The Gra signed the decree of excommunication.

I have long thought that the prohibition in the Torah not to do idolatry refers to the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side. The realm of Satan.] So it is clear why the Gra would have signed the decree of excommunication.
But if one asks what obligation does anyone have to listen to the Gra? I would answer that this comes up in the laws of Nedarim and Shavuot. The achronim [authorities after the Beit Yoseph]] in fact discuss what force does any excommunication have? [We know it is valid because the laws concerning excommunication are brought in tractate Moed Katan] But why is it valid? The Achronim say it is derived from the law of a neder [(oath) נדר]. A person can forbid his object to another person by saying: "This object is a "karban" קרבן [an animal dedicated as a sacrifice] to you."

But my point is that the signature of the Gra is not what makes the Sitra Achra [the dark side] to be evil. The Satan is evil anyway. It is just the signature of the Gra that makes it more clear.

[Just to be a bit more clear. A neder [(oath)] is brought down in the baMidbar (The Book of Numbers). It is forbidding an object to oneself or to another. It is not the same thing as a shavua (to swear). Both are laws that come from the Torah. So when we have laws of "Cherem"  (חרם) or "Nidui" (נידוי) these have the force of Torah laws. [But that is only when the court that makes the excommunication has sufficient authority to do so. Not anyone who decides to put another person into cherem can do so.] So when the Gra signed that letter of cherem, it has validity in so far as anyone who violates it is automatically in cherem themselves and that everyone is obligated to listen to it. [I.e., just like a person can forbid his object to another person--even if that other person does not like it or agree--so a cherem brings about an automatic obligation to listen to it even if you do not agree with the premises on which it is based.

Cafeteria type of religion.

Cafeteria type of religion. Too many choices. Some of which are defended well. Some not.
Plus the problem of combining faith with reason. Since faith itself is unclear and also what reason by itself proposes is not clear how can combing two kinds of mud bring to clarity?

The best idea that I have been able to come up with is as my Mom put it: "To be a mensch"
That is a decent human being. To know the difference between right and wrong is not hard as long as one does not lose his common sense. And most of religion and philosophy is directed towards getting people to jettison their common sense.

That is why I have found it helpful to read Michael Huemer web site and his essay why I am not an objectivist where he spells out clearly the idea that Reason recognizes universals. Moral principles are universals.



[However I should add here that I do hold with the basic canon of Torah Law which is the Written Torah, the two Talmuds, plus the basic commentaries of the Rishonim [medieval authorities]. Also Rav Avraham Abulafia, the medieval mystic and Rav Isaac Luria.] But for some reason I never studied Avraham Abulafia very well. When I started looking at his writings those writings had not been printed at all. Tye were only in the ancient medieval Spanish-Hebrew script. So every words took time to discover. Only after that a fellow printed the entire corpus of Rav Abulfia and made it available on line. But by then I had already gone off into other adventures and studies.

the argument of Berkley that is supposed to show we only know what is in our minds.

Michael Huemer apparently does not think much of the argument of Berkley that is supposed to show we only know what is in our minds. It seems to me he must not think much of the argument of Hume that is supposed to show that all that reason knows is what can be derived by definitions. (note 1) Even Kant did not like that much and showed that in fact we know by pure reason things that can not be derived by definitions like the fact that two lines can not enclose a figure while three lines can.

So he expands the role of reason.

This seems to me to be  a lot like Hegel who does not assume any automatic limit to reason except that it needs a kind of back and forth process to make progress towards the Absolute Idea.
That is a bit different than Plotinus who starts with Logos [Divine Reason and comes down to this world. Hegel starts in this world "Being" and works up towards the Divine Idea.

(note 1) Actually Hume never gives an argument for this. He just assumes it since he learned Euclid which is based on that idea. You learn things in geometry based on the beginning axioms and you deny what comes out contradictory. But in spite of repeating this often he never gives and argument for it.[As pointed out by Bryan Caplan)

the Litvak Yeshiva approach-- is that it is the most faithful to Torah.

The main thing that I found important about the path of the Gra and Rav Shach -the Litvak Yeshiva approach-- is that it is the most faithful to Torah. There however can be differences how individual places are. I found my experiences in Shar Yashuv and in the Mir in NY to be amazing.
However for some reason or other I did not appreciate what I had sufficiently and therefore walked away from that path --thinking I would find something better elsewhere00and that did not happen, [Even though I did find amazing advise and lessons in Rav Nahman of Breslov[ but nothing really comes close to my experience at the Mir.


 My first year was in Shar Yashuv. That is a yeshiva of Rav Shelomo Friefeld who was a disciple of Rav Hutner the founder of another famous Litvak yeshiva in NY, Chaim Berlin.
My first year I now recall must have been floundering. I think I really only got into learning Gemara intensely in the second year when we started Hulin. The third year was Ketuboth. Then another 1/2 yer Yevamot  and then my Dad helped me to enroll in the Mir. Both Shar Yashuv and the Mir were great but the reputation of the Mir is that of an Ivy league school like Yale or MIT. In those days Shar Yashuv was considered to be a beginners school. However I was learning there with Naftali Yeager who was later the rosh yeshiva and his method of learning was as deep as anything I saw later in the Mir.

w8 Music File MP3

w8 Music File MP3  w8 midi w8 nwc

Just finished now. I am very grateful to God for granting to me to write music again after a whole year that I was not able to.

The history behind the music is that I liked classical music and did not think very well of anything that comes after Beethoven. So when I began to write music, it came out in classical style.
It might be said also that my high school music teacher. Mr. Smart, I believe had a taste for classical music. As an orchestra we used to go on tours [not for pay] [even though we were only a simple high school orchestra--but we had some really talented people in the orchestra like Wendy Wilson who was the first violinist] In any case--on all those tours we played only classical music.
And I simply refused to listen to anything else. So I guess in some way you might say I intended to absorb only classical music. So when I write music myself that is what it sounds like.

One of the advantages of learning in a Litvak Yeshiva is that you get an idea of the importance of learning Torah. You see learning Torah as a goal in itself and in fact as the supreme goal. Not as just another good thing to do.

One of the advantages of learning in a Litvak Yeshiva is that you get an idea of the importance of learning Torah. You see learning Torah as a goal in itself and in fact as the supreme goal. Not as just another good thing to do.

[This you can see in the Nefesh HaHaim of Rav Haim of Voloshin].

Another great thing about it is that you do not make learning depend on how smart you are. You realize learning Torah is for everyone.

But the question does come up what is included in this commandment? I think it is fair to say the entire Shas with Tosphot and the rishonim counts as "learning Torah."

But once you get past the Beit Yoseph [around 1500] then I am not so sure. After the Beit Yoseph it was just too easy for anyone to write books since the printing press was invented. So most of the achronim are just not up to par.

[I however have to put the Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua into the category of Torah].

[And I add Physics and Metaphysics as I discussed elsewhere.]

The origin of Philosophy in ancient Greece actually started with the question how is change possible?

The origin of Philosophy in ancient Greece actually started with the question how is change possible? So it looks to me almost as if philosophy has come a full circle to the same question. [If there is no time, then nothing can change and therefore nothing can interact with anything else.] That is in Relativity, time and space are laid out in such a way as they are almost interchangeable except with a minus sign in front of time. In that way of looking at time, there is no particular value "the present". And if there is no present, then change is impossible since change can happen only in the present. 

But we also know Quantum Mechanics. And in Quantum Mechanics we have the two slit experiment and also the Bell inequality. [Bell's inequality is based on the Einstein Rosen Podolsky experiment.  ] if we only had Bell's inequality, then we might say that things can have effects far away instantly. Or we might say that nothing has a time or space value until it is measured. Since we know Relativity is true and also we know that Nature violates Bell's inequality so we know the second idea is true. Things have no time value until measured.  And this to some degree shows that Kant was right that time and space us how we measure things. They are dinge an sich--things in themselves that we have no window into. [What Bell's inequality shows is not strictly what Kant held, but it gets close. It shows that things do not have space time values until measured. But there is space time.