Megilah of Esther

The Megilah of Esther has a comment at the very end. That I have found hard to understand for a long time and still have a hard time understanding. "All the rest of the acts of Achashverosh are written in the annals of the kings of Media and Persia".
The name Achashverosh is the way you pronounce "Xerxes" in Farsi. So we are talking about the same person  whose army of about a  million or more soldiers that was almost defeated by three hundred Spartans if not that someone betrayed them by finding a path that came up from their rear. Will you find that in the chronicles of the kings of Persia? It seems unlikely.

The Megilah ends before that misadventure, but from the Megilah itself it sounds like everything was peachy. 

Trinity seems to have many difficulties among Christians.

The Trinity seems to have many difficulties among Christians. Many see that it has logical difficulties

In Plato there is an idea of the One Emanating the lower worlds. So you could have souls that flow from God's light but are not God. But also are not exactly separate from Him either. [That is they would not be said to have been created but having flowed from God's infinite light.] In that sense, the Trinity can make sense. You say Jesus in one with God in the sense that his soul flowed from God with no division in between.

[What some do instead of this option is a kind of Kantian approach that Kierkegaard took. It was Christians were saying all the time anyway. "It is a mystery". Few took Hegel's approach. Which is somewhat like the Reshash [Sar Shalom Sharabi].

USA Constitution does not seem to have some deep philosophical analysis behind it.

Politics is odd. On one hand I can see the system of the USA [the USA Constitution] as making sense. But the thing that is puzzling about it is that it does not seem to have come about by any kind of logical analysis. [Though I used to think that John Locke had a lot to do with it, but that no longer seems to be the case.] Rather it is a basic development of English Law. Mainly the Magna Carta and the issues that came up in England with James II. [The Glorious Revolution]. The way it looks to me is that the English simply saw the problems with pure Parliamentary power, not some super intuition about the value of King and Parliament. Same with the house of Lords and Commons. It does not seem to have some deep philosophical analysis behind it.
 To me it might make sense to understand why the USA Constitution has worked so well until now, and why things seem to be going haywire.

To see how the English System developed, you need to learn about Edward I, the struggles of the later kings, [John I, Henry II][See the provisions of Oxford.], not the slightest bit of philosophic analysis. Zilch. Then you want to get to the American Constitution, you simply transplant the English System onto American soil, then change a few minor details.  

Yet the result is the most astounding system and balance or freedom with responsibility that the world has ever seen. Compare that with the logical rigorous analysis of Das Capital which results in gulags and mass starvation. You can not help and see that fundamental law of Physics: no matter how logical and rigorous a system is, if it does not agree with experiment, then t is wrong.

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.