Daughter of an Am Haaretz.

I noticed in the Rambam on the mishna [Sanhedrin chapter 9]that he says it is a sin to marry the daughter of an Am Haaretz [person ignorant of Mishna and Talmud.] I had thought that it is simply not advisable.

I wonder if I had taken this advice how things might have turned out differently.
For when I was discussing marriage with my future wife she asked what would happen if there would be no parnasa [money]? And I said I would go and find a job. [The background here is that I was in the Mir Yeshiva in NY at the time and we were planning on my continuing to learn Torah.]
This might very well be the reason that in fact later things fell apart. I might have answered like the sages said in the Chapters of the Fathers one who accepts on himself the yoke of Torah there is removed from him the yoke of the government and of making a living. I might have said if there is no money then I am not learning Torah hard enough and thus I should work harder on learning.

I am not saying eveything about the Litvak world that revolves on the Gra is right. I realize there is an array of values. But what I am saying is that I had found the one thing that worked for me. Learning Torah at the Mir. It seems to me that it was a failure on my part not to be committed to this approach at all cost.

[Nowdays I have a wider constalation of values but for me to list them here would make no sense since many of them apparanetly conflict one with the other. My question is how to resolve this conflict? ]

The dialect of Hegel unfolds in time.

 I want to consider the possibility that the dialect of Hegel unfolds in time. This clearly is not like McTaggart, but I think that it makes sense. That is the basic process is really what you see in the Neo Platonic school of Plotinus. But with Plotinus is is logos which is bringing things about. But in any case the idea is this whole vast process of Hegel is unfolding in time. And this helps a lot. It helps to understand the main problem of this generation of disappointment. For example me. I went very deeply into the Litvak Torah world, but as is usual with the process of thesis anti thesis I found things not perfect. So what needs to be done is to get to the synthesis that finds what is right is both the thesis and antithesis.

The Mishna in Bava kama 36

The law of the Torah is an ox that has not yet considered  to be expected to gore only pays half damages. An ox gores 4 other oxen one after the other but still remains "tam". Each one was worth 200. [It perhaps did it not one after the other exactly] R Meir says the last one gets the whole amount and if anything is left over it goes the one before that etc. R. Shimon says the order is 100/100. The next time the division is 100/50/50. The next time 100/50/25/25.

In another case R. Ishmael considered the damaged ox to be a debtor.But R Akiva thinks the owners of each ox become partners with the owner.

The problem our Gemara brings up on page 36 is who is R. Meir going like? It concludes like R Ishmael. [I would expand on this but I have no computer and and just borrowing a friends for a few minutes.] The next opinion of RS is like R Akiva.

But if it is like RI then the first owner of the first damaged ox should get the whole sum, not the last. The Gemara says each owner of the subsequent ox grabbed the ox to hold it until he gets paid.

The Rif says R Shimon agrees if he grabs it he is a paid guard and he agrees with RM.
Both R. Ephraim and Rav Zarahia the Baal Hamaor degree with the Rif. As you can easily see why. If he would be right then there was no reason to say the opinion of RM is like RI. It could be R Akiva also.

The answer that I think makes sense here is the debate in Pesahim 30. A lender is not paid back on time so he gets some property of the borrower. So when is he considered to own that property? This is a debate over there but the Rif must be thinking that our gemara over here in Bava Kama is like the opinion the lender owns the property only after he collects it. But the Rif is thinking that the ox is different. It becomes a pledge and is owned from the time of the goring and if so then there would be no difference between R Akiva and R Ishmael and so in truth R Shimon who is like R akiva in our case is talking about a different case than R Meir.
Sorry I can not explain this in more detail. If you look it up it will be more clear. Anyway you can see this idea of mine in Tosphot Bava kama pg 33. where Tosphot brings it for a different reason.

The Rambam uses every opportunity to say that one should not use Torah to make money. So why has it become such a bussiness? I am not sure but today i met a girl from Brazil who recently arrived in Israel who mentioned that a lot of people in Israel are having trouble with making ends meet. [making enough to get by.] So the fact that a lot of people do not work but rather use Torah to make money makes little sense.

One thing I saw in my first yeshiva in Far Rockaway was the opinion of the Gra that every word of Torah is worth more that all the other commandments of Torah.He brings this from the Yerushalmi Talmud. And that fact sunk deeply into me. The only thing that has changed much is that because of the opinion of Maimonides and other rishonim is that I include Physics and math in the category of Torah.

When it come to Torah I try to spend time in the local Na Nach (Breslov) group's place. That seems to be the only place I can learn Torah.

But if I could I would try to have a balance between these separate areas of study.
But when it comes to Physics i try to use the approach of Rav Nahman of just saying the words as fast as possible and going on. I would try to show this from Rav Nahman's main books but I have to go since i have no computer and I am just borrowing a friend's.



[Maimonides also includes the Metaphysics of Aristotle in the category of learning Torah but I have not been able to spend much time in that area. And modern philosophy seems to have gotten off track in that area.]

Where you see clearly the approach of Maimonides about the importance of Physics is in the story brought in the very last chapter of a volume in the Guide [I forget which]. Where the people around the palace of the King are the people that learn Talmud and the people in the palace are the physicists.and philosophers.

I myself had never even noticed this until I saw it quouted in a book by David Hartman

Rav Nachman emphasized not to masturbate but this can be taken too far in that people think this is worse than actual things that are forbidden in the Torah.Even though Rav Nahman was certainly right that it needs a correction to say the ten Psalms [16,32, 41, 42, 59, 77,90, 105 137, 150.] but still it is not an actual prohibition in the Torah.