"Kollel Erev", [evening kollel].

 I was in the nearby Na Nach place today, and someone mentioned that they would like to make a "Kollel Erev". Even though their suggestion was that it should be limited to Gemara, I still wanted to express my doubts. Somehow mixing Torah with money does not seem to work very well. Either people will learn --no matter what. Then when there is that degree of commitment, then  money just seems to appear. Or when there is not that degree of commitment, then no matter how much money your pour on it, the whole enterprise remains flat. 

[I mean to say that Rav Israel Salanter started the kollel idea as a temporary solution to the problem that people right after marriage --when they are supposed to be going up in spirit, have  to leave off learning Torah to go and work. But he did not mean kollel should be became the standard way of using Torah to make money as it has become. Often the result of pouring money into the "Torah world" is the creation  "Torah scholars that are demons" [in the memorable words of Rav Nahman. And that phrase just says it all.]

 x21 D minor mp3 x21 midi  x21 nwc

 I have been thinking about Columbus and Isabella. To me it looks like the war against Moorish rule in Spain was connected with the expulsion. The thing which looks odd is that Isabella looks  heroic in her support of Columbus, even pledging her crown jewels to pay for the expedition, [that was said to be a suicide mission by all the experts.] The message got to her just as she and her husband were about to wage the last battle to end Moorish rule in Spain. But she does not seem so nice when the issue was the Alhambra decree. 

  However I think it is possible to understand Isabella by means of  the way the Columbus himself thought of his mission was as a  way of expanding Christianity. [There is lots of evidence for this.] So I think to understand Isabella is clear. She wanted Spain to be Christian and she wanted to expand Christianity.

I think this is clear also from the events starting from the pogrom of 1391 which started the downward spiral. There were plenty of converts [about 200,000] and it seems many of which were not sincere. So you have the Inquisition which was directly responsible for investigation of insincere conversions. The numbers of auto-de-fa's are not as great as people imagine. The estimates are between 1000 and 2000. Still the pressure was on.

 The closest I can see for a consistent world view in philosophy is that of the Kant Fries School developed by Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross. [Though I do not share the distain against Hegel.] While Michael Huemer also has some important points, I still think the approach of Kelley Ross comes out on top.

I have a few reasons for saying this. One is that I mainly can not stand when philosophers  start to talk about physics. Especially QM or Relativity. The only one who has understood the subject and been able to place it within the context of a wider world view is Kelley Ross. 

And Analytic Philosophy I think is already fit for the trash bin.  Robert Hanna goes into rigorous detail showing this.

[However, the actual Fries and Leonard Nelson approach seem to be in great need of modification as Kelley Ross shows. Besides what he shows it is an odd sort of fact that Nelson was not very happy with Relativity and Fries was against the existence of atoms. However the insight of non intuitive immediate knowledge seems so  significant that I am thinking that these short comings should be ignored.]

For me the approach of learning by saying the words and going on גירסא seems to work along with trust in God. That is to say that often when I am learning in this way I find that I have not understood much, and yet I try to have faith that what I am supposed to understand-I will understand. That is to say: that trust in God seems to be an important principle in this, and many other aspects of my life. But there does not seem to be any way of knowing when one is supposed to have simple trust with no effort-- as opposed to when one is expected to have trust along with effort.

I would venture to say the reason that there is no clear criterion to know is because of the fact that there are areas that reason can not enter into. And if reason tries, it collapses into contradictions. [The is the famous idea of  Kant. (Or maybe not so famous. At any rate, it was by Kelley Ross's web site on the Kant-Fries school of thought that I became aware of this approach.]

תוספות [ראש השנה יג א]

  וזה עלה בדעתי מה הכוונה של תוספות [ראש השנה י''ג ע''א]. למעשה, נכון שתוספות אומרת שהגמרא בעבודה זרה דף כ''ג ע"ב מתייחסת לאשרות (אשרות שמדורות הראשונים) בשאלת הגמרא, ולא לתשובה. שכן כפי שאומר הרב שך, התשובה מתייחסת לעצים שהיו על האדמה בזמן שניתן לאברהם. הדבר שהפך את זה למעט מבלבל הוא שהגמרא עצמה מעמידה את השאלה לאחר שכבר נתנה את התשובה. זה נשאל, "מדוע נאלצה ישראל לשרוף את האשרות? הרי אף אחד לא יכול לגרום לאסור את מה שלא שייך לו. ואתה לא יכול לענות" זה מתייחס לאשרה שנשתלה אחרי הארץ ניתנה לאברהם והעצים האלה היו שייכים לכנענים, כי  ביטול היה מספיק. אז הגמרא עונה שהיא מתייחסת לעצים שהיו בארץ בזמן אברהם, ואז עבדו את העצים האלה  לאחר שסגדו לישראל את עגל הזהב, ולפיכך היו נדרשים לשרוף את אותם עצים. זו הסיבה שתוספות מתייחס ל"אשרות מהדורות הקודמים "שכן הוא מדבר על שאלת הגמרא, ולא על תשובתה

  I was on my way to the sea and it occurred to me what תוספות ראש השנה י''ג ע''א means. In fact, it is true that תוספות is saying that the גמרא in עבודה זרה כ''ג ע''ב is referring to the   אשרות שמדורות הראשונים in the question of the גמרא, not the answer. For like רב שך is saying, the answer refers to the trees that were on the land at the time it was given to Avraham. The thing that made this a little confusing is that the גמרא itself qualifies the question after it has already given the answer. That is it asks, "Why did Israel have to burn the אשורת? After all, no one can cause to be forbidden that which does not belong to him. And you can not answer "It refers to the אשרות that were planted after the land was given to Avraham and those trees in fact belonged to the Canaanites," because ביטול nullification would have been enough. So then the גמרא answers that it refers to trees that were in the land at the time of Avraham, and then those trees were worshiped after Israel worshiped the golden calf, and thus those trees would have been required to be burnt.] This is why תוספות refers to the "אשרות שמדורות הראשונים" since he is talking about the question of the גמרא, not its answer.

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