z90 midi music file

 Rav Nahman said there is a evil inclination in the service of God of going overboard. It is hard to know what are the exact parameters of this. I for one took myself to study of the Ari while at the Mir Yeshiva in NY and this certainly can be considered to be going overboard. After all right at the Introduction of the Eitz Chaim you have the warning and oath of Rav Chaim Vital that no one should look at his book who has not fulfilled a set of enumerated conditions. Take a look at them and you will see that no one who has looked at that book can possibly have fulfilled those conditions in the couple hundred years. No one is fasting from after Shabat to the next kidush.

  

[not to leave the subject in the middle let me say that the issue still is unclear to me --since after all i think that this learning helped me in many ways. Still  i feel i jumped in too soon and still needed to do a lot more of Shas] at any rate i do think that learning the ari for some time helped prepare me for the land of israel and the amazing light which shines there. so i would have to say that rav shmuel berenbaum was right when i asked him about thissort of learning. he said first finish shas. i said i already did. he said do it again. [of course when reb smuel said finish shas he did not mean the way some do it. rather he meant beiyun with tosphot, maharsha and reb chaim of brisk. ] 

 I noticed an odd fact. Julius Caesar was from the family of the Julii. The Julii were not originally Romans but rather from Alba which made war on Rome but the war was resolved by combat of three soldiers against three. The last one standing was a Roman so Alba came under  Rome. But then in the next war against the Sabians, Alba rebelled. So Rome killed their commander who ordered his troops to defect. Then the city of Alba was destroyed and all the citizens were  moved to Rome and some of their leading families were made patricians in the Senate.  And one of those families was the Julii.

There is some irony here. on one hand Caesar was from a people that were not originally Roman. And he in fact was the end of the Roman Republic, Yet on the other hand, it is hard to think of any Roman greater than Caesar. There must be a lesson here about baali teshuva [don't trust the newly religious.]

[actually I can think of one roman who was greater than Caesar, i,e., the philosopher Plotinus.]

 z88 music file

Rav Nachman did not say to go to his grave on Rosh Hashanah. He did however say so for the tikun klali, but not Rosh Hashanah. For Rosh Hashanah he said to come to him. He never said anything about his grave in connection with Rosh Hashanah. 

 דאשתמש בתגא חלף "One who uses the crown passes away." מכאן אמרו כל הנהנה מדברי תורה נוטל חייו מן העולם "From here they said, 'Anyone who derives benefit from words of Torah, takes his life out of the world.'"

Pirkei Avot chapter 4 mishna 7. see commentary of Rambam who writes that the roshei yeshiva who say it isamitzvah to give money to yeshivot are liars It is a strong sort of language that you do not see usually in the words of the Rambam. But it seems that he saw that Torah was becoming a business and saw this would    bring about a situation lie we see nowadays--when the vast majority of those who claim to be learning and teaching Torah are hypocrites.

זבחים ט ע''א פסחים ס''ב tractate zevachim page 9 and pesachim page 62

 Even though רב שך writes that the רמב''ם holds the leftover פסח sacrifice does not need עקירה from the name פסח and rather becomes automatically a קרבן שלמים I think he must have been aware of how weak this idea is. For he himself brings two powerful refutations of this very idea. One he tries to escape with a weak answer what is called a דוחק. The other he does not answer at all. The first refutation is this: the רמב''ם brings the teaching that says ''if the owners of the פסח die or become unclean [before it is sacrificed] it must be burnt immediately.'' The גמרא brings this teaching and right away says, ''we see from this that the leftover פסח needs uprooting. [Now even though רב שך tries to answer this that the רמב''ם is only referring to specific cases where the owners are pushed off to the second פסח, we see from the language of the רמב''ם that he states the law simply if the owners died it is burnt.] The next question even רב שך does not attempt an answer to. It is the teaching that if the whole year has passed and one brings the פסח for the sake of פסח in its time it is כשר but not accepted. That even the גמרא does not use as a proof that the leftover פסח does not need uprooting for everyone agrees in this case as תוספות says. The גמרא does not in fact use that ברייתא as a proof for רב הונא in the name of רב that the פסח does not need uprooting. 

למרות שרב שך כותב שהרמב''ם מחזיק את קרבן הפסח שנשאר לא צריך עקירה מהשם פסח ודווקא הופך אוטומטית לקרבן שלמים, אני חושב שהוא בטח היה מודע לכמה שהרעיון הזה חלש. שכן הוא עצמו מביא שתי הפרכות עוצמתיות לרעיון זה. אחד הוא מנסה לברוח עם תשובה חלשה מה שנקרא דוחק. על השני הוא לא עונה בכלל. ההפרכה הראשונה היא זו: הרמב''ם מביא את ההוראה האומרת שאם בעלי הפסח מתים או נטמאים יש לשרוף אותו מיד. הגמרא מביאה את ההוראה הזאת ומיד אומרת ''אנו רואים מכאן שצריך לעקור את השאריות הפסח.'' [עכשיו למרות שרב שך מנסה לענות על זה שהרמב''ם מתייחס רק למקרים ספציפיים שבהם הבעלים נדחקים לפסח השני אנחנו רואים מלשון הרמב''ם שהוא קובע את הדין בפשטות אם הבעלים מתו זה נשרף.] השאלה הבאה אפילו רב שך לא מנסה לענות עליה. הלימוד הוא שאם חלפה כל השנה ומביאים את הפסח לשם פסח בזמנו כשר אבל לא מקובל. שאפילו הגמרא אינה משתמשת כהוכחה ששארית הפסח אינה צריכה עקירה שהרי כולם מסכימים במקרה זה כדברי תוספות. הגמרא למעשה אינו משתמש באותה ברייתא כהוכחה לרב הונא בשם רב שהפסח אינו צריך לעקור.