For I do not trust any totalitarian system.

 A lot of people in Ukraine were pro USSR. I was very surprised by this since I thought that everyone would have been happy to be free of the yoke of Communism. But most people were unhappy with the chaos that came after that. [Areas in each city became subject to some mafioso]. Still if the orientation is towards the West, that ought to be embraced.

For I do not trust any totalitarian system. So when England handed Hong Kong over to China, I never thought for one minute that would end up in anything but disaster and tragedy. I never had any illusions when Venezuela became socialist that that would end up in anything but mass famine. 

I just do not trust any totalitarian system, no matter if it comes from the Left or the Right. I can see on one hand, when there is chaos, that you need some sort of rule of law to impose order. So instead of chaos, I can see why in the Ukraine people would always say the USSR was better. But that does not mean they would not rather have the rule of law and a Western sort of Democracy --as long as there is order and peace. So I do not trust China at all, and do not for  second believe in any of her intentions in the South China Sea nor in Taiwan.

[Even in High School when I read the Communist Manifesto I was totally unimpressed. Not everything that someone owns was gained by theft. Is the computer you are reading this on was gained by theft? Did you exploit someone to get it? Probably not.] So why think all private property is theft?

[I believe that there should be order just enough for people to be safe and proper, but not more. After there is peace and rule of law, people must be free.

the Divine Chariot and the Work of Creation are the subjects that the Greeks called Physics and Metaphysics

 In the book (Nefesh Hachaim by Rav Haim of Voloshin) of the disciple of the Gra  we find [volume 4] the importance of learning Torah. He brings this from many statements of the Chazal [Sages]. So the idea you find in the Litvak yeshiva world about the prime importance of learning Torah is not made up or pulled out of a hat. It is a basic axiom of the Sages. 

The only thing in which I differ is Mathematics and Physics which you find are thought to be  part of the commandment of learning Torah in some rishonim. Mainly Ibn Pakuda and the Rambam but hints to this opinion exist in other rishonim as well.

The in Guide for the Perplexed you find the Rambam saying that the work of the Divine Chariot and the Work of Creation are the subjects that the Greeks called Physics and Metaphysics. [He repeats this same idea in the Mishna Torah--so it is not just something he decided towards the end of his life.]

[Not that I can do any learning myself anymore. So I figure even if I can not do what is best and good, why should I not want my friend to know and do what is right? And who knows if perhaps someday God may grant to me to get back to learning?] 

The American Civil War.

I figure that the Supreme Court could have been appealed to if the South had not seceded from the Union. But even if they did, the North did not recognize that as being valid. So the South always had a right to appeal to the Supreme Court. And what could the North have said? That it was legal for some states to wage war on other states because they did not like some of their practices?

I guess the role of the Supreme Court as being the arbitrator of Constitutional issues had not been firmly established by that point. 

[Besides I can not figure out what the North was thinking. If the Southern States were still part of the Union, then how could one state make war on another? Is not that a  violation of the Constitution? (And so what if the president orders it? So what? That does not make it legal.) So the North must have thought the South had legally seceded. Okay. Then they had seceded. Fine. End of Story. [I am not ignoring Fort Sumter. True that it had been attacked, but the North was not fighting the South to take back Fort Sumter!!]

(As General R.E. Lee put it ironically in one of his letters (I forget which one), the issue of secession had been "decided by arms."---i.e., it had not been decided at all.] 

music file z54

z54 A minor   z54 nwc

Zevachim page 6 side A.

I apologize for not writing on Torah for awhile. At any rate, I wish now to share an issue that I have still not worked out but just as a beginning I still want to mention.

There are basically two issues which I have not worked out. One is that light sacrifices are the money of the owner. (קדשים קלים ממון בעלים לפי ר' יוסי הגלילי)Plus if one is not able to inherit a sacrifice then it should be the same with maasar sheni (I imagine). And we know that two inheritors can redeem maasar sheni.

What I mean to say is Zevachim page 6 side A. A inheritor can make exchange but not two inheritors. (יורש ממיר. אחד ממיר ולא שנים ממירים ) Not because of owning  jointly, but because they do not own the animal at all. Proof: R. Yochanan said a two inheritors of a flour offering can bring it. Why is this so? Is it not the case that only an individual can ring a flour offering? Answer: they do not own it at all. But if so then why can one inheritor make exchange? Because while in terms of monetary value, the inheritors do not own the sacrifice, but in terms of forgiveness of sin, they do.

So my first question is obvious. The second one maybe not so much Still I am mulling these issues over. I imagine Rav Shach must have an answer for these difficulties, if I can get around to seeing what he says.

[I might mention here that exchange of an animal dedicated to be a sacrifice is not allowed. But if one does it anyway, the second animal becomes holy--in so far that it is not sacrificed but is not allowed to be used for work or shearing.

The second maasar can be redeemed by two inheritors even though the same  kind of verse applies אם גאול יגאל

אם המיר ימיר

Robert Hanna wants to get back to Kant and to me that makes some sense.

 Robert Hanna wants to get back to Kant and to me that makes some sense. Except that it leaves the problem that I think Kant Kant's argument about against Berkley does not seem to work. The reason is the step of the difference between dreams which are not rule based and the categories which are the rules by which the mind processes data. But this step seems weak. The rules are themselves synthetic a priori. --the very things Kant is setting out to prove. 

Now you could ignore Kant and go like Michael Huemer, but that seems to be a sort of quietism [things are the way they are because that is how they are.] Huemer is based on the Intuitionists [Prichard, Ross, G.E. Moore] but also on the insight of Bryan Caplan who noticed that Hume never proved a very basic point that all philosophers after him assumed to be true. [The pure reason can only tell us what is implied in definitions.] {A idea based on Euclid's Geometry. You start with the axioms and go from there.

I have long thought that Hegel is away to get around the problem in Kant that in similar to Huemer in this: why place arbitrary constraints on Reason?  

There is also Kelley Ross's idea that the categories of Kant [Why When where how--space time causality etc.] are known not by reason nor by sense perception, rather immediate non intuitive knowledge.

(At least that is what I think Dr. Ross is saying. Lack of time and energy has caused the sad fact that I have not read the actual writings of Leonard Nelson. But from what I understand, he uses the idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge to justify the categories.[That is to say they are not based on reason nor the senses.]

[If it is not clear my own view let me just say I see there are three different schools of thought, Kant Hegel and the Intuitionists that each has some aspect of truth and I think they are all pointing in the same direction and I think some kind of synthesis ought to be possible to combine them.

Dr. Huemer is modifying the Intuitionists [GE Moore, Prichard. Ross] in a way that takes account of some odd fact that Hume never proved his point about that reason can only tell us about contradictions. In that way the point of Berkley seems not even to start. So one question that Kant was addressing in the CPR does not even start. However this does not seem to answer the questions exactly.  For I still think that Kant and Hegel were addressing real concerns. Even Thomas Reid saw that Berkley had a point. 

attachment with God

There is an aspect of attachment with God-- that is not emotion, nor reason nor sensory perception. This is why there is a interest in immediate non intuitive knowledge.

That being said, I admit that the religious world tends to lunacy, since every area of value can deteriorate and even become its opposite.

So obviously most of the religious world is insane and in fact highly immoral. But that in itself ought not to reflect on Torah. The way I see things is that Torah is to bring to objective morality. But when Torah becomes a business as is the case nowadays it becomes its opposite --as the sages said סם חיים למימיניים בה וסם מוות למשמאילים בה It [Torah] is the elixir of life to those that walk on its right side for its own sake and a poison of death to those that walk on its left side(learn and keep it for personal benefits)