In the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria]

In the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] you have a basic scenario like this. Before the creation of the world there was simply the Divine Light everywhere-and thus no place for creation. So there had to be made an empty space חלל הפנוי from where God emptied out his light.But he did leave a source of light in the exact middle. Then he sent down a beam of light that as onion rings [ten rings] --crown until royalty. Then after that he sent down again light in the form of a man אדם קדמון. Then this form of a man sent light down from his ears nose mouth and eyes. These formed world outside of the body of Adam Kadmon. One world created from this was "Akudim" stripped. The nekudim "dotted". [both are mentioned in Genesis in report about Jacob with the striped and spotted sheep.] Then there was the famous Shivrat Hakelim [breaking of the vessels]. So at that point we have the vessels along with some sparks of light left in them falling down into three lower worlds Creation Formation and then the Physical Universe. Then begins the process of bringing up the fallen vessels and repairing them (this repair happens in the place where there were the dots nekudim but at this point this is called Emanation Atzilut). [In more detail it makes sense to learn the Eitz Haim of the Ari. That books gives the full picture in more detail. Other books of the Ari deal with other issues like the Shaar HaGilgulim which talks about the root of different souls. A major theme there is how a lot of souls have their root in Cain and others in Hevel his brother. But it is useful to know that the Ari himself revealed that information to his student Rav Haim Vital to give him details about the roots of his soul [Rav Haim Vital's] which was from Emanation. The idea is that there are rare souls whose come from the world of Emanation. It is well known that the patriarchs are souls of Emanation. This is one reason why you find some souls to be from Emanation, That is to say some souls are united with some sephera of Emanation like Abraham being united with the sephera of Hesed Kindness. Isaac united with Power etc. But also you can have a soul that is from Emanation but just a spark of some sephera there--not the whole sephera.
[I knew someone who wanted to convert and the question was asked if they thought Jesus was divine? I do not see how that is a valid issue since lots of tzadikim are thought to be divine in the sense that the world of Emanation is considered pure divinity. כולו אלקות
[The way I see the Ari is as a modification of Plotinus]

Questions on the Gemara -Talmud.

In the Talmud there are some passages that give some people pause. I would like to say that I asked David Bronson in Uman about some passages that were bothering me and his answer was to open the particular passage and see what it is actually saying. Most times that cleared up the issue. But that does not mean there are no good questions or that everything in the Talmud is 100%. Rather the Talmud is an approximation of the Oral Law. It is how the Oral Law had been handed down and written down. But there are differences between things that are directly from Mount Sinai and things that were judged to be so by one court of law in one generation that can be overturned by a later court if the later court is greater in wisdom and number.
But in any case, there were some passages that were brought to my attention that I would like to address.

One is a case brought that a person tied up another and put him in his basement--he is not judged guilty of the death penalty. That is in Bava Kama dealing with laws of causing indirect damage. So the Gemara there does not go into the issue in more detail as it does in Sanhedrin where the actual subject of murder comes up. There in Sanhedrin it is brought that when you have a murderer who has murdered but without the condition that would make him judged guilty accoutring to the laws of the Torah but you still know he did murder, you take him in a cell and give him dry barley  until he dies
The idea is that in the Torah it is hard to actually incur the death penalty since the conditions are hard to come by. That is there has to be two witness that see the act and the act has to be direct--not by indirect causation and there has to be a warning by the witness right before the act saying to him, "If you do this you will incur the death penalty because of such and such a verse."

I should be impeached.

I should be impeached. I confess. I did an infamous tit for that transaction today. A despicable quid pro quo. I bought two packages of potato chips I offered money to the owner of the store to give me those two packages. {Maybe Trump and I can share a cell at Sing Sing prison?]

Mir Yeshiva in NY

I was discussing some of my path that led me to the Mir Yeshiva in NY and later to Safed. In the conversation Spinoza came up. The basic story is this. I knew that Einstein liked Spinoza so from the age of 11 until I actually went tom Shar Yashuv and the Mir I learned Spinoza. But not that I had any concept of his being supposedly under some excommunication.

In fact I think that for a excommunication to be valid the people making it need to have a certain degree of knowledge in Gemara. But if the people that put him into excommunication are anything like the religious leaders today then their ban is not valid.--This is for the reason that there is no Tosphot anywhere in Shas that you can ask any  religious rav about and he will know the answer. They are simply ignorant. The reason is to get into their position they have connections and learn a few laws but knowledge of gemara and Tosphot --forget about it.

So the idea of excommunication is  valid idea and when it is done properly certainly has legal validity. But that I think could not have been the case with |Spinoza.

In any case the only book of Spinoza I was familiar with was the Ethics and from that I got the idea that morality is objective and that reason recognizes moral principles.. His idea of God I also did not find a problem with since to him the center of gravity is on God-not nature. Nature is simply God doing his thing. Natura Naturans--Nature naturing. Still in all that was not my concept of God which was more along the lines I heard at home--of God that is the first cause and that hears and answers prayer--and is not the world but rather the creator of the world.
At any rate, to me going to the Mir just seemed like a natural continuation of the education I got at home and in Temple Israel.--that moral laws are recognizable by reason--and that God hears prayer.
My fall from the Mir I think was because I was not really finding myself in that environment very well. I had gotten married and somehow sort of got pulled away from learning. In the long run I think I ought to have been stubborn to stick with the straight Torah path of the Gra and the Litvak Yeshiva world.

The way to go about learning Physics in my opinion does not involve books that are meant for laymen. See this blog :https://motls.blogspot.com/ where you can see that books written for laymen give wrong ideas--especially nowadays.

Instead the best way to go about is I think is to say the words and to go on. לומר את הדברים כסדר וממילא יבין ואם לא יבין תכף יבין אחר כך ואם ישארו איזה הוא דברים שאף על פי כן לא יוכל לעמוד על כוונתו מה בכך כי מעלת ריבוי הלימוד עולה על הכל שיחות הר''ן שיחה ע''ו


From where do you learn that learning Physics is a part of learning? From Musar. חובות לבבות הקדמה ושער הבחינה פרק ג
Also in the Mishna Torah Laws of Learning Tora-- about dividing one's learning into Written Law Oral Law and Gemara and "Pardes" is in the category of Gemara--and the Rambam says there that he explained what Pardes is in the beginning of Mishna Torah in the first four chapters. There he explains Pardes as the subjects of Physics and Metaphysics as you find in Aristotle and his later commentaries.

religious truth

My opinion about religious truth follows a idea that is brought in the Phenomenology of the Spirit by Hegel. You can look on a process of growing of fruit a fruit tree thus--the bud is destroyed by the blossom, Then the blossom is destroyed by the fruit. Or you can say the bud is sublimated into the blossom and then the blossom is sublimated into the fruit.
So Plato Aristotle Aquinas Leibniz and Spinoza were like the bud and blossom that eventually develop into the full fruit.


I see religious truth to be along the same lines.

For example in Christianity the issue about the Trinity is in a process of development as one can see in this blog https://trinities.org/blog/.
That is to say it is becoming more clear as time goes on that Jesus was attached to God in the sense that the commandment says to love and fear God and to be attached to him. That does not mean he was God. See also the book on Sonship by Professor Moshe Idel.

However this is not to say that the Trinity is all that much off. In fact we find lots of saints that are considered divine. The name of the Ari on his grave is האלקי ר' יצחק לוריא אשכנזי.. The Divine R, Isaac Luria. Lots of saints are thought to be souls of Atzilut Emanation. See the whole discussion in teh main book of Rav Nahman of Breslov the LeM vol 2 about tzadik who is בחינת בן ר'' אליעזר וצדיק שהוא בחינת עבד כמו ר' יהושע

page 13 of Bava Kama

There is something going on in Tosphot on page 13 of Bava Kama that I am finding hard to understand. Why does he bring up the issue of whether the ox does full damage or half in his question on Rashi. I was puzzling about this until I saw the second edition of the Maharsha. Still the issue is unclear to me.

The basic issue is this. On page 13 the case is a peace offering gores another animal. The law is the owner of the animal can not say I want the parts of the animal that are not brought as a sacrifice. They both have to share equally. The Gemara asks who is this going like. If to the sages then it is simple.
ר' אבא אמר שלמים שנגחו גובים מן הבשר ולא מן האימורים היינו החלקים שעולים על המזבח. הגמרא שואלת לפי מי זה? אם לפי החכמים אז הוא פשוט.. מה הדין של החכמים? הוא אם שור דחף בהמה לבור-בעל השור משלם ולא בעל הבור. ולפי רש''י הכוונה היא שבעל השור משלם את הכל אם הוא מועד וחצי אם הוא תם. תוספות שואלים אם כן מה הדמיון למצב של שלמים שנגח ששם גם האימורים הם חלק מן השור? תוספות מוסיפים בתוך שאלתם על רש''י שבשלב הזה של הגמרא אוחזים שכל חלק מן השלמים עשו כל הנזק. שאם לא כן וכל חלק הזיק רק לפי חלקו אז  הניזק יכול לומר שמגיע לו רק הבשר ולא האימורים. אבל לי נראה שזה תלוי בדין של ברירה. ואם זה תלוי בברירה אז מה משנה אם כל חלק עשה כל הנזק או רק הזיק לפי חלקו?


What is the case of the sages? It is when a ox pushes another animal into a pit. and the sages say the owner of the ox pays, not the owner of the pit.  Rashi explains the sages that they mean if the ox is tam [never gored before] then the owner of the ox pays a full half and if it is muad [it gored before] he pays full.
Tosphot asks if so then the owner of the pit has no portion in the damage and so what is the parallel to the case of the peace offering?
But then Tosphot adds that Rashi must be holding at this point in the case of the ox and the pit that the sages are holding the ox does full damage. Why because otherwise why would the owner of the ox pay full damages. But also the Maharsha add a further reason. That is the if the sages hold the ox did half damages then when we get back to the case of the peace offering there would be a good reason for the owner of the animal that was damaged to claim only the half of the ox that does not go on the altar is the part that did the damages.

The thing about this that I find difficult is the question is this not then a case of brera?[choosing a portion after the fact. ]