I have never been very impressed with the "racism" charge. I have not seen anywhere in the Bible that that is considered a sin.
If it means feeling superior to others because you belong to some racial group or some other group , well why not? Let's say one is an American, and feels superior to others because of the great things America has accomplished. And then someone insults him, "You are an American" or, "You are a patriot," as a slur. Well so what?
Besides that there is no such sin. There are lots of categories of sins. The Gates of Repentance goes into them in detail. [By R Yona of Gerondi]. But racism is not there. Besides that, people ought to welcome it. It is a compliment to feel that your group has accomplished great things.
So if you are a Wasp, White Anglo Saxon Protestant, then feel racist, and proud of your race. When other races have invented anything even a trillion light years away from this then they will also have reason to feel proud of their race.
11.7.20
People do not usually put the Gra and Rav Shach in the same category as Rav Nahman of Breslov. But to me that seems like a mistaken approach. True the Gra did sign the letter of excommunication the herem which certainly has halachic validity and ought to be heeded to at all cost. Still Rav Nahman certainly was not in the category of the herem.
The Gra and Rav Nahman have different areas of emphasis. Rav Nahman with prayer, and the Gra with Torah. Happy is one that can combine both.
The Gra and Rav Nahman have different areas of emphasis. Rav Nahman with prayer, and the Gra with Torah. Happy is one that can combine both.
I have thought about an idea of Rav Nahman [of Uman and Breslov] that there is always some piece of advice for any problem. He never says this in so many words but it is implicit in all of his writings.
Not just the Sefer HaMidot where in fact you have about a thousand individual bits of advice for a whole assortment of problems. But you can see in events reported about him that he was always looking for some kind of advice that would help people in some way or another.
It usually has mostly to do with some positive commandment. So in terms of "sweetening of judgements" [that is for cases where a person feels everything is going wrong with his life]]
But most of these pieces of advice I think have to be done over a period of forty days in a row or more.
Still the idea seems powerful to me and it has stuck with me for a few years.
Now I think there is one major piece of advice I believe has saved me from countless problems and enemies. To speak the truth always at all cost.
But there are other bits of advice I have not seen so much in Rav Nahman but more in the Gra that struck me at also being extremely powerful. Learning Torah along with trust in God.
This I saw in practice while at the Mir in NY. people would learn Torah and put their trust in God to help with making a living and somehow that always worked out. No one ever starved. They all got married and had good children --all the while doing nothing but learning Torah and as for making a living the attitude was "God will help"
I feel this is true and great. But I would like to say that I think Physics and Mathematics are part of learning Torah in terms of this advice. That is also to learn Physics and no worry if you will understand or not or if will help in terms of making a living. Just for its own sake,
I would like to also mention coming to Israel can be a great help based on a few statements of Rav Nahman about Israel being the place of miracles. And start a Beit Midrash HaGra and Rav Shach. --so that people learn authentic legitimate Torah.[There is no patent on teh name of the Gra and Rav Shach.\]
Not just the Sefer HaMidot where in fact you have about a thousand individual bits of advice for a whole assortment of problems. But you can see in events reported about him that he was always looking for some kind of advice that would help people in some way or another.
It usually has mostly to do with some positive commandment. So in terms of "sweetening of judgements" [that is for cases where a person feels everything is going wrong with his life]]
But most of these pieces of advice I think have to be done over a period of forty days in a row or more.
Still the idea seems powerful to me and it has stuck with me for a few years.
Now I think there is one major piece of advice I believe has saved me from countless problems and enemies. To speak the truth always at all cost.
But there are other bits of advice I have not seen so much in Rav Nahman but more in the Gra that struck me at also being extremely powerful. Learning Torah along with trust in God.
This I saw in practice while at the Mir in NY. people would learn Torah and put their trust in God to help with making a living and somehow that always worked out. No one ever starved. They all got married and had good children --all the while doing nothing but learning Torah and as for making a living the attitude was "God will help"
I feel this is true and great. But I would like to say that I think Physics and Mathematics are part of learning Torah in terms of this advice. That is also to learn Physics and no worry if you will understand or not or if will help in terms of making a living. Just for its own sake,
I would like to also mention coming to Israel can be a great help based on a few statements of Rav Nahman about Israel being the place of miracles. And start a Beit Midrash HaGra and Rav Shach. --so that people learn authentic legitimate Torah.[There is no patent on teh name of the Gra and Rav Shach.\]
In the Torah, there is a general rule that when one is extra strict about any commandment, that brings him to afterward nullify the commandment completely. [
In the Torah, there is a general rule that when one is extra strict about any commandment, that brings him to afterward nullify the commandment completely. [This is from the sages and brought in many books of Musar.]
In Torah the rule is "Do not add nor subtract from the commandments." [Deuteronomy 6] This is one of the reasons why the religious world is kind of "off." By adding restrictions, they end up transgressing everything in such a way that all the religiosity is paper thin. From the clothing and outwards. Not the inside.
In Torah the rule is "Do not add nor subtract from the commandments." [Deuteronomy 6] This is one of the reasons why the religious world is kind of "off." By adding restrictions, they end up transgressing everything in such a way that all the religiosity is paper thin. From the clothing and outwards. Not the inside.
10.7.20
battle and war for the soul of the USA
What is going on in the USA is that there is already a change of regime. You might be confused when the Left demands there be no police. That sounds like no law and order. But that is not it at all. The Left does have a police, that is the mobs destroying white people and business. The mob is their police. But not just the mob. Already they own the judges and courts and even the Supreme Court. So in essence the battle and war for the soul of the USA is lost. If a white person defends his or her life, they are guilty of assault. Anything any white person says is easily dismissed instantly with four words "You are a racist."
In terms of a plan of action, my recommendation is to learn Torah [especially the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach] and to trust in God.
I think things would never have gotten this far if people had learned Torah. Marxism could never have even gotten started if people had been aware of the commandments "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet." [And if you learn even one page of Bava Metzia it is impossible to miss this.]
People would never have made an issue of slavery in the first place.
And there never would have been adopted all the principles of the Left that go directly against the laws of Moses.
[ The fact that a lot of Americans are Christians is not the issue. Just because people are Christian does not make the commandments null. No Christians held that way until recently.
Rather there was a distinction made between ritual law and natural law that was stated by Saadia Gaon and Aquinas. From the Pilgrims down until around 1920 the USA was going with biblical principles. \
[I might add here that Russia already knows about the insanity of Marxism. It would be nice if there would be some kind of alliance between Russia and the USA. ]
In terms of a plan of action, my recommendation is to learn Torah [especially the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach] and to trust in God.
I think things would never have gotten this far if people had learned Torah. Marxism could never have even gotten started if people had been aware of the commandments "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet." [And if you learn even one page of Bava Metzia it is impossible to miss this.]
People would never have made an issue of slavery in the first place.
And there never would have been adopted all the principles of the Left that go directly against the laws of Moses.
[ The fact that a lot of Americans are Christians is not the issue. Just because people are Christian does not make the commandments null. No Christians held that way until recently.
Rather there was a distinction made between ritual law and natural law that was stated by Saadia Gaon and Aquinas. From the Pilgrims down until around 1920 the USA was going with biblical principles. \
[I might add here that Russia already knows about the insanity of Marxism. It would be nice if there would be some kind of alliance between Russia and the USA. ]
I just wanted to jot down my basic interpretation of Hegel, Heidegger, and Leonard Nelson.
It is not very academic but it is way I see them. It is all contained in one word: Plotinus. That is his neo Platonic system. (1) The One, (2) Logos, Reason, (3) Being.
So to me when ever I look at Hegel I see a modification of Plotinus. That is a modification that had to happen after Kant's three critiques. Hegel gets from Being up back to the One. And he does this by means of the Dialectic.
Heidegger is a bit different. He gets from Being to Logos. That is most clear in his debate with Ernst Cassirer. He sees Kant as dealing with the question of life, not knowledge as one aspect of life. [AS you can see also in his Being and Time.] He like Schopenhauer put the main emphasis on the first Critique before the revised edition. His answer is that Being uses time to manifest itself, to come into the meadow. And the Transcendental Deduction of Kant is to get from Logos to Life [Logos to Being]. That is how Heidegger understands the synthetic a priori. [See that debate with Cassirer.]
Then Leonard Nelson [based on Fries but going beyond him], shows that not only is there non intuitive immediate knowledge [faith], but that has to come before reason and before empirical knowledge.
So maybe it is just me, but I see Western Philosophy after Kant to be foot notes to Plotinus.
It is not very academic but it is way I see them. It is all contained in one word: Plotinus. That is his neo Platonic system. (1) The One, (2) Logos, Reason, (3) Being.
So to me when ever I look at Hegel I see a modification of Plotinus. That is a modification that had to happen after Kant's three critiques. Hegel gets from Being up back to the One. And he does this by means of the Dialectic.
Heidegger is a bit different. He gets from Being to Logos. That is most clear in his debate with Ernst Cassirer. He sees Kant as dealing with the question of life, not knowledge as one aspect of life. [AS you can see also in his Being and Time.] He like Schopenhauer put the main emphasis on the first Critique before the revised edition. His answer is that Being uses time to manifest itself, to come into the meadow. And the Transcendental Deduction of Kant is to get from Logos to Life [Logos to Being]. That is how Heidegger understands the synthetic a priori. [See that debate with Cassirer.]
Then Leonard Nelson [based on Fries but going beyond him], shows that not only is there non intuitive immediate knowledge [faith], but that has to come before reason and before empirical knowledge.
So maybe it is just me, but I see Western Philosophy after Kant to be foot notes to Plotinus.
9.7.20
Apparently it takes a certain amount of spiritual awareness to be able to tell who is a true Torah scholar from the realm of holiness and who is a Torah scholar demon as Rav Nahman of Breslov points out. In those two sections LeM I:12 and I:28 he in fact does not give any hints about how to tell the difference. But I recall that in LeM II:1 he in fact does point out traits that one can hold onto that give one the ability to discern.
I might hold that the Lithuanian yeshiva world would be clear from this kind of problem, but the problem is that by ignoring the cherem signed by the Gra the Sitra Achra got into the Litvak world also. So what one can do? Well clearly the best idea is to learn Torah at home. Go through the two Talmuds and the Midrashim. Another suggestion would be to start a Beit Midrash on the name of the Gra. [With of course, Rav Nahman's books would be allowed. That would be different from for example the Yeshiva of Rav Silverman in the old city of Jerusalem.]
But the main point I want to bring out is that trusting any religious authorities at all is tied by too much danger. As far as I can tell the majority might be Torah scholars that are demons. Who knows? And once there is a majority then how can you trust any? Frankly the whole religious world seems a bit creepy. So it is better to simply learn Torah and Musar of Rav Israel Salanter at home and teach your own kids at home.
[In any case there is an obligation to get through the oral law which means the two Talmuds, the halachic midrashim and the agadic midrashim. So the best way to do that without distractions is at home.
I might hold that the Lithuanian yeshiva world would be clear from this kind of problem, but the problem is that by ignoring the cherem signed by the Gra the Sitra Achra got into the Litvak world also. So what one can do? Well clearly the best idea is to learn Torah at home. Go through the two Talmuds and the Midrashim. Another suggestion would be to start a Beit Midrash on the name of the Gra. [With of course, Rav Nahman's books would be allowed. That would be different from for example the Yeshiva of Rav Silverman in the old city of Jerusalem.]
But the main point I want to bring out is that trusting any religious authorities at all is tied by too much danger. As far as I can tell the majority might be Torah scholars that are demons. Who knows? And once there is a majority then how can you trust any? Frankly the whole religious world seems a bit creepy. So it is better to simply learn Torah and Musar of Rav Israel Salanter at home and teach your own kids at home.
[In any case there is an obligation to get through the oral law which means the two Talmuds, the halachic midrashim and the agadic midrashim. So the best way to do that without distractions is at home.
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