Pantheism

It is not the belief system of Jews , Muslims nor Christians.[See Volume II of the Guide where a similar issue is the focus. If creation was from an eternal substance. The Rambam rejects this and says that if it would be true then the Torah would not be valid.

This all came up because the pope has been in South America recently and the announcement from the Vatican seems to indicate a kind of pantheism that leaves Catholics wondering what is going on with the pope.

The Rishonim held that creation is ex nihilo. Or in Hebrew "Yesh Mei'ain" "יש מאין".[Something from Nothing.--not from any pre-existing substance.]
[You can see this mentioned in all the medieval sages, and even the Ari himself right smack in the beginning of the Eitz Chaim.]


In spite of this being the belief of Spinoza, it does not seem to have a lot of evidence or support even from reason. --Because the basic assumption of Spinoza that one substance can not effect another substance is not at all obvious. [And the reasonableness of axioms is important. For example in mathematics you do not start out with wildly unreasonable assumptions. You start with things that are almost too simple to state. Like the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Or if A =B and B=C then A =C. So for Spinoza to build his system on shaky foundations does not add a lot of credibility to it.


So when Rav Nahman emphasizes the importance of faith, I have to assume he is not talking about pantheism. In fact, in the context of the L''M of Rav Nahman, it seems he is simply talking about straight and simple faith in God,--not pantheism nor even facts about God, but simple faith and trust.

[He never mentions the 13 principles of faith of the Rambam and might well be thinking along the lines of Rav Joseph Albo that the actual principles are 6 or like the Abravanel that they are 3 principles.]

The meals that a husband owes his wife. [Shulhan aruch of Rav Joseph Karo Even HaEzer 70 sif 8]

Lets us say a husband has gone off to work in a foreign country and his wife borrows money to feed herself. Then of course the husband is obligated to pay back the debt when he returns [Shulhan aruch of Rav Joseph Karo Even HaEzer 70 sif 8] But what happens if she forgives the loan?  Normally I would think that once one is obligated in some debt then that is that. But that is the odd thing about loans in general. A lender can always forgive a debt even after it has been incurred.

So I just happened tp stop by the Breslov place of learning today and noticed this issue comes up in the Shulchan Aruch. The Halkat Mehokeke says in fact she can not forgive the loan.[[opposite of what the Rema writes there from the Mordecei in in the end of Ketuboth. I saw that the Beit Shmuel does in fact defend the Rema and the Mordechei but I did not get a chance to see his reasoning. It might be what I am saying here. That the loan the debt does not go directly from the husband to the lender but rather it goes through the wife. But if that is the case then this whole issue certainly depends on that exact issue that i recall came of in Shas and I recall seeing that Rav Shach brings it in his book the Avi Ezri.

But if I recall this issue was decided already in the Gemara itself and in the Rambam that the middle man can be excluded and we can consider the debt as going directly from A to C without B.[In the case of loans]. That is all I have to say about this issue for now except that I did get a second or two to notice the Taz over there does bring up this issue that it is like a a regular loan.


I ought just to add that over there you also see what I mentioned a few days ago that the husband does not owe a lot of מזונות [meals] to his wife. Just two a day plus one me'ah of money per week. Which is just a few dollars. And you can see right there in shulchan aruch that a divorced woman get zero support. --which just goes to show how the religious nowadays are liars as they claim the Torah gives alimony to a divorced woman.

In any case we do see also in the Shulchan Aruch at the end of 69 that the wife can forgive the meals.- Just like you see when people get married on condition that the husband keeps on learning Torah. This is clearly a great thing --as long as the husband is not using Torah to make money.

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.