true authentic Torah

 The importance of the Gra and the straight Litvak approach [note 1] came home to me today at the beach. I was resting there in order to gain enough energy to  start back on my walk home. [And I was mulling over the sugia in Gitin page 86 and how it relates to two hazakot against one.] Then I saw some girls sit down to eat ice cream. Then one got up and went over to throw the wrapping away into the trash can. Then another did the same thing, and when the wind blew away what she had thrown out, she retrieved it and threw it away again. At that point, I could not help myself anymore. I went over and said, "You girls are the daughters of a Litvak Torah scholar." And of course they agreed. It could not have been more obvious. I asked where in fact their father had learned Torah?, and it turned out he had learned by one of the great Litvak yeshivas. 

If you see someone who is has midot tovot [good character traits] and is careful about things between man and his fellow man [bein adam lehavero], then it is clear they are Litvaks.  

[However far from Torah as I am, still I can smell the scent  of true authentic Torah a mile away. ]

[note 1] I wish I could explain what this is exactly. The rough picture has a lot to do with Musar, but there is something else about it besides that. A kind of devotion, fear of God, and good traits.] 

The approach that I think is best is Torah with Derech Ertz.[derech ertetz means roughly theway of the earth. Which have a wide spectrum of meaning fro good characer to getting a job. However in pirkei avot it means most often getting a job כך תורה שאין עמה מלאכה גוררת עוון וסופה בטילה וסופו יורש גהינום] [As you see a few times in Pirkei Avot.] I can however agree with the idea of trust in God. But trust in God in the religious world is mixed and confused with the idea of asking secular Jews to pay for the religious to sit all day and pretend to learn Torah.

The constant refrain in the religious world is: "Give us money." [Or the variant: "Give us money because we are  so holy."] That is already pretty much what the Torah says not to do. But often this goes with a large degree of fraud. Pretense and holy talk of how they are trusting in God.

This is typical primate behavior of using what every advantage or tactic one can in order to get on top. The religious world has found the best tactic is fraud.

[Of course, I do not mean to include the great Litvak yeshivot like Ponovitch or its off shoots-- where in fact people learn "Lishma"[for its wn sake and not for money or influence]. Nor do they pretend to learn Torah, but rather learn in truth. Also, I ought to add for praise the two great yeshivot I went to,- Shar Yashuv and Mir in NY. There is no question that there people were in fact learning Torah for its own sake. Rather, it is the general religious world that something is terribly "off", or plain deception.  [And no offence intended towards the path of Rav Nachman. Though people may abuse this approach, still I  found his advice very helpful  and I do not think he could be included in the excommunication of the Gra. You can see this if you see the original letters of the letters of excommunication.

[And while I am at it I should add that I do not think the the excommunication of the Gra should be ignored, To be it seems like a valid halachic category. Once the Gra signed in it, it became legally valid. Even of one does not agree with it or thinks it  was mistaken. That does not take away the legal force of a "herem" which is a valid legal category.]

 there are people that are good and even great writers but not good thinkers. There are others that are great talkers , but terrible writers. I noticed this in the autobiography of Trotsky. He is desperate to get  visa to Germany. Thus he creates out of thin air a right of asylum. I can imagine he must have believed this. But that is not a right in natural law nor in the bill of rights of any democratic state. He just slips it in to the list of right of democratic states since he needed such a right in order not to be murdered by Stalin's agents. 

He was a great writer like Ayn Rand. but not a great thinker. He never seemed to ask if Marxism really made much sense outside of convincing people that they have been exploitered in order to gain power to exploit them for other interests. 

I must add here that the idea of "rights" of democracies is what the government must not do. It is not what the government must provide. Trotsky was being a compelling writer but poor thinker in this regard.

 Just a quick note. Ketubot pg 9.  Kohen A priest marries and finds his wife was not a virgin, she is forbidden to him because of a doubt,--the act of sex was before or after Airusin [engagement]. Tosphot: why not say hezka every person is in the hazaka of being OK until proven otherwise. Answer: because hazaka from the start. That pushes the time of sex as close to now as possible.  R. Akiva Eiger: Why not say like the mikve that was found lacking. I.e., Hazaka of OK with hazaka of now [present status] pushes the assumed time of sex to before the Airusin.[in which case she is permitted to her husband.] Rav Shach brings an idea from the Rashba that answers this. You only use hazaka of now [present status] in a case where you do not know if an act occurred--like the case of pure things which were dipped into the mikve. We do nor know if any "act'' occurred since the mikve is now lacking the 40 seah. But in the case of the wife of the priest we know she was not a virgin at the time of marriage. So there hazaka of now [present status] does not apply.

Why does this come up?, you might ask. The answer is there is an argument in Gitin between Ramban (Nahmanides), Rashbam, and Rambam about the need for the date in a get. And from what I can tell Tosphot is being consistent with his approach [Gitin page 86] that when we know an "act" occurred we use hezkat hashta [present status] to push the assumed time backwards.] but I am very full of hope that God may grant to me to  think about these issues at a future time. I just wanted to write down some of these basic issues. [So far I am thinking that Tosphot is being consistent. But then the questions would automatically arise about the Rambam, Rashbam, and Ramban how to answer the question that Tosphot brings in Ketubot page 9. [which I might mention is perhaps the most famous page in Shas or at least second place to Bava Metzia page 100.]   

 I wanted to mention a sort of odd kind of fact. That Shar Yashuv was and as far as I know still is a yeshiva where beginners start. The Mir in NY is considered the Ivy League. Especially when Rav Shmuel Berenbaum was there it had the reputation of being the place of the deepest learning. 

But Shar Yashuv had an aspect that the Mir did not seem to have. That is after the first year or two when I got out from the beginners mode and began to listen to Rav Naphtali Yegeer I saw this sort of intense focus on the depths of the Gemara and Tosphot. This was in stark contrast to the approach of the Mir which was based very much on Rav Chaim of Brisk which is global.

Both approaches are good, but it is from the first one that I began to see the depths of the Gemara. [I however only began to have both approaches reawakened in me when I began to learn with David Bronson in Uman. I had not forgotten the first approach but up until then I did not have the mental vessels to be able to see the depths of Tosphot on my own. Only when I began to learn with him and saw how naturally the sort of awareness of the infinite depth of Tosphot came to him--then I started to gain some sense of what it means to understand the Gemara with Tosphot in a deep way. I tried to relay that in my first little book on Bava Metzia. 

The Musar movement had a good point. That is without Musar people have no idea of what Torah is about, --or worse than that, they substitute their own half baked ideas for the real thing. Musar has the advantage that it is legitimate Torah written by rishonim or by the sages of the achronim period. [I mean to say that when people came up with pseudo Torah, [fake Torah that seems like the real thing but to a trained eye it i clear that it is fake] that is when the Gra signed the letter of excommunication.]

On the other hand, even with Musat it is easy to get off track.

And even to learn Musar in the context of a regular Litvak yeshiva does not see to offer any guarantees.

No matter what one does, it is hard to come to straight forward Fear of God and Good Character Traits [midot tovot].

You would not think that Rav Nahman of Breslov would be one person able to solve this problem, but I found his advice very helpful. [And I did enough research to realize that the letter of excommunication does not apply to him. You can see that yourself if you find the actual language of the five excommunications that were published in Villna.] It was Rav Nahman warning that there is such a think as Torah scholars that are demons that gave me enough insight to realize the danger. That is even if I am not able to come to fear of God as well as I would like, at least I know who to avoid. Torah scholars that are demons--of which there are way too many nowadays.  

 I have never been able to figure out why people do not take the American system of government as their model? As the ideal model. I men if you run s series of experiments with different molecules and one of them simply blows up in your face, the other turns into a foul mixture of mud, and etc,  until you get to one that works and gives you beautiful colors in a stable compound--then why go back to the other models? I can only explain this in one way. When it comes to politics, people are insane.

See the essay of Michael Huemer which goes into this in great detail and that essay itself is based on the original idea of Bryan Caplan. 

[You might ask why I bring this up. The reason is I have been looking at the writings of Trotsky and his My Life after his expulsion from the USSR for anti revolutionary propaganda. At any rate that was article 56, and then later article 58/10 that he was expelled under. And in one sense that was correct. [The USSR was not formed to be a dictatorship but rather a rule of the party of working people, and that party had voted legally to expel Trotsky.] He worked to put the labor party [the proletariat] into power. The idea was that only people that were actually doing physical labor deserved a right to vote. No one else mattered. And if one did not work, she did not get a welfare check. She was shipped off to prison. And that party of the proletariat voted to have Trotsky outed. And in some ironic way that was exactly what he was advocating.--permanent revolution. So if you have a revolution, and then you keep on revolting, that means you are revolting against the revolution. [So to speak.]

[You might suggest that people are always looking for utopia. What ever they have that works is not good enough. They have to find the perfect system. But to do that they first have to work to achieve the goal:"Down with the System!"] [As per the 1960's]. And this explains most of what people complain about concerning the USA. The issue is never the real issue. The main thread of continuity is anything that the USA has done is always shown to be evil. The idea is not to improve anything, but rather to kill the USA with a thousand wounds.  Not any one alone would be fatal. This is the reason for the continuous attacks on anything the USA stands for.