In Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not add nor subtract from the commandments I command you this day."

In Torah there is brought twice a prohibition of adding or subtracting from the commandments.
I have had a problem in understanding this for  along time. One explanation I heard from my learning partner in Uman is that rabbinical laws do not add to the Torah since they are not saying that they are adding. Rather they claim those laws are rabbinical so that is not adding.
This might seem to you a bit disingenuous. [They can add as long as they do not say they are adding. It would be like if a thief steals but that is OK as long as he does not say that that is what he is doing.]
The way I see this is this. The Pilgrims on the Mayflower made the "Mayflower Compact". That is there is such a thing as a community of people getting together and deciding that they are going to live under certain rules. So there would be no such thing as decrees of anything that is binding for all generations except the actual laws of the Torah. Other than that there just basic norms that are applicable to a particular time and place.

 But this is a debate. Like in the city of R. Yose ha'Galili they went by his rulings even when that was against the general rulings on things even things from the Torah. [I recall this came up a few times. Like the meat of fowl with milk. But I recall it comes up more than that.] So the idea that there is a general right to add seems to be specific to place and time. Besides this there is the old argument even in the Gemara itself if once the reason for a decree disappears then the decree itself is null and void. Most Rishonim hold the decree is null, i.e, the Raavad and Tosphot.



But just to show the basic idea see Avot of R. Natan [a commentary on Avot by an amora. a sage of the gemara] on the mishna "to make a fence".
Also the idea that decrees are for the local communities that they were made for comes up in the Gemara often enough. Like with R. Yehuda Hanasi and R Yose in terms of milk with poultry

There is also progress down. There are forces of Darkness. And often these forces are embodied in people.

There is a tendency to think of philosophy of the Middle Ages as being "the Dark Ages". To think of human progress as only progress upwards is however a mistake. There is also progress downwards. There are forces of Darkness. And often these forces are embodied in people. 

 So the question is how to make sure that you are on the side of good? This is not totally independent of the question of what is the world all about. [Even though Hume held that "ought" and "is" are logically distinct; but they are still connected. That is, they are not identical, but still they are related] The fact of Communism causing the death of almost 100 million people in the USSR and China is not irrelevant to the question if Communism is good.]

So the question is: how to merit to common sense? That is a kind of sense of how to distinguish between good and evil. This is not a question of whether to choose any particular certain belief system or science. It rather seems like a kind of sense that can tell you how to choose.

The philosopher of common sense, Thomas Reid, might help for this. However philosophy does not seem to help anyone come to common sense. Though they might have it before they get involved in philosophy, but after learning philosophy, they lose it. But the same applies to almost any religious belief system.

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I really see history a little different than Hegel. He certainly looks for the overall direction of history and believes that The Absolute Spirit reveals Himself in history. However he sees the peak as  the Prussia under Frederick William III. On one hand that makes sense because under the different kings of Prussia from Fredrick the Great and down until WWI, Prussia had a nice combination of order with freedom. And Hegel certainly sees Freedom with Reason as being the goal of the Absolute Spirit. [Freedom is not just lack of constraints, but also not less than that. So if there is any external constraint ,that is not freedom. Rather means there is no external constraint but there is internal constraint ,e.g. as when a person makes goals for himself and then constrains himself to fulfill the, That is freedom.]People that used [and use] Hegel to support  totalitarian systems were not going with Hegel, who was 100% a conservative. Private property and family values.]

But I just can not see Prussia in the same light as Hegel. To me, it seems clear the the real organic development of freedom really happened in England with the Magna Carta, and later in the USA with the Constitution of the USA and with the Federalists Papers which show the reason behind the Constitution.

Though nowadays I admit that the cause of freedom in the USA has taken a hit. So when I think of the type of unique combination of freedom with reason that Hegel was thinking of, it makes more sense to refer this back to a somewhat earlier period. Nowadays things do look different.

But I think that Hegel would see modern developments as being some further development of freedom. [In some way that is not clear right now.]

G. Lemaitre: "If this suggestion is correct, the beginning of the world happened a little before the beginning of space and time."

Lemaitre writes in his article in Nature May 9, 1931: "Now, in atomic processes, the notions of space and time are no more than statistical notions ; they fade out when applied to individual phenomena involving but a small number of quanta. If the world has begun with a single quantum, the notions of space and time would altogether fail to have any meaning at the beginning; they would only begin to have a sensible meaning when the original quantum had been divided into a sufficient number of quanta. If this suggestion is correct, the beginning of the world happened a little before the beginning of space and time."

That was the article in which he proposed an expanding universe.
But the interesting thing is this goes along with the idea that the fact that Nature violates Bell's Inequality does not violate Special Relativity. Rather [like I mentioned before this] that things simply do not have values of space and time until they interact with something else.


It is not that there are hidden variables. The Aspect Experiment cancels out all hidden variable theories. But I am not thinking of branes of String Theory either because these are themselves just higher dimensional strings. (You need them so an open string can attach itself to something,) Rather what I am thinking of is some sub-layer that  exists underneath space and time.

w84 C minor mp3   [w84  midi]  [same piece in nwc format]

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The Sages said, "The Torah is poison for those that use it to make money." But the entire religious world uses Torah to get money and power.

There are tremendous lessons for life in Torah. The problem is Torah scholars that are demons as Rav Nahman brings in his LeM vol. I, chapter 12 and 28. [There are plenty more references there to this subject, but those two places are the most open about it.]
The idea here is that Torah is perfect, however ושמתם אותם וחז''ל אומרים שסם חיים למימינים בה וסם מוות למשמאילים בה ("The Sages said, 'the Torah is poison for those that use it to make money.'") But the entire religious world uses Torah to get money and power. So you can see right away the trouble.

Since the religious world uses Torah to make money, it is by definition poison. So what ever one might gain from some of the great and important lessons he might learn, the benefits would be suffocated in the poison that saturates it. So to keep Torah, one must stay as far from the religious as possible.

One problem with the religious world stated simply is the idea of "consciousness traps".


I am aware that no one in the religious world cares to hear about the prohibition of using Torah to make money. Still that does not change the fact.


The excuse that the government of Israel needs the religious is false. It is only because the religious vote that they are needed to make a 60 person coalition. If they would not vote, then there would be 60 without them. The way it works is the total votes go for 120 members of the parliament. And why do they vote if not for power and money?