My impression of the best places to go to learn Torah --at least in terms of what I am familiar with is for beginners Shar Yashuv in NY, and for advanced levels the Mir [ of NY]. I am really not very much familiar with yeshivas in Israel. If, of course, Ponovitch [in Bnei Brak] is still represented by anyone like Rav Shach, well that stands to reason that that is the top. He was the Mount Everest of the Torah world.

The things that were amazing to me about Litvak yeshivas in New York was their depth.
Israel is great in many ways, but too many people come because they imagine they will get some level like what you have in Litvak yeshivas in NY. That is usually not actually what happens.

The idea of Rav Nahman of Breslov to do "hitbodadut" [talk with God] the whole day seems to me to be  a good idea. You see this idea in the very end of his book the LeM where he says the main thing is to do hitbodadut the whole day, but for people that are weak the minimum is for them to do an hour a day.

There seems to many great results of this. But one is that to choose between good and evil requires a  kind of common sense that is anything except common. It needs a special kind of help from above.

w25 music file

w25 G Major mp3 fast. i.e. Allegro, with Rondo at end. w25 midi   w25 nwc

"It is possible to serve God with everything."

Grace and Law. The thing is you need a balance between these. You see a kind of balance between these two areas of value in Rav Nahman. In fact in two lessons in his LeM he brings the ideas "Not to be strict" and  "It is possible to serve God with everything." [ LeM II 44.]

The idea is that God's light fills the world. So the idea is not that everything is good. Rather that it is possible to find the Good.

The thing about two different areas of value is you need each area to get to its perfection before it can be integrated successfully with the other. An example would be Newton's Gravity with Maxwell. Each needed to get to the peck until Einstein could see the way to combine, or better said to modify Newton. Same with Einstein and Heisenberg until you got Feynman and Schwinger with QFT. Same with String Theory. So it is with other areas of value.
The way you can see this is with spectral lines. Each one is sharp and defined for every element and molecule. But each has its own signature. so the same element will have very specific lines and nothing in between. No penumbra.

The problem is implanted knowledge. There is no reason to think it is true.

Dr Michael Huemer has a kind of point that he answered to me long ago about a kind of problem in the Kant Friesian approach of immediate non-intuitive knowledge [i.e. faith.] [note 1] The problem is implanted knowledge. There is no reason to think it is true. So what can you do with that. In my own mind I have thought to answer this by the idea of Hegel of the dialectic. That getting to truth is this process between empirical knowledge and a priori knowledge.

[I mean to say that as Dr Huemer has argued that even the most straight forward empirical knowledge has hidden a priori assumptions. I would say faith has also this aspect. That is the old mediaeval approach of balance faith with reason.]


[In case it is not clear what I am saying it is that moral principles are objective universals. And that Reason's "thing" is to recognize universals. But as Huemer mentions that sometimes even for pure reason to get the concept in the first place requires an empirical element.]

[I am really not able to take any sides here. It seems to me that Hegel, Kelley Ross, and Huemer all have good points. I imagine the Kelley Ross answer to Huemer would be that your prima facie assumption would have have to have a starting point before reason can even start, plus that it can be checked empirically. thus even flat space time which for kant was the start of reason without which reason could not even start, had to be sacrificed to general relativity. this in fact caused the major crisis of the friesian school. but as kelley ross pointed out, it did not have to be so. and here the insights of michael huemer are helpful for if you see your starting principles cause problems, you might as well find other tarting principles--just as Einstein did.   [he assumed Maxwell's equations were  more fundamental than newton's, so with Einstein the starting principle had to be that the speed of light is constant in all non accelerating frames of reference --as is the case with maxwell ] 


[note 1] "Non intuitive" is not sensed by any of the five senses. "Immediate" means not through anything. I.e. no mediate step. That means not derived by some logical deduction. So "immediate non-intuitive" means knowledge that you know not through the sense and not by some logical derivation. 

w24 music file

w24 G Major

THE LEFT: "The U.S. is always wrong, therefore the Gulf War was wrong."

Abelard Rules for thinking straight

The basic problem is this. The left takes the view that whatever the USA does is wrong. That includes any and all white, males. Especially if they are Protestant.

The question is not weapon quality Uranium being shipped to Iraq.[See the whole history of the Iraq acquiring.] Or N. Vietnam massacres of civilians in S. Vietnam after they took over. The issues are all easy to decide. As long as it is on the side of the USA and/or  democracy,- then it is wrong. The left just needs to think how to argue the point. But the beginning assumption is always the same. White, Protestant, American is always wrong. That is three strikes and you are out. If only one or two of these three evil categories, then one is only part evil. But put all three together, and you get the whole.

It gets tiring to argue when you know the conclusion anyway.

The truth be told, it is hard to get something like justice. But my feeling about it is more or less like Allan Bloom [Closing of the American Mind] said in so many words. The political question is settled. The Constitution of the USA is the best you can get. That does not mean it can not be perverted. But it is the best anyone can get.And countries that follow that basic English British model have done extremely well.  Just take a look at all former colonies of the British. The amount of success and respect for human rights is astonishing.--as compared with any other system that has ever existed in human history.

The issue with the USSR was that sometimes there is such a thing as exploitation. That does not make it right to steal someone else's money. Stealing is still stealing. To exploit was more or less the basic reason that the revolution happened in Russia. But that was not a good reason to go in the opposite direction. You need a kind of balance between private property and government protection of workers.