If you go by the actual molad [conjunction of Sun and Moon] the Tues night should be the start of Hanuka.

But the calendar everyone else goes by is usually different because they are basing it on the average new moon. However it seems to me that the date of should be by the actual time of the molad, and that ought to count as the first day of the month.

The basic reason I say this is because of the Gemara in Sanhedrin page 10 where the time for the new moon does not depend on the court of law establishing it, but rather on the right time. As R. Elazar puts it: "If the court sanctifies it in the right time, then fine; if not, then the higher court in heaven establishes it."

So what matters is the right time. Is that when it can be seen, or when the actual molad is in fact? That seem to be a debate between the Gemara in Sanhedrin and the Gemara in Rosh Hashana [I seem to recall that is on page 19.] 

So why choose one Gemara over the other? Well as David Bronson told me once that what makes my idea interesting is the fact that there is no court of law to in fact establish the date. And I would have to add the fact that the calendar that everyone is going by is not mentioned in the Gemara. [If Hillel II in fact established the calendar you would imagine that somewhere in the Gemara someone should have mentioned it. So we have to say it got to be the custom to use it during the time of the geonim. [There was readily available a calendar in use at the time that got the solar year and lunar year to correspond more or less that had been in use for about a thousand years from the time of Meton in Athens.]

A certain problem exists on the religious world that refers back to the verse in the Torah: "Do not add or subtract from these commandments which I command you this day."

Once my learning partner David Bronson pointed out that some people just delight in adding restriction for others. So you find in the LeM of Rav Nahman that he warns against "חומרות יתירות"  extra restrictions. Once there is a "posek" to depend on, one can depend on him. "posek" means a medieval authority in Halacah like the Rif or Rosh or other rishonim when they write about halacha.

And Rav Nahman adds to that that it is possible to serve God with everything.

I tend to depend on this. However I realize there is higher service of God which is to sit and learn Torah. However I found myself not really up to doing so. So I tend to depend on this idea of Rav Nahman that it is possible to serve God through everything. 

In the LeM vol II ch 4 there is explained  there is  higher service of straight Torah. However there is also a service of God that is the 39 types of work that bring light into the work of creation.

Another problem is idolatry, which is related to the first. I think the reason for adding restrictions is to take attention away from the real problem of idol worship.  [Not of statues. But in Torah though all worship is towards God, not people.]

 

The argument to say the South [i.e. the Southern States] was right is דין חלוקה the law of dividing.

 The argument to say the South [i.e. the Southern States] was right is דין חלוקה the law of dividing.

That is, if you have a courtyard that is owned by two people and it is big enough to divide [about 4 yards by 8 yards], then either one can say to the other, "Buy my portion, or I will buy yours".  They are not forced to stay together.

However, you can also say that a political union is not the same thing as a business arrangement.

After all, let's say one is living under a king, and he decides he no longer is subject to that king. That is treason.

 So we see that politics and business are separate subjects although related. See for example Danny Frederick's critique on Dr. Michael Huemer. [Dr. Huemer holds no government is legitimate.

Frederick shows the flaws in his arguments. There was a debate in NY with Dr Huemer and a law professor of NYU  that basically brought out these same point.

 When in Quantum Mechanics you hear about the collapse of the wave function when it is measured that can mean a physicist in a lab but it also can mean simply an interaction with a macroscopic body. It is not saying that everything depends on who is looking at it. It is not an argument for subjective morality as some people think.

 I was listening to the hearings of the State Legislature of Arizona yesterday. The part I caught was of a computer expert showing the ways the computers were rigged. So I would imagine that since the Constitution gives the right to the state legislature to appoint the electors, they ought to do that.   

[Besides being at the sea most of the day so that is why I was not blogging.]

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Torah as monotheism is opposed to idolatry and pantheism.

The issue of idolatry you can see mainly in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. There almost all commandments of the Torah are hardly mentioned. The issue is always centered on idolatry. The idea is simple. One who does idolatry will be punished. One who does not and instead directs his heart towards God alone will be rewarded. Kings and the people of Israel were constantly warned abut this one issue. It is the issue where the religious have failed because they worship people.

Also the belief system of the Torah is Monotheism, not pantheism. [Pantheism makes everything into idolatry.\] You can see this clearly in Rav Saadia Gaon and the later rishonim who clarify the subject of the faith of the Torah. 

You can also see this in the Ari'zal [start of the Eitz Chaim] and Rav Nahman [LeM vol I chapter 4 and vol II chapter 4]. 

However at this point I would like to defend the idea of Monotheism. One, not a composite and that God is an infinite Conscious Being. And completely "other". Not the same as the universe He made. 

But he is also the Absolute Reality outside of which there is nothing.

So what does consciousness mean?

 (1) Consciousness always has a content. There is always something other than the consciousness itself, which exists as the object of it. It is thinking about something. If it is not thinking about something, then it is not thinking.

(2) But consciousness  includes its thoughts  and content as something essentially its own. The content is not received by consciousness as if it were a stranger to be momentarily entertained and then lost forever: on the contrary, the content is the very life of the consciousness that possesses it. There is a unity that exists between consciousness and its content - a unity that is absolutely fundamental to the integrity of each. (3) Consciousness is never identical with, but is always something more than, its content. Notwithstanding the fact that the content is always received by consciousness as its very own, as its other self in fact, still there is a distinction between the two that never disappears; consciousness and its content never fall together in an undifferentiated identity.

The fundamental importance of these three characteristics of consciousness, as well as their vital interconnectedness, may be emphasized by a brief analysis of self-consciousness. It is evident that as a self-conscious being I am of a two-fold nature. In the first place, I am a bundle of sensations, feelings, impulses, desires, volitions, and ideas. And from this point of view I am eternally changing. At any moment of my existence I am never what I have been, or shall be, at any other moment. At one instant I am a center of impulses and passions; at another, a center of ideas and ideals. Today I am a self of pleasures; tomorrow, a self of pains.  But there is another fact about this self-consciousness that must be taken into account. It is true that I am eternally changing, that I am not what I have been heretofore, and that I shall never be again just what I am now. And yet, paradoxical as it may sound, what I have been I am, and what I am I shall be. Underlying the panorama of change, deeper than the self that is in a never-ceasing process of transformation, is another self that gives unity and coherence to the process. This is the subject-self. And this it is that makes education, spiritual development in general, possible; without it our experience would be at best but a chaos of meaningless sensations and incoherent desires. These two aspects or phases seem to be present in all self-consciousness. Take a cross-section of consciousness at any moment, and you will discover that it is of this two-fold nature. Even in our moments of most intense introspection, when we enter as intimately as possible into ourselves, we find that this duality is present; indeed, one is inclined to say, it is then that its presence is most strongly impressed upon us.

It is to be noticed, moreover, that the duality is absolutely essential to self-consciousness. Not only do we find it actually present in self-consciousness; the implication of experience is that it must exist so long as consciousness itself exists. For self-consciousness is just this duality: the subject-self and the object-self exist only as they co-exist. 

And from this follows immediately a further result. Since this duality is essential to consciousness, these two phases of subject and object cannot fall into identity with each other. Take any case of consciousness that you please, whether it be consciousness of objects in the mental or in the physical world. Do you find there a coincidence between subject and object? Certainly not. The object is never its own consciousness; there is, and can be, no identity between them. It is inconsistent with the very nature of consciousness that these two phases collapse into identity. The presupposition of consciousness is that there shall be something, an object in the physical world, an object in the mental world, something other than the consciousness itself, of which the consciousness shall  not be identical with each other. 

So concerning an Absolute Consciousness. In the first place, such a Consciousness would necessarily have a content; that is, there would have to be an Other of which the Absolute is conscious. In the second place, this Other would not be regarded by the Absolute as something foreign or external, in the sense that it lay genuinely outside of the Absolute; rather would it be possessed as an essential element within the Absolute. And, lastly, the Absolute would necessarily differentiate this Other from itself in such a way as to preserve the duality that we have found to be essential to the conscious life. And our justification for making these assertions concerning an Absolute Consciousness is simply that these characteristics which we have attributed to the Absolute are those that experience shows us to be fundamental to all consciousness as we know it; and unless we are to reduce our discussions to meaningless talk, we must test them by concrete experience. Certainly it seems that we must assume that the conditions prerequisite to finite consciousness must be fulfilled in an Absolute Consciousness.

What now must be our answer to the dilemma with which we began our discussion? In the first place, it would seem that we have found a way of escape from pantheism in our doctrine of the Absolute. For so long as we maintain the self-consciousness of the Absolute, we are forced to maintain also that the Absolute and the world are differentiated from each other. Really, pantheism is logically possible only to the metaphysician who denies the self-consciousness of the Absolute. For pantheism, if it means anything, means identity between the Absolute and the world of finite existence; whatever form the theory may take, it ultimately reduces everything in the universe to an undifferentiated unity with the all-inclusive One. But, if the Absolute be regarded as a self conscious Individual, this abstract identity becomes impossible; because, as our analysis of the category has disclosed, consciousness always demands a content from which it is differentiated. Destruction of this duality is the destruction of the possibility of consciousness. Therefore no theory that maintains that the Absolute is Self-Consciousness can legitimately be accused of pantheism so long as it is consistent. But have we escaped the other horn of our dilemma? Our own argument has forced us to admit that an Other to the Absolute is essential; indeed, it is this fact that relieves us from any fears concerning pantheism as the outcome of our doctrine. And have we not virtually limited the Absolute by positing this Other, which our analysis of consciousness has compelled us to assume is necessary? The answer to this objection is involved in what we have just been saying about the fact that the two extremes of the equation of consciousness are not foreign to each other; and it might perhaps be sufficient simply to point to this fact in meeting the objection.