Question.

Question.  Concerning are the gemarot that encourage deception and having different standards for Jews and non-Jews. I would be glad if you can provide me any kind of justification for the very clear bigoted and hateful talk. The supremacist view. Etc. Is this ostensibly for the betterment of the world that we should be skilled in the arts of double speak and deception? Is that how you [think people ought] to be brought up and taught or does this register for you differently or not at all. Does our treatment at the hands of the Egyptians justify? Are we a race that is attempting evolve past the human state? The logic of eisav soneh et yaakov makes it so that immediately when a Jew leaves the faith he must be deceived and hated as well. There is no middle ground. Either eisav or yaakov. These doctrines are written in stone in the haredi world. You either justify it and live it or you're against. Am i right or wrong? Maybe it's a sacred evil... [The curiosity for] Evil leads to evil. Anyway. Trying to understand difference between evil and selfishness vs chaos vs natural action based upon healthy desire and communion with nature vs service to money vs child sacrifice what all these concepts actually mean in today's world. Who really deserves to live? Whom does God take pride in etc.

What is it the Jewish God specifically hates about the world and its morality? Are we bound to the will of this God or are we simply inextricably illogically bound? What happens if you test this God and say no?

My answer: Very important questions. My answer is more or less based on the idea that the mizvot are to bring to objective morality which is recognizable by reason. Therefore, in anything that conflicts with objective morality, they are not valid. You can see this in particular in R Shimon Ben Yohai who holds that there are reasons for the mizvot and they are recognizable by reason and so when there is a conflict they are not valid.
In other words the Rishonim do not hold from Divine Command Theory. That is the theory that mizvot are good in themselves. No rishon holds that because the gemara itself does not hold it. The Mitzvot are to bring to natural law.

Of course this is not a complete answer. The religious world is not very menschlich [decent]. But so what is the answer? Rav Nahman said the Evil Inclination has evolved. It has become the power of delusion."Dimyon".
And this infects the religious world as much or more so than the secular world.

The big answers for these questions are not clear to me Except to say as Breslov says " I need to look at myself" Why talk about others?" That is from the story of the Simpleton and the wise son.

And so to answer these kinds of questions I have tried to pinpoint the areas that I need to work on. These areas are two fold. One set are things that I am aware i did wrong-so I need to correct. Another set is areas that simply are obligations.

 In sum I see Learning Torah as important. But I think the frum religious world does not represent Torah. I think objective morality depends on input from Torah and Reason as many rishonim held.

natural law

So then the Aquinas approach to natural law is different than the Rambam. I guess that is what you are saying. To Aquinas natural law is  objective morality but not meant to bring to certain goals but rather because it is embedded in the nature of things. Teleological by nature. In think this is what the difference might be.

Rav Israel Salanter

The Musar ethics movement at its core was meant to learn the books of Ethics of the Middle Ages which had a kind of balance between faith and reason. Later Musar became more fanatic.

But fanatic in the wrong kind of way. That is religious fanaticism. And this can lead to ריבוי אור ושבירת הכלים  [too much light that leads to the breaking of one's mental state].

The best answer to this kind of dilemma I think was the path of my parents which was that of balance and menschlichkeit. Not religious fanaticism.
But a justification for this kind of path I did not see until I saw Dr Kelley Ross's web Site the Friesian school. That is a development of Kant. This is a trend of thought that was developed by Leonard Nelson.

In Dr Ross it is shown mainly in his PhD thesis about what he calls a Polynomic Theory of Value.

Danny Frederick

Danny Frederick and Berkeley, i.e. consequentialist theory of political authority.

[As Blandshard put it: without the state no human good is possible. It is a "sine que non" "not possible without which".

Michael Huemer had a debate with Epstein on political authority and to me it seemed that Epstein was right even though Huemer is the greater philosopher. however the actual point really was not clear to me until I saw Danny Frederick's idea that the critique of Huemer on political authority does not apply to Berkeley's consequentialist theory.
[Dr Kelley Ross also noticed the problems with Huemer's position in that debate.]


And I think this consequentialist theory goes well with all mediaeval authorities that I know about.
The Rambam has peace of the state as one of the purposes of many of the laws of the Torah.
Even though the Gemara does not state the reasons for the commandments still it holds the Torah is a consequentialist approach. See Bava Mezia 119a. and lots of other places where the sagesagree with r shimon ben yohai that there are reasons for the commandments that are known. They however disagree about cases where the reason and the letter of the law differ. But that we know the reasons they do not disagree.

Rav Nelkenbaum [who later became a rosh yeshiva of the Mir in NY.]  also pointed out to me that the Ari (Isaac Luria) does not disagree with this point. rather he shows the connections of the commandments with the higher worlds but does not disagree that there are rational and known reasons for them. The Ari certainly does not give reasons himself.

Los Angeles looked better to me when church and state were a part of society. Even as a Jew i felt more comfortable with Merry Christmas and preforming Christian themes in the orchestra in high school than after  radial division of church and state took place. Los Angeles seems to have gone drastically down hill since then. עיר הנידחת. A condemned city.

The actual issue seems to me to have best been dealt with by Rav Avraham Abulafia, Rav Yaakov Emden, the Meiri, the Abravanal, and the Beit Yoseph. These sources I think are well known so there is no reason to go into them. Just Rav Abulafia seems to be ambiguous. You can bring quotes from him that seem to go in two different directions.My own impression is based on his statements that are clearly very positive and also the first PhD thesis of Moshe Idel at Hebrew University.

Gematriot tothe opposite effect do not seem to be proof of anything. After all the numerical value of Moshe is the same as Shemad Heresy. There are lots of examples of that kind of thing. And when they occur no one says they mean that each is identical with teh other. Rather they say זה לאומת זה exact opposites.

תוספות בבא מציעא מ''ג ע''א Tosphot Bava Mezia page 43 side a

There is one more question i have about Tosphot Bava Mezia page 43 side a.
Tosphot is asking about buying. What is the status of the money before the deal is complete? If the seller who has the money at that point is like a borrower then there is a question from the barber. If he is like a paid guard then there is a question from the case of R. Yohanan. That is they made the decree that only drawing the fruit seals the deal because otherwise the buyer can say your fruit was burnt up in the attic. So if he is only a paid guard for the money then why can he not say your money was burnt up in the attic. On the opposite side of things if he is a borrower then why is the person that gives bedek habait  to a barber not liable to meila until the haircut starts? Money that was donated to the Temple can not be used for private purposes. One that does use it for private purpose is transgressing "Meila" Usage of temple money.
My question that occurred to me as I was leaving a dip in the sea is this. Is not the barber hired? Not bought? That is it occurs to me and probably occurs to everyone else that there is something hard to understand about comparison of the bathhouse attendant and the barber to a buyer and seller.

Even though you can argue that the money given to the barber might have the same staאus as the money given to a seller until the point that the deal is sealed. That could be. But why does Tosphot assume it has to be?

יש לשאול על תוספות בבא מציעא מ''ג ע''א. תוספות שאול מן הדין של ספר. מי שהוא נתן כסף של בדק הבית לספר. הוא לא מעל עד שמתחיל התספורת. מזה יש ראיה שהמוכר שכבר יש לו את הכסף של העיסקא קודם שנגמר העיסקא הוא בכלל שומר שכר. אבל שעניין של הספר הוא עניין של שכירות לא מכירה. ולכן מה הדמיון?

infatuation with Sodomy

Plato already made the point that not all physical desires are good. So pleasure does not equal good.
So the infatuation with Sodomy nowadays seems to be misplaced.

Secular morality is a fluid as water. But the problem is that religious morality is not much better.
One really needs the medieval approach of a synthesis of  Faith with Reason.