x56 G Major

x55 F Major

The Litvak yeshiva. If one would want to improve the situation, I would recommend that the Litvak yeshivas should go with the Gra totally since, after all, it is that path of the Gra that endows them with the spirit of Torah in the first place.

There was I have to say, an amazing spirit of Torah in Shar Yashuv and in the Mir. But it is pretty much in almost any Litvak yeshiva I have walked into. It is almost as if there is a kind of Divine presence in a place where people learn Torah for its own sake.

[My basic story was my first year in Shar Yashuv was fraught with difficulty. But the second years I started getting more into the learning. That is pretty much when I was what you might call addicted to Torah. I had to get my "Torah high". If that sounds like a drug addict, well maybe it was. After all Aristotle said that "virtue is habit."

 That is, you have to choose as to what kind of habits you want to get yourself accustomed to. I made a choice to get into the Torah addiction instead of other kinds of things which I might have chosen.

Later on, the Mir in NY was my second destination. And then Israel. The second I got off the plane in Israel, that  "spirit Torah" came  in a more intense way.

Nowadays, I would say that the Litvak yeshivas [that go by the Gra and Rav Shach] are the citadels of Torah, though I myself am far off from them. Probably the best is Ponovitch. Also the yeshivas based on the Gra (founded by the father of Rav Eliyahu Silverman) in Jerusalem are great.

[But as I have said before, nowadays I would go with the idea of many Rishonim that learning Physics and Metaphysics ought to be supplementary to the  basic structure of learning Torah.] 

If one would want to improve the situation, I would recommend that the Litvak yeshivas should go with the Gra totally since after all, it is that path of the Gra that endows them with the spirit of Torah in the first place.

when one starts out in the service of God, it is the general rule that he is pushed away.

 I did have a lot in mind when I first went to Shar Yashuv and later to the Mir. [I had a great desire to learn Torah, and was not thinking about parnasa/making a living or getting married.] But the Mir in NY is a Musar yeshiva, and so I started getting the idea of what it is all about. That is: trust in God. So I more or less gained this mind set that all I need to do is to learn Torah and trust in God and then not worry about anything else. God will take care of things if you trust in Him.

You might see this in books of Musar like the Chovot Levavot, but I mainly got this idea from the later Musar book of Navardok.  

So you can ask what do you do when things are falling apart? Well, one can fall from trust in God or trust more in God. I elected the idea that I needed to trust more.

But I admit that is not simple to do. Still I can see in the Torah there is this idea of "tests". Abraham was tested 10 times. So you can extrapolate from this that you or me might have other kinds of tests. And what we do in time of trial makes all the the difference of how things go later after that.

[You can see this in the events surrounding the kings of Israel. The major theme is always this: When king so and so trusted in God, things went well for him. When he turned to other gods, things stopped going well for him. That in a nut shell is the entire major theme of the entire Old Testament. So you can see the importance of trusting in God alone and not in your own ideas and efforts.]

[I ought to add here that my idea of learning Torah has expanded to include Physics and Metaphysics as the Rambam says openly in the Guide and in Mishna Torah and this is hinted at in the Chovot Levavot. I might have thought in this more expanded way just from theory itself and seeing the rishonim that hold this way. But experience brought home the idea to me. That is when my world was shaken up I had to rethink my basic principles. Few people rethink things when everything is going well. And that includes me. Only when I had to, that is when I stated to rethink things.]

[I might add here the LeM of Rav Nahman vol II. # 48 where he brings this idea that  when one starts out in the service of God, it is the general rule that he is pushed away.  Heaven is making obstacles. However this does not happen unless one is really intending to serve God. So if you see that you are having enormous obstacles in trying to learn Torah and serve God sincerely, that simply shows that you are doing it for the sake of God and that is good.]

 x51 B flat minor  x51 midi  x51 nwc

On to list the great qualities that R. Yohanan ben Zacai possessed are: "He knew the speech of the birds,.. and even ... and the great thing and the small thing."

The Gemara brings down that Hillel had a certain number of disciples. The greatest was Yonatan ben Uziel. The least was R Yohanan ben Zazai. And it goes on to list the great qualities that  R. Yohanan ben Zacai possessed. "He knew the speech of the birds,.. and even ... and the great thing and the small thing." [דבר גדול ודבר קטן]." Then the Gemara asks what is "the great thing"? The work of the Divine Chariot and the work of Creation. What is the "small thing"? The discussion of Abyee and Rava. [And that later is a major content of the two Talmuds.]

In The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides [the Rambam] explains the "Work of Creation" is what was known to the ancient  Greeks as "Physics" and the "Work of the Divine Chariot" is what was known to the ancient Greeks as "Metaphysics."

[So neither refers to any kind of mysticism.]

So, we learn that there is some aspect of these two disciplines that help to bring a person to human perfection more readily than learning Gemara. That is not however meant to diminish the importance of learning Gemara. Rather that Gemara is the first step up the ladder. [The Rambam states this clearly at the end of the first four chapters of the Mishna Torah. That is,-- even though Physics and Metaphysics are greater, still one first must learn "the forbidden and the allowed."

[The way I see this is that there is an area of value in Gemara ("numinous value"),-- but that area of value can easily be subverted. For an example the more powerful an energy source, the more careful one has to be. A mistake in handling an electric battery would not cause the same kind of damage as the mishandling of a nuclear reactor. And since Gemara  and learning Torah is in this area of numinous value, a mishandling of it, causes untold damage. We can see this clearly in the religious world. Something is clearly off there.

[Rav Nahman of Breslov says [LeM II:91] the importance of combing the wisdom of Torah with the lower wisdoms of this world and by that all the judgments are sweetened.]

Rav Nahman warns against philosophy. Most Americans are not thrilled with all the crazy ideas emerging from philosophy departments that have infected all society.

I see a little philosophy as importan.t--but not a lot. It seems important because there are legitimate question in faith. It seems to me that Dr. Kelley Ross helps to provide a decent justification for faith by the use of non intuitive knowledge. But you can ask why not just go with G.E. Moore that reason has direct awareness of universals. [To me that does not seem possible since there are enough problems in G.E. Moore  as Robert Hanna pointed out.] 

[However, rightfully Rav Nahman warns against philosophy, and it is clear that people that go into philosophy generally lose any resemblance of common sense. However, a little bit is needed in order to cancel out all the false ideas that are floating around.]

I think most Americans are not thrilled with all the crazy ideas emerging from philosophy departments that have infected all society. At some point Americans will take back their republic based on faith, not modernism. It is like when James II in England, tried to impose the Catholic religion on Protestants. That led to his fleeing England and William and Mary being crowned King and Queen. That is,-- the people will accept a certain amount of imposition. But only up to a certain point. And their patience with sour faced liberals has grown short.

 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.]