The regular Mishna holds ממון המוטל בספק חולקים. [Money that is in doubt is divided]. This comes up in several places in the Mishna. And every place it comes up the mishna goes like Sumchos.
But in Bava Kama Shmuel says that is not the opinion of the sages who hold one who enters a plea that money that is in someone else's possession really belongs to him needs to bring proof.


The question of המוציא מחבירו עליו הראיה has the same format as a Gemara in  Ketubot page 40b.

There Rabbainu Hananel [last of the Geonim and teacher of the Rif as far as I recall] and the Raavad say the law is like the stam Mishna even though in the Gemara Rava said "These are the words of R. Meir but the sages say..."

In Bava Kama you have the same situation. A stam Mishna says one thing and then the Gemara says [from Shmuel] These are the words of sumchos but the sages say etc.

the religious world a lot of people like to consider themselves as being particularly smart

In the USA it is considered a good thing to find where your talents are and to pursue that as a goal. This can be misleading. For example lets us say you notice that you are not very good in mathematics. But in other of subjects you are a lot better. So you find yourself in a group of people following a course load in some soft subject. The tendency will be to think you simply have found yourself with group of people that have a different set of talents. You do not immediately suspect the truth that that whole group has a low IQ and that the reason you are better in that than in math is because you found yourself with  bunch of dumbbells.


The issue of self deception comes into play here. Just take for a hypothetical example. You are in a Physics class in university and notice that everyone  else in class in doing better than you. So you get discouraged and switch to psychology and immediately notice than you are doing better than anyone else in class. Does that mean that now you have found your real calling and talents? Or does it mean that psychology students have the lowest IQ of anyone else in universities and Physics students have the highest? [The answer we already know. But the point is that this example can be applied to other areas.]

You can use this example to explain why in the religious world a lot of people like to consider themselves as being particularly smart. And like to convince others of this "fact". This comes from a certain degree of self deception. Even being able to memorize a lot of things in the Talmud does not make one smart.  Smartness at least as understood as being able to figure out complicated stuff has nothing to do with how much work you put into something nor with memory. 

When I was in Shar Yashuv [of Rav Shelomo Freifeld]  I wanted to learn fast--that is by just saying the words and going on like you see in Rav Nahman's Sichot HaRan 76. But for some reason that kind of fast learning was looked down on over there.  so I found some kind of compromise in that every section of gemara I would read twice and go on. That was not going exactly fast but not as slow as the path was over there either.

Nowadays I can see the value of both going very fast like Rav Nahman emphasized and also the kind of in depth intense learning that you have in teh great Litvak Yeshivas like Ponovitch and Brisk.

So when I eventually tried to expand my horizons a little and get into Physicsand Mathematics  I also found the need the path of lots of review and also the fast kind of learning of Rav Nahman.

You can tell a lot about a person by what their goals are. I have noticed that people in the space program wanted to accomplish something great for all mankind.


My dad was like that. He contributed a lot to the advance towards space. Little known to most people is the fact that NASA makes very little of what they send up. It was TRW that made the first early warning satellites and later on developed the advance laser beam communication satellites.

My dad was the leading engineer in the infra red satellites. The reason was that he was the person that invented infra red camera in Monmouth Army Base. So when TRW was contacted  and asked to make an early warning system they contacted my dad and asked him to drop what he was doing and help them develop the satellite system.

See this link on page 24 about the first infra red camera invented by Philip Rosenblum.  https://books.google.co.il/books?id=D1QEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Later after the last infra red satellites went up he stayed on a for a few years to make laser communication satellites. But even though TRW had the plans for that for  along time these more advanced satellites were not made until the 2000's--way after my dad left the corporation. [The reason was that TRW lost all its contracts after the Russians were discovered stealing the plans.]


My feeling about this is there is a need to be able to get out of the solar system. In the short term settling Mars I believe is an important goal. But eventually there is a need  to discover some way of traveling to the stars. And the only thing that I or anyone else can contribute to that at this point is to learn String Theory and make some kind of progress in understanding the basic nature of space time.

As for Mars--there is no need to develop any new technology. everything has already been invented that Mars needs. Nuclear power is 1940's technology. We had it before colored TV's and transistor radios.

Incidental my dad also was the leader of Team II for the camera on the U-2. But that was when I was too young to remember. When I recall when I was five we were already in Newport Beach CA and my Dad had his own company to market a machine he had invented the copymate machine that used x rays technology to make super sharp copies. That went on until TRW contacted him as I said and then we moved so he could be closer to TRW.

[I admit I do not know why my dad is never mentioned in connection with the U-2 camera. There were two teams.]

According to the Rambam, the Torah is a consequential system.--But not in the same way as consequential theories of morality. Rather to the Rambam the idea is that the laws of Torah have a purpose to bring about good character traits and peace of the state and to lessen ones physical desires and to avoid idolatry.

You can see this theme all the time in the Musar movement of R Israel Salanter. One of his original motivations was when he asked someone a polite question but the person was so busy being frum he did not even notice his question. So Rav Israel started putting two and two together seeing how that Rav Shmuel from Salant had come to good traits as by intense learning of Musar.

You can see this in the Gemara itself in the places where the argument between R Shimon Ben Yochai and the  Sages is brought down.

Space Travel.

In the Universe there is a lot of energy which has not been identified. In fact, the vast majority of stuff in the universe is dark energy and dark matter.
For dark energy there are two possibilities: the Lambda constant of Einstein or a scalar field.
So there does seem to be an anti gravity force. This opens possibilities for space travel.

And not just normal space travels in regular space time--but also the possibility of poking a hole in a black hole or a worm hole.to get to another universe.

What I am suggesting here is that I think that space travel is a possibility, but it seems to depend on string theory. Though in the near future it is probably best to concentrate on getting to Mars. But what I am thinking is that to settle the universe is also a possibility for mankind. But it would depend on further work in string theory.

[I admit that I think that string theory is good to learn for other reasons besides the possibilities it opens up. That is that it is the wisdom of God in his creation.  Plus there is a element in it that the Rambam brings of love and fear of God and of learning Torah.]

wife that rebels against her husband

So what is the din about moredet? [דין מורדת]  A wife that rebels against her husband? What is the law? What if he is sitting and learning Torah for its own sake--that is not getting paid and his or her parents support them until at which time she decides to go out and work herself as was the arrangement with Rav Shach and many gedolei Israel?
Or to ask even further--what if her husband in in a kollel? A kollel in itself is really not legitimate; but what if anyway he is sitting and learning in such a place?

[The regular law about a wife that rebels is she loses her ketuba.]


I ask this because one of the very first tracates that I learned was Ketuboth. In Shar Yashuv of Rav Friefeld and Rav Naftali Yeager they were doing a lot of the first and third chapters. But after I got to the Mir I spent a lot of time on the fifth chapter.--where this issue is located.


This is an issue which strikes me as being relevant. Some people will tell the wife to get rid of her husband even though she is in fact being supported by his or her parents and is not exactly starving!
It seems to me she would have the category of a moredet in such a case.

There might be other issues that she feels she can not live with. But the fact that her husband is learning Torah "lishma" (for its own sake) seems to not be a reason that makes her move moral or valid in terms of halacha.

The issue is that here is one area where religious leaders will in general tell the wife to get rid of her husband  because they either do not know Torah, or do not care. The main thing for them is to get money for their social clubs called kollels or yeshivas which really have nothing to do with Torah.

[You can see this fact in Rav Nahman's detailed treatment of religious leaders in his major books. Clearly he thought there is some kind of problem with religious leaders. See the LeM vol 1. chapters 8, 12, 28 61. and vol 2 chapter 8--and other places that I have forgotten off hand.]