כנגד מדינת הלכה A state of halacha is against halacha.

I claim that a state of halacha [Jewish Law] is against halacha. [There is no such thing as ordination. Authentic ordination stopped during the time of the Talmud. After that there is only pseudo ordination. And even if there would be the authentic thing no one today were qualify.]  It is merely an attempt to use the appearance of ordination to gain power and money.  The whole religious world is just one big scam. [There is no legitimate excuse to use Torah to make money or to be excused from military service. But the problems are much deeper than these two issues.]
  One one hand there is much to learn in Torah about values and morality. But the attempt of the religious world to impose their power and authority on others would result in the worst kind of nightmare I can imagine.
   The main support for this idea is experience, not theory. That is to say I can pick out things in which the religious world is obviously against the Torah.  But these would be after the facts that I and anyone who has lived under the authority of the religious leaders knows about.
  There is a kind of cult mentality in the religious world that you would expect more in Adi Da or Scientology.
  There are better places and worse but the major emphasis of getting the fry to be frum has hidden agenda. It is no as innocent as they try to make it look.
  Netanyahu [The Prime Minister of Israel] was actually asked a few days ago about this exact question and he said a state of halacha. that is just a sick joke. I will not give any support to such a thing.
  I do not know how he knows this. But it is clear that he is as aware of the evil and sickness of life under Jewish religious authorities as I am. It is no accident that anyone who has lived under that kind of authority leaves it as soon as they are able.
  However on the positive side of things --if I could I would try to learn a and keep Torah as much as I could. But that has nothing to do with the sick frum world.
The basic idea is that part of the Torah בין אדם לחבירו obligations between man and his fellow man. In these areas as is well known the frum religious world is a nightmare.

[ Rav Nahman was aware of these problems. Especially you can see this in LM vol I chapter 61 where he warns about allowing religious leaders to claim ordination.]

I thought the USA was doing well when it was basically WASP. There is a principle --a guest can not invite a guest. So WASPs graciously allowed people in need to come. But that does not mean they the guests ought to invite others. The change in the USA is such that a swamp of people in the USA are hostile to America. Also the Socialist Left made the USA seem a lot different than the period that I recall.


A similar thing seems to apply to Israel. The religious did everything they could to stop its foundation. But now want all the benefits.

religious leaders

Even though Rav Nahman made it clear that religious leaders in the Jewish world tend to be demons (note 1)--that is from the realm of Evil. Still I think the problem is not the people but the system.

That is that the system is not really based on Torah at all but is rather based on a group dynamics that rewards fraud.


I noticed that the religious world tends to believe they are smarter and better morally than anyone else.
These two claims do not hold up to scrutiny. And they are not minor issues. The whole  raison d'être (reason to be) depends on these claims being factual. (note 2) As you can see in the Rambam in his reason for the commandments in the Guide for the Perplexed.


(note 1) For example in L''M I: 12. I:28  and many other places were he refers to Torah scholars that are demons. "The reason that some Torah scholars are against those who fear God is because they receive their Torah lessons form the demons" (LM I:12).  Another quote is" Torah scholars that are demons receive their Torah lessons from the "alfin hanefulin" [the fallen letters A"]

(note 2) See Talmud Bava Mezia 119 the argument between R Shimon Ben Yohai and the sages. The Rambam in Mishne Torah seem to decide the halacha in opposite ways. Once like R. Shimon and in another place not. But Rav Shach pointed out there is a third opinion R Yehuda and that the Rambam in consistant in deciding like him in all cases.

I was in Uman

 I was in Uman and needed an operation on my foot and the doctor there did a fantastic job.[Though as you can imagine that same hospital had a dreadful reputation from the time of the USSR.

Not to say I have any desire to go back. Ukraine was getting to be  a nightmare. I would be attacked in the middle of the day just randomly by people that recognized I was not a Ukrainian. There are too many criminals over there. 

A lot of the yeshiva world is about using Torah to gain power and money. Otherwise it would be more or less simple to simply stay home and learn Torah.
[You can simply buy a Shas and Rishonim and even Rav Chaim Solovietchik's Hidushei HaRambam and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.] [I do not mean this critique to apply to the yeshivot where Torah is learned for its own sake, for example the yeshivot I was in the Mir of NY and Shar Yashuv. Certainly there are places like that in Israel --like Ponovitch. Torah for its own sake I agree with. Torah for the sake of making money I do not agree with.\ 




 But the religious world is kind of like a parasite that needs the secular world to survive. The religious are about as healthy for Klal Israel and  sores are necessary for the human body.

Not that it was always that way. But that is the present day situation. Probably you can understand from this why the Rambam wanted to make an iron wall between Torah and money.

Hints that come from Above.

There are hints in what happens to one that come from Above. This is something in the book of Rav Nahman that comes up in a few places.

[In one place Rav Nahman says that "God condenses himself from infinity to the place where one is and gives him hints about how he can return to Him." That is to say:  God is above logic and comprehension. But still he gives hints to every person --even one who has fallen from holiness completely and is totally absorbed into the evil realm, still He gives him hints how to return to Him in repentance. קול קורא במדבר.


So even though learning Torah is a great thing, still there is a higher level that I believe I was getting hints about that I should spend time and effort on.

It is kind of like the gemara brings about Rav Zeira [an Amora from the time of the Talmud] who fasted forty days in a row in order to forget the Talmud that was being written in Iraq [Babylon] in order to come to the higher level of understanding on the Jerusalem Talmud

From the Rambam and Ibn Pakuda I would have to say that Metaphysics and Physics are a part of Torah

It is not that I am unconcerned about Bitul Torah. It is more along the lines that the Gra said--that according to lack of knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms, one will lack 100 times more in Torah. [As brought in to Introduction to Euclid by a disciple of the Gra, i.e. Rav Baruch of Shkolev].
There seems to be some kind of Achilles heel in the world of Torah when this aspect of things is lacking.

The actual opinion of the Rambam you have to get to in a more round about way. But it is hinted to in the commentary of the Mishna, in the Mishne Torah and in the Guide.

It seems that however the Ramban [Nachmanides and other rishonim would have disagreed. But still from what I can tell, the Rambam was right. The Ramban has some choice words for Aristotle!  But perhaps it is not so much that the Rambam was right as this is an are of the dinge an sich [things in themselves] where reason can not enter. For on one hand, I wished I would be able to sit and learn Torah all day every day for every second all my life. I was that attached to Torah. [] But then circumstances tore me from that and I have had to discover that point of Ibn Pakuda and the Rambam.