a difficult Rambam and Aba Shaul in tractate Gitin 172.

 I was at the sea again and reflecting on a difficult Rambam and Aba  Shaul in tractate Gitin 172. Aba Shaul said a  get [document of divorce] with witnesses and no time but it says "today" is okay. The Gemara says that seems to imply that "today" means the day she brings forth the get in court. Then it pushes that off and suggests No. Perhaps he holds like R Elazar." To the Rashbam this is simple. To the Rashbam if the law goes like R Elazar [that witnesses that see the get make it valid--not the signers] then we do not need the date in the get at all. But to the Rambam this sugia subject is difficult, because he holds like R Elazar and still also holds [laws of Gitin perek I: law 25] that if there are witnesses that signed, then there must be the date also. The Avi Ezri [of Rav Shach] explains the issue thus [if I got the gist of it]: The Ravaad holds once the date is a decree from the scribes then it is part of the required formula. [Otherwise all he would need to write would be "You are allowed to any man."] But the  Rambam holds the the reason for the decree is what matters--covering up for the daughter of his sister. [who he married and then she had relationships with someone else and thus should be executed for adultery, but since she is his close relative he writes a get with a date before the time of the relations.]]

So how does that help us? By חזקה מעיקרא prior status. We know she was married. So until the last minute when she shows the get and we do not know when it was signed, then we assume it was at the last moment. And as Rav Shach shows in Laws of Sota from the Rashba that present status [which pushes the time backwards] only applies when there was an "act" that we do not know when it occurred. And here we know when the act of adultery happened. We just do not know what her status was at the time.

The question that has been bothering me is if this is so then why ever need a date when there are witnesses on a get [to the Rambam]? Would we now always say  חזקה מעיקרא prior status? And thus always say that the date of the get is always at the last minute and s there would never be a case of covering up for the daughter of his sister? I am sure Rav Shach must answer this question, but so far I have no been able to see what his answer is. 

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 I was at the sea again and reflecting on a difficult רמב''ם and אבא שאול in גיטין קע''ב. There אבא שאול said a  גט with witnesses and no זמן תאריך but it says "היום" is בתוקף. The גמרא says that seems to imply that "today" means the day she brings forth the גט in court. Then it pushes that off and suggests "No. Perhaps he holds like ר' אלעזר." To the רשב''ם this is simple. To the  רשב''ם if the law goes like ר' אלעזר [that witnesses that see the גט make it valid, not the signers] then we do not need the date in the גט at all. But to the רמב''ם this סוגיא is difficult, because he holds like ר' אלעזר and still also holds [הלכות of גיטין פקר א:כ''ה  that if there are witnesses that signed, then there must be the תאריך also. The אבי עזרי of  רב שך] explains the issue thus: The ראב''ד holds once the date is a decree from the scribes, then it is part of the required formula [תורף הגט]. [Otherwise all he would need to write would be: "You are allowed to any man."] But the רמב''ם holds the the reason for the decree is what matters: covering up for the daughter of his sister. חיפוי על בת אחותו [who he married and then she had יחסים with someone else and thus should be executed for adultery, but since she is his close relative, he writes a גט with a תאריך before the time of the  יחסים.]

So how does that help us? By חזקה מעיקרא. We know she was married. So until the last minute when she shows the גט and we do not know when it was signed, then we assume it was at the last moment. And as רב שך shows in Laws of סוטה from the רשב''א that present status [which pushes the time backwards] only applies when there was an "act" that we do not know when it occurred. The question botherS me is if this is so, then why ever need a date when there are witnesses on a גט [to the רמב''ם]? Would we now always say  חזקה מעיקרא prior status? And thus always say that the date of the גט is always at the last minute, and  there would never be a case of covering up for the daughter of his sister? I am sure רב שך must answer this question, but so far I have no been able to see what his answer is. 

שוב הייתי בים והרהרתי ברמב''ם קשה ובאבא שאול בגיטין קע''ב. שם אבא שאול אמר גט עם עדים ובלי זמן תאריך אבל כתוב "היום" הוא בתוקף. הגמרא אומרת כי נראה כי "היום" פירושו היום בו היא מביאה את הגט בבית המשפט. ואז הגמרא דוחה את זה ומציע, "לא. אולי הוא מחזיק כמו ר' אלעזר." לרשב''ם זה פשוט. לרשב''ם אם החוק הולך כמו ר' אלעזר [שעדים שרואים את הגט הופכים אותו לתוקף, לא החותמים] אז אנחנו לא צריכים את התאריך בגט בכלל. אבל לרמב''ם זה סוגיא קשה, כי הוא מחזיק כמו ר' אלעזר, ועדיין גם מחזיק בהלכות גיטין פרק א': כ''ה שאם יש עדים שחתמו, אז חייב להיות גם התאריך. האבי עזרי של רב שך מסביר את הנושא כך: הראב''ד מחזיק ברגע שהתאריך הוא תקנה של הסופרים, אז הוא חלק מהנוסחה הנדרשת [תורף הגט]. [אחרת כל מה שהוא יצטרך לכתוב יהיה: "את מותרת  לכל אדם."] אבל הרמב''ם מחזיק שסיבת הגזרה היא מה שחשוב: כיסוי לבת אחותו. הוא התחתן עם בת אחותו והיא קיימה יחסי מין עם מי שהוא אחר, ולכן יש להוציאה להורג בגין ניאוף, אך מכיוון שהיא קרובת משפחתו, הוא כותב גט עם תאריך לפני תקופת יחסים.]

אז איך זה עוזר לנו? בגלל חזקה מעיקרא. אנו יודעים שהיא הייתה נשואה. אז עד הרגע האחרון כשהיא מציגה את הגט, ואנחנו לא יודעים מתי הוא נתנו, אז אנו מניחים שזה היה ברגע האחרון. וכפי שרב שך מראה בהלכות סוטה מהרשב"א שהמעמד הנוכחי [שדוחף את הזמן לאחור] חל רק כאשר היה "מעשה" שאיננו יודעים מתי הוא התרחש. כאן אנו יודעים מתי אירע מעשה הניאוף. אנחנו פשוט לא יודעים מה היה מעמדה באותה תקופה. השאלה שמטרידה אותי אם זה כך, אז למה בכלל צריך תאריך כשיש עדים על גט [לרמב''ם]? תמיד נגיד מעמד קודם של חזקה מעיקרא? וכך תמיד נאמר שתאריך הגט הוא תמיד ברגע האחרון, ולעולם לא יהיה מקרה של כיסוי לבת אחותו 

This I included in Ideas in Shas even though I might still have to devote some more thought to this issue.

 There is a lot of adding to the mitzvot which goes on in the religious world. I mean to say that most or all of what the religious emphasize are not actually things that are from the Written or Oral Torah. [note 1] However it can take a long time of learning until one finds this out. Plus there are hidden memes or sets of principles that are unspoken. One major idea in the religious world is "Yihus" [family lineage.] You might be from a society where the hierarchy is based on competence and assume that the religious world is also based on competence. However it is not. Rather it is based on "Yihus." 

So you might think that if you learn Gemara well you will get ahead. and get the best shiduch. [And I might add that one should not learn Torah for these reasons. However one might learn Torah for its own sake and still hope that he will get a good shiduch.] However competence has nothing to do with getting ahead in the religious world.

 [note 1] the "kipa" is one example. There is a teaching in tractate  sofrim that when one is reading from the Torah scroll in a minyan, then one needs to cover his head. Besides that there is no commandment from the Torah or from the words of the scribes.

But somehow using Torah as a tool to make money which is openly a prohibition is counted as a mitzvah. In fact, this is the most common obsession in the religious world to constantly ask secular Jews for money. "Give us money because we are learning Torah!" If only they would in fact be learning!! [Obviously they are not except for the great Litvak yeshivot like Ponovitch or Brisk. Besides the few great Litvak yeshivot, this claim is a lie. And another point is that asking money for learning Torah is against the Torah. A shovel to dig with. See commentary of the Rambam on Pikei Avot perek 4

 

The problem in the religious world is that they think they are morally and intellectually superior and baali teshuva [new comers to their religion] are born to be their slaves. So competence has nothing to do with the hidden values. Rather birth. But baali teshuva that have little worldly experience are taken in by this fraud.-that is the fraud in which the frum pretend to great genius and higher moral standards.

But we know already that גניבת דעת tricking people to gain advantage over them is forbidden from the Torah.  So I do not think the religious should be thought of as keeping the Torah, but rather as serious transgressors of Torah. The religious rituals do not indicate holiness.  They are in the business of using the pretense of Torah to enslave the secular Jews that are not very learned [knowledgeable] in the actual written and oral law. It is upon their ignorance and naivety that the frum [religious in show] play upon.😊

The issue is not the areas in which the law of the Torah is ignored by the so called "frum".The issue is that they lie constantly and therefore nothing they say can be accepted. Even in the few areas where what they say has surface correspondence to the actual Torah. I do not trust anything the frum say. I an smell their BS a mile away. And that is the true path of Torah. To avoid the liars. 

 The problem I see in Trotsky and Lenin is this. In Russia there were class differences to an exaggerated degree. The workers and the non workers. The non workers were the land owners. So that state of affairs made for an easy analysis. But to apply that to the USA was highly flawed. Most people of the world are divided by the State, not by the division of land owner as opposed to worker. For example in the USA there are many people that work and also own property. For instance their own home. Many owners of vast farms and ranches also work.

The trouble was the that the Bolsheviks had accepted a certain sort of set of social memes. [Workers against non workers. And the solution is to get rid of the non workers.] And that became hardwired in their minds. Like the Russian proverb says: To one who has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

 My parents were full hearted Americans. They believed in the American system totally. True Justice and the American way.  What you earn, you keep. There was in those days n concept that everyone had to have the same amount of money as there is nowadays.

But even with wide variations of what the USA is, they always believed in it. 

This is in stark contrast to their attitude towards the religious world. Though they never expressed this, still it was clear they thought then religious world is highly corrupt and unjust--as is in fact the case. 

So while they believed in Torah fully, they did not think the religious world has any actual connection with Torah.

I however felt there was and is true Torah in the Litvak world of the Mir and Shar Yashuv in NY and Ponovitch in Bnei Brak. Still even the Litvak approach is not perfect. Often a few rotten apples ruin the whole bushel.

[Nowadays with Socialism the direction of the USA, my parents might have second thoughts. 

I also agree fully with my parents. There is something about the founding fathers and the Constitution of the USA which is so remarkable one has to classify the USA as one of the greatest wonders of the ages.--a model of freedom and justice for all. If anything comes anywhere close to the ideal of "peace of the stare [shalom hamedina] " it is the Constituation of the USA. []Peace of the state is one of the goals of the commandments of the Torah as you can look this up in the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam and Sefer HaHinuch

z27 D minor  [It is midi. I can not convert to mp3 anymore.] 

My dad never talked about his work at home--ever. The only reason I was at his lab at TRW was because I expressed always great interest in his work and his service in the USAF.

 LLGT satellites

The regular radio way of communication is by having waves superimposed on a radio wave. 

The idea of laser communication is to have your messages superimposed on a laser frequency wave.

This is already the means by which you have relays communication for the internet.

And this is going to be the prime method of communication when mankind starts to colonize the Solar System. 

So while I realize that there were some things my dad worked on in collaboration with many other great people [like the U-2 camera]. But there were things that were his sole ideas and inventions. One of course is the Infrared Telescope as detailed in Life Magazine.

And I know he was the chief inventor of laser communication at TRW. I actually saw the laser and that was his lab. Not a joint lab. So what was the story after that? Well, TRW was infiltrated by the KGB. When the mole that was stealing the technology was discovered obviously TRW was not going to get any more government contracts. My dad left it and the company because an auto compony until the 1990's when they were rehabilitated. In the meantime what ever they were working on was all sold to the aerospace company and NASA.

My dad never talked about his work at home--ever. The only reason I was at his lab at TRW was because I expressed always great interest in his work and his service in the USAF. And I probably would still not bring this up if not for the fact that I have heard of others claiming credit for his inventions.

Hegel only published four books

Hegel only published four books even though there were plenty of notes that his students took down at his lectures. The only one of these that I read from the beginning to end was the later Logic. [That is the part of Logic in his Encyclopedia.] While I am no expert, still I had the distinct impression of his approach to be simply a post Kantian Plotinus  --that is simply Neo Platonic philosophy, but taking the three critiques of Kant into account. That is that there is the One , then the Logos, then the physical universe of Being.

 I was happy to see Cunningham agree with me.

But I also can see a lot of merit in the later Kantian approach of Kelley Ross who bases his approach on Fries and Leonard Nelson. He however does modify Fries and Nelson--taking just the best aspects of their approach to build his own system.  [Dr Ross does mention that Nelson made some improvements on Fries and I have to say that I believe that Ross made improvements on Nelson.] [Robert Hanna has an idea of "Forward to Kant", but I think that the Friesian school is an improvement on Kant.] [I should mention that interest in Fries has been a lot more in Russia than in the West. [Fries' book were published from 1967 to 2011. Nelson's from 1970 -1977.]

And while seeing the differences between these two schools, I do not see the big differences. There is of course the "immediate non intuitive issue." But I do not think the differences are as great as either school of thought thinks. [Walter Kaufman wrote a nice piece  on Hegel which I think relates to this issue.] 

Dr Ross is basically a Platonist. That is Plato after the Critique. Hegel is basically Plotinus [ie neo Platonic after the Critique.]

[I might add here that the Chovot Levavot and the rishonim go with Plotinus as you can see in all Musar books up to and including the Ramchal. And thought the Rambam was leaning towards Aristotle, still you can much of the influence of Plotinus in him also. [Besides that the Ari and the Ramchal and Rav Avraham Abulafia all are going with Plotinus--Neo Platonism. But you can see a slight variation on this in Rav Shalom Sharabi [the mystic from Yemen who made his way to Jerusalem.] He holds the order of the higher worlds starts out like Plato [all the higher levels are above. That is vertical.] but in the future they wll be like Aristotle--all the higher levels with be in things --horizontal]