In the beginning of laws of marriage in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.

In the beginning of laws of marriage in Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.
There is the subject of  "kinyan Sudar" [buying by means of handkerchief]. That is is a way of buying as we see in the book of Ruth where at the end of the book it says there is a way to acquire or sell by means of taking off one's shoe and giving it to the party. Is it the category of barter, or buying by money?

So when Rav Shach writes at the end the Rambam holds kinyan sudar [buying by handkercheif] is  a kind of buying by money This is hard to understand. [note 2]

We know the Raavad and the R''id [Rav Yeshaya of Trani]] hold that way.
But the Rambam?


For after all the Rambam is pretty consistent that kinyan sudar [barter] does not work to marry a woman. [note 1] So that means barter is not any kind of buying by money. And that also goes along with the fact that exchange of a needle with a coat of armor has no law of overcharging [that is the normal law that overcharge by 1/5 is not valid]. And Rav Shach right before that explained how the Rambam explains barter as being an exchange in which there is no object causing the deal to be valid. Rather when one person picks up the object he is getting --that is when he acquires it. And when the other picks up his object that is when he acquires it.

It is the the Tosphot Ri''d and the Raavad that hold if the handkerchief is worth more than a pruta penny, then the buying is because of a buying by money. You see that in the Tosphot Ri''d who actually says so openly. That is -that Kinya Sudar will not work to acquire a woman unless the handkerchief has more than the value of a penny. And the Raavad also says that kinyan sudar will work to let a slave go free. [So he also holds kinyan sudar works as money]
So someone ought to go to the original handwritten notes of Rav Shach and see what he actually wrote there. I am sure that the names Raavad and Rambam got mixed up.

[[note 1]]. I mean to say that the normal way of marrying a woman is by money, sex or a document. But something "worth money" also works. So you could give a woman a ring for example in order to marry her, and she says "yes", and this takes place in front of two witnesses, then the marriage is valid. Same with sex or a document. However a handkerchief would not work. So what does exchange by handkerchief usually mean? It is a kind of barter. I give you a handkerchief and by that I buy from you let's say a violin. That works. The deal is sealed by that, and neither party can go back,
However the Tosphot HaRi''d holds if the handkerchief is worth more than a pruta penny that works to marry the woman. However it looks clear to me the Rambam does not hold that way.

[note 2] It looks like the Rambam would disagree with the Tosphot R''id. To the Rambam there are two kinds of exchange, barter and handkerchief [or any vessel]. You see this in laws of selling perek 5. There is exchange by barter and then in law 5 the Rambam introduces the handkerchief and there says it does not have to be worth a pruta. So the laws of exchange up until then, [e.g. vessel for vessel, but not fruit for fruit] do need to be worth at least a prura penny. And that is because barter would be as a kind of money exchange.

we have lost the idea of repentance.

The modern world is too modern. You can not imagine Eisenhower going into a church and asking to get whipped by the monks for the  deaths of D-day as repentance. But you can understand Henry II doing that for the death of  his vassal who was rebelling.
Why ? Because we have lost the idea of repentance.

So what Allan Bloom saw as a crisis of the enlightenment as opposed to the anti enlightenment as reaching a kind of peak of the wave in American universities--I see something else. The crisis of Western Civilization losing our foundations.


So you can see something important about the whole idea of Israel Salanter in the idea of the Musar movement. That was not just about any old Musar. The major idea was the Musar of the Rishonim.

Robert Hanna and "Forward to Kant"

Robert Hanna has a very nice book explaining in a detailed way the problems with the "Analytic philosophy". [That is what you might hear called "British-American," as opposed to Continental. ] He says more or less "good riddance" and the sooner the better.
He coined the phrase "Forward to Kant".

But I did not see so far his approach to Hegel or what he thinks about the Friesian School of Leonard Nelson that has a different approach to Kant that the well known Neo Kant School of Herman Cohen.

[Also I can not imagine that Michael Huemer would totally dismiss Analytic philosophy altogether since it does have a nice tendency to look at things with logical rigor.
[It occurs to me that Leonard Nelson and Hegel are not as different as all that. The world is rational. It is understandable by reason and built in reason as we see in Physics. And Reason has limits. And as Fries and Leonard Nelson argue that reason itself needs to have a starting point of premises you know but do not have an explanation for. That is non intuitive immediate knowledge. These principles all seem fine to me and I can not understand why make a conflict where there is no conflict?]


You might ask by bother? The reason is that the conflict of Jerusalem with Athens Reason and Revelation was more or less solved during the Middle Ages thus: you need both.

Trust in God with no effort was brought by Rav Israel Salanter as being mentioned in Nahmanides/(Ramban). But I have not heard where that statement of the Ramban is.

However clearly it is in the Gra in Mishlei/Proverbs.

IN the Obligations of the Hearts [Chovot Levavot] by Ibn Pakuda it is brought in a slightly different way that when one trusts in God and places all his effort towards teh serve of God then God takes away the yoke of things of this world and in particular the money issues.

However in the Mir in NY where I learned about this idea, it was understood that service of God means to learn Torah. [i.e. Gemara in depth with Rav Haim of Brisk and the other sages of Lithuania like Rav Shach.]
The only difference is that I would like to add learning Physics and Metaphysics to what is in the category of serving God.
[That is quite clear in the Rambam in the Guide and also in the Mishne Torah in a slightly round about way. But it is not his particular new idea as you see it is most of the sages of Sefarad that followed Rav Saadia Gaon.

Ashkenazim more or less rejected that approach. However you do see it somewhat in the Gra in the Translation of Euclid done by a disciple of the Gra who quotes the Gra thus: "One who lacks any knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms will be lacking in understanding of Torah 100 times in proportion".

G Minor w75 Andante    w75 midi format  w75 in nwc format

D Major w74

It is odd that the deepest thinkers of this generation in philosophy are not really on the same page. Dr Kelley Ross is with Kant, Fries and Leonard Nelson. [Friesian School]. Michael Huemer with the reaction against Kant: i.e. G.E. Moore. [Intuitionists]. Ed Fesser totally with Aristotle and Aquinas! And it seems unlikely that even getting them into a room to discuss the issues would change much. [But who knows?]
[Also you might notice that Hegel does not have any really bright advocate. Even the best Hegel site is specifically communist!] I feel sorry for poor Hegel who really did not deserve all the misuse and abuse he got.][Hegel once had a great advocate--McTaggart who is still important.] But  nowadays mainstream  philosophy (swamp philosophy) ignores all three.