unveiling of Being

There was can be a period the unveiling of Being that can be sabotaged. This is something you see in a Midrash about King David who said רומה על שמים השם May  God be lifted above Heaven. The sages said that King David saw that the Divine Presence was coming down on Earth but that people would not ready for that brilliant Light and so David asked God to take it above the first firmament, and then above the second, and then the third, and then finally above all the different firmaments-- so that the actions of people would not harm the Divine presence.  You can definitely have periods of some kind of Divine revelations or awakening coming into the world that can come to fulfillment, or it can be jinxed and replaced by the presence of the Sitra Achra. --the Dark Side. I mean to say that in the case of King David, if he had not asked that the Divine Presence should be removed, then the damage would have been such that the destruction would have reached even into the higher worlds, and the Dark Side would have been given power on Earth.

You might see certain periods of unveiling that are successful, and other times when the Dark Side rules the world-- like nowadays.

"He whom the gods want to destroy, they first make insane."

 "He whom the gods want to destroy, they first make insane." [That is from the Ancient Greeks.] If people believe is no that there is no difference between men and women, there is nothing else more plain and obvious to appeal to.

So the USA has gone insane. Thus China is going to be the major superpower soon.

How did they get this way? By a kind dual axis of the individual and the general society.

That is to say: that the Communist Party of China started out totally society based--I mean Marxism. [That is the world is oppressed and oppressors and the solution to to take out the oppressors, (as in "eliminate"). That would result in Utopia.] Then that resulted in disaster, so in 1978 the switch happened to private property and technology and economies as opposed to politics. The slogan was "to seek truth from facts." Not to seek facts from ideology as in the USA. But the Communist Party would still be  in charge. So China found some balance between the individual and society.

There is a sort of insanity which can be hard to distinguish between it and holiness .

There is a sort of insanity which can be hard to distinguish between it and holiness . The difference is that every area of value has an opposite area of value. So holiness which is all essence and no form [God the Creator], can easily decay into an opposite area of value. That is the Dark side.  So to come to holiness is rather a process that is not well defined. One one hand, you might say that keeping Torah plain and simple ought to prevent one from falling into the Dark Side  [Sitra Achra]. But in everyday life, that is clearly not what happens. People that get involved in the Torah often end up as great disappointments. They are hurt and destroyed by those they trusted, and in turn destroy the life of others. Religious devotion most often causes a great deterioration in simple human decency. 

[I think is better to have balance between faith and reason according to the basic approach of the Middle Ages. But what is reason nowadays? In the Middle Ages that was at first Plato., Plotinus and later Aristotle. But that approach is a bit different after Kant.] 

filial piety is not just an obligation, but the prime obligation.

"Honor your father and mother" is a dead letter in the religious world, and in the West in general. The general attitude in the religious world  and the West is that parents at best are no more than friends and most of the time much less.  Even major philosophers say openly that since one never asked to be brought into this world , therefore one owes no debt of gratitude towards one's parents. However you can ask on this. What is you are walking by a river and a little girl is drowning in the river and you just walk by and you say, "She never asked me to save her." Well you would say that is wrong. And what if you did save her? Does that means you never did her a favor because she did not ask for it?

This is in stark contrast to China and Confucius where filial piety is not just an obligation, but the prime obligation. No wonder China is on the rise, and the West is sinking. 

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Why is Musar--learning the works of Ethics of Torah important?

Why is Musar--learning the works of Ethics of Torah important? One reason is that often the very people that make their living by means of Torah can be the enemies of Torah.

The religious clothing and the whole song and dance about keeping Torah, can hide the agenda of getting naïve secular Jews to be slaves and servants and support of the patrician [morally-superior] class of the religious, [...that we secular Jews are just too stupid to understand or perceive. If only we would understand the moral and intellectual superiority of the religious we would just throw all our money at them and agree and acquiesce to subsistent on the bare minimum.]

That kind of thing can make it hard for simple people to learn Torah, and can take away the very desire to learn and keep Torah,-- i.e. by seeing the way the religious world is and acts towards baali teshuva [newly religious]. [And that is often atrocious.]

What does one do? I tend to say that Torah is important, and not responsible for those that misuse it. [The Romans even had a saying for this kind of thing, "Abuse does not cancel use." "Abusus non tollit usum."]

But that is not a really satisfying answer to this problem, since you assume that just learning and keeping Torah in itself ought to bring people to a higher moral level in which they would not be acting in such ways that clearly lack simple human decency. [Otherwise why learn it in teh first place?]

So it must be that there is something about the very way that they go about it is lacking some essential aspect. [Or that the religious are not in fact keeping Torah at all. Just the very opposite.]

This really great problem was addressed by Rav Israel Salanter in his efforts to bring the learning of Musar to people. 

While on one hand, this is a good answer for the problem--but not really all that powerful a cure. Mashgikim [spiritual directors of yeshivot] are often just failed roshei yeshiva that could not make the top grade, and so were appointed to be the spiritual directors.   

 And the further problem is that many people have found this kind of problem and their lives are destroyed, and yet have no shoulder to cry on since they are blamed themselves for what really lies at the feet of the religious world. 

From where does this disconnect come from? It seems to me that part of the reason is that a kind of force of evil got mixed up into the religious world. Something that the Gra tried to warn us about, but was not heeded. And that is found even in Litvak yeshivot.

What is the big deal you might ask? Because of something the sages of the Talmud said: :"The evil inclination abandons its attempts to seduce the while world and rest only on Israel. And then it abandons its efforts on Israel and takes itself to the Torah scholars." (That is to say that the very essence of the Dark Side is disguised in those that supposedly keep Torah).

[I am not saying that I am perfect in this regard. Rather that as well as I can keep the straight Torah path of the Gra all the better. And that I can wish that others might do the same and also pay more attention to the fact that he signed the letter of excommunication and repeated that fact several times afterwards, Showing that although we can not see this right off hand at first, still there is  a terrible danger that we may not see.]

 

My mistake was to leave the world of straight Torah of the Gra, Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.]

Rav Shach does emphasize the importance of learning Torah and Musar.  And he was certainly not thinking about going to university, even though his son did become a doctor.

So I ought to ask forgiveness from people that read this blog that I do seem to differ on that point.

My excuse is that I did not fit in the yeshiva world. Even though I love Torah and agree with the Gra and Rac Shach and Rav Israel Salanter, still I simply did not find my place there. So more or less by force of circumstances, I had to go to major in Physics at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU.

But I regret that I was not able to learn Torah and Physics both. So I still try as much as possible to walk in this middle path of Torah with Derech Eretz [way of the Earth].   

So is that a thing to aim for? Or is it better just to sit and learn Torah? That is clearly still an unresolved question. Some of the great Litvak Yeshivas of NY do in fact aim for both, like Chaim Berlin and Torah VeDaat. Others like the Mir do not. The Mir aims for just Torah all day, every day. I have to admit that I tend to the more balanced approach. 

[I would like to suggest that the religious world suffers religious schizophrenia and from a kind of desire to become a patrician class [to rule over us low-lifes]. So learning Torah and competence in Torah is not the thing that they aim for, but rather the appearance of competence in Torah. So there is a large difference between the insane religious world and the sane, straight world of Litvak yeshivas. My mistake was to leave the world of straight Torah of the Gra, Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.]