Every word of Torah is "equal to them all" (i.e. all the other commandments).

 Where you see the idea of every word of Torah is equal to all (other commandments) is in the Yerushalmi on the mishna in peah תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם אפילו דבר אחד של התורה. "Learning Torah is equal to them all (other commandments),"--and the Yerushalmi says there, " even one word of Torah."

But this leaves me in a sort of contradictory position, for on one hand I think learning Torah [Oral and Written Law] is the greatest of all the commandments, still I do not think people ought to be paid money for doing so. To me it is like having trust in God. Trust in God is also a mitzvah [as brought in many verses]. But would you pay someone to have trust in God?

[ I might mention, that the strict definition of the Oral Law refers to the actual books written around the time of the Talmud. רבינא ורב אשי סוף הוראה As the Gemara says: "Ravina and Rav Ashi are the end of the period of teaching and deciding the law." So what comes later is second hand. So while the rishonim are important in order to understand the Oral Law, they are not the Oral Law.] 

כמו שאין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבכתב כן אין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבעל פה--רמב''ם באגרת

[When I  was in Shar Yashuv (of Rav Freifeld), I discovered this idea of the importance of every word of Torah. That lite a fuse under me. Later circumstances dampened my ardor, but I still wish that I could be learning Torah.]  (Incidentally he emphasized doing every chapter or portion of what one learns ten times. In Shar Yashuv they were very much into learning in depth. I now appreciate that much more than I did then, because I have that people that d not get the in depth sort of learning when young, never get it.]

[There is a difference between the Oral Law and explanations of the Oral Law. So while the actual Oral Law is only the books of the sages of the Mishna and Talmud, Tosphot would be in the category of what explains the oral law. 

b100 b101 music files [these two I wrote sometime around 2000 A.D. The e files I think I wrote later around 2003. --using the nwc music writing program. Later transferred to midi . Then eventually I got access to mp3, but no longer.]

 I thought to share some old music files. So here is one from a few years back b100 mp3  [same in midi file b100 here is another b101.[b101 midi file]  And another e36 mp3. e36 midi file Here is a old P file also from around the year 2000. Here is another old e file.e34mp3 [e34 midi file]

i1 mp3 file (i1 midi file) 

and here is a file I am not sure if it is worth sharing b98 mp3 [b98midi]

here is gem I totally forget writing at all:j90mp3.j90midi

And others j81 j47 j2 file j3 file j6 [j6 midi file] i89 [i89 nwc file] (This i89 was almost finished but forgotten. I now had just add the last few measures.]) j10

Why share now? you might ask.  I do not know.  I was just writing it for me. [And it would take a lot of time to see what is worth sharing, and what would be worth sharing with editing. And besides tons of files were lost. 

 

music file i69

i69   (This seems to be a midi file, but it sounds like mp3) . Here is the nwc program file that it was written in:i69  [written in 2013]

[I have no new ideas, so i thought to share something from times long ago.] 

Why do I write music when the Gemara in Gitin forbids music vocal and instrumental? Tosphot says there this refers to drinking halls. And when i find a rishon to depend on, I usually depend on him. [Especially Tosphot who is always right, as David Bronson once told me.] [Tosphot is the most exact and logically rigorous of the Rishonim].--but also the most difficult.

 תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם That is there is a mishna in tractate Peah: that brings a list of the commandments that have no lower limit. E.g., charity. That means even the smallest coin. [It does not mean that one ought to give just the smallest coin. Rather that even with the smallest coin one has done a good deed.]And after that list it brings, "learning Torah is equal to them all." The Gra explains that even with one word of Torah, one has fulfilled the commandment of learning Torah.

The Rambam brings in laws of learning Torah that the things that he explained in the first 4 chapters of the Mishna Torah that are called "Pardes"  (Physics and Metaphysics as he explained in greater detail in the Guide for the Perplexed) are in the category of the Gemara  [That is learning the Oral Law in depth.] So  every word of Physics is included.

in the South, the government became federal, not local.

 

 Two things you see. The South was right that slaves would become welfare dependents.[They said that it was white people that were taking care of them because they could not take care of themselves. ] Also they said the slaves would try to destroy the USA as we see today.

But the great lesson of the Civil War is the endurance of the USA Constitution and this kind of government. And the ability of this kind of government to tackle difficult issues.

that everything in the modern Western world, from mathematics to nuclear families to pumpkin-spice lattes, is racist; that intelligence is a meaningless and unquantifiable concept;

https://malcolmpollack.com/2022/01/15/on-mass-formation-in-the-here-and-now/ 

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/

To participate in polite society today – or, to put that more accurately, to be able to keep your job, get a college degree, or avoid being deplatformed from most media – we are expected to go along with things that most people know in their hearts are simply not so: that sex and race are purely social constructs; that men can become pregnant and bear children; that biology and heritability have nothing to do with human traits, and with their statistical distribution in populations; that cultures and peoples can be mixed and jumbled together at random without affecting the cohesion and stability of formerly homogeneous societies; that “equality” means that people cannot vary in talents, abilities, and aptitudes; that the greatest threat to American society is “white supremacy”; that everything in the modern Western world, from mathematics to nuclear families to pumpkin-spice lattes, is racist; that intelligence is a meaningless and unquantifiable concept; that when different identity groups perform differently on qualifying tests for education and employment, those tests should simply be discarded; that for nations to control their borders is inherently immoral; that the interests of criminals trump those of law-abiding citizens; that parents should have no say in how their children are educated; that members of various, designated groups are not to be considered responsible agents; that the way to deal with rising crime is to stop arresting people; that the 2020 election was squeaky-clean; that the January 6th protest was an assault on a par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11 (while the three-day siege of the White House by BLM and Antifa, in which hunrdeds of officers were injured, and the First Family had to be evacuated, was not); that the protests of that summer were “mostly peaceful”; and no end of other obvious falsehoods and absurdities.

dead tzadikim

   In prayer, people ought to turn to God alone. Not to God through tzadikim saints or any intermediator. Even in the merit of tzadikim. If you think about the times of the prophets, there was a sort of clarity that one should worship and pray to God alone. Not through any intermediator. The modern equivalent of worship of idols is worship of dead tzadikim. [Or even live tzadikim]. 

  If they are tzadikim or not? is a good question. But worship is due to God alone. And the religious world is the opposite of worship of God. They worship dead tzadikim,-- all the rituals none withstanding.