I have to admit I owe great gratitude to many people in the Ukraine who showed me kindness when no one else would. But I also noticed some of the types that can be problematic. So I have not written much about it since there seems to impossible to generalize. 

The doctor the operated on my foot Sergey Alexivitch and his whole staff, showed not just competence but even something I would call "Mesirut nefesh" absolute determination to do a good job. But that is just one example. They wanted to be so careful that they only used local anesthesia. The nurse Irina held my hand the entire time and called me Avraham Philipovitch -a meaning of respect to call me by the name of my father. 

 So it is hard to make sense of things there.

 The test of men nowadays is divorce. When the woman he loved turns into a determined desperate enemy fixated on doing everything in her power to destroy him. This can wear down a person's mental state.

The test of women is talking neighbors. 

In all these cases Reason does little or nothing to protect one from the evil inclination.

For as Benjamin Franklin wrote making fun of the human condition: "How wonderful it is to be a reasonable person because then you can find reasons to do anything you want."

Or as Kelley Ross [The Kant Fries School] puts it. Be careful when people start talking about reason or as when Spock says "Logic dictates...". Reason does not tell us much.

That is the source of the idea of the Kant Fries school of "immediate non-intuitive knowledge." Or what Rav Nahman calls "faith".

 On the way to the sea I met someone who had been afflicted with the virus. From what he told me it seems that he was really sick from it, and it is not just a hoax. He had noticed me going into the sea, and doing a bit of exercise afterwards, and was telling me that he thought that would be good for him also.

Though  going into the sea, and doing a bit of exercise I  do just because of spiritual health, but he was suggesting that it has to do with physical health also.

I can imagine he must be right since I know there are little things in the blood which attack hostile viruses and so doing the ocean and then exercise I guess must boost that immune system.

Even at the founding of the American government, people found it hard to concentrate on anything else. I noticed this in the events surrounding the creation of the Constitution. From that you can see there is  a kind of collective consciousness. [That was an idea around I guess for a long time,-- but in particular I recall it was a subject of an argument between Ibn Rushd and Aquinas].

Nowadays it does seem hard to concentrate on anything else besides the coming election -even for people who have at all other times no interest in politics.

I am however not sure if perhaps it is possible to rise above that. I recall that during the time I was at the Mir in NY, I was  unaware of politics at all. And that was not just me, but rather because I was immersed in an atmosphere of people that were highly involved and dedicated to learning Torah.

 When Rav Nahman talks about Torah scholars that are demons (note 1) it is not possible to say that he means this as an allegory or just some way of putting them down. The reason is that you can see that he believed quite literally in the existence of demons. [As you can see in his 13 stories.] So he must be talking about possession.

The idea is  that as people grow older they change. So are they the whole time exactly the same person,-? Or is it that at some point they have changed so much, that they are no longer the same person? When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, is it really the same thing? Or has it changed so much, that the very essence of the being has changed?

So is is possible that  Rav Nahman is saying about many Torah scholars that they have changed so much so from their human essence that they actually become תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים [Torah scholars that are demons.]

[I am pretty sure that most people can tell this type. It is no secret.]

This I must add does not refer to Litvak sages who are simply trying to learn and keep Torah. The difference is easy to tell since in the Litvak world there is no scamming or falsifying what the Torah says or means. 

(note 1) Lem I:12, LeM I:28 

 x28 mp3 file  

x28 midi  

x28 nwc [noteworthy composer file]

 It really ought to go without saying, but still I think it is worthwhile to mention that the ideas in Rav Nahman's LeM come within a certain context. Thus without a basic background in Gemara and Musar, things that he says often are taken out of context. Thus it is easy to see how when people get involved in the teachings of Rav Nahman, sometimes things go a bit onto some tangent which does not seem to be anywhere near the original intensions of Rav Nahman. 

So what I am thinking is that if one has merited to be in a straight Litvak yeshiva where the context and meaning of Torah is crystal clear then he ought to stay there. And learn the ideas and books of Rav Nahman as an addition to Musar. And if there is no Litvak yeshiva nearby, then to make one.

So what is straight Torah? That is not so easy to explain but more or less it is the kind of attitude that I saw in the Mir in NY which could be summed up as follows: "We have no opinions except what the Gemara says." It more or less is the idea that opinions expressed in the Gemara or Rishonim count as legitimate Torah, Anything that does not fit within that context is out of bounds.