Socialism is theft. People agreeing to the Constitution agreed to Congress having powers to tax for the common welfare, not interest groups. So Socialism is simply advocating to steal which is clearly a problem as well defined in the Ten Commandments.

So the question is not that if socialism a practical way to prosperity. [Which in any case Venezuela makes a joke of.] But the question is moral. Just because you can get together enough people to take way from others what they own does not make it right.

w54 F major  w54 in midi   w54 nwc

In Ezekiel 19 you have a basic account of the principles upon which the Torah is based. The context there is that God is telling the prophet to tell Israel about the fact that He judges a person only on the basis of a few basic principles. And the prophet then goes on to enunciate them. When a righteous person does right, that is he does not hurt others, does not lie or steal or commit adultery or do idolatry he will live, says the Lord. So you see right there the basic idea of R Shimon ben Yochai who is דורש טעמה דקרא [he says you go by the reason for the laws, not the letter of the law. Bava Metzia 119]. (There he argues with the sages who say you go by the exact meaning of the words, not the reason. For example. RS says you can take a pledge from a rich widow because the reason for the prohibition of taking the pledge of a widow is absent.])

So right there you see the important principle of Rav Israel Salanter in the Musar Movement--that is that the main idea of the Torah is to have good character. [To be a "mensch" as my Mom put it.]

[I wanted to add that right there in Ezekiel 19 you also see the fallacy of group pride. One of the comments of Ezekiel there complimenting a righteous son of some wicked person is that he did not go after  גילולי בית ישראל "idols of the house of Israel". So you see a person is judged based on his own actions. Not which group he belongs to. 

Rav Shach Laws of Divorce 8. law 10.

IN Rav Shach Laws of Divorce 8. law 10.
Rav Shach brings an argument between the sages that came right after the Talmud [רבנן סבוראי][Savorai] [before the geonim] and the rishonim. The origin is the the very first book that compiled laws from the Talmud the "great halahot" [Halachot Gedolot] .
  The issue is if one says to his wife, "Here is your "get" [divorce]  if you do not drink wine all the days of So and So." Then some time later, the husband dies and then she drinks while so and so is still alive.
Is the get [divorce doc ] nullified? The Savorai רבנן סבוראי say "No." There is no nullification after death. The Halachot Gedolot and the Rishonim say the get is null  and void based on a law that says one says to his wife, "This is your get [divorce] if you do not drink wine your whole life." That get [divorce] is null. But if the Savorai would be right, then it could happen that he would die and the get [divorce] would be valid. What's the difference? I would like to get into the debate that Rav Shach has there with the Shaagat Aryee [a friend of the Gra] and R. Akiva Eiger.

  I thought about the difference when one says, "This will be your get [divorce] if you do or do not do such and such". The other case is when one says, "This will not be your get if you do or do not do such and such."] But that does not seem to help.

  Rav Shach said a way to answer for the [רבנן סבוראי] Savorai sages would be to ask what the main thing the husband means. In one case he is not giving a time limit. He is just saying she should not drink wine. That makes her still attached to him, so the get is null. [The "get" has to be a complete separation in order to be valid]. But in the case of her not drinking in the time of so and so, there the main idea is to give a time limit when she can start again drinking. So there is a possibility of complete separation.


[When he gives to his wife the get on condition she never drinks wine, that has no time limit. So even if he dies in the middle, that is still infinity minus some number-- which is still infinity. But in the case of her not to drink during the life of so and so, that has a possible limit. That is the way I understand this. It is not exactly in Rav Shach but it seems to dovetail nicely with what he says. He makes the point of where the focus of the husband is. And in my view that itself depends on teh difference between "do not drink wine your whole life " [which means for her never], and "do not drink wine during the lifetime of so and so."

[The way that the Shaagat Aryee and R. Akiva Eiger answer for the Savorai is that there needs to be a positive fulfillment of the condition [not just passive] and that can not be after the death of the husband. Rav Shach notes at least two problems with that answer.  [Which I really did understand. Mainly it looks to me that Rav Shach is simply saying that that "Hiluk" [an answer by making a distinction] does not seem to answer the question. ]


I just wanted to add that the story with the Savorai was that the yeshivot in Iraq [Babylonia] were closed by the government after there had been a few rebellions against the government and the Jewish people there sided with the revolutionary elements. That was the end of the writing and complying of the Talmud. Also I must add that there is a level of thinking and depth in the Talmud which you just do not see after that. The hundred years after the closing there were still some sages that did the finishing touches and transmission. Then the yeshivot were allowed to be opened by the Muslims that had taken over the area. That was the beginning of the period of the Geonim.

Pet worship. It used to be gods. Then Moses came and explained about God. At some point God started losing his reputation and people started worship mankind. It was thought OK to criticize God but Man was thought to be great and infallible. The Noble Savage fit with that. Anything wrong in the world was thought to be God's fault. Anything right was Man's credit. But at some point Man lost his charm, so women became objects of worship. Then children. Now it is pets and animals. I noticed this in relation to "קברי צדיקים" [graves of righteous]. Also in respect to the love people transfer to their pets from their family.

The problem is that one ought to worship and trust in God alone.
[This principle is clear in the Bible, and Christians accept it in principle, and also Muslims. It is hard to see why or how after the principle is clear, that people anyway get off track.]

Like Steven Dutch wrote that all stereotypes have a basis in fact. Before you try to correct people's perception,- correct the problem.]

There is a kind of suspicion of anything spiritual in the kind of secular world I grew up in. Not that I saw or heard anything like that in my home but I noticed this in secular Israelis.

I think this has a basis in fact. [Like Steven Dutch wrote that all stereotypes have a basis in fact. Before you try to correct people's perception,- correct the problem.]
The reason for this problem I think can be explained. The more spiritual some area of value is, the less form it has and the more content. For you would start out with Logic which is pure form no content. The rules are formal in that no matter what your sentences A and B stand for the rules apply.
[See the Kant-Fries way of thinking especially in Kelley Ross]. So as you gradually progress towards more content you would have less form. So Math is a bit less formal than Logic since it can not be reduced to Logic as Godel showed. Physics even more so. Then you get into areas with more content [something that you can feel but not know by reason.] like justice or music. As you progress even from there into holiness, you get even more content, but less form. Until you get to God. God has no form at all, but is all luminous and whom you can feel.
So you have for every positive value also a negative value which is equal and opposite. But when you are in the area of value of logic - that is an area of value that can be perceived by Reason. [Reason perceives Universals [rules and or adjectives that can apply to many individuals] or what we call form.]
If I make a mistake on a Logic test, I get marked off for that problem. But when you get into areas of value of more content but less form, it gets more into an area that reason does not perceive. That is what you would call Intuitive knowledge. "Intuition" here is technical and comes from Latin and means perceiving. It has nothing to do with women's intuition.
But since every area of value has its equal and opposite when you get to the area of God Himself all content and no form, you have the problem that Reason can not perceive what really is from God and what [God forbid] might be from the Realm of Evil. The Dark Side. Reason has no way of telling the difference.
And empirical evidence does not help since it only tells you what is, not what ought to be.

IN the concept of trust in God, I have wondered how much of that is related to the way Rav Nahman of Uman talked about learning fast and just saying the words and going on.
What I mean is that in a wider sense Rav Nahman held the basic right approach to trust in God is thus: that one makes a vessel in order that the blessing can come in it. That is one does some small action by which the blessing of flow can come into and that is all. More than that is "ריבוי השתדלות" [too much trying].

On the other hand that would not saying doing review and in depth learning could not also be done with trust. But it does seem that the "Girsa" [just saying the words and going on] is more directly related to trust.

I mean I find whether in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach or in Math and Physics that just saying the words and going on tends to be frustrating after a while.  At some point you begin to think "If I would review this just twice I would get it while now I understand nothing. So why not do a drop of review?"

So to me it seems like they used to do in the Mir in NY. I.e. have one session for in depth learning and another one for bekiut [fast]. [That is common in all Litvak places. The morning is for in depth learning. The afternoon is for fast. But in the Litvak approach that is still not as fast as Rav Nahman recommended. Still the idea is similar.]]