Rav Avraham Abulafia

The idea of Rav Avraham Abulafia is that Jesus was the messiah son of Joseph and that is different from messiah son of David. It does not mean that he was divine in the sense of the Trinity but rather a soul of Emanation אצילות similarly to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, David.
[Rav Kaduri also brought down a similar idea in a note that he said should not be opened until after he would be gone. The note is fairly famous.]

You can see this clearly in his writings of Rav Abulafia, and also in the Ph.D. thesis of Moshe Idel at Hebrew University.
The subject of messiah son of Joseph is dealt with in the Talmud in Suka [at the end] and also in Moshe Haim Luzato in his Tikunim Hadashim [תיקונים חדשים] and also in the Gra in his Kol HaTor (קול התור). [Voice of the Dove].

Moshe Idel also points out a gematria [numerical value of the letters] that reflects negatively on Jesus. But that is not any different than countless gematriot [numerical values] that mean one is the opposite of the other. For example Moshe [משה] is gematria heresy [שמד עם הכולל] with the value of the word itself counting as one. That means Moshe stands against it. Not that he is identified with it.

This same idea is also in the Ari (Isaac Luria) in the books of his disciple Rav Haim Vital on the Five Books of Moses--at the end of Breshit concerning Joseph. [That is the books that are commentaries on the Torah at the end of Genesis -that were actually written by Rav Haim Vital but are of lessons he learned from the Ari.]

This makes a difference in terms of "faith in the wise", that is that it adds something good to one's soul when one believes in a true tzadik [saint].

[Other places that deal with this subject are Tosphot in Avoda Zara, which is quoted by the Rema. But to me it is seems what Tosphot is saying is three different hypotheses. Not just one. I learned that Tosphot with David Bronson.]

[Rav Abulafia is quoted by Rav Haim Vital at the end of his Gates of Holiness and by the Remak. It is a surprise that in the last part of Gates of Holiness is where Rav Haim Vital is talking about unifications that bring to the Divine Presence and as the authority for that he is quoting the books of Rav Abulfia,-- and does not bring the Ari!] [The Chida (Rav David Azulai) also brings Rav Abulafia in his Shem Hagedolim the book that brings a short biography of all the great sages of Israel.]

the word "science" is used nowdays for pseudo science like psychology.

In the West a lot of people are into attacking science nowadays.
This mainly comes from the humanities and social pseudo sciences.

In the meantime it seems the Chinese are building a collider that might be able to discover super symmetry.

Part of the problem is the word "science" is used nowdays for pseudo science like psychology.

woman's property when she gets married.

I do not have any new idea about this but I thought that it is a good idea to make clear some different categories about a woman's property when she gets married.

The famous categories are נכסי מלוג ונכסי צאן ברזל. [Property that she owns before she gets married and then gets married]

And in these there are lots of subdivisions as you can see in Ketuboth page 78 and 79.

But these categories are very different than money she earns as wages or if she ruins a business or if she finds some object that has no owner.

[I admit I was confused about the differences between these things when I first was learning Ketuboth in my second year in Shar Yashuv [NY] of Rav Freifeld and Rav Naftali Yeger.

So when you encounter right in the beginning of Ketuboth what a woman acquires is acquired by her husband מה שקנה אישה קנה בעלה has nothing to do with property she owns before she gets married. It refers specificall to מעשה ידיה the work of her hands.

This is big subject in Ketuboth and Yevamot. But the reason I mention this even though I have no new idea about it is because some women think that whatever their husband's owns is owned by them--at least half. And that is false.

[In any case some of the differences are if property [land] comes to her before ארוסין betrothed and the then she becomes betrothed. Or it falls to her after she is betrothed and then she sells it when she is betrothed. Or after she gets married.]
In the Mishna Beit Hillel holds property she owns before she is betrothed she can sell after she is botrothed. But if it comes after she is betrothed then she should not sell it but if she did already the sell is valid.]

woman's first intuition is always correct?

The press agent of Hitler [Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl] that eventually turned against him, and had to escape made note of how Hitler would address a crowd of people that had plenty of people were there specifically to heckle him and shout him down.  The way he did it was brilliant. His very first remarks were about how woman's first intuition is always correct since they are more spiritually attuned to reality. That immediately silenced his detractors who were eager to hear more about how great women are.

Praising women as always right is the general way that people try to gain power. 

immediate non intuitive knowledge and faith.

I suggested a long time ago to David Bronson in Uman that immediate non intuitive knowledge is the exact same thing that Rav Nahman of Breslov was talking about in his emphasis on faith.

[This came up because I was noting that Einstein has an essay commenting on Bertrand Russel's approach to Hume.]

To me it seems clear that there is another way to access knowledge besides pure logic which can detect contradictions and empirical knowledge based on sense perception.

Hegel was trying to get to a kind of nationalism without the flaws of the nightmare of the French Revolution.

Nationalism has support from Hegel. But some people are not happy with Hegel like Dr. Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer.  Brand Blanshard defends Hegel and also Walter Kaufman. My feeling about the State is that along the lines of Blandshard--that no human good is possible without the State. But why the state? Why not the village? or the whole world? The answer is like why the human brain works like it does. It is not that it is big. There are bigger brains. The point is it is right size for abstract thought. Too big would ruin it. So the state. Village would just be in conflict with  other villages. World government is too big and just would be the same as war of all against all. The State is the right size for people to work together. [This aspect of State I think Dr Ross would agree with.]

Hegel was trying to get to a kind of nationalism without the flaws of the nightmare of the French Revolution. And as Walter Kaufman noted he thought the America is the country of the future, not Prussia.

And the more people depend on the Zohar, the more they fall in delusions. The reason is that the Zohar itself has a certain flaw.

I agree that there were great mystics like the Ari Isaac Luria], Rav Nahman, the Remak [Moshe Cordovaro]. But to the degree they depended on the Zohar they seem weak.  But that does not invalidate their teachings. It just means that was the sort of looking glass that they were seeing through. It is like when one wears green colored glasses everything looks green.

But to account for the true revelations of great mystics you do not need the Zohar. There is more or less a basic path that people can follow--of separation from pleasures of this world and to spend time learning Torah. That in and of itself leads to attachment with the Divine.


But to account for mystic revelation I think the best approach is the Kant Friesian School which is a kind of Neo Kant School different than the Marburg School of Herman Cohen.

[The sad thing is no one has translated Leonard Nelson which is a very important development of Kant. So unless you have time to go and learn him in German, he is more or less a closed book. However Dr Kelley Ross does make up for that to some degree in his development of Nelson's Philosophy. But that still does not replace the original.]



The fact is that kabalah has flavor. It is Geshmak. But not accurate. And the more people depend on the Zohar, the more they fall in delusions. The reason is that the Zohar itself has a certain flaw. Though it was written to encourage people towards the service of God and is based on previous great books like the Sefer yezira. Still the intention of presenting it s as if it was written by R Simon Ben Yochai leaves it with a certain degree of some aspect of the Sitra Achra, a sort of spirit of fraud. Andthat spirit gets into people that learn it.