small books on Talmud  to me seem to be gifts from Heaven-since I was never on the level to be writing ideas in Torah in the first place. But somehow it just started after I was learning Gemara in Uman with a friend.

I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education.

String Theory--Origins

[I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education. Mainly I saw this in some books of Musar of the Middle Ages. But the message never got through to me. Eventually I started seeing the point. But the way I go about it is different. For me the best way to go about is is to say the words and go on as brought down in the Gemara itself and also in Rav Nahman's Conversations 76.

The two main places in Musar i saw this were the Obligations of the Heart and Sefer HaMidot by Benjamin the Doctor. Later I saw that even in Rav Nahman's view there a difference between false "wisdoms" that he was against [rightfully so] and true wisdoms
[Besides that there is a basic idea in Rav Nahman about the ten statements of Creation and especially the  hidden statement of Creation] have deep holiness. 

Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation.

Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation. But I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of Reason that that recognizes universals.
That is a kind of faculty of reason that one knows things to be true as soon as they are understood. And these things are not based on sensory perception.

But also I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of immediate non intuitive knowledge. That was the major point of Leonard Nelson.

I found Leonard Nelson to be very important when I was trying to figure out "things"--I mean world view issues. And his idea of immediate non intuitive knowledge does seem to me to closely  connected with faith.
At the same time I was looking at ideas of Nelson [as presented by Dr Kelley Ross] I also found the web site of Michael Huemer. His idea that reason perceives more things than simple contradictions in language was also very helpful. Putting it together you get the synthesis of Faith with Reason -that is the old synthesis from the Middle Ages.

This is not to take totally the Nelson approach totally, --I still think that Hegel had a lot of important points. But Nelson's critique on the Neo Kant School I think was accurate.

[Kelley Ross also made some advances in this Kant Fries Nelson approach.]

I ought to add that the idea of Nelson [coming from Fries] of immediate non-intuitive knowledge is not the exact same thing as Michael Humer's Reason. The function of Reason for Huemer is much wider than what was assumed by Berkeley and Hume. To Huemer, Reason recognizes universals.[Universals are character traits that things have in common. But it also includes laws of nature or morality.] Immediate non intuitive knowledge is the starting points of reason that one knows without thinking about it--the existence of space and time.

When some kind of problem appears in the text of the Bible like the flood, I take the approach of Isaac Luria that placed the narrative in higher worlds [Emanation]. I think this idea goes back to Plato that there are two levels of reality--the real world of ideas and the shadow world of change.

Lots of problem arise in the religious world when you delve too deeply into it. So I try to keep things simple

With the Ari- the actual simple explanation of a lot of verses comes out to be in Emanation

King David changed a command of the Torah in a permanent way. So you have to say he held like R. Shimon Ben Yohai that we go by the reason for the verses, not by the literal meaning.

The command to build the משכון Tabernacle was not confined to the Sinai desert. If you look at the verses you will see that making the holy Ark of the Covenant and the Table for the Show Bread etc is all on the same level as building the Tabernacle with curtains of goat hairs. That is right away in the beginning of the command to build the Tabernacle, and it all comes under one large commandment ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם "They shall make for me a Tabernacle and I will dwell among them."[and then the verse explains how to build the Tabernacle.] Then look at the end of Chronicles I where King David gives the blue prints to the new Temple that he wanted Solomon to build. There is nothing there about curtains but rather walls.
So we find a later prophet can change things. What is there then that a later prophet can not change? I think it is natural Law.

I mentioned this a day ago when I brought down the Gemara in makot that later prophets reduced the obligations of the Torah until all that was left was faith. וצדיק באמונתו יחיה. If you look at Rashi over there in tractate Makot [last page] you will see he explains that Gemara literally. He says that these prophets saw that if people would have to keep all the commandments, then no one would merit to a portion in the next world. So they lessened the requirements.

The point here is I think you have to say that when the Torah talks about a false prophet, it says specifically one that says to do idolatry. [That is how the verse over there in Deuteronomy actually looks. It only refers to a prophet that says to worship idols.] There is an opinion that a false prophet is one that changes a commandment in a permanent way. But if that would be the case then King David would be a false prophet since he changed a command of the Torah in a permanent way. That does not seem like a likely scenario.
Some of the commands of the Torah it says are forever. But those are not all. Most of the time the Torah simply says to do such and such a thing without giving a time frame.


The gemara in Eruvin also brings down a number of things that later prophets changed like the fact that in the Torah it is stated that children can bear the guilt of their parents and Ezekiel changes that. And besides that he also changes the dimensions of the Temple.

Another thing which I do not think is really that important, but it still seems worth mentioning. That the place of the Temple was not stated in the Torah openly but the simple way of looking at the verses seems to indicate it should be at Mount Eval. This is because in the early verses it says to bring your sacrifices in a place I will choose. And to put the altar of God in a place I will choose. And then later it says when you cross the Jordan river you should build the Altar of God at Mount Eval and bring your sacrifices there. So God did choose a place and it is not Jerusalem. So what do you do with that? I think you have to say what the Gemara says in Eruvin, that later prophets changed things.

I ought to add that it is not uncommon to use verses to prove a point. An example is the פלגש girlfriend that the Rambam forbids to anyone who is not a king, and the Gra counters that with the example of Caleb ben Yephuna from Chronicles I 2:46 who had a few girls friends and was not a king.