I think punishment is personal. While certainly the point about whole peoples and nations getting punished seem valid to some degree, however my feeling is that nothing happens to any individual that comes without there being a specific judgment. That is even if you see it happening to a whole people- nothing happens to me that has to do with others being punished. It always is about Me. Some evil deed I did, or some good deed I neglected.

You certainly see this in the Gates of Repentance which brings it from the Gemara Shabat "אין יסוריים בלי עוון" There are no trouble without sin.

[That is a debate in the Gemara. The Gemara concludes that death can come without sin but troubles always have some sin that is their cause. You can see this in Deuteronomy also אל אמונה ואין עוול צדיק וישר הוא God is a just God--with no perversion of judgement. He is righteous and straight.

The debate between Kant and Hegel

To me the issue in philosophy is still the debate between Kant and Hegel. But the issue seems to boil down to the differences between McTaggart and Leonard Nelson.
Besides that I just do not see that much or any of twentieth century philosophy has any worth or merit. Not the British American Analytic, nor the Continental versions.
Not that McTaggart was perfect when it comes to understanding Hegel. There were blind spots. See Cunningham on Hegel. Leo Nelson is clearly not straight with Kant, but seems to be about the best understanding of his system with proper modifications. See the blog of Dr Kelley Ross for information abut that.


Why I bring this up is that Dr. Kelley Ross shows how Kant fit in well with Quantum Mechanics. [He has an essay on a Kantian approach to QM based on Fries and Leonard Nelson.] But what I am wondering is would not Hegel also work? After all with Hegel the whole point of the dialectic is not just how knowledge proceeds. It is in the very fabric of reality itself. So this duality between the particles or wave seem to be exactly what Hegel was talking about. Each is some aspect of  a deeper reality just like Hegel always says about opposites- that you get to a higher level and the apparent contradiction disappears of becomes sublimated in the higher level. That is kind of what happens with Quantum Field Theory and String Theory. 






So when people start realizing how dumb 20th century philosophy, then was Kant and Hegel will start to matter more. And then so will the debate between Leonard Nelson and Herman Cohen and the Marburg school and McTaggart. [But I think the Marburg School is obsolete. The only approach to Kant that makes sense to me is Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross.]

The silliness of 20th century philosophy was noted by Allan Bloom, Robert Hanna, Kelley Ross, and Steven Dutch.

Russian Revolution and justified anger. But the anger needs to be directed towards legitimate targets.

I wanted to bring a few ideas and then to tie them in.
[1] One is that to some degree I can see the point of the Russian Revolution. People feel hurt.  And sometimes that is justified. So from one aspect I can that there is such a thing as justified anger.

You can see this in the אורחות צדיקים [Paths of the Righteous] in the Gate of Anger.

The problem is that often the anger is directed towards the wrong targets. Capitalists, kulaks etc. Though it must have been that in tzarist Russia these powerful kulaks and capitalists were abusing people to the degree that their anger spilled over.

But also people were angry at religion. And that is also often justified. Not that in the Law of Moses, there is anything wrong. Not the Oral or Written Law. However people use that as a cover to hide their evil. This Rav Nahman pointed out often. So what people did was to reject all religion.

That was because people did not have the ability to be able to discern what is right and what is wrong. So they just said all religion is wrong. They did not have the insight and understanding of the Gra and Rav Shach to be able to tell the difference between the holy  and the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side.]
What they could have done was to have "faith in the wise" and just trust that the Gra and Rav Shach knew what they were talking about.

But furthermore, sometimes there is a point to the secular. It is not to say that if if just have the right religious values everything is OK. Not really. Often religion opens the door towards other things. People might start out with faith in a true tzadik like Rav Nahman but then get side tracked. That is in fact almost guaranteed. That is because it is in the very nature of things, that religion gets side tracked
all too quickly and easily.

I think this whole situation gives to me and others a chance to finally get to sit down and get through the Oral Law [that is the two Talmuds with Tosphot and Maharsha], the basic set of Ethics (Musar) books of Rav Israel Salanter, and Physics and Mathematics.
[Many Rishonim said also Metaphysics referring to besides Plato and Aristotle's Metaphysics as the Rambam stated openly in the beginning of the Guide for the Perplexed.

F Major w69mp3  w69 midi  w69 nwc

Trust in God draws good things. That is not the same as trusting in the Divine decree. Rather it is trust in itself which God answers. והבוטח בה' חסד יסובבנו  Kindness surrounds one who trusts in God. Not that kindness surrounds everyone. [I am just picking one verse, but there are many more all over.]

On one hand you do not hear about trust in God outside the Litvak Yeshiva World. And even there not so much. I heard about it at the Mir, but in Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway not so much.

The interesting thing about trust in God as understood at the Mir in NY was that it was active, not passive. That is to say--it was trust in God in such a way that one was left free to learn Torah. It was a kind of way of being freed from constraints.--Constraints that would normally prevent one from learning Torah.

קניין סודר acquiring by means of handkerchief  as far as I can tell in the Raavad  and the R''id (Yeshaya of Trany) seems to work because of a kind of acquiring by means of money.
With the Rambam it seems a different kind.

The Tosfot Ha'Rid right at the beginning of kidushin says if the handkerchief is worth more than a penny then the kidushin is valid.
[That must be how he understands the gemara there that "exchange'' would not work because it is valid even for less than a penny.]
However the Rambam understands that that type of acquiring would not work for kidushin nor for letting a slave go free.

That is based on the Gemara in Kidushin i think around pg 79. One fellow had a Hebrew maid servant and threw at her a vessel and said, "With this vessel you go free." That the Gemara there says is not valid. At first the thought it is not valid because of acquiring by means of a  handkerchief. And in they end they decided it was because the vessel was owned by the owner.
So the Raavad in fact says that letting a slave go free by means of acquiring by handkerchief is valid. The Rambam says not.

So what I see here is the an argument about the handkerchief.

I admit this is the way it looks to me. From what I can see in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri, he seems to understand this sugia differently and I can not figure out what he is saying.