The idea of Rav Nahman not to be מחמיר חומרות יתירות [not to seek extra restrictions] shows what it is about the religious world tat is "off". For the religious world is always seeking new restrictions.
If people ae not familiar with the Gemara, this might seems to in accord with Torah. But the extra restrictions of the religious are very often not necessary and sometimes made up fanaticisms. However the world of the Litvak yeshiva is much better in thus regard.
When I would discuss political issues with my learning partner, David Bronson, his answer was always along these lines: כל המקבל על עצמו עול תורה, מעבירים ממנו עול מלכות ועול דרך ארץ [When one accepts on himself the yoke of Torah, the yoke of the government an of work is removed from him.]Maybe at first it seemed e was just pushing me off but then I realized that he meant it. No one really cares what I think about any of the burning political issues that so much occupy pubic debate. The best I can do for myself and for others is to sit and learn Torah. In fact, I noticed how easy it is to get all excited about issues that have nothing to do with me and no one cares what I think. Like it says in the verse: כאוחז באזני כלב כן המתערב בריב לא לו [Like one who grabs the ears of a dog, so is he who gets mixed up in a argument that is not his.]
The West has been thinking of Russia as a nobody ever since the end of the Cold War. But by constantly poking at the Bear, the bear will eventually react. A wise policy would be to notice that the Ukraine has never been an independent state--ever. Not when the area was owned by Poland, nor under the Romanovs. All you have is a population that feels and thinks Russian, and that other unfortunate part of Ukraine that has always been addicted to murder and crime. Without the firm rule of Russia, they have always been a terror even to Ukrainians. Even now they force the common people to acquiesce to the false profile that is presented as freedom fighters. Ukraine is divided between the bullies and the bullied. And if the bullied speak up they lose their lives.
I recall the Cuban Missile Crisis. My mom and dad took us kids along with them to look at buying some underground shelter. [Even though we lived on the West Coast.] And all through the 60's, 70'sand 80's the power and ability of the USSR was never in doubt. No one thought starting a war with the USSR was a good idea. Everyone thought peace and cooperation with Russia was the most important thing.
Why is it that now people think that they can keep on poking the bear without worry? One reason is the fact that Russian advance into Ukraine has been slow. But that does not signal weakness but rather the desire to reincorporate the Ukraine back into the orbit of Russia. There is no desire to ruin things, but to keep everything intact, but just have rule from Moscow.
And for years I asked people what they thought about how things were in the Ukraine as different from the time of the USSR. This I asked from the women at the markets, from the owners of stores. From random people where ever I went in the Ukraine. And the answer was always the same. "Things were better then than now." [I.e. better under the USSR than the more recent governments.]]
I have been thinking about a a certain problem in the Rambam Laws of Lender and Borrower perek/chapter 19 law 8 for a while but have not come to any clarity.
The basic subject is this: You have a lender and borrower. The borrower sells a field to a buyer. Then the lender writs to that buyer "דין ודברים אין לי עמך" "You have no obligations to me." Then that buyer sells the field to a second buyer. Then if the if borrower does not pay the debt, the lender can go to the second buyer and take the field as a repayment of the debt. [This is the regular law of שיעבוד that any property owned by a person at the time of a loan is obligated to pay that loan even if he sells that property or gives it away. The lender can always go after it if there is nothing owned by the borrower.]
The problem that I have is that then the first buyer can go and collect the field from the lender because he will have lost the money that he had to pay to the second buyer because of the loss of the field to the lender. I do not see why the first buyer can go and collect the field from the lender, for the lender did not collect the field from him. All he wrote was, "I will not collect the field from you," and he didn't..
I noticed this subject in the Avi Ezri and it is also brought in the Chidushei HaRambam of Rav Chaim of Brisk but how they explain this is not clear to me. I was hoping that thinking about this while at the sea shore would help but so far I have zero ideas.
The age of disappointment. The religious world has made an impression that they are for family values. But this false. They are for power over secular Jews.. They might try to give this impression because the Conservatives have in fat tried to support family values in the face of the left trying to destroy the family. But that is the definition of cult--trying to bring in people to support their power structure by means of a lie and false claim if moral superiority.
In the West the family collapsed. So it made sense for the religious world to pretend to fill the gap. What I discovered was that the claim of the religious as being for family vales is a borrowed value from the Republicans..When they have a chance to destroy the families baali teshuva they do so.
The religious found it useful to use the fiction of support of family values by means of Shabat Table Judaism, the whole thing is Potemkin façade. They are trying to show a value they have borrowed from the Conservatives and Republicans.