pondering Rav Shach.

 I was at the sea shore again today pondering Rav Shach. The issue is this. Shavuot page 22 side a. The gemara gives one explanation of a Braita. This braita is brought as a question on Rav papa who said a vow does not need a size. The Braita itself says this שני קונמות מצטרפים שתי שבועות אינן מצטרפות. Two vows are joined. Two oaths are not. [That means to say that if one forbids to himself a half size (of a kezait) of a fig and a half size of an apple these two sizes are joined even if he forbid each by a separate vow, The Gemara asks how are two nedarim joined?  Go here and there is not enough. Go there and there is not enough. [To transgress the prohibition, one needs to transgress the whole amount of a kezait). Answer: he forbade both by one vow. After this the gemara brings a statement of Ravina to answer the question on Rav Papa.The answer is Rav Papa is talking about lashes, the braita is talking about meila. At this point the gemara is holding that the sages hold there is meila with nedarim. But before this point the gemara thought the sages hold there is no meila with nedarim. [Meila means transgressing. This is the word used to for the case where one uses an animal dedicated to be a sacrifice. For this prohibition there is a guilt offering. The point here is that there is an alternate opinion of R. Meir that there is no meila with nedarim. So what does this mean? It means that if one says this piece of bread is forbidden to me like a sacrifice and then he goes ahead and eats it anyway, he has to bring a guilt offering. This fact is not well known because  you do not see this subject much in tractate Nedarim. It actually comes up in tractate Shavuot 

So now we come to Rav Moshe ben Maimon [Rambam] and the Raavad. Rav Moshe writes if one forbids to himself a half size of a fig and half size of another fruit  even with two separate vows, they are joined to make a whole size. The Raavad asks this is in contradiction to the above mentioned gemara that says only when one makes one vow to forbid two half sizes are they then joined Not with two vows. 

Rav Shach says that Rav Moshe ben Maimon [Rambam] holds that after the statement of Ravina, the gemara no longer needs that first answer. For before the statement of Ravina, the gemara thought there is only lashes for nedarim not meila. So the Braita was only talking about getting lashes. And in getting lashes only the fact of transgressing the words of the vows matter. So two separate vows would not be joined. But after Ravina there is no need for this answer. To transgress the isur or meila two separate sizes would be joined just like two separate pieces of any forbidden food.

My question at this point is this only applies to a neder where one says "This food is forbidden to me like a sacrifice." That is the only case where meila applies according to the Rambam. And after all it is the Rambam here that Rav Shach is giving an answer for. But if one says simple "This food is forbidden to me" that does not have meila. So then why does the Rambam write two half sizes that are forbidden by two vows  are joined? That should only be the case if each vow ended with "like a sacrifice."

 So I do not have energy this minute to show that Rav Moshe holds that only when one says like a sacrifice does the prohibition of meila apply. But in the meantime I ask you to belieeve me that this is in fact the opinion of the Rav Moshe [Rambam] 

By combining these two systems even a block of wood could become a rocket scientist.

 I believe lots of people would learn Physics and Mathematics if only they knew how. This would obviously destroy the the pseudo sciences that fill the grievance studies departments of universities.

People that could learn real knowledge would run away from what they intuitively know is false.

So then how could people learn these subjects that are hard? By Iyun and bekiut. By fast learning half of the time--saying the words of the text, and going on. The other half of the time by intense review. To say over each paragraph or chapter that one learns ten times.  By combining these two systems, even a block of wood could become a rocket scientist.

But this takes time. It means every day to spend time on this--even a short amount of time. But one must be consistent to do this every day over years. Then eventually one will understand.

The Social Studies departments and so called Humanities are failures and should be shuddered up.

 The government in the USA has always bounced back and forth around a middle point. It tends towards the middle. Thus during the Civil War it went from Jeffersonian  to Federal Authority of Hamiltonian.

Thus it sees to me to be the case today. To paint it as radical communism or Right seems to be inaccurate,.

This is characteristic of the England where the powers of king or lords went back and forth with the people as the arbitrators. This is unlike systems where only the rule of the emperor mattered. I.e. this type of balanced system is characteristic of Anglo Saxon DNA.

So the question is can a system born from English DNA absorb foreign DNA? Or how much is too much? My grandparents came over from the Old Country at a time when the USA I think was free--not "socialist". Would they come over now? I am not sure. Certainly they would never have let my parents or me in a public school with the garbage they are teaching nowadays.

So while all these  are important issues and questions that are unresolved, I think one thing is clear. Allan Bloom was right. {Closing of the American Mind.} The Social Studies departments and so called Humanities are failures and should be shuddered up.

 The path of the Gra is learning "beiyun" (in depth). To me it seems clear that learning in depth and review are related. Thus I heard in Shar Yashuv the importance of reviewing every chapter ten times.

And I took this advice with me when I went to the Mir in NY. [Doing each Tosphot that many times I found bogged me down, so I settled on doing each Tosphot twice, and the Pnei Yehoshua (a commentary on the Gemara ) ten or more times. The Maharsha I forget how many times I would review it.]

And I believe that this can be very helpful when it comes to doing Math and Physics also. However because of my late start in math and Physics, I decided to do the fast sort of learning [saying the words and going on] until I could get up to speed with the current issues in Physics and Mathematics. [String Theory, and the vast array of subjects coming after Algebraic Topology.]

My son, Izhak, definitely held with learning beiyun [in depth], and the way I see this is that in depth is not different from fast learning except in the amount of review.

 Before Kant, John Locke and Hume thought pure reason can only know analytic ideas--things that are contained in the definitions. [To the empiricists the only real knowledge is what can be verified by observation. ] Kant expanded the areas of what can be known.  He said reason can know synthetic a priori-[i.e. universals, like causality]-but only within the conditions of possibity of experience. Jacob Fries expanded that further. To Fries, God, and the soul are areas where knowledge is possible, but not by reason, rather by a sort of knowledge that is not reason nor based on sense perception.

[I think that both Kant and the Friesian School of Kelley Ross have tremendous points, but I can not tell if the truth is only in one camp or the other.

Rav Nahman in the Le/M [I think in the left out portions that were later added back in] says when God created the world the midot like wisdom would expand indefinitely. Then God set a limit to them. 

Rav Nahman wrote this specifically about wisdom [Reason]. This goes along with Jacob Fries that we have knowledge beyond conditions of possibility of experience [i.e. Faith.] but this knowledge is not by reason. 

 The Morality Quotient.  In secular society it is thought that the Bell Curve is invalid. When people are stupid, that is thought to have nothing to do with violence. To some degree this is correct. There is also the Morality Curve. Someone can be dumb, but highly moral. And that morality can even bring one to higher intelligence than even natural IQ. "Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom" [Proverbs]

This you can see in many very intelligent women that after they get divorced spend the rest of their lives trying to hurt their ex husbands. They ate blissfully uncaring the traumatic effect this has on their children whom they ruin by their constant lashon hara [slander.] They could not care less if they ruin their children --just as long as they get to hurt their ex-husbands.

 Where Hegel disagrees with Jacob Fries is in the area beyond science. That is--the area beyond what can be tested experimentally and verified in the laboratory. The question is metaphysics.  How to get to it? [How to get to an area that is liable to be tested experimentally?] [Both Hegel and Fries agree that it is possible to get to.] To Fries one can get to this area by means of immediate non-intuitive knowledge. A sort of knowledge that does not depend on reason nor on sense perception. To Hegel, one gets to this area of knowledge by reason itself.

[To Kant only also areas beyond  experiment are available  to human knowledge, bur only those within the conditions of possiblility of experience. []Eg., God the soul, morality, etc.] But to Kant and Fries even areas beyond the conditions of possible experience are open. To Fries that is by immediate non intuitive knowledge. To Hegel it is by Reason itself. 

From where do you see this. From Hegel's own idea of what the Phenomenology is about. It is a Wissenschaft a science--not in the sense of natural science but science of what is beyond that.