I have not tried to object strongly to the practice in Israel of using Torah to make money. The reason is that it seems if you would simply come at the end of the month and give to each person a monthly salary then no one would learn. Still the way of having the young men in kollel take exams to show they went over the material seems to be that that is forcing them to use Torah to make money. I find it hard to object to this practice but I myself found it so repulsive that I left the kollel system for this exact reason.  

I said to my wife that, "We will trust in God and he will help us. But if it ever comes to a situation where there is no parnasa [means of a living]I will find an honest job rather than use Torah to make money."

[In fact, I find the whole profession of using Torah to make money highly odd. And I think the Torah they learn has no blessing in it.

[This is besides the fact that young people can be convinced that the the  teachers of Torah that use Torah to make their living are all righteous and all the secular Jews and gentiles are all wicked. However that is only because young people do not have much experience with any of these groups. They assume the religious world is righteous, not from experience but from what they have been told. However, as is well known, the truth is very different.   Even by the most rigorous standards of Torah, we find many gentiles willing and anxious to extend a helping hand to you, and many religious that will use you for their own interests until you are no longer of any use to them. So if we look at the standards of Torah, we find many secular Jews and gentiles much more righteous than any of the religious. 

However I might take down this blog entry since I would not want to disparage the importance of learning and keeping Torah. Rather I would hope t encourage others to come to midot tovot {good character}. It is just that  religious people as a rule seem to be  very far from human decency. It seems they think they can get away with this fraud to pretend tp be righteous  since young people do not know any better and have no real experience with them. 

Even though most women never become zavot [women who have seen blood after the first seven days],

 Even though most women never become zavot [women who have seen blood after the first seven days], still I wonder why there is no mention of "מים חיים" [live waters-- or river or spring]in their case? I mean to say- that the law of the Torah is a nida [the regular monthly cycle] sits seven days and goes into a collection of water [a place where rain water has collected.] Still there is a custom to sit seven clean days.. Seven clean days is for a zava. So if you are worried about a zava (even if you are pretty sure she is not a zava) then why not require a spring or river? At least be consistent. If she is a zava? Fine. Have her wait seven clean days and send her to a spring or sea. If she is just a nida, then why wait seven days? Make up your mind.

I think the most basic problem in Kant is that we know nothing about electrons, photons, other people, etc.

 The basic approach of the Torah is Neo Platonic as you can see in the Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Hearts] by Ibn Pakuda. [Also Saadia Geon, the Rambam and Ramban and all other rishonim that I am aware of] But this needs modification because it is based somewhat on Aristotle. Now with all due respect to Aristotle, there are some issues that need addressing as Berkeley noticed. There is nothing in the sharpness of the knife that enters into the human brain to give it the idea of sharpness. There is nothing in the heat of the fire that comes into my head to give me an idea of hotness. You go back and forth on these issues until you get to Kant and Hegel. But going back to the straight Neo Platonic view is impossible. So you are left with who was right? Kant or Hegel?

Maybe this will be like the problems between Plato and Aristotle that also had no resolution until Plotinus came up with the Neo Platonic school. May that is how things will eventually work out between Kant and Hegel. It seems each has some things right, and some things not so right. So until a new Plotinus comes along, I think we are stuck.

{I can imagine you can look up the problems in each. Critics abound. But just for one example of a problem in Kant. The mind imposes the categories on the phenomenological world. OK. But whose? My mind? Yes. Your mind? Yes. Lots on minds imposing all their rules on the world. There is something odd about that. Plus, the other issue that a central proof in the Critique is to show from the fact of time ordering events in the mind, Kant gets to time ordering events in the world. Well, no. That is Relativity. Problems with Hegel on the other hand also abound. Mostly because of his political views which in fact seem a bit hard to swallow. The individual is not a microcosm of the state. The only way a well ordered state can function is by division of powers. Not the king, not the parliament, not even the people have all the powers. Examples abound when one of these gets the upper hand what goes wrong. But the individual is just the opposite.  I would rather my heart not be working against my lungs. The individual works only when everything is working together. The state is just the opposite.  

I think the most basic problem in Kant is that we know nothing about electrons, photons, other people, etc. That is the very reason I had to write "phenomena" instead of "appearances". All we know about are the image of electrons in our minds. I this so obvious? Would it not take a lot of evidence to show that we know nothing about electrons, only our concept or electrons? Lacking any definite proof, would it not make sense to say that we know E=mc^2 about actual electrons, not just the ones in our minds.

This was the exact point of Hegel. This was later taken up by Michael Huemer and the Intuitionists. But they diverge from Hegel in other points.]

Would not physics seem to be about actual electrons? Not just the appearances on our heads? I thought Physics is telling us something about electrons and the Schrödinger equation. Not just he ones I have in my head. I after all I a not smart enough to have come up with the Schrodinger equation all on my own. No in my conscious nor in my subconscious. So why should those poor electrons worry about what I think? Besides the fact that I could not have come up with the Schrodinger equation even if I had thought nut i a thousand years. Would t t]have giv3n  chance to those poor miserable electrons some toe to have fun until I cam along with my preconceived ideas anpoiyt ow they ought to behave

Trust without effort.]

 Trust in God is a difficult issue to know when it applies. On one hand when I was about to go to Shar Yashuv [a great Litvak yeshiva in NY and now I have heard that there is one in Israel also], my parents were saying that they thought most people going to a yeshiva were doing so in order to make that into a profession. And I was claiming that "No. They are learning Torah for its own sake."

 And as far as the Litvak world of Yeshivot based on the Gra I think it is clear that I was right.

But since then this issue of trust in God has always been a difficult issue to figure out.

Before I got married I mentioned this issue to my father in law (Bill Finn) and he agreed totally with me. Trust in God is everything and carries the day. 

[By that time I was at the Mir, and I think I must have been aware of Navardok. Trust without effort.]

the religious world actually believes [as strange as it may see,) that they keep Torah.

 Even if I learn a great deal R. Rav Nahman,I do not give approval to everything he says.

In terms of Torah I think that the Gra was right. The problem the Gra was addressing in the letter of herem [excommunication] was that of idolatry (or worship that is not of God alone.) This is totally ignored nowadays to the degree that the religious world actually believes [as strange as it may see,) that they keep Torah!?? No. Not at all. They keep rituals in order to seem as if they keep Torah. But the religious world is the opposite of Torah since their religion is based on idolatry.] [If the Torah is not about not to worship anything but God, then it is not about anything at all. The rituals do not count.]

See Proverbs  3 verse 5 and 6 in the commentary of the Gra. Trust in God. Forget about your own efforts. And not not trust in anyone except the First Cause.]

There is a right and wrong way in Torah.

 There is a right and wrong way in Torah. [So even if there some valid approaches that does not mean that all approaches are valid. Some are simply false. And that is the reason the Gra signed the famous letter of excommunication --to show that idolatry is not in accord with Torah. [This is kind of hard to miss in the Ten Commandments.] 

 For example in Philosophy. You might have a few different approaches to Kant. But that does not mean any approach approach is right. Some are false.

There might be better ways of approaching Beethoven. Some better and some not so much so. But that doe not mean scratching on a blackboard is playing Beethoven.

 You can see why Leonard Nelson was so perturbed by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It goes against the major argument of the Critique of Pure Reason.[The Transcendental Analytic] Kant proves there is an objective order of events. (Plus causality. That is not against Relativity but it seems to be somewhat of a problem in Quantum Mechanics). He takes nine closed argued steps to prove this. [And to me it seems not clear if Friesian concepts can help Kant. 

[As for the first point, in some way Kant was right because events [for one observer] to be taken in reverse order [by another observer] would be out of one of the light cone of one of those observers. Kant wants events in the mind to have an objective order in time. And that is true. But then to apply that to the world outside one's mind is what he is trying to prove --in order to disprove sceptic claims about reality. But there is where the proof seems to fail. I mean to say Kant wants to prove that we have a priori knowledge of the phenomenal world--for example we know causality.(He goes with Newton as opposed to Leibniz.)  [Clearly Kelley Ross would have an answer for this that is. After all Gretta Herman found the reconciliation between Relativity and the Friesian School. Still, it seems that this is some area that shows a problem.] 

[One thing I might mention. Kant was trying to refute Berkley. {It is all in the mind} He wanted to prove causality and simply existence of the objective world. But the way he must causality is events which happen according to a rule." Well That is certainly true. when the particles coming out in EPR [Einstein Podolsky Rosen] decide to refrain from being upor down spins until they interact, they are doing so according to a rule.