return to Feudalism.

 I see in the former USSR that people tend to form a village around their place of employment. I mean this is a return to Feudalism. I actually saw this when I was in the hospital in Uman and saw this kind of dynamics. And I heard this from a former KGB agent also.

This is I think also the basic idea around the "Litvak Yeshiva". Even though Litvak yeshivas tend to do a great job in what they were created for--to teach Torah. [Especially the Mir in NY and also Shar Yashuv]. Still the subtle aspect is that it provides a Feudal Castle to protect one from robbers.

After all this is what the whole Feudal system came about from. Rome was collapsing. The roads were no longer safe. People wanted protection from roaming bands of "protesters." So they aggregated around a strong man that could protect them. But in return they had to work and and pledge loyalty. 

This is in fact one of the reasons why people go into Litvak yeshivas--not just to learn Torah but also to be in an environment where they can learn Torah. The secular world used to be able to provide a degree of security. You lived in a safe USA. Jobs were available. Now secular society is falling apart. 

[Does this reciprocal relationship in fact exist? That is if you pledge loyalty and obey all the rules  do you get some kind of protection like in a feudal castle where you get protection by pledging loyalty? I would say it does exist to a degree. Maybe not as much as one might hope, but it still seems to be so to a degree.]

For a mediaeval feudal system to work there needs to be a hierarchy. Sometimes there is good reason for that. Like in the case of Rav Shmuel Berenbaum the head of the Mir Yeshiva in NY.  Or Rav Freifeld of Shar Yashuv. But often, not. 

argument between the Rosh and Rav Hai Gaon

There is an argument between the Rosh  and Rav Hai Gaon. Normally when there is enough land for the males to inherit and the daughters to be feed then that is what happens. [That is to say that daughters and a widow do not inherit, but they do get feed from the proceeds of the land.] If there is not enough land for both the boys and girls then only the girls get feed. But if the sons sell the property the sell is valid. That is straight from the Gemara itself. But what happens  after during the time of the Geonim there was made a decree that movable property is also used to pay for the Ketuba and all the conditions of the Ketubah.

That is where Rav Hai Gaon says after that decree now the girls would get feed from the proceeds of the sell. The Rosh disagrees.. The question that Rav Shach brings is that the proof that the rosh brings is hard to understand. 

The Gemara says that there is  a proof to Rav Asi that the boys have some rights to נכסים מועטים [small amount of land], because if they sell, the sell is valid. The Rosh brings this as a proof that they keep the money of the sell.--even after the decree of the Geonim.

I admit that I have trouble understanding the answer of Rav Shach to this question. It does look that you can not bring a proof from the sell being valid before the decree and the sell being valid after the decree that the boys might in fact have to feed the girls with the proceeds.

Basically Rav Shach is saying that the point of the Rosh is that you  see there is a no "halot" settling of the land on the money, such that the money is in place of the land. We do see that with Maasar Sheni but not here. So while there is a decree to use movable property to pay for the Ketubah, that means money that was actually inherited. Not money that came because something that was inherited was sold. 

When communism is brought up, someone has to blame Hegel.

On one hand almost invariably when ever communism is brought up, someone has to blame Hegel.  Not that he was a communist, but clearly a capitalist. See his Philosophy of Right and his views about private property. But the reason he gets blamed is because the individual gets meaning only by being part of a larger group. However there is no freedom for the individual without the state. 

However I think he was trying to get to freedom for the individual without the craziness  and reign of terror of the French Revolution. And in fact looking at the kings of Prussia during that period do show them on the side of a liberal Constitution.

What the situation in Germany was lacking I think was people like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison whose forte was how to frame a political question and how to answer it with a just Constitution. That simply was not the forte of Hegel nor Kant.

See Walter Kaufman on Hegel.

I would suggest to blame Marx and Communism all you want, but leave Hegel alone. In fact. it could be that allowing the communists to hijack Hegel, is what gave them the small amount of credibility that they had. After all it could not have been simple to convince the average peasant in a Russian village that the success of the more well to do peasants was all because they had stolen it from the less successful.Just the opposite --to anyone living in a village or small Russian town it is clear where the prosperity comes from--the few smart peasants that bring in all the business..It is always just the few who are the big producers. So the Marxists had to use word play to convince the poor peasants to murder the wealthy peasant and steal his property and rape his daughters, and do it in name of social justice.

[Is it possible, I might suggest that communists took a hitch hiked with Hegel on some issues because he was the best thing out there?]

x-9 D Major

 x-9 D Major

to betray those that do the most good to us

 It is not just that people have a evil inclination [yezer hara]. Rather people have a very specific yezer hara--to betray those that do the most good to us and we owe the greatest gratitude. Not just lack of gratitude but even to do positive harm to those that have helped us the most. So while there are all kinds of yezer hara, this one seems to me to be the worst of all

[You can see examples with the hatred of people towards the USA, when according to their enlightened views they might have done better by staying in Somalia. Instead they come to the USA to turn us into another Somalia. [which recently blamed whites for not staying there and teaching them how to run an economy. Or course it is hard to blame the whites for leaving since they were being murdered.]

Another example is fathers who are by default the arch villain in the minds of most people. Again the same reason--to repay good with evil. 

I am no prophet, but I can say with some degree of confidence that this can not end well. There is a Judge and justice. People that betray those that have done the most for them will almost certainly not end well.

Can communists take over America?

To me it seems depend on one thing. If people can believe promises of everything for free without being aware of what is planned to make everything free. I mean there are enough examples of communism to provide evidence whether the promises of utopia becomes real.

Plus there is the slight inconvenient fact that communists think only the "rich" will lose all their money. They are not thinking that they themselves will no longer have private property, but will live where the State assigns them to live, and will work at what the State assigns to them to work at.

But the trouble is Americans believe in something only after seeing it on the internet. Since the main sites are Communist, how is there any chance of correction? 

"You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him."

 אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלוהים אין עוד מלבדו מאי אין עוד מלבדו אפילו כשפים

 "You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him."

The simple idea of the verse is there are no other gods besides God, -not that nothing exists besides God. 

The sages ask in tractate Shabat "What does it mean 'there is none other besides Him?' Even magic"

You would imagine that if the point of the verse was to tell us that nothing exists besides God, this would have been the perfect place for the sages to tell us this. Instead they explain that there are no other spiritual forces--even magic.

The truth be told, monotheism was always the faith of the Torah. That God created everything something from nothing. (And he is other than the world. He is not the same thing as the world.])That is not to say nothing exists besides God.  

[To all Rishonim [medieval authorities], Monotheism is assumed. That is that God made the world something from nothing, and that he is totally "other" that this world.]