I saw something interesting about Elon Musk --that a good deal of his motivation for making Space X and the Tesla car was his question in college when he asked himself what can I do to help humanity.

Well that sort of lit a light for me in that I also have a few ideas that I believe would be great for humanity. 

One is learning fast. That is too many people shy away from Math and Physics because they think they are too hard. They lack the confidence that by just saying the words and going on that they will understand. So I want to bring this idea to the attention of people. [That would also have a side benefit that when people would know what real science is they will throw out all the pseudo sciences like the Social Studies and humanities departments of the universities.

This idea is from the gemara Shabat  [I think around page 63] and brought in books of Musar. [e.g. אורחות צדיקים]

Another great idea is talking with God in one's own language. 

Another idea is saying the truth always which also people do not know how this provides a kind of protective shield around one.



[As for the political situation I have little to say but Trust in God.] 

I should add that I see the coming civil war as the end of civilization so I have to explain that Trust in God does not mean to do nothing. Rather it means not to do "over efforts" "ריבוי השתדלות". It simply mean to trust and God and take the basic necessary steps to protect yourself. So for example if Antifa stand in the way of your car to stop you, step on the gas and accelerate. That is a simple basic logical step of self preservation. Also get gun skills.

w99 G Minor edited   It usually takes me a lot of time to get the instruments right, after I have gotten the basic music line down. Plus corrections as to the music line often come only after I have thought about it for a while. So there still might be more corrections that need to be done.  [w99 in midi format]

The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

Idolatry is worship of some being other than the one First Cause [סיבה ראשונה]. And that includes people. It even includes people who have souls from Emanation [אצילות]. So for example when we say that Abraham the Patriarch's soul was from Kindness of Emanation [חסד של אצילות] we do not worship Abraham. Nor do we pray to him. That is in spite of the fact that souls from Emanation are Divine אלקות.

So worship of people that is the basic essence of the religious world should not be considered to be OK.  And from this it is easy to see why the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication to make this point clear. [And the letter of excommunication I believe has halachic validity in spite of its being ignored. In fact it is hard to understand why anyone would imagine that a letter signed and sealed by the Gra would not be valid in Halacha. Such a thing seems absurd on the face of it.]

[And though you can argue on this point, but my looking at a book that collected all the testimonies in Villna  and letters of excommunication I decided that Rav Nahman was OK. This seems to be a gray area.]

I thought to add the fact that once I got to Tenach [Old Testament] I noticed the central issue pf idolatry. I mean when critique of kings comes up it is always about this one issue. The implication is that to worship only God, and no other being is the essential point of the whole Torah.

There is a kind of work that is forbidden on Shabat called בורר seperating. The idea is to separate what you do not want to eat now from what you want to eat now. Or to separate what you want for later.

This process can be understood in a  sense to apply to the fact that there is an array of good values that one ought to hold onto. Good points. These have their root in Divine traits [Sepherot]. And there is also a process of combining these good traits. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them. This can apply in science also. Newton and Maxwell could not be combined until Einstein came along. Einstein and Heisenberg could not be combined until Dirac and Richard Feynman came along. [Dirac was OK with one or two particles but once you got more it could not work until Feymann showed the way to QFT. Quantum Field Theory.]

Similar to good traits. There are several areas of positive value. To say the truth, trust in God, learning Torah. But they can not be combined until the kelipot are separated from them.
This is a kind of process which you see in Kant and then later Hegel. 

So there is a process of finding the good traits and good points one needs to stick with. And to separate out what is mixed in of the poison of the Sitra Achra (Dark Side). And then to combince the good traits.

Sometimes a tzadik comes into the world to reveal one particular trait or more and sometimes another may come to combine traits.
So for example you will find that Avraham Avinu was united with the Divine Trait of Kindness. That would mean not just that his soul was from Emanation but also that he came to reveal that trait in the world.

Rav Nahman [of Uman] explained what was the problem with a country where the taste and scent and beauty had all gone down. He said the problem was the slaves of a foreign king who had been sent in and ruined everything by means of ugly language, sexual promiscuity, and addiction to bringing lawsuits.
The solution in the story of Rav Nahman was to make a separation.

he did not openly say he was referring to the USA but it seems clearly the implication. That is he was predicting already 200 years ago exactly what is happening today.

The original idea of the Litvak yeshiva was to be  a four year program which would go through the three bava's [Bava Metzia, Bava Kama, Bava Batra] and four nashim [Gitin, Kidushin, Ketuboth, Yevamot]. This I see as very important even though it is not really the same thing as the commandment of learning Torah itself which applies all through life and is required of every man.
So the main greatness of the idea of the Litvak Yeshiva is that those are the ages 18-22 that a world view is formed. One generally accepts at that point the social meme of his environment at those crucial ages,- and this meme becomes hard wired. [So the idea in short is that you learn good morals at those few first years and that sticks.]

[This was the original idea of Rav Haim of Voloshin. Before that there was no such thing as a yeshiva in modern sense, but rather it was the local hall where people would pray in the morning, and then go off to their work. The younger people  stayed there and learned. Then Rav Haim came to his teacher the Gra and suggested creating a yeshiva as an independent institution. It is not clear what the answer of the Gra was. There are different versions of the events. At any rate, I must add that I had a great time at the Mir in N.Y.  And besides the my learning during the regular hours I also was privileged to spend time with Rav Shmuel Berenbaum (the rosh yeshiva that gave the highest class). He was  a very deep and creative thinker along the lines of Rav Shach. But for some reason, he never wrote a word, and so most of his ideas were lost with time. Still you can get the basic approach from Rav Shach's Avi Ezri or Rav Haim of Brisk's books.]

w98   [w98 in midi format] [these were written in a format called nwc but i assume most people do not have that so i post the midi format so that people have access to the notes--which they would not have with only the mp3 version.][I want to add that I do not know why some music files were posted while others not. I just can't recall,  --nor did I think it mattered at the time. [w98 nwc]