An argument between Rav Haim of Brisk and Rav Shach about things that are worth money.

שווה כסף something worth money is considered as money to Rav Haim of Brisk but to Rav Shach it is in the category of barter.

The issue is how to marry a woman. That works by means of actual money. [I mean some kind of coin. Not paper money.] But also it works by means of something worth money. Tosphot asks how do we know this? After all the fact that money works we learn from the field of Efron the Hitite. Tospfot says right on the first page of Kidushin that something worth money works to marry we learn from a Hebrew slave. That means that in the verse of how a Hebrew slave is redeemed it says  כסף ישיב לבעליו and from the extra words we learn this includes something worth money שווה כסף.
The question on this is that learning from place to place by a "gezera shava" גזירה שווה only works if you learn everything, But here you do not since a Hebrew slave that is owned by a gentile can not be redeemed by something worth money שווה כסף,-- only by actual physical money. Rav Shach answers this question in this way. This is the important principle: that there are different kinds of acquisition. For example an when a person is hired to work for someone else. Lets says he is hired to work for the manager of the bank for a five year contract. So even though he is not owned by the manager, still here is a "kinyan".

That is the same kind of thing as a Hebrew slave or marrying a woman. There is not an acquisition of the person but there is a different kind of acquisition. So you can learn something worth money can acquire for this kind of acquisition.

[I had forgotten this very point until my learning partner in Uman David Bronson showed me that there are many different kinds of kinyanim קניניים acquisitions. They something mean ownership of an object. But other times it might mean a acquisition of certain obligations or rights as when an employee is hired for a job. He has an obligation to fulfill the contract but his body is not owned by the employer.]

It is pretty clear that the Rishonim [mediaeval authorities] were not into "identity politics" when it came to issues about what the Torah means. To them what matters is the search for truth and justice. Not to believe in things because one is born into some belief system.
You can see this in the Rambam for one example when he emphasizes the study of Physics and Metaphysics as defined by the ancient Greeks.Yet this has been for me a bit confusing because I do not assume that Physics reached its peak with Aristotle. And not Metaphysics either.

The progress of Physics is easily defined because of experiment. But what progress in Metaphysics is possible?  Kant thought his anti-monies [showing the limits of reason] stood in the place of experiment. He was  trying to walk a similar kind of path in Philosophy that Newton had walked in Physics. [This point is brought by Palatnik at Harvard].

It is a good thing that nowadays there is a lot more clarity in philosophy than in the 20th century. The top people have realized that getting back to Kant is important. E.g, Kelley Ross. And most serious thinkers have realized most of twentieth century philosophy was pure nonsense.

[It is has been my hope for a long time to introduce the idea of Rav Nahman of just saying the words and going on as a way to learn Physics even for people like me that are simply not that very talented in it and yet see it as an important part of the commandment to learn Torah --at least according to those Rishonim that hold this way. [It is not at all unanimous but still a significant group of Rishonim hold this way.]]

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.

w85  w85 midi  w85 nwc

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.