Rav Avraham Abulafia is unknown to most people.  partly because he is considered a "mekubal" the last thing he would have liked to be known as. He wrote--''the Christians believe in three gods, and the mekubalim in ten.'' And until today you can see he was right. I was in the Breslov place today and learned LeM 33 and tried to explain that God is beyond time and space since these two are His creations. One can not say ''God is here,'' nor that he is absent from here since neither predicate are applicable to Him.  Most people that learn the LeM of Rav Nahman seem to think that pantheism is correct, but in spite of this being not the Torah approach it is also incorrect from the aspect that has no plurality in Him. If everything is God, then one introduces a plurality into Divine simplicity--(Divine simplicity means that God is not a composite. He has no predicates. Not time nor space, nor any sort of ingredients.

[Just to be clear--God has no characteristics that can be applicable to finite beings--as Saddia gaon makes clear.

There is no such thing as tolerance.

 There is no such thing as people that do not have a cut off point... of what is acceptable and what is not. There is no such thing as tolerance. The Left will not tolerant the political right. Everyone has some cut off point of what they will tolerate and what they will not. Often it will be a case of self deception. Where people are congratulating themselves of how tolerant they are by not tolerating the intolerant. (I wish they would see the logical contradiction in that.) [This is not my own new idea. I heard this in Uman by a fellow that I had  known in Safed. ]

Maybe you can see this in people that will not tolerant "racism" in whites, but hate males or whites etc. But This is just one example. I am sure most people an find examples of their own. There is no such thing as tolerating a little bit of cyanide in your chocolate pudding. 

z24 E major 

 I have been mulling over in my mind back and forth  the subject of documents. It is something that at first seems like a direct contradiction that I must have seen plenty of times but never paid attention to the fact that these two statements directly contradict. One is עדים החתומים על השטר נעשה כמו נחקרה עדותן בבית דין (witnesses signed on a document are as if their testimony was already investigated and confirmed in court. ) and the another statement is מפיהם ולא מפי כתבם. (from their mouths, not from their writing.) I would never have noticed this if I did not see in the Avi Ezri  this exact issue. [In Laws of Gitin] chapter I halacha 24.] 

The law  is that in a "get" (divorce) document there is time.

The  sanhedrin there is a mishna that monetary laws need to be investigated and verified.  The gemara right there asks if so why are loans OK if the time put on them is after the actual loan was made? The gemara answers so as to not shut the door in front of people that want to borrow money. [That is-to lessen the restrictions] The Nemukai Yoseph asks then want about a get or kidushin?

Rav Chaim of Brisk answers there are documents that cause an event.-like gitin or kidushin or a document of  a present. This type is what the gemara refers to as עדים החתומים על השטר נעשה כמו נחקרה עדותן בבית דין (witnesses signed on a document are as if their testimony was already investigated and confirmed in court.  The another type of document is simply a proof that an event happened--like a loan. For that we know that it needs to be verified by bringing in the witnesses. This seems to answer the question of the Nemukai Yoseph. However Nahmanides/ the Ramban however disagrees with this sort of division. To him documents of loans are also regular documents. You do not divide between them and documents of kidushin. So the whole answer of Rav Chaim falls off in this case.[]

Rav Shach answers a different answer.  He notes that sometimes documents involve a court case that needs to be investigated.--a "din Torah". That can mean loans  or documents of presents. These are  cases where the doc. is a doc. but loans have the advantage that the sages lessened the requirements in order not to shut the door. But cases like kidushin do not need a court and so do not require verification in the first place in a court. So you would not even need to say "witnesses signed on a document are as if their testimony was already investigated and confirmed in court"--because you do not even need a court.

 I wanted to mention some of the major aspects of the path of the Gra. (1) Learning Torah is the most essential part of it. It is not just from his comment on the Mishna in Peah אלו דברים שאין להם שיעור וכו'.. ותלמוד תורה כנגד כולם והגמרא ירושלמי אומרת שאין לו שיעור היינו אפילו על ידי דבר [דיבור] אחר מן התורה אדם מקיים את המצווה של לימוד התורה. [These are the things that have no measure... and learning Torah is equal to them all. The Talmud Yerushalmi says that means no lowest measure. That is even by one word of Torah one fulfills the commandment of learning Torah.] Rather the spirit of Torah is embedded in the path of the Gra. Learning in depth also is an essential part of the Gra's path, i.e. Tosphot, Maharsha , R. Akiva Eiger, the Ketzot etc.

(2) Not to speak lashon hara. [i.e. not to speak evil about others.]

(3) Trust in God --as you can see in the Madragat HaAdam who brings the comment of the Gra on Mishlei.

(4) Great caution in dinei mamonot --monetary laws--Choshen Mishpat.

[5] "The seven wisdoms". This is a forgotten part of the Gra. Most people assume that math and physics are not in the Gra's approach. But you can see that it is in the intro of the translation of Euclid by Baruch of Shkolov who was a disciple of the Gra. There he quotes the Gra: "For every lack of knowledge in any one of the seven wisdoms, one will lack a hundred fold more in Torah."]

There is some sort of problem with Torah scholars that are demons [mentioned in the Zohar parshat Pinchas that seems to cloud the issue of keeping Torah. [This often comes up in conversations with people that have found their lives irretrievably ruined due to these so called Torah scholars. This is an amazingly popular subject among people that have tried to keep Torah, but then find that the supposed representatives of Torah are demons--in the picturesque language of Rav Nahman. ] That is you might find a person that is seriously devoted to keeping Torah, But then he encounters one of these demons that dress and talk like true Torah scholars. This makes the whole possibility of keeping and learning Torah difficult. For he might fall for the deception and be pulled into the net of the demons, or he might give up on the whole possibility of learning and keeping Torah.   At least it is helpful to know that someone deals with this problem as is brought in the LeM of Rav Nahman. [Lem vol I 12and 28. But also mentioned many times in the LeM, e.g., vol I 61 or vol II perek 1 and perek 8. ] Even of one is suffering from the troubles caused to him or her by being fooled and tricked by these Torah scholars that are demons, still it is a comfort to know that he or she is not alone. 

One solution to this problem is the yeshivas founded in the path of the Gra, i.e. straight Torah with no pretenses. However the demons have extended their reign so far as to enter, and sometimes even take over these basically good places. I personally have not found a solution to this problem except to try to learn Torah in my own space--as far as I am able--which is not very much.

[I might mention here that in fact I am not in a place where there is any straight Litvak yeshiva. If there was, I might very well change my approach and try to learn there. I have hear that there are extensions of Ponovitch in different areas. but I have not heard of anything like that near my area. Recently. I saw  a group from the Aderet Eliyahu [based on the Gra] just visiting from Jerusalem, but so far I have not heard of any real presence of a Gra sort of yeshiva in this area. [I might add to learn the the Birchat Shmuel--also a disciple of Rav  Chaim of Brisk and Rav Naftali Troup. I do not know of learning these could take the place of  an authentic Litvak yeshiva but nowadays, learning at home might be the only possibility because the immense confusion that exists in the Torah world.   

[I should mention that Torah scholars that are demons  is a wide spread problem in the Torah world. It is almost impossible to avoid unless one learns at home. So what one might do is simply get some of the basic Torah books, e.g. the Chidushei of Rav Chaim of Brisk  and learn at home.[Or the book of Rav Shimon Skopf, or the Avi Ezri.]  

The Ari'zal [Rav Isaac Luria] says in this world the evil is the majority. So if one finds that someone is presented as a great tzadik, the likelihood is that he is a demon

 should at least be taken as a possibility.

Trotsky said to the Politburo, they should tax people, but let them keep what they own.

 Trotsky in his autobiography recounts an amazing detail. In 1920 he told the Politburo that unless they got off of "war communism"  and stopped confiscating goods the economy would collapse. He says they should  tax people, but let them keep what they own. (Hey! So what about Communism?)) So he noticed the problem. There was no incentive to work in the communist system except fear of arrest and prison. But no positive motivation. Why work if all your needs are given for free?

[However I wonder if he ever wondered about the system he helped put in place. ]