The reason the religious world is so messed up

 The first time in the LeM of R. Nahman of Breslov that he brings the problem with religious teachers is the the LeM volume I, chapter 8. רברבי עשיו The princes of Esau. This Rav Nahman says refers to religious leaders of the Dark Side.

The basic idea in that chapter is that the spirit of life comes from Torah. So to be attached to Torah is the source of the spirit of life. But from where do evil people get their spirit of life? From the religious leaders of the Dark Side. The princes of Esau. רב דקליפה The Rav of the Dark Side.

Pretty scary. How do you tell who is who? I say listening to the Gra is the way to go about that. That is: the Gra made clear exactly who are the religious leaders of the Dark Side,--- and the fact that he is ignored is the reason the religious world is so messed up. 

One way you can see that the Gra was right is the who are the people that are in fact attached to Torah?--the obvious answer is: the Litvak yeshivas.

Eliyahu on Mount Carmel

 Eliyahu on Mount Carmel asked the People of Israel, "How long will you jump between two extremes? If the Lord is God then serve him, but if the Baal is God then serve him."

Why did they not just answer "Both?" After all that was the ancient Canaanite religion: that the Lord [Yod he vav he] is the ruler of the heavens and the Baal was the ruler of the Earth. I think that the point of Eliyahu was that there can be only one First Cause. [There can only be one first of any series.] This is the same point that the Chovot Levavot brings in answer to this same question. [That is the first book of Musar The Obligations of the Hearts by Ibn Pakuda

I was reading that whole incident and I had  a few observations. One is the Eliyahu was eating bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat at night. That was from what the ravens were bringing to him. That seems odd in itself in terms of tractate Hulin. [The sages said the meat was coming from the table of Ahav. So the only problem was בשר הנעלם מן העין. Meat that was hidden and then found. But there is an answer to that.]

Another thing is that even after the People of Israel had repented, still the later prophecy when Eliyahu was at Mount Horev said to anoint a king on Aram, then one of Israel and then Elisha who would kill all those who had bowed before the Baal. And you see later that in fact only 7000 people were left of all Israel. That is another thing that is hard to understand.

Another point is that the way the Canaanite religion was, was that the Lord is the God of the heavens which means he has final and absolute control over the heavens. The same with the Baal on the Earth. So the point of Eliyahu was that God has the final and absolute control of both heaven and earth. But we do find in the Torah that people did ask prophets to pray for them. Like Hezekiah asking Isaiah to pray for him. So the idea that there can be an intermediary between one and God is possible. But "asking" is not the same thing as "praying." "Praying" is when one knows there one he is praying to is the final court of appeals and has absolute power over the subject one is asking about. "Asking" is not the same thing. And one does not worship the intermediary. Only askes to pray for one.  

Aliens. My dad used to work in area 51.

 I would like to mention that my dad used to work in area 51. That was when the USA government asked him to develop an extreme long distance camera to mount on the U-2 in order to see what was going on on the ground in the USSR. [There were two teams to develop a camera so in history you do not see my Dad's name (Rosenblum) since he was in charge of the second team.] And he never mentioned anything about aliens to me. OK, (you might say), it was after all Top Secret. However he never hid from my brothers and me (when we were just kids) his work on SDI - Star Wars in making Infra Red spy satellites and later laser communication between satellites;-- and even with him and his friends discussing how far advanced or behind the USSR was from us. [As far as that goes, he and his buddies at TRW explained that the USSR was actually more advanced than the USA in developing the tech and math needed for a SDI program, but then towards the end of the 1960's the USA caught up, and out stripped them. That was even before either government admitted that they had such a project.]

To be up front with you all, I think there probably are aliens, and they probably have been around here looking at earth. [But I am not afraid of them. It from the humans down here that I am afraid of.]

 However as for Area 51, I doubt if anything is going on there with that. 

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Sorry I put this on before checking it. [I forgot to change the key back into A Major at the end. ] Now it seems to be OK. 

sexual purity

 Rav Nahman said for the sake of Tikun HaBrit/sexual purity to go a natural body of water. [That is if one has accidently spilled seed in vain  to go a dip into a natural body of water and say the ten psalms called the Tikun Klali 16, 32, 41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150.

Bit I have noticed that going into a natural body of water seems to help me get my equilibrium back. (I usually go in with my clothing on and just change into dry clothes when I return to where I am staying.) That is: whenever I am upset or taken off balance for some reason, I run to the nearest body of natural water like a sea or a river.  [If you go in a sea with clothing, then rise them when you get home because the salt eats away at the material unless thoroughly washed out.]  ]Sometimes I have been in area where there is a spring. That is when I was in Safed and also in Jerusalem by the site of Shmuel the prophet. [It can not be man made like a pool.]  This helps purify my spirit. And at the same time, I do some exercise to help me regain physical health also.

Still even though the great ideas of Rav Nahman are important, one needs to be careful that one's focus should be on God, not on the tzadik.

Eliyahu  said to Klal Israel, "How long will you skip between the two ends. If the Lord is God  then serve Him; if the Baal is god, then serve him."  This seems to be ignored by religious people who tend to take some middle agent to serve.

Rav Shach in the Rambam's Laws of Buying and selling, Chapter 23. Bava Batra 63.

There is an argument of one can give or gain possession of something that has not come into the world.

R Meir said one can. However the sages said "no", and so throughout Shas, you see it is a given that one can not.

[There is a certain order among the tenaim/ authors of the Mishna with whom is the law. R Jose, R Yehuda, etc. according to order. R. Meir is near that bottom unless it is a "stam mishna" [no authorship is attributed] in which case the law is like R. Meir. [That is how R Yehuda the Prince arranged the Mishna]

In the case of a fruit tree, if one sells it to one person and sells its fruit to another, the other has acquired nothing except fruit which is on it right now. Not anything that will grow in the future. But in a case where he sells the tree to one person and he says, "I am selling to you the tree, but keeping the fruit for me," he keeps the fruit --for it is considered as if he kept the place where the fruit is growing for himself.

Same with a sell of a house where he says I am keeping the upper porch to be able to build upper extensions into the courtyard. But in both cases, there is an argument among rishonim if he can pass that right along to the people that inherit him. The Gra and Rashbam say no. The Ramban [Nachmanides] says yes. The issue is that the right to build an extension is thought to be a thing that has no substance.

The Gemara there in Bava Batra says the case of the Levi who sells his land "on condition" that the first tithe he gets. That arrangement does not continue with his children that inherit him. The idea is he keeps in theory the actual ground that the tithe grows on.

From there Reish Lakish learns from there about a person that sells his house on condition he keeps the roof space. But he keeps it anyway in the ancient usage of Iraq when if one sells a house the seller keeps top of the roof unless that is specified. To the Rashbam  saying openly "I sell you the house on condition the rood space is mine" means he added a condition that was implicit anyway. So it comes to include teh right to extend the rood to the other side of the courtyard and to make  a walk way there.

To the Ramban [Nachmanides] that is not because of the language but part of the actual arrangement in any case

The Gra holds like the Rashbam that the case of a Levite and roof are similar in that the children do not inherit the right, but the case of the roof is because of owning a thing that has no substance, not because of the language used in the deal.

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