Peah 2:11. But that initial stalk is considered by the Jerusalem Talmud to obligate., and thus not obligated

 The basic issue of "peah" is you are to harvest your field up until 1/60. That us all that unharvested standing corn in left for the poor. But lets say one is tempted to go beyond that boundary? He harvests the next stalk that is part of that 1/60. Then the obligation of peah goes to what was already harvested.

And in fact this is the case the Rambam is talking about in Peah 2:11. But that initial stalk is considered by the Jerusalem Talmud to obligate., and thus not obligated. So that whole 59/60 of the field becomes possible to be made into peah. [In peah one can made all except for the sheaf that beings the process. But he can not make less than 1/60.

So if he says all that I have harvested in peah that is valid since there is still that first sheaf that in not obligated .

What bothers me here is this. The initial stalk is what makes the obligation of peah go to the harvested wheat מן העומד לעומרים. Fine. And we are talking about where he simply went ahead and reaped the whole field. So now the question is why does the Rambam say is he makes most of it to be peah then it is not obligated in truma and maasar? It should be 59/60. And if you would hold that that initial stalk of the 1/60 [that was supposed to be let alone and become peah with the rest of the 1/60]  is obligated in peah then fine so the next stalk is not and that is the thing that would make the whole 59/60 plus that one more stalk all possible to be made into peah. So the first question I have here is why does the Rambam not simply say then that if he makes the 59/60 into peah then it is not obligated in truma and maasar [or the 59/60 plus that one stalk then it is not obligated in truma and maasar.] What is this "most" the Rambam puts there?

 [I am referring here to the answer of Rav Shach about this difficult Rambam which takes care of the issue to some degree but still leaves this gap between what should be 59/60  not "most". 

Also I admit that I am still mulling over this sort of odd state of affairs where he cuts into the 1/60 and then as per the Yerushalmi the obligation goes to the 59/60 that was already reaped. Let us say that first stalk is obligated in peah? then what makes the reaped sheaves into peah? Nothing. Everything else is standing! Or may that is the exact point of the Yerushami? So that first stalk is in fact not able to be made peah. But there are lots of other issues here which I am not sure if are issues or simply that I have not leaned the subject well.

If you are wondering then I will tell you: The issues that are bothering me are simply these: Surely not all the reaped sheaves are peah [the second he goes over the 1/60 line of demarcation. He has to declare them or some part of them to be peah. So what is left besides what he made peah could be the none peah part which makes the peah valid? And what is the law about what was standing at that minute? Presumably it can not be made peah even if he wants to? He can give it as a present to the poor but it will till be obligated in truma and maasar.

"shver Rambam" [hard Rambam] Peah 2:11

I was not thinking about that "shver Rambam" [hard Rambam] Peah 2:11 at all. Sadly to say I was just lazing off at the beach. But now and then it occurred to me to wonder what he could mean? And what is the answer of Rav Shach to explain him?  Oddly enough right before I drifted off to sleep, the answer hit me.

The answer is this. I knew Rav Shach suggested that that Rambam is based on the Yerushalmi. And now I see what this means. If one reaps the whole field, he is supposed to leave 1/60 as the edge/peah for the poor. If he then goes ahead and reaps one sheaf of the 1/60 then the obligation of peah switches from the standing sheaves to the  stacks that he harvested. The question the Yerushalmi asks then is what is the law about that first sheaf? Is it obligated in peah?

That Yerushalmi is the reason the Rambam writes "If he makes most of the field that he harvested as peah then it is not obligated in truma and maasar."[The whole statement is if he reaped the whole field he can still give the peah from what is reaped. And if he makes most of what was reaped as peah that is valid and not obligated in truma and maasar.]] That is referring to our case. He reaped the first sheaf of the 1/60. The obligation went to the stacks. But he said "all that is harvested is now peah." Well if that first sheaf of the 1/60 is also obligated in peah then there is nothing left to be not peah. Therefore the Rambam is poskining/deciding that first sheaf is not obligated in peah. So when peah goes over to the stacks, that has validity as peah and therefore not obligated in truma and maasar.   And that is 59/60 of the field. Which is the majority of the field. [The problem was what is this majority? Why not say if he harvested his field and made all of it except for one stalk as peah that has validity as peah and it is all not obligated in truma.]

music file z45

 z45 D Minor  z45 in nwc

morals are objective.

 I have been having a debate on the blog of Michael Huemer about rights and the issue of government came up. I just wanted to say that my idea about government is what I think John Locke meant [even though I do not recall seeing it stated openly in the Two Treaties]. That is this: in the state of nature man has rights. [That is not hard to see that some principles of morality are objective. We do not think it is right to torture millions of people for the fun of it is okay. So there is an objective right of millions of people not to be tortured for the fun of it. Even if someone might do that, it still is wrong.]

But we give up some of our rights in order to form a government. Even though the government is formed to preserve our rights still some of our rights we agree to relinquish in order to have a government in the first place. E.g we agree to have judges instead of deciding argument ourselves. We agree the government can make laws for the common good instead of our deciding our own good and acting on that by ourselves. etc. 

[I am also saying that morals are objective. This is well argued by Huemer in some of his papers on his web site and all those arguments are put together in his book Ethical Intuitionism.] 

This problem of self delusion is wide spread in the religious world, but is just the normal state among "mystics. "

What is called mysticism is thought to have great insights into spiritual reality. This is obviously a mistake since it is too mixed up with falsehood.  While I do agree that the Ari and Rav Nahman had great spiritual insights, that has nothing to do with the basic question. A person can have great spiritual insights because of their work and efforts in learning Torah and in separating himself from the vanities of this world. But that has nothing to do with "Mysticism".

Better it is to stay away from the self deluded.  This problem of self delusion is wide spread in the religious world, but is just the normal state among "mystics. "

Delusion of the religious is, "Because we are strict in certain rituals, therefore we are smarter, more moral, and more holy than anyone else." [And the corollary to this axiom is "And thus we are not begging for charity as it seems we do all the time. Rather we are asking for what is justly ours since we uphold the whole world."]

One aspect of this delusion is the idea that the religious are more moral than anyone else. But experience shows this to be false. They seem nice until you ask for a favor (after you have done tons of favors.]) 

[I hope it is clear that I do not mean to cast aspersions on the truly sincere or the great Litvak yeshvot which are far from all these faults. Rather my hope is to warn the naïve about what is all too obvious to those with experience. And in the Torah there is a specific command ""Do not stand by the blood of your neighbor"אל תעמוד על דם רעיך

the greats, Kant, Hegel, Leonard Nelson

 Once John Searle makes it clear that he thinks the whole problem that started "Idealism" in Berkley is a mistake that caused philosophy to sink into the mud for 300 hundred years is a mistake [See5:16 of this video]-a simple mistake in the word "aware".[The idea is that we are only aware of the picture of an object that we have in our mind] [The logical fallacy of ambiguity, aware of an external thing. Aware of an inner thing.] This lends a lot of support to ideas of Huemer that we have direct awareness of what we see and feel. Otherwise you might say that most of us simple people have not the wherewith all mental capacities to understand the deep logic of the philosophers. However I have been aware of this issue for a long time, I still think the greats, Kant, Hegel, Leonard Nelson  still have very important points. And all the more so that there is no evidence to say that Hegel agreed with Berkley at all. Just the opposite. I have always thought that his point is the exact point of Huemer that we have direct awareness of the real world and the mistake of the later philosophers is just misuse of the double meaning of the word awareness.

The Russians had tried Marx and Communism and found it terrible.

 How is it that Marxism is so entrenched the English departments of American universities? The Russians had tried Marx and Communism and found it terrible. Even as freedom was granted to the republics, there was an attempt to keep Communism. The result was the Russian people elected to have Yeltsin and freedom. Clearly those who knew a thing or two about the joys of Socialism decided it was nothing like its promises.